Jamaica Reggae Girlz forward Kayla McCoy insists the team remains hungry for success despite achieving the historic feat of qualifying for back-to-back FIFA Women’s World Cups.

Having already secured a spot in next year's premier global football showpiece the Jamaican team could be forgiven for getting caught in celebration mode, ahead of Thursday’s Concacaf W Championship semi-finals against Canada.

According to the player, however, the team remains sharp and focused as the match-up against the Olympic champions will present a unique opportunity.

“Although it's very exciting that we qualified again, as a group we knew that we could and fully expected to do so,” McCoy told members of the media on Thursday.

“We’ve qualified but we know the job isn’t done yet and there’s still more to go, so, going into the game against Canada we are going to be firing on all cylinders.  We are still hungry.  We’ve qualified once and now we’ve qualified again but now we want to take it further and show what we can do,” she added.

So far, the Jamaicans have not had a happy time against the Canadians.  The team has lost both times they have faced the North American heavyweights, with the most recent of those meetings ending in a 9-0 defeat.

Trudi Carter and Khadijah Shaw each scored hat-tricks as Jamaica clobbered The Cayman Islands 9-0 on Saturday to set up a top-of-the-table showdown with the unbeaten Dominican Republic at Sabina Park on Tuesday.

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.

 

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