Reggae Girlz Head Coach Hubert Busby says the team’s 4-1 win over hosts Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) in an international friendly match in Couva on Tuesday night was dedicated to Jamaicans worldwide after the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa.

Jamaica defeated T&T 4-1 through two goals from Jodi Brown in minutes 11 and 84, as well as Natasha Thomas (52nd), and Tiana Harris (67th). T&T got theirs through Nikita Gosine in the 13th. This performance came at the same time Jamaica was being pummelled by Hurricane Melissa, a category 5 system deemed by experts to be the second-most powerful in the history of the Atlantic Basin, and which made landfall in western Jamaica on Tuesday morning and continued to affect the island into the night.

But Busby’s immediate thought after the game was the tragedy back in Jamaica after the hurricane.

“I want to take this opportunity to let the people back home in Jamaica know our thoughts and prayers are with them. Stay safe and stay strong,” Busby said in the post-match press conference. “This game was about going out there and making sure we can give something, not just to Jamaicans on the island but Jamaicans worldwide who are going through a lot right now. Credit to the players, and all of us who are impacted by what’s going on at home. But we want to say prayers for everybody and we hope everybody is safe.”

Busby says this game was taken seriously despite being a friendly.

“There is no friendly matches when these two countries get together. We knew it was going to be a tough match. They’re a well-coached team, organised. We knew that we were going to be tested. That was the reason why we took this game.”

Busby says he thought they were wasteful in front of goal.

“We always said goals change games and I think early on, we put some of those chances away,” he said. “But with that said, they responded really well, made a couple of adjustments at half-time. We spoke about things we needed to improve on and credit to the players, they went out there and executed accordingly.”

T&T Head Coach Damian Briggs is pleased with their performance, in spite of the result.

“We’re really happy, really happy,” he said after the game. “I thought the energy level was high, so we had a go. It was really a pleasure to see that the players worked to the game plan and adjusted when they needed to adjust.

“I said to them, ‘Don’t let this result define who we are, we know what we’ve got to do.’

“We know we’re in a rebuilding phase. We’ve got to take the good bits here and then also look at the bits that weren’t working too well and look at it and go again.”

The Reggae Girlz are preparing for their first round of FIFA Women’s World Cup Qualifiers, also known as the Concacaf W Qualifiers. Jamaica gets started against Dominica at the Daren Sammy Cricket Stadium in Gros Islet, St Lucia, on Saturday, November 29.