Fans, family and fearlessness: Nanna’s ribbon fuels World Cup weapon Hayley Raso’s rise
Hayley Raso hated football as a young child. ADAM PEACOCK discovers how the Matildas star’s love of the sport grew, even after a month-long stint in hospital recovering from back fractures.
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After every Matildas home game, the full effect of the team’s popularity plays out over nearly an hour.
Young fans line the fence, eager for a hello, a photo, an autograph with everyone and anyone in a gold shirt.
And for one fan in particular, there is a special souvenir.
Hayley Raso’s ribbon.
Nanna, Pat, provides her granddaughter with a colour-scheme strip of fabric to wear, and Raso gives it away to a fan lining the fence. The ribbon is dual function.
To keep her hair back as she rockets around the pitch without fear. And a heartfelt connection between the two undeniable considerations in Hayley’s life: fans and family.
When that ribbon is handed over to a young stranger, the effect is immediate. Hayley can see it, everyone around can feel it.
Which is odd, because as a child, Hayley Raso wouldn’t have gone near that fence.
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As an eight-year-old, Raso didn’t want to know about football.
“Parents always told me I hated it. And I can remember hating it, not wanting to play,” Raso tells CODE Sports.
“It was not something I enjoyed.”
Raso grew up on the Gold Coast, where she was hauled to older brother Lachlan’s games on the weekend. Always quick, she was made for football too.
“Was really shy, being in a team out of my comfort zone I was not interested in it. Was young,” she recalls.
“Probably just wanted to stand next to my parents and watch my brother!”
But her parents, namely mum Renaye, wanted young Hayley to give it a try and capitalise on a natural talent evident from playing in the backyard with Lachlan.
“I was pretty good,” Raso concedes. “So I kept at it.”
Good choice. In fact, a brilliant, life-changing choice.
Football has opened up the world way beyond the Gold Coast’s stereotypical lifestyle. From a young prospect in the A-League Women’s, Raso has gone on to play extensively in America, then England with Everton and, until last month, Manchester City.
Next season there will be a new challenge. Spanish giants Real Madrid, who in the women’s game are desperate to catch up to – then overtake – current pacesetters FC Barcelona. El Clasico, a new language, a new frontier awaits.
Raso is not fazed by any of it, remarkable given eight-year-old Hayley’s closed-minded introduction to football.
“Honestly, I can’t imagine myself being shy now,” Raso laughs.
“I’m the complete opposite, talk to everyone. Don’t stop talking! Love playing in front of fans, connecting with them, and meeting new people.
“Guess I got it all out when I was younger.”
Not to say Raso is an unbridled extrovert, with moments of intense introspection dotted through her time in football.
Hayley’s two brothers haven’t had an easy ride through life. Eldest brother Jordan has an intellectual disability, while young brother Lachlan grew up with a congenital heart problem which required surgery in 2015.
And with the way she goes about her football, Hayley has added a layer of worry every time she puts on a pair of boots.
“I play without fear, 100 miles an hour all the time,” Raso says simply.
“It still gives my poor mother a heart attack, every week! Most of the time I come off the pitch with a bruise or a knock.”
And that’s on a good day. But, as she points out, “it makes me the player I am”.
The fearlessness turned into a living nightmare in 2018, when playing for Portland Thorns in the United States. Raso chased after a lost cause, but Washington goalkeeper Aubrey Bledsoe got to the ball just before her. Raso got hit, legally, with car-crash force by Bledsoe.
The result was three fractures in her lower back and pain not wished upon anyone.
Renaye, who never misses watching her daughter play, was horrified back in Australia and sprung into action immediately.
“As soon as she saw what happened, was on the next flight to America and sat by my side at the rehab hospital for weeks,” Hayley Raso recalls.
“She did every single thing for me for weeks. Don’t think I would have got through without her.
“Spent about a month in the hospital, learning to do everything again. I can remember lying in the hospital bed not being able to roll over, the nurse physically rolling me over.”
It says plenty about Raso’s character that less than 12 months later, she was at her second World Cup. And, unlike being an unused sub throughout 2015, she featured in all four of the Matildas’ games at the 2019 tournament.
“I feel like it was another me,” Raso says of her recovery process, long completed but always with her.
“Something I can look back on now and think I’m much bigger, better and stronger from it.”
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Available now! Shop @TheMatildas website 🎀 pic.twitter.com/74wncDfvJn
— Hayley Raso (@HayleyRaso) June 22, 2023
The functionality of a football team is dependent on a mesh of characteristics formed in one style.
Matildas manager Tony Gustavsson has spent the best part of three years finding the pieces to fit a style that suits. There are the calm heads, like Clare Polkinghorne, Steph Catley and Katrina Gorry. Creative queens like Mary Fowler and Caitlin Foord.
And the chaos creators, like Sam Kerr though the middle and out wide, Ellie Carpenter, Cortnee Vine, and Raso.
With her pace and fearlessness, Raso is an integral part of the plan to cause havoc. At some point in this World Cup, probably many times over, Raso will see an opportunity and – despite the laws of physics suggesting less than a 50 per cent chance of getting the ball – won’t think twice.
All to help the Matildas be what they hope to be, and do it in a way that resonates with fans, and family.
“To achieve something special with the Matildas is my goal in football,” Raso says.
“Everything little thing I do is for the Matildas.
“The team we have now is such a special group, and with the fans, we really want to achieve something special together.”
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