GORDON WILLIAMS, Freelance Writer

Blaine

Illustrated neatly on the pages of a personal planner Vin Blaine lugs around with him most days is a map to his deepest passion.

Side-by-side on white, lined paper, are scribbled notes, instructions for coaching women's football. There, also, is a simple chart with the heading "D.O.P.", which gets a prominent place alongside complicated diagrams of on-the-field formations and strategies.

The letters stand for "date of period", the coach of Jamaica's national team explains in a calm, but direct manner, a near mirror image of the one he carries to the sideline during most games.

"First of all you have to deal with the (menstrual) cycle," Blaine says. "That is one of the major factors in how they respond to training and as a coach coaching females you have to understand that."

Team machine

Understanding "that" is no less important to Blaine than figuring out how to attack or defend his next opponent. He knows that if the parts trusted to execute the game plan are not in top working order before they hit the field, the team machine will grind to failure.

"I do it for two reasons," Blaine says, elaborating on the importance of the chart.

"One reason, I know not to push them (the players) too hard (during their cycle). Second reason is that they will use (the cycle) against you, to cop out of training. So if they know they are seeing their period, they can't come again next week and tell you they're seeing it again."

His tightrope-walking method of preparing women - emotionally and physically - for a task that requires brute strength, aggressive-ness and a mean competitive edge not often found in the manual of common female conduct, appears to be working.

Despite Jamaica's elimination from the semi-final of November's CONCACAF Gold Cup, and the 2007 World Cup finals, Blaine has already taken the Reggae Girlz to their loftiest level.

Jamaica is the top female Caribbean team and has earned a berth in next year's Pan American Games in Brazil.

Still the Girlz, like most female athletes in Jamaica, are locked into a sport dominated by men. The Reggae Boyz demand - and get - the lion's share of the country's crowd and financial support. The women scramble for what's left behind.

The first time Blaine saw Jamaica's first round Gold Cup opponent Panama play was on game day, a scenario almost unheard of in the international game.

No pre-tournament scouting trip; no game film, although Panama reviewed Jamaica's earlier games. That would never have happened to the Boyz.

Yet the fledgling Girlz, once ridiculed as beating sticks for bigger, richer countries, are slowly commanding respect.

"They are technically better than us," Even Pellerud, coach of Canada's World Cup-bound team confessed before his team played - and beat - Jamaica in the Gold Cup.

That skill, speed and natural athletic ability helped propel the Reggae Girlz through an impressive Gold Cup qualifying campaign where they scored more than 30 goals while conceding none against Caribbean teams. They also shut out Panama 2-0 in the Gold Cup, before losing to Canada and then Mexico.

Blaine revels in the quest of competition. He also relishes the job of balancing the delicate world in which he thrives - and vows never to give up - where gender issues and sensitivities forge an eternal tug-o-war, and he finds himself embedded smack in the middle.

Coaching women, he says flatly, offers far more joy than confronting the inflated egos of men. And Blaine is convinced that even if offered the job to take charge of the world famous Reggae Boyz, he would not leave the women's programme.

"If I had a choice I would stay with the girls, first and foremost," he says without a hint of hesitation. "I have no interest in coaching the national men's team."

But the current job is not easy. Men and women are different off the field. And while the women compete just as fierce and understand the nuances of the "beautiful game", they bring a different set of gears to the park as well.

For Blaine, the skill to making it all work is often about leaving his own ego at the door to enter a world he can never even pretend to fully know, even as a father of four daughters, but somehow must manage to understand.

"It is more for the male figure to adapt to coaching females," says Elaine Walker-Brown, a former player and current Reggae Girlz manager who has been involved with the local game for close to two decades.

"Whatever way you take it, they are girls and they are women. There's some things that come in that you don't face with men."

What Blaine is sure of is that while men claim superiority on the field, there are important lessons they would do well to learn from their female counterparts.

"It is easier to have girls gel than men," he says, "because they can get closer physically and emotionally than men. You can't have that because they (men) look at it as a no no if a man gets close to a man. While a girl can comfort another girl, a man's not going to do that."

