Cortnee Vine is not used to doing things slowly.
On the field, she's developed a reputation as one of the fastest players in the A-League Women; her game characterised by luring opponents in before zipping past them in a whirr of pale limbs and fiery-red hair.
She was part of the attacking triumvirate at Sydney FC that won back-to-back Premierships over the last two seasons, with her best-ever campaign coming last year with nine goals and two assists in 12 games as the Sky Blues broke record after record.
It was that stellar season that saw Vine earn her first senior Matildas call-up, debuting in the Asian Cup in India last February where she was suddenly teeing up superstars like Sam Kerr and Caitlin Foord, who she was more accustomed to watching on television.
As one of the only Australia-based Matildas, Vine has rocketed to stardom off the field, too. She's been one of the faces of the team during major announcements and product launches on home soil in the build-up to the 2023 Women's World Cup, most recently representing them at the unveiling of the official tournament match ball on a grassy clifftop overlooking Bondi Beach.
It was there, while standing side-by-side with sporting legends such as Ian Thorpe, Eniola Aluko, Dan Carter, and Jess Fox, and being asked questions in front of a crowd of media and VIP guests, that Vine had a moment of realisation – even by her own warp-speed standards, she is still catching up to her own rapid rise over the past 12 months.
"I was like, 'holy crap, what is going on? Why am I here?'" she tells the ABC.
"That's been the whole last year, to be honest. Going to those events … it hasn't really hit me yet that I'm in this position where I've got the opportunity to represent my country now. I travelled a lot last year – I got to go to England, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, the Asian Cup – but I still haven't really reflected on that.
"I'm playing with some of the best players in the world … players I've been watching in the Matildas for years, and now I get to go and train with them? It's surreal.
"And then these big media events in the build-up to the World Cup. Being there with some amazing athletes who have done so much. I do feel like an impostor when I'm at these things. I'm like, 'am I meant to be here?'. I even feel that way in the Matildas; I have to put on a brave face, that's for sure."
It was barely two years ago that Vine was working casually in a JD Sport warehouse and guiding wheelie-bins full of corner flags and goal nets around the Football NSW headquarters in western Sydney.
Now, the 24-year-old is travelling around the world with the Matildas; her football having suddenly become her full-time job. She has almost experienced a kind of psychological whiplash from how rapidly her life has changed.
"It's a whirlwind once your name does get noticed," she says.
"I feel like a lot of other opportunities tend to follow that sort of thing in the women's game. After I got my first selection in the Matildas and got a few appearances at the Asian Cup, it kind of went crazy after that. I had a lot of overseas offers.
"It's something people don't realise, the mental impact it has once you do reach this goal you've had for your whole life. To be part of the Matildas and go into a camp, that had been one of my goals since I was 15. And then to tick it off…
"It's funny, once you've done it, now it's like, 'what's the next thing?' You have to think of your next big goal. What do you want to accomplish now? I've always wanted to go to a World Cup, go to an Olympics. But now that I'm starting to get closer, I should probably add some things to that list. I should put on there: 'I want to be a starter in the Matildas'."
These are lofty, almost otherworldly goals considering Vine was close to quitting the sport just over a World Cup cycle ago.
"It's a very big mental game, sport; no one tells you that when you're younger when you just play it because you love it," she says. "But as you go further, it becomes much more about the mental side.
"I'm not sure if it's the Australian system, but there used to be a lot of pressure with my under-20s group to make the Matildas. It was like, if you didn't make it at 20, you were never going to make it.
"I went through a patch where I just wasn't enjoying it, I didn't want to do it anymore. I hated the game a bit. But I did some work with a sports psychologist to change the way I looked at it all, where I'd ask myself: well, why am I playing?
"And when I stripped it back, it's because I love playing with my friends, I love kicking a ball around and scoring goals and having fun. I had to try not to put that pressure on myself to make these teams – especially teams that aren't in your control. I can't decide to make the Matildas, you know? It's the coach that picks the team.
"The biggest thing for me was going to Sydney FC and having a coach like Ante [Juric] who didn't put any sort of pressure on me at all. He really backed me. And playing with a group of friends, as well; I haven't [before] been part of a team that's made me feel so in love with the game. I get so excited to come to training; I want to win with these girls. It's such a nice feeling that I don't think comes around very often, especially in the professional leagues."
It was during that patch of doubt that Vine learned how to look at herself and football differently; to reframe the things that used to overwhelm her and, instead, find the possibilities and opportunities within them.
As a self-confessed perfectionist, she'd developed a lot of negative self-talk during training and games, berating herself internally for screwing up shots or passes – even if it was the only one she'd missed in the entire session.
But sessions with her sports psychologist, as well as a mindfulness coach, allowed her to see these moments in another light. She began keeping a journal, meditating, and reminding herself to bring it all back to the present; to focus on the things she could control.
