Sunday, May 1, 2011

Battle of the Virgins

Venton James (13) and Roger Alexander of the British Virgin Islands during their World Cup 2010 South Africa Qualifying match on Sunday, March 30, 2008.

British Virgin Islands vs. US Virgin Islands

British Virgin Islands


British Virgins Islands is another British overseas department. The population is about 27,000 from a 2005 census. The main sports on the island are cricket and soccer. They have a pro league with 9 teams. Their coach is Avondale Williams who is a native Islander. He has coach then from 2001-2008…now again he is coaching. They did not have a home pitch last World Cup Qualifying cycle so hopefully they will play one of these games at home. They will wear green shirts with bright yellow shorts and yellow socks.                                                                                                                                               The 2006 World Cup Qualifying they lost 0-10 aggregate to St Lucia. 4 year later they put in a much better performance against the Bahamas. Both games were played in the Bahamas and both games were a tie 2-2 and 3-3. They were bitch slapped by the Dominican Republic 0-17, then slapped again by Dominica 0-10 in the 2010 Caribbean Cup. These games were in the Dominican Republic. They could not defend nor could they score. I doubt much has changed from last year.

US Virgin Islands

           The U.S Virgins Islands has a much bigger population (about 110,000) than the British Virgin Islands. …therefore more virgins (ha ha not funny). The main sports are baseball, basketball and American football. There are 3 main islands St Thomas, St Croix and St John. They may play in the capitol of St John’s Charlotte Amalie. Lionel Roberts Park is listed as their national stadium than holds about 9,000 spectators which is huge. Hopefull they can get a big crowd this cycle.           Their coach is Craig Martin. Craig was a Canada national team player from 1983-1984 making about 6 appearances. USVI has a domestic league but can not get info on it. Their overall record is 1 win, 5 draws and 20 losses. Their only win was against British Virgin Islands. They also tied British Virgin Islands twice in 2008. The dashing Eagle is nothing to brag about. USVI has not competed since 2008. They lost 0-10 to Grenada in St. George, Grenada in World Cup Qualifying.

               I do not know which Virgin will perform better. The British Virgin Islands at least tried to compete in the Caribbean Cup. I am going to pick the US Virgin Islands to advance. Since St Thomas populations in the 2000 census was 51,181 which is almost double BVI alone. Ths USVI has 4 times (over 100,000) as many potentail players to pick from than the BVI. I think Craig Martin can pull the team togather and advance.

2 comments:

Lorric said...

Seems about right. BVI did terrible, absolutely, mortifyingly terrible in Caribbean qualifying, and with USVI having the higher population, it would seem they are the favourite despite BVI being higher ranked.

Of course, I still think we won't get to find out and FIFA will throw the system out, making all this speculation a waste of time, but I find it interesting you seem to be devoting entire articles to single ties between CONCACAF's lowliest.

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