Spews and skateboards on a ring road to the World Cup: Matildas star Tameka Yallop back where she began
When the Matildas enter their camp for the World Cup next month at the Queensland Academy of Sport, Tameka Yallop could well give the tour, writes TILLY WERNER.
Matildas
Don't miss out on the headlines from Matildas. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Tameka Yallop has travelled the world with football, only to end up exactly where she started.
When the Matildas enter their camp for the World Cup next month at the Queensland Academy of Sport, Yallop could well give the tour.
Having grown up in Mudgeeraba, inland on the Gold Coast, there were plenty of hours around the QAS traps.
“I think it did take over my life, especially during high school,” Yallop (nee Butt) says of her time as a player through the Queensland youth program.
“Most of my high school life I was there, would drive up to Brisbane every day and back in. I can’t remember how many times I’ve run around the ring road or upstairs in the stadium.
“I would literally get picked up from school and we’d drive. So I’d do my homework in the car on the way up, get to QAS and you know, it’d be two hours there.
“Then get in the car home and it would be eat, go to sleep. Do it again the next day.”
They were almost daily road trips up the Pacific, with her moments between drills, fitness and gruelling time trial sessions spent skateboarding around the grounds.
“The ring road around the stadium is just over a kilometre, so we used to have to do time trials around there. And yeah, those were tough.”
Carpools to-and-fro were shared between the Butts and the Kellond-Knights, with Matildas cap No. 153 Elise in the same team as Tameka at the Academy.
“We didn’t click straight away – we took some time to suss each other out,” Kellond-Knight says of her early moments with Yallop.
“We were rivals and then became best mates and we roomed together in the national team for 15 years.”
Yallop says: “We got a lot of lifelong friends there from the sheer amount of time we spent there.
“We used to have Skate Club, where we would also skate around the ring road, so those memories are slightly nicer ones.
“Can’t tell you how many times I’ve vomited on that ring road though. Clare Polkinghorne probably can.”
Spews gave way to shared dreams. Yallop, Polkinghorne and Elise Kellond-Knight graduated from the QAS and into Matildas history.
For Yallop, the opportunity to play in a home World Cup while training at the QAS still feels almost surreal.
“I just want it to happen so I know how it feels because it’s definitely nothing that I’ve experienced before, a tournament of this size in my backyard,” she says.
“It’s not something that I ever thought would happen in my career and it is definitely a once in a generation sort of tournament to host at home.
“I honestly don’t know how I’m going to feel, I’m just excited to experience it.”
Currently though, Yallop is still just out of declaring herself fit for selection in the Matildas squad.
The 31-year-old sustained an ankle injury in the Matildas’ historic 2-0 win over World Cup favourites England in April, just a few games after returning from ankle surgery on the opposite joint at the end of 2022.
As one of a number of national players under a tight time-frame for rehabilitation before coach Tony Gustavsson names his World Cup squad in early July, Yallop is giving herself every chance for selection.
“I’ve been through the rehab process with the national team before and the club working together with my other ankle, so I have full trust and listen to everything that they say,” she says.
“At the moment, I’m working with the national team and the club to get back on the pitch.”
Yallop has had limited time with her Toppserien club SK Brann this season and is yet to return to playing since sustaining the injury, but feels that the recentness of the surgery – the first of her long career – has helped with ensuring her mental readiness to return to play.
“I think that experience [surgery] definitely does come into it. Definitely settles sort of the emotions and I guess the sort of mindset that you can get in with having an injury this close to the World Cup.
“But as a footballer, any kind of sport, you just never know how injuries are gonna go. So there is a little bit in the back of your head saying, ‘Come on, like, just happen and just work’.
“I’ve got a rehab plan in progress that will get me back for the World Cup. So I’m on track with that. And yeah, getting through the rehab.
“I don’t know if it’s just been my luck, one ankle after the other. But I’m on track. I’m definitely looking for the World Cup.”
Her QAS and national teammate Kellond-Knight hasn’t been as lucky. She was ruled out of World Cup contention after sustaining an Achilles injury in March this year.
“For KK it’s obviously saddening, it’s kind of hard to talk about because she was there when we first started our journey and for a major tournament like this to be right at home and have that happen, it’s heartbreaking,” Yallop says.
“She will be there watching and hopefully she’ll enjoy it as much as she can.”
Kellond-Knight won’t be gearing up but she will be sharing the pitch with her Matildas teammates as part of Channel 7’s World Cup commentary team. She will be paying particularly close attention to her rival turned lifelong friend.
“She’s like a part of me,” Kellond-Knight says of Yallop.
“Everyone used to joke that we were one person. A lifelong friendship.
“I wish her every bit of success. She’s always been a team-first player. The things she’s had to do for this team: play left-back in an Olympics, just throw her in there and she’ll perform.
“She’s become a versatility weapon.”
Even more so than her utility status in the team, Kellond-Knight believes it is Yallop’s determination that will earn her a place on Gustavsson’s World Cup roster.
“She has white line fever, she’s just a winner at heart,” Kellond-Knight says.
“If she goes over that line in a game, she’s not walking off a loser.
“I think that’s what makes her special, that pure determination and there’s a gracefulness to the way she gets it done.”
It will take both versatility and gracefulness to have Yallop back to the fighting fitness she’ll require to contest a fourth World Cup.
But the same determination she had, first, in the back seat of a car 15 years ago, she’ll be channelling to winning the whole thing.
Originally published as Spews and skateboards on a ring road to the World Cup: Matildas star Tameka Yallop back where she began
Matildas call on familiar name as new coach
As a global search continues for the next full-time coach of the Matildas, Football Australia has turned to a familiar face to take charge for the immediate future.
Matildas’ most successful coach returns
The Matildas’ most successful coach is back, at least for a short stint, stepping into the void left by Tony Gustavsson after his post-Olympic exit.