(L - R) Ricardo Gardner, Ricardo Fuller- file

Audley Boyd
Assistant Editor - Sports

LOS ANGELES, California:

Caribbean champions Jamaica launch their quest for a first CONCACAF Gold Cup championship title when they face Canada in the opening match of the competition's 2009 staging at the Home Depot Centre here at 5 p.m. (7 p.m. Jamaica time).

Costa Rica and El Salvador, the two other teams in Group A - dubbed the Group of Death - will contest the feature encounter at 7 p.m. (9 p.m. Jamaica time).

Head coach Theodore Whitmore and his Reggae Boyz will be kicking for a winning start.

"We want to do well in this competition and we have to start by winning tomorrow," the Jamaica head coach said after the team's training session at the match venue here yesterday evening.

"It's the opening game, we want to come out with three points at the end of the game," Whitmore stressed.

"I'm pretty much happy with our preparation coming into the Gold Cup," he added. "We had a good crop of players going into the World Cup qualifiers and coming into this tournament, but at the end of the day it's what we do out on the pitch that determines the result.

In the World Cup qualifiers in November last year, Jamaica beat Canada 3-0 at home. They also drew 0-0 with another team in the group, El Salvador, in a friendly international in Washington, DC, recently.

Past not relevant

Whitmore, however, stated that past results count for nothing.

"We have to put that behind us," he said of the contests. "It's a different team. Both Canada and El Salvador are different, so we have to take a different approach to this game."

Though they were knocked out of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying, the Jamaicans are a dangerous team, having assembled a strong squad of professionals based in Europe and the United States. Only two players are local-based, reserve goalie Dwayne Miller and Eric Vernan, MVP of the Digicel Caribbean Championship that they won in December.

Ricardo Fuller, Luton Shelton, Ricardo Gardner, Tyrone Marshall and goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts number among Jamaica's leading players.

Captain Gardner said the tournament is a very important one for the Boyz.

"It's a very important tournament for us, especially as we missed out on the World Cup," admits Gardner.

Gardner was recently treated for a hamstring injury and though that has healed and he is not at peak fitness, the left-sided player is ready to give his all.

"My hamstring is 100 per cent better, but pertaining to match fitness I wouldn't say I'm 100 per cent fit. But I'll just play hard and see how it goes in the game tomorrow."

The Canada team includes Jamaica-born Simeon Jackson, who scored in one of their two latest warm-up matches, a 1-0 win over the Cypriots in Cyprus on May 30.

Second stint

They won their following practice match 3-0 over Guatemala on Tuesday, to mark the end of a six-day camp. Ali Gerba scored a double and Patrice Bernier netted the other goal in that win, which was the first in the second stint as head coach for Stephen Hart, who is Trinidadian.

After that victory, Canadian defender Kevin McKenna was quoted as saying in a FIFA website article: "I think we can go positive into the game against Jamaica."

The Jamaica team is also coming off a one-week camp in the Cayman Islands. They won two games during the period, beating the Cayman Islands national team 4-1 and led 5-0 against a Cayman All-Stars team before that match was called off in heavy rainfall.

Prior to the camp, the Reggae Boyz beat Panama 3-2 at home and tied two other practice matches in the United States - 2-2 against Haiti in Miami and 0-0 with El Salvador in Washington DC.

In the most recent meetings between Jamaica and Canada, apart from the 3-0 win in Kingston on November 19 last year, the number 65-ranked Reggae Boyz tied 1-1 without several of their top players in Canada at the BMO Field in Toronto, in World Cup qualifying last year.

Headliners

Deportivo de la Coruna midfielder Julian de Guzman, who scored in that match-up for Canada - who are ranked 92nd in the FIFA tables - headlines their team, which will seek major contributions from Jackson, Gerba, McKenna, Atiba Hutchinson and veteran Paul Stalteri.

This is the 10th staging of the competition and hosts, the United States, are the defending champions.

The CONCACAF number one-ranked Americans, rated 12th in the world, are fresh from a runner-up finish at the Confederations Cup in South Africa. They will begin their campaign tomorrow against first-time qualifiers Grenada.

Only four members of the United States team that participated in South Africa are included on their Gold Cup roster. They are Charlie Davies, the only one who saw action in the Confed Cup, along with Freddy Adou, Heath Pearce and Luis Robles.

Haiti and Honduras are the other teams in that group, one of three that involves four first-round participants.

The other, Group C, consists of Guadeloupe, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama.

Following round-robin first-round action, the group winners and runners-up, along with the two leading third-place countries, will advance to the eight-nation quarter-final stage. Those matches will be played in Philadelphia and Dallas on July 18 and 19.

Top four

The top four move on to the semi-finals, that will be played in Chicago on July 23, while the final is set for New York on July 26.Jamaica (from): Donovan Ricketts, Dwayne Miller, Tyrone Marshall, Damion Stewart, Claude Davis, Eric Vernan, Demar Phillips, Ricardo Gardner, Jason Morrison, Oneil Thompson, Rudolph Austin, Jamal Campbell-Ryce, Jermaine Johnson, Nicholas Addlery, Dane Richards, Luton Shelton, Omar Cummings, Ricardo Fuller, Rafe Wolfe.