"I had to learn to strip it back and ask, 'okay, what can I do about that?'
"So the strategy we came up with was to go kick the ball 100 more times to get my touch better; to repeat the thing that I'm struggling with so that, on the field, it will just come to me and I won't get so worked up about it. Because that's in my control – to get better at things – but it's not in my control to complete every pass.
"Recently, after all my Matildas stuff, I spoke with a mindfulness coach who told me something that has stuck: football is a game of mistakes, so it's about which team makes fewer mistakes.
"You're gonna make mistakes. That's the whole point of the game. So then it becomes about: how much can you limit the mistakes that you make? And often, that's the team that wins.
"I just thought that was so great – I'd never looked at the game like that before. I thought I had to be perfect and complete every pass and beat all my opponents one-on-one all the time. So to see the game in that way really changed things for me."
It wasn't just on the field where her perspectives began to shift; Vine also began to realise that her life off the field was just as important to her mental health.
During the pandemic, when most of Australia's sporting leagues were cancelled and players were locked away in their homes, Vine picked up a couple of online courses in computer coding: writing programs, creating websites, thinking of new ways in which technology can shape the future.
It was at the suggestion of her partner, Sydney FC teammate Charlotte McLean, that she then enrolled in a Bachelor's degree in Information Technology; something she does in her spare time while her football takes up most of her days.
"Back then, I didn't have something else that I really enjoyed – my life was purely about football," she says.
"And because sport is such a roller-coaster, when you don't have something else to lean on, you just get taken along for the ride. When you're down, you're really down, and nothing is lifting you back up again. There's nothing to take your mind off it because that's all you have, it's all you are.
"That can be a dangerous game sometimes. It definitely was for me. So I decided it was good to find something else I enjoyed, and to find another side to life other than football. That helped me so much.
"Look at [Matildas midfielder] Katrina Gorry: she's just had a baby, she's embracing that life, and she's playing her best football. She loves her life away from the game, and that's really reflected on the field."
Even though she struggles with impostor syndrome, Vine is becoming less starry-eyed than what she used to when she was first called up to the Matildas last year.
While she is still getting used to the "insane" intensity of camps, where "you try to do more, to work more in every aspect, especially as a new player trying to impress," the big-name players she used to watch on TV have now become colleagues; gradually, she is feeling like she is starting to belong beside them.
But that doesn't mean her senior teammates don't still teach her some valuable lessons every now and then.
"There was a key moment in my first camp at the Asian Cup, where I thought Sam Kerr's mentality after that tournament was incredible," she says.
"Like, you've got Sam Kerr – probably the best goal-scorer in the world right now – missed a big moment in a quarter-final. Missed an open goal. That's a big thing: you could hold onto that for a while. I probably would've held onto that a lot more.
"She was obviously upset and pissed off. But when we get into the elevator after the game, I was like, 'how are you going?' and she said, 'yeah, you know, these tournaments happen. You miss goals, you miss opportunities. But you can't hold onto them. It's happened now, we're out, so let's move on to the next one.'
"I hold onto so many little mistakes, and you belt yourself up about them, especially at that level. But what's the point of that? At the end of the day, the game's over, it is what it is. So I thought her mentality in that moment was so elite."
With the friendly Cup of Nations starting this week – a tournament that the Matildas won in 2019 – Vine is beginning to feel the pressure of the 2023 Women's World Cup growing. Head coach Tony Gustavsson has said these three games against Czechia, Spain, and Jamaica are intended to simulate what the big dance in July will feel like.
She has a particular bone to pick with Spain, who she played against in that 7-0 thumping last January, but where, she feels, she didn't show the best of herself. She has a point to prove to them, to Gustavsson, and to herself: that she belongs here, that she deserves it.
For now, with the World Cup approaching at light-speed and her own career trajectory flinging her into an unknown future, Vine is just trying to slow down and embrace the moment before it disappears out of sight.
"Pressure is a privilege," Vine says.
"That's something Tony said in one of our camps. It means you've earned the right to have pressure. We're not underdogs; we actually deserve this. There's a reason for this feeling, and you've got to back that.
"It's about seeing pressure differently. Even though there is pressure from Australia for us to do well at this World Cup, I think it's going to be more of an internal battle for the players that get picked.
"That's what [former England international] Eniola Aluko said at the ball launch, too: her biggest piece of advice for us girls who could be going was to try and normalise it all.
"For us, it's going to be so overwhelming. I can already tell that it will if I don't try and normalise, for example, all the media we're getting. So I need to be prepared if I do want to go to this World Cup for all the attention and all the questions and people speaking to me and about me.
"It's just about trying to break through the mental barriers you put up and the internal pressure you put on yourself. If you're able to handle that, if you're able to normalise it, it's going to be so much easier. So that's what I'm trying to do now."
