Jamaica vs. St Vincent and the Grenadines - Gold Cup Qualification

Back again for part 2 of our March window double header, we cover a deeper cut between two nations with deeper-than-expected historical connections: Jamaica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. They clash in Gold Cup prelims/qualification matches on March 21 at the famous Arnos Vale cricket stadium in Kingstown, SVG, and then March 25 in another cricket ground, Sabina Park, this time in Kingston, Jamaica.

Situated on opposite ends of the Caribbean, these countries were both influence by Guyanese Black Power activist Walter Rodney while he taught at the University of the West Indies (UWI) campus in Mona, Kingston, Jamaica. After his anti-colonial speech rubbed Jamaica's post-independence elites the wrong way, he was forcibly encouraged to leave his position at UWI. 

While that exit would push Rodney to achieve great influence across the Caribbean as well as in Africa, one of his most ardent defenders would later return to his native St. Vincent and become, as of 2025, the longest-serving democratically-elected state leader - Ralph Gonsalves. 

Rodney's anti-colonial influence lives on more in St. Vincent than in Jamaica, as SVG is party to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples' Trade Treaty while Jamaica prefers more traditional neoliberal free trade deals.

As you well know, after we run through these connections, we also run through the distant and recent past for both national team squads, and make our prediction for the matches!

Song - Protoje (son of a Vincentian calypso singer father and a Jamaican singer and lawyer mother) - Who Knows feat. ChronixxJam