Matildas deliver in spectacular form to enter Quarter Finals

The Matildas defeated Denmark 2-0 in spectacular form on Monday night, with Caitlin Foord and Hayley Raso both scoring in front of the almost 76,000 strong crowd at Stadium Australia in Sydney.

Mary Fowler was also in electric form, delivering a perfect pass to Foord that secured Australia’s first goal of the night. The pass was lauded across social media, described as “absolutely magnificent”, “counter attack at its best”, “absolutely first class” and “inch-perfect.”

The win sees Australia advancing to the quarter-finals of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 against either France or Morocco, depending on who wins the Round of 16 match tonight.

While Coach Tony Gustavsson started with the same team that delivered a 4-0 defeat to Canada in their final group game, Sam Kerr made a late appearance as the Matildas were already well up and looking likely to take the win. She substituted in the final minutes to raucous applause from the crowd. Within the first few minutes of her taking the field however, Kerr slipped – making Gustavsson “very nervous.”

At the post-match press conference, the coach told reporters the decision to put her on was “big” and wasn’t easy.

“It takes a lot of talks, a lot of communications, a lot of forth and back together with my experts around me and my support team,” he said. “My sports science and sports medicine team, they’re freaking world-class.”

“[We’ve had] a lot of meetings, last night we had a long meeting, and today we had a lot of meetings and a lot of talks with Sam and then, when do we use her, if we use her, maybe she needs some minutes to mentally and physically get ready for the next game. But that means a risk as well. I’m going to be honest, and open up here and say it was a tough decision. Today I hope I got it right even though I was a bit nervous when she slipped.”

Kerr sat out Australia’s previous game against Canada due to a calf injury she has sustained for the last three weeks.

She told reporters she was “just relieved and happy to be back out there”.

“Everyone knows I’m going to play, so we can stop talking about it,” she said post-match. “We can start talking about how amazing these girls are because they’ve absolutely smashed it the last few weeks. I was just trying to support the girls… Sometimes you’ve got to play the good teammate role.”

“[The team] have absolutely smashed it in the last few games,” she continued. “They’ve all done so well and dealt with so much, as a team we’re all really proud – that’s what teams are for, everyone’s dug dig.”

When she was asked how it felt to miss out on playing in the past matches, Kerr responded: “I was just another team mate, I was trying to support the girls, playing the role that all our players and the subs do.”

Midfielder Hayley Raso said Kerr’s return boosted the team’s spirits.

“It gives us a lot of confidence – Sam coming back – it’s just a big boost for us and really important, but the girls have been doing absolutely incredible,” she told Optus Sports post-match.

“So it’s whole team performance from the starters to the players on the bench and everybody’s really doing their job for the team.”

Defender Clare Hunt agreed, saying Kerr’s return makes the squad feel “really comfortable.”

“We’re just trying to do the simple things right and continue to move forward…I think that catches teams out…our transition game and our speed up front beats teams,” she said post-match. “We’ll just put our head down and just do our job.”

Caitlin Foord described the crowd in Sydney as “the thirteenth man”.

“The crowd’s massive, they’ve been our thirteenth man all tournament and continue to be that,” she said. “When we’re tired, I guess it helps to push through that when it gets tough. Every game has been awesome and we want to keep doing it…we want to keep our dream alive.”