Unless one is fortunate enough to be among that pure group of supporters whose mood is governed entirely by their team winning or losing, in the same binary way that the tides are dictated by the moon, then at some point watching the Matildas clash with New Zealand, all you could do was laugh.
It wasn’t humorous in the traditional sense. There were no slapstick collisions or misunderstandings. Lydia Williams didn’t decide to take advantage of the almost complete absence of threat to her goal by giving the crowd at the north Queensland stadium 15 minutes of stand up. Instead, it was amusing in the most perfect, absurdist manner. Your best-laid plans are folly and there are no rules or logic to the football universe.
By all measures of statistical analysis or logic, the Matildas should never have had to rely upon late, late goals from Emily van Egmond and Sam Kerr to secure what was a dramatic come-from-behind 2-1 win over the Football Ferns. Australia’s women had 71% of the ball. They sent in 37 shots to three, with the on-target count an even more farcical 15 to one in favour of the hosts. Outside Anna Green’s 32nd-minute Puskás Award contender, the Kiwis offered nothing in attack.
And yet despite all this, in defiance of the gilt-edged chances that fell to the Australians, as normal time expired Green’s worldie remained the only goal. Australia hit the woodwork. They mis-hit shots on a largely open goal. They fired shots just wide. They were blocked away by Claudia Bunge or Meikayla Moore or denied by another Victoria Esson save. And most of all, they did not score.
It was football’s version of an absurdist comedy, the footballing gods seeing how far they could push the joke before reality collapsed in on itself and sucked north Queensland into a black hole.
Against this darkly humorous backdrop, a macabre sense of irony began to form around Matildas’ coach Tony Gustavsson. The week prior he had sought to re-write history by declaring that multiple analyses of his side’s disastrous 1-0 loss to South Korea at the Asian Cup showed the Matildas should have won that game, ignoring how the Koreans largely outplayed his side in the moments that mattered. But on Friday, he watched on powerlessly as his side put in arguably their most functional and effective performance under his charge, only to find themselves on the wrong end of a deficit.
And after exhausting significant goodwill by failing to demonstrate an improvement in execution or results when the switch was flipped to “performance mode” in India, significant pressure was inevitable despite the underlying positivity.
That’s why when Kerr charged through a pack like a ponytailed freight train and headed Australia into the lead in the 96th minute all one could do was laugh. In the cruellest way possible, the New Zealanders found out that eventually sheer weight of numbers will win out in a game of football.
As Australia’s greatest-ever goalscorer wheeled away in celebration, all the angst that had swirled over the heads of those in the Matildas dugout vanished. And for all the declarations from the commentariat on how Australian football needed to stop defining itself by effort, grit and emotion, they were hoisted on its own petard as the “never say die” attitude of the Matildas won the day.
Nonetheless, good comedy always contains within it a grain of truth. And if there is any moment from the Matildas’ performance on Friday that represents the truth, it was Katrina Gorry’s performance at the base of the midfield.
The most prevalent role of a deep-lying midfielder in Australian football is that of a screener that provides extra defensive cover. Gorry’s role resembled more that of a “regista” – a creative force whose deeper position in front of the defence allows them to pull the strings and dictate the ebb and flow of their side in attack. In Italian, regista translates to “director”, and that’s exactly what Gorry did throughout the contest. The Brisbane Roar midfielder was a revelation in giving the Australian midfield a hitherto unseen level of functionality and composure during extended periods of possession.
Of course, despite the win, it was far from a perfect performance from the Australians. The level of resistance provided by New Zealand adds further qualifiers to the performance – Spain, the United States, and England will bring far more heat.
But there were positives to build upon. After the disaster of the Asian Cup, Gorry’s presence showed the Matildas are capable of doing more with the ball. While at some point they might run into a European-shaped brick wall, it was a performance that showed the Australians do possess a ceiling greater than the one demonstrated thus far under Gustavsson.
Now to see if they can build on it … or if the joke is on us.
