WITH the assessment period now done and dusted, Senior Reggae Girlz Head Coach Lorne Donaldson has already shifted focus to a narrowed player pool that should take centre stage when they head to Europe to engage in another two-match friendly series during the next FIFA window scheduled for April 3-11.

Though reluctant to reveal details about who they will face as negotiations are still ongoing, Donaldson confirmed that the fixtures could be staged in England or elsewhere in Europe but in the same breath pointed out that the number-four ranked Lionesses will not be their opponents.

“We are working on something, which I can’t disclose as yet until it’s official, but we are trying to get two games in and it would be against the same opponent, possibly in two different cities. No, it will not be against the English team, I can tell you that,” Donaldson declared.

“We are just trying to get another team to come over and play, and we also have a strong Jamaican population in England that we want to connect with and so we want to give them an opportunity to see the Girlz in action, and also we know the support would be fully fledged,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

For Donaldson, the upcoming fixtures take on added significance as this will mark the first in a long time that the technical staff will centre its attention on in-depth technical and tactical work, as well as building out the team’s cohesiveness.

This, as they zone in on selecting the final squad for a second-consecutive FIFA Women’s World Cup appearance, in Australia and New Zealand this summer.

“We can say we have narrowed it down so we have a pool of players that we are working with, going forward, and the expectation is that, barring injuries, we will have a very strong team there [next window] because now we can start coaching and getting our tactics in place to see how we want to play as a unit. So, we are going to pay a lot more attention to the details in terms of how we want to go forward,” Donaldson said.

“Now we can play players for a full match as oppose to what we did during the assessment period when we had players playing limited minutes because we wanted to look at other players. So within this pool now, we want to start looking to come up with the best 23 for the World Cup,” he noted.

In fact, if all goes according to plan during the April window, Donaldson and his assistants Xavier Gilbert and Ak Lakhani should have a better indication of the players who are likely to fill the remaining spaces in the World Cup squad.

“If we didn’t know who the core players are, we wouldn’t be doing our job so, yes, we have identified the core of the final squad. There are some stuff that we are looking at, and I can say Konya [Plummer] is one of the players we are looking at — if we can get her back,” Donaldson shared.

“So we are still looking to solidify some of those positions to ensure that our unit from front to back is very strong, so if somebody else is doing much better than another player we initially had in mind then we have to move them back in the narrowed pool — so performance still counts all the way through,” he emphasised.

Reflecting on their recent Cup of Nations outing down under, Donaldson reiterated that the experience was more than positive despite the fact that the 44th-ranked Girlz conceded nine goals and only scored two.

They lost 0-3, 2-3 and 0-3, to seventh-ranked Spain, 28th-ranked Czech Republic and 12th-ranked Australia, in that order.

“It is a result-oriented game so nobody likes to lose but sometimes you have to step backwards before you can go forward, and we did that to accomplish what we wanted to — but even then, we are playing some of the top teams in the world,” Donaldson argued.

He continued: “People from afar can look at it and say we gave up goals and so on and yes, we were disappointed with that because at times we gave up some bad goals, but at the end of the day it was about seeing if the ladies could get the job done under pressure. Some people can get it done and some can’t.

“So, like I said earlier, going forward we want to be a bit more deliberate with the units we put out, to start developing some cohesiveness because if you don’t train together it is going to be difficult. Those teams that we played, they train together. And it is not an excuse, it is just a fact that we are in a different space and time from everybody else and so all we are trying to do now is get the right players together and just move on.”

That said, Donaldson expressed delight that Concacaf rivals Panama and Haiti will make their debut appearances at the July 20 to August 20 showpiece.

In fact, Panama joins his Reggae Girlz in Group F alongside top-ranked teams Brazil and France.

“I’m actually happy for the Concacaf teams. They defeated two South American teams, which show the quality and investment of their federation, so it should be a good matchup against Panama. We are familiar with them but they are a different team and different coaching staff but we are going to take it one day at a time. We can’t worry about Panama just yet; we still have pressing business to take care of,” Donaldson ended.