In a match that City dominated Shaw scored the final goal in 59th minute to seal the victory.
Manchester City dominated the match with 64 per cent possession and taking 14 shots at goal, eight of them on target keeping Claudia Moan busy throughout. The breakthrough came early when Julie Blakstad netted in the eighth minute.
Alex Greenwood’s corner was poorly cleared by Sunderland’s defence.
Shaw’s back header then found Steph Houghton, whose clever pass found Filippa Angeldahl, who squared for Blakstad to tap home. Manchester City went into the break leading 1-0 but added a second early on the resumption when once again poor defending saw Hayley Raso run through to slot past Moan.
Shaw’s goal came when Houghton’s defence-splitting pass was slid home by the Jamaican striker.
The Jamaican will have a chance to add to her eight league goals this coming Sunday, when Manchester City take on Brighton Hove Albion, a team with the worst defensive record in the WSL.
Carter scored in the seventh, 16th and 17th minutes as Jamaica scored five in the first half against the home side playing at the Truman Bodden Stadium in Georgetown. Tamoy Phillips’ own goal in the 12th and Jody Brown’s goal in the 14th meant that Jamaica scored all five goals within the first 20 minutes of the match.
Miraculously, Jamaica failed to add to the scoreline in the remaining time before the interval.
The domination continued after the break as Shaw scored three within 11 minutes (54’, 56’, 65’) as Jamaica boosted their goal-difference advantage over the Dominican Republic which were only able to defeat Bermuda 1-0.
Kayla McCoy came on as a substitute for Shaw and added her name to the score sheet in the 88th minute to complete the rout.
The lopsided victory means Jamaica leads Group C with the maximum of nine points, the same as the Dominican Republic but Jamaica has scored 19 goals and conceded one in their three matches. The Dominican Republic has 14 from their three matches, which means that they need to defeat Jamaica on Tuesday to win the group and advance to the next round of competition.
A win or a draw for Jamaica means they advance.
First-half goals from Celsa Sandaoval and Ramona Martinez in the 16th and 35th minutes, respectively gave the visitors a 2-0 lead at half-time before Khadijah ‘Bunny’ Shaw pulled one back from the penalty spot in the 61st minute.
Glaring errors by the Jamaica’s gifted the Paraguayans their two goals against a wasteful Jamaican team that missed several opportunities to score.
Deneisha Blackwood’s errant back pass was seized upon by Sandaoval, who beat an advancing Rebecca Spencer in the Jamaican goal before shooting into the bottom right hand corner.
The second 19 minutes later resulted in a poor pass from Havana Solaun, which gave the Paraguayan forwards to spread the ball wide before a cross found Martinez free inside the box to smash home from close range.
Head Coach Lorne Donaldson said he was not surprised by the slow start. He said he saw it coming given that the girls were not sharp during their warm-ups and it showed in the opening 20 minutes of the game.
He explained, however, that the match was not all about trying to win as there were several players that the coaching staff wanted to take a look at before finalizing the squad for the World Cup still nine months away.
“Our camp is a little bit different from Paraguay. We are still looking at stuff. We are still looking at players, so obviously we want to win but it is not going to be at all cost for this camp because we have to give some players a look, so stuff is going to be a little bit off and that was evident in the first 20 minutes,” he said.
Among the things that we “off” was the Reggae Girlz shooting. Chances fell to Drew Spence and Shaw in the first half but were either blocked missed entirely.
Spence’s 13th minute shot was parried by goalkeeper Christine Ricalde while Shaw dragged one past the far post just two minutes later.
Siobhan Wilson’s cross fell to Paige Bailey-Paige, whose shot from inside the box was charged down by a defender. Allyson Swaby also had a shot from two yards blocked by Ricalde.
Three changes made at the resumption of play resulted in Jamaica being more organized and stable defensively. Vyan Sampson replaced an ineffective Solaun and Atlanta Primus came on to replace Kayla McCoy in midfield while fullback Tiernney Wiltshire replaced Malikae Dayes.
Bailey-Gayle and Wilson were substituted for wingers Cheyna Matthews and Rachel Jones in the 59th minute, the latter making an immediate impact.
Jones’ driving run down the left flank and resulting cross led to the handled ball from which a penalty was awarded allowing Jamaica back into the game.
The changes, Donaldson said, were a direct result of the team’s inability to control the game and limit the number of turnovers, which invariably but the defence under pressure.
“If you see, when we came out in the second half there were two changes in the midfield because we couldn’t control the game, we couldn’t anything. We were passing the ball to the next team, so that’s a part of saying this would never work or this is not going to work,” he said while lamenting the poor finishing that ultimately cost the team.
“Should we have knocked some goals in, maybe we should have but such is football. To us, it’s preparation and the end product is what we are looking at.”