Blaine also swears a woman will not deliberately try to hurt another on the field just to get more playing time at the expense of the injured player, a practice he says men cannot totally deny.

Women also fit easier into the team mold, with the group's objectives far outweighing individual targets. They organize better - a product of being trained to manage homes and families - and follow instructions more willingly.

"(Women) are all about being committed to the things that they do," Marlon Charles, coach of Trinidad and Tobago's women's team, argues in support of Blaine.

"Women are organizers and if you as a coach lend yourself to what they want to do, but yet with you demanding the things that you want for you, then it's easy because the approach is the same that comes in a relationship with a woman. All you need to do is to show that sensitivity, show that love."

To harness that affection - never, ever to be confused, Blaine says, with lust - the coach must first command respect from the players. Yet although most female athletes in Jamaica have known only male coaches, he says, they are not easily fooled into offering respect that is not earned.

"That is how (they) get by," the coach says. "They study you more. A man doesn't care(He) just wants to play football. He doesn't care if the coach likes him or not."

Blaine's approach is much different from what is normally used for men. Discussion sessions among the women and the coach usually address and quash in-camp conflicts speedily. On-the-field coaching strategies are also more subtly applied to the women as well.

"Even in a game, when you are substituting in a game, it affects (the women) more not getting a game than the men," says Blaine. "The men will sit down and kick back. They will cuss one side. But the girls want to be in the game."

And they want to win. Badly. Their emotional meter heats up much faster than men, but not enough to allow selfishness and egos to create prolonged friction and damage team goals. The women also adapt easier to team strategy than men.

"Women respond better to training," says Blaine. "They respond better to instructions. They want to learn, as opposed to men who want to show you that they are the (Brazilian star) Ronaldinhos of the world. And sometimes you tell (men) what to do and they don't do it."

"(Women are) very much emotional to the things that they do," Charles adds. "So as a coach, being involved with women you've got to be the same way. You've got to have that passion. You've got to show that sensitivity."

Yet, as Blaine's "D.O.P." chart proves, not much will be accomplished if all players' concerns are not addressed. Unabashedly, he admits attending games and training carrying feminine pads - just in case.

Meanwhile, the emotional side of women, which makes them unafraid to confide in someone they trust and respect, is on the same delicate plane that tells them if a coach can't handle that part of the deal then it's best he steps aside.

"Their needs," Walker-Brown explains. "If they are not comfortable you're not going to get the results you want on the field. It is in the women's game. You have to make them as comfortable as possible with what little you have."

Which is why Blaine says he encourages his players to explore and enjoy their femininity. Female footballers often play pick-up games with males. They get accused of being tomboys at an early age, but they like to test and toughen up themselves - physically and mentally - against male competition. In many cases they idolize male players and want to be like them, despite their differences.

If they are still playing the game, say, late into their teens, females are usually conditioned not to worry too much about issues like broken fingernails or minor cuts and bruises. But some wear eye shadow, blush, eyeliner and even lipstick while competing.

Blaine says that despite the rough and tumble requirements of football, he demands that his players embrace their identity.

"When we travel the first thing I say to them is 'you're women first'," explains the coach of Harbour View, which won Jamaica's premier women's club league recently, but who has never been in charge of a male squad. "That's why any team I coach, I make sure they dress like women when they travel."

That represents another vital part of the team-building puzzle. But just in case the females miss the message, other forces step in with timely reminders not even the most considerate male coach could offer.

"You know when the reality strikes?" says Blaine, whose oldest daughter is 38, "when their period comes. They know they are a woman. You understand me? So they might dress and behave like a man, but when their period comes that is the time they know they regain their womanhood so they must know that."

So too must he. After all, cramps, headaches and grumpiness are just as important as bending it like Beckham.

-Gordon Williams is a Jamaican journalist based in the United States.

Shanique Mitchell and other Reggae Girlz in training last month under the guidance of Vin Blaine, for the World Cup qualifiers. - Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer