Sam Kerr injured; misses Australia's women's World Cup opener
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SYDNEY — Fate had to be freaking kidding. Fate had to have lost whatever wobbly mind it has generally. What a louse, fate. Three years of buildup since Australia became a World Cup co-host, three years to anticipate the Matildas and their super-duper-star Sam Kerr shining at home, three years go right to the brink of the beauty and then about 75 minutes before kickoff there’s this announcement that Sam Kerr can’t play? Twenty-three years after 114,714 in Stadium Australia sang “Waltzing Matilda” to end a near-peerless Summer Olympics, and now the same stadium starts to fill with 75,784 for its biggest global moment since, and Sam Kerr got some calf injury in training the day before and will miss at least the first two World Cup matches?
What a thud.
Fate goes and does that to the nation that arguably loves sport the most.
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Okay, it’s not really all that arguable.
“And for her as a person,” Steph Catley, who replaced the 29-year-old Kerr as captain Thursday night against Ireland, “we were completely heartbroken.” Then: “We had to gather ourselves pretty quickly.” They gathered themselves to a messy 1-0 survival of a more than commendable Ireland with some real whews near the great relief of a whistle. They did so with Catley’s penalty in the 52nd minute, the first penalty the 29-year-old has taken in 11 years with the Matildas. They did so with just enough grit, without the space on the pitch usually afforded them with Kerr’s dynamic presence, and with Kerr as “our spiritual leader,” as Catley put it.
It’s just that nobody really wants to go to the grand stadium with its grand noise to see her spiritually lead.
That’s nothing against her spiritual leading, of course.
How it went: Kerr and Manager Tony Gustavsson sat for a preview news conference on Wednesday while aware of the damned calf yet while revealing nothing and signaling no distress. Call it adept acting. Gustavsson et al waited until Wednesday night for confirmation of what was going on with that calf, then Kerr told her teammates, “This is not about me; this is about you; this is about the team playing tomorrow night,” then the Matildas made their announcement near kickoff. “When did we find out?” said Ireland Manager Vera Pauw. “When we got the match sheet.”
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It showed Kerr, the one with the 120 caps and 63 goals (most ever for a Matilda), and the one the trained eyes call the best striker in the world, among the substitutes. It all came one day after Kerr happened to say at the news conference, “I guess for me, the expectations have kind of been going on the (last) four years.” Now her teammates warmed up as she stood on the sideline watching and chewing gum, appearing on the big screen at several points, including one just as the public address system played Calvin Harris’s and Rihanna’s “This Is What You Came For.” At one point in the pregame a camera moved toward Kerr, and she saw it and gave a smile and a thumbs-up. Kerr’s absence will linger through the next match, against Nigeria, and as for the next one, against Canada, Gustavsson couldn’t answer that for sure, even as he asked reporters for understanding about his plight of Wednesday.
“Two games and then we’ll reassess afterward,” he said, “and that tells you a little bit about what grade (of injury) it is.”
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His team still had what Pauw accurately called “powerful” and “strong” and “attacking” players, but her team’s defense had noticeably less hassle. “I think it was a game in which a point could have come our way,” Pauw said. “I’m really proud. The game plan worked. They couldn’t do what they wanted to do.” The Girls in Green, meanwhile, “were ready for this level” — in Ireland’s first women’s World Cup — “and I’m just very, very proud.” Ireland “went for a result,” she said soon thereafter, “not just to be here part of a nice tournament in Australia.”
It didn’t get a result because of a sequence early in the second half, after Australia had started to look like it had gone into halftime from its unthreatening first half and had located some calm and patience. Kyra Cooney-Cross, a 21-year-old gaining note as she blossoms, sent a ball from about 35 yards toward the box, and while that ball didn’t look all that hopeful, it seemed to cause alarm beneath. Ireland midfielder Marissa Sheva wound up shoving Australia forward Hayley Raso from behind, and Raso sprawled on her frontside pleading for the referee’s acknowledgment of her distress.
Acknowledgment did come, and Catley stood above the ball for the penalty, because “I’m usually up there if Sam doesn’t want to take it for whatever reason,” she explained helpfully later on, having left-footed the penalty into the upper left corner, then having run madly up the pitch as her teammates and their fans seemed to feel something akin to relief. “I can see why strikers are strikers,” Catley said, “because that adrenaline is like nothing else.”
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Once Ireland switched tack to attack, it started shedding defenders and causing tension, just as Australia started losing possessions and feeling tension. In the 71st minute, Ireland’s Katie McCabe curled in a corner so good and scary that goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold had to lunge to punch it out. In the 90th minute after a foul, Ireland’s Megan Connolly curled a free kick from just atop the box that skidded onto the goal roof just barely. And in seven minutes of added time, Ireland looked the brisker of the two with various threats that enabled Pauw to say, “Till the last second, we were able to put them under pressure.”
Australia had won in a match without its notable flair, Gustavsson said, because it had learned how to win in the grinds. Now it looks like its bid to surpass its best World Cup finish (quarterfinals, thrice) could feature a string of grinds. What crummy fate for eyeballs, suddenly stuck with the groans of grinds rather than the wonder of Kerr.
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Source: The Washington Post