Donaldson said this was the last window when the coaching staff would be looking at new players. He indicated that by the next camp they should have the 30 players from which the final squad will be selected for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Prior to the match Manchester City manager Gareth Taylor, promised they would not take their second-tier opponents lightly.
"With some of the teams you play, there's not a huge amount of difference in level between the kind of top end of the championship to the bottom end of the WSL,” he said.
“I think it's just making sure that as a team, we are prepared, we're focused. We're not being neglectful of the opposition.”
They were not.
In a dominant display in which Manchester City took 27 shots, 14 on target, Shaw opened the scoring in the 16th minute. The three-time FA Women’s Cup champions doubled their lead when Chloe Kelly scored in the 38th minute as City threatened to run rampant.
Deyna Castellanos then scored on the stroke of half-time to send City into the break with a 3-0 lead.
Shaw was against first on the scoresheet with her second goal six minutes after the resumption before Julie Blakstad scored the first of her two goals in the 53rd minute.
Blakstad scored her second in the 78th minute to make it 6-0.
Shaw completed her hat-trick in the 87th minute to complete the rout.
The 24-year-old Shaw, who plays for Bordeaux in France, is the joint leading scorer in the French league this season with 20 goals from just 17 games. She joined the Bordeaux on a two-year deal in the summer of 2019, scoring 10 goals in 15 appearances in her first season.
However, according to Goal.com, Manchester City are close to signing the Jamaican, who has scored 42 goals in 30 games for Jamaica and who was instrumental in getting her country to the FIFA World Cup in 2019, scoring more than 20 goals in the qualifiers. According to Goal, Shaw would bring added depth to City’s roster of strikers and share the goal-scoring burden with England international Ellen White. She would also offer head coach Gareth Taylor a different option, tactically.
More popularly known as ‘Bunny’ played her first two years of junior college at Eastern Florida State College scoring 21 goals, earning NSCAA first-team National Junior College Athletic Association All-America honours in 2016.
In 2017, she transferred to the University of Tennessee where she scored 27 goals across the two seasons and she was named to the All-SEC first team in both her seasons. She was awarded SEC Offensive Player of the Year as a senior in 2018.
After graduation, Shaw opted not to enter the NWSL Draft and after a brief spell with the American semi-pro side, Florida Krush joined Bordeaux.
After missing several presentable opportunities early on, against a game Bermuda unit, Jamaica finally took the lead in the 21st minute when Jodi Brown opened the scoring. Trudy Carter doubled the team’s lead 9 minutes later after booting the ball into the net from around 8 yards, profiting from a late run into the box and a searching cutback from Brown on the flank.
Shaw, who headed the ball onto the ball early on, looked to have earned a penalty when she was brought down midway the second half by Bermuda goalkeeper Micah Pond, but her protest was waved off by the referee.
The Manchester City forward made no mistake in the 79th minute, adding the team’s third after smashing the ball high into the net from close range, after the goalkeeper had parried an effort from winger Kalyssa Van Zanten. She added her second only moments from the final whistle after picking up the ball ten yards from goal, swiveling around her defender, and firing home.
The team will face Grenada in the second match of the round on Sunday.
Following a 1-0 loss to their Asian counterparts on Saturday, the team closed out the tour with a 2-0 defeat on Wednesday. Despite the results, the tour that was earmarked as an opportunity to evaluate players and team tactics was in Shaw's estimation a huge success.
“From the beginning the coach had said he wanted to use this opportunity to see other players, to find an identity and style of play, especially now that we have time before the World Cup,” Shaw said.
“So just coming here, playing against a different style, playing against a team that loves the ball helped us to know that sometimes we are going to suffer in different games and that gives us an idea of how we can approach the game,” she added.
The Reggae Girlz are expected to take part in further camps during the October and November window.
The duo was outstanding for the Jamaica national team who finished third overall at the event behind winners the United States and second place Canada.
The typically outstanding Shaw, the Jamaica national team’s all-time leading scorer, managed to net a tournament-leading three goals, which added up for a very productive 12 overall.
The introduction of Tottenham Hotspurs midfielder Spence was a major boost for the Jamaicans as she racked up a tournament-leading 15 pass interceptions an assist and a goal.
Also joining Shaw and Spence in the W Championship Best XI was Haiti livewire Melchie Dumornay who proved a slippery customer for opposing defenses to handle time and time again. The Caribbean players were selected as part of a 3-4-3 formation. The rest of the team was comprised of players from the United States and Canada.
Full squad
GK Kailen Sheridan, Canada
DF Becky Sauerbrunn, United States
DF Vanessa Gilles, Canada
DF Naomi Girma, United States
MF Melchie Dumornay, Haiti
MF Rose Lavelle, United States
MF Jessie Fleming, Canada
MF Drew Spence, Jamaica
FW Julia Grosso, Canada
FW Alex Morgan, United States
FW Khadija Shaw, Jamaica
