For the last eight months Kyah Simon has been on an emotional rollercoaster. Some days she was a “moody wreck”, others she was on top of the world with the small wins in her rehab after sustaining a ruptured ACL when playing for Tottenham last year.
The experienced striker has been in a race against time to recover for the Women’s World Cup ever since. But that race was won on Monday, when Matildas coach Tony Gustavsson included the 111-cap veteran striker in the 23-woman squad for the tournament on home soil.
“It’s a massive relief, I just broke down in tears,” Simon said after Gustavsson revealed his squad at a press conference in Melbourne. “It wasn’t a smooth sailing rehab. It was definitely ups and downs and for it to finally come to a head and achieve that goal that I set when I underwent the surgery … I feel like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.
“The whole Matildas set up has given me every support possible to get me back playing and back fit for the World Cup and I’ll be forever in debt to them for supporting me through such a tough time in my career with such so much weighing on a rehab.”
Simon, an Anaiwan woman, has been a stalwart in the Matildas frontline for almost a decade and became the first Indigenous Australian to score in a World Cup and reach 100 national caps. She said despite being picked in the provisional 29-woman squad to attend camp on the Gold Coast, she felt “in the dark” about her place on Gustavsson’s final roster.
“Training and having confidence in my ability I think is one thing, but then obviously the coach has plans and are you in his plans and does he still see me as that player that was … I didn’t believe it until the words came out of his mouth,” she said.
Without recent game time under her belt, Simon knows it will be a big ask to make the starting XI but won’t let that dampen her ambition to make an impact.
“By no means is the job done,” she said. “Obviously that’s one little tick that I can check off from my goal, but at the same time I don’t want to go to the World Cup just to be a squad player, I want to go to help the team hopefully achieve something special. I mean, ideally if I started in the final I wouldn’t complain about that.”
Gustavsson calls Simon a gamechanger – someone who can watch how a match is unfolding and come off the bench in big games with a steady head and the experience to refocus the team. It’s a different role to the one she played for the Matildas at the Olympics when she was a starter, but she’s taking it all in her stride.
“I said to [Gustavsson] I’d much prefer to be in the squad and have that gamechanger role rather than wanting to be a starter but missing out,” she said.
If and when Simon takes to the pitch at this World Cup she will look into the crowd to see her family holding the Aboriginal flag, knowing “there’s no better place than being here on home soil in Australia to display First Nations culture and heritage”.
“I’m hoping that people that come from abroad can see that rich culture that we do have here and and also be educated along the way,” she said.
For now, Simon, Noongar woman Lydia Williams and their teammates are waiting to see whether Fifa will allow them to bring an Aboriginal flag on the field with them for matches.
