Australia beats Canada, advances to women's World Cup knockout stage
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MELBOURNE, Australia — This metropolis down south and the big country around it grappled with the jitters early Monday night over the specter of a party long planned but about to go jarringly discontinued, in a world where discontinued parties count as lousy, particularly here. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Skip to end of carousel World Cup 2023 See full coverage of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 End of carousel Then Australia’s Matildas brought their urgency and the moxie they seemed to have misplaced into the cuddly little 27,000-strong soccer stadium in Melbourne’s stadium cluster, and the World Cup party of a host nation took on the dreamiest element a party can corral: sustenance.
The Matildas will play on into the knockout stage because they ransacked a top-tier Canada team 4-0 with energy immense enough that the excruciating mystery of the past dozen days here, whether and when brilliant star Sam Kerr and her injured calf might play, went moot.
Kerr roared and rejoiced from the sideline anyway, and her face that seems to appear on every other billboard in this country kept beaming on the big screens in Melbourne Rectangular Stadium. With no need for her to appear as some inspiring substitution, the most famous calf in sports nowadays could avail itself of further mending.
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Maybe it can hold its own news conference.
“We knew what was at stake,” the 30-year-old Australia midfielder Emily van Egmond said, and she clarified just that: “Our last opportunity to be playing in a home World Cup in front of our friends, family and our country.”
An unthinkable ouster of Australia before the knockout stage even hatched, a prospect that began shouting last week in a rattled 3-2 loss to Nigeria, would have robbed the event of one of its essential fabrics, not to mention startled the national senses. The World Cup would have continued with full or near-full crowds, and the world would have continued rotating on its axis, but both matters would have suffered a deficit of jolliness.
“Desperate Matildas depending on Kerr — and crowd — to avoid World Cup disaster,” went the pregame headline in the Age, the 169-year-old Melbourne newspaper. The Australian Broadcasting Company news began the sports portion with an anchor saying, “We are building up to a monumental evening.” Australians from all around their sporting land reached the stadium in Melbourne on a ski-cap kind of winter night with many a nerve ending mired in unrest on the concourse before kickoff.
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“I’ve been excited that I’m coming to a World Cup game …” said Emma McVeigh, who jetted in from Tasmania on Monday with her local club soccer teammate Sophie Booth and Booth’s sister Lucy, a rugby player, “ … but incredibly stressed at the same time because the team needs to win the game.”
“Nervous, just nervous, mostly,” said Molly Appleton of Melbourne. “I think you’ve got to try and not think about it at times.”
“There are nerves,” said Ronnie Blyth of Adelaide, but she had found something bigger: “The atmosphere has been electric, the anticipation. A once-in-a-lifetime experience. You’ve got to do these things in life, don’t you?”
One anxious fan who had just gotten herself a fish and chips at concession turned out to be Heather Reid, a pioneer in the Australian and global women’s game. Attending her seventh World Cup, she felt a tad annoyed that a flight delay had cost her party its party before the match. The drinks might have helped.
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“We’re here,” she said. “And I’m nervous. It is a critical game. I don’t want to think about the repercussions if we don’t progress.”
All might have clung to the words on Sunday from the defender Ellie Carpenter, who said, “Honestly, I feel like we’re the best when we have our backs to the wall.” They proceeded to come out like people who had backs to the wall as they swarmed Canada, the reigning Olympic champion, which would undergo its first group-stage elimination since 2011, while Australia won Group B on six points and Nigeria advanced on five.
The Matildas came barreling out, getting Hayley Raso’s goals in the ninth and 39th minutes, seeing a goal overturned in the 34th but getting Mary Fowler’s goal from Caitlin Foord in the 58th minute and Steph Catley’s penalty in stoppage time. Then they walked through the interview area and produced a chorus about their impeccable evening.
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“Obviously we thrive under pressure,” Alanna Kennedy said.
“It was such a special night,” Raso said.
“This team has a lot of passion,” Catley said.
“We had so much energy,” Raso said.
“Everything we did was how we wanted it,” Catley said.
Asked why she seemed subdued, young Fowler said, “That’s because I’m so tired.”
“I can’t even tell you what it was like before the game,” Catley said, and it must have been something, because, “The unity, the fight tonight was incredible.”
By the ninth minute, Foord fed a ball on the left to Catley, who barreled along the edged of the pitch before sending a cross that bounded through teammate van Egmond over to veteran Raso on the right side of the box. Raso stopped, adjusted — “I felt like I had a little bit too much time” — and shoved the thing leftward through the legs of Canada’s Ashley Lawrence and into the back left corner of the goal.
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Most everyone around felt better.
Then, most everyone didn’t.
The offside flag went up, causing sighing and booing. A VAR check ensued. It showed that Catley was, in fact, not behind a Canadian defender who was out yonder somewhere as Catley made her charge, so Raso got a second celebration. She fell to her knees and smiled one of the bigger smiles of this event.
Most everyone around felt better.
That lasted through another Catley-to-Raso in the 13th minute, which forced a diving save from Canada goalkeeper Kailen Sheridan, and through Fowler’s disallowed goal for Australia in the 34th minute, when a VAR review found Carpenter interfering.
Then it came time to start the clinching, and for the ball to take up shop in the Canada end. That led to a corner in the 39th minute which Kyra Cooney-Cross struck into a tough place, so that Sheridan swatted it desperately over to where it bounced off Quinn’s leg and back in to Raso, who cleaned it up with Canadians strewn around and peeved.
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By halftime soon thereafter, the evening already seemed a daydream.
It would continue as such, all the way through, Canada never menacing, but Foord doing just that in the 58th minute, making it all the way to the end line on the left beyond all defense in order to cross to a lonely Fowler. Fowler, the 20-year-old wunderkind who missed the loss to Nigeria with concussion concerns, kind of caught the ball with her boot as she ran, so that it trickled to the right goal post, caromed and came to rest over the line.
Catley scored that penalty in stoppage time. The crowd erupted. Raso, on the bench by then, marveled. The whistle came. The Matildas exulted. The club and sports anthem “Freed From Desire” played. The Matildas took a victory tour around the ground. Kerr danced. Worry ebbed. Party didn’t.
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Source: The Washington Post
