Women’s World Cup 2019: Lydia Williams’ journey from Outback kid to Matildas goalkeeper
Now at her fourth World Cup, Matildas goalkeeper Lydia Williams has come a long way from the Outback kid who grew up with kangaroos as pets.
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Lydia Williams had two pet kangaroos. She loves Kelly Clarkson. She wears corduroy with pride.
If there’s a different drummer out there it’s safe to say she’s marching to its beat — when she’s not between the Matildas’ posts.
Because of all the stories of all the goalkeepers in France — and goalkeepers are generally a quirky bunch – there might not be one as fascinating as the girl from Kalgoorlie with an Aboriginal father and American mother.
Who, at 31, is at a fourth Women’s World Cup, a world away from her roots but still tied very much to them.
Williams was born in Katanning, a few hundred kilometres from Perth, the product of one of an unlikely whirlwind red-dirt romance between a member of the Stolen Generation and an accountant from Oklahoma.
“She worked in New York on Wall Street, then found a missionary trip to come to Australia and work with the indigenous people,” Williams tells The Daily Telegraph.
“She met my dad on a New Year’s night. They exchanged addresses and wrote to each other for four months and he proposed to her through letters.
“She came over to Australia to marry him and they had their honeymoon in a cave. Then literally at 41 my mum got pregnant with me.”
Williams’ late father Ron, who died from cancer when she was 15, was an indigenous tribal elder.
“He had four half-siblings so he never had a job,” she says.
“He was part of the first Aboriginals to go to school. Only lasted three months so never had an education, never had a job.
“And then he decided to work with Aboriginal people out in the desert as a missionary as well. So then he was doing that, travelling around with a guitar, sang songs.”
Not long after Williams’ birth the trio moved to Kalgoorlie, where she spent a rewarding childhood.
Eleven months of the year she’d live in a house and go to school. The 12th was spent out in the desert where her dad taught her how to hunt, camp, make fire and gather bush food.
“I did Aboriginal dance and corroborees,” she says.
“I think my first word was indigenous rather than English.”
Animals were another constant, and she had pet dogs, chickens and birds - and kangaroos.
“Kangaroos come out of nowhere so we’d hit them (in the car), but dad would always check to see if they had joeys,” she says.
“So we’d get a pillow case and put the little kangaroo in the pillow case.”
Years later, but still before the days of fully professional female football, Williams spent four years volunteering and working at Canberra Zoo and then completed a TAFE course to become a qualified zookeeper.
The conglomeration of experienced inspired her to write her new children’s book Saved!!! about a little girl called Lydia from the outback who discovers a love for football.
In truth, the round-ball game wasn’t even on the radar until a little later.
Williams’ earliest sporting memory is being barefoot on dusty earth, kicking around an Aussie Rules ball with the local kids.
It wasn’t until the family moved to Canberra (“the worst day of my life”) and her mother enrolled her in sporting teams to help her overcome the major culture shock of private school.
“I was pretty coordinated and my coach was like, ‘you can either be in the first division and be a goalkeeper or you can be in division four and play wherever you want’.
“I was like, ‘I don’t want to be in division four, no way’.”
One day she saved a penalty and that was that.
Five years later she’d made her Matildas debut.
Williams is, without doubt, a world-class ‘keeper.
For all the accolades Sam Kerr rightly receives, her agile teammate in the gloves is just as central to the Matildas’ chances of success against Norway in the round of 16 on Sunday morning, especially if penalties come into play.
And yet for a figure of such intense focus and presence on the field, there’s an appealing guilelessness off it.
Like the glow with which she discusses her one true musical love Kelly Clarkson (”I’ve been to five concerts”), or the big corduroy jacket she brought with her to France (“I’m fashionable, okay”) or how the word ‘like’ creeps into almost every sentence.
At Australia’s press conference the day before the Jamaica game Williams was asked about her very first World Cup in 2007.
Much to the amusement of coach Ante Milicic, she regaled media with an anecdote about how she and Clare Polkinghorne, both then 19, unexpectedly discovered a chocolate fountain at one of their hotels in China.
Part of the culinary exploration may have been due to the fact she didn’t play a minute.
In fact, Williams had only played a single World Cup match when she went to Canada 2015.
At that tournament, having returned early from a second knee reconstruction, she played all but one game and has since been the undisputed first choice.
A long-time admirer of Manchester United legend Peter Schmeichel for his loud vocal directives, Williams says she was a painfully shy kid.
If that’s the case then she’s learnt how to marshal the backline authoritatively without being bolshie.
And at a time when football has never been more about the mental game, Williams credits her father with giving her valuable perspective.
“I guess with the things that I’ve been through in my life the mental side of it has been something I’ve already developed through life,” she says.
“Like when my dad passed away it was like, ‘Okay, well, you have to kind of get through that. You’re still at school. You can’t just quit school. So let’s go and work through each day and make sure you pass and keep doing homework.’
“’Then you’re still playing soccer so okay, you still have to go to training, still have to kind of live your life, I guess’.
“So for me it was like, what I went through anyway was already way bigger than what I’d do here. So it’s always been a joy for me to even be here.
“But there’s definitely been some times where it’s been like, ‘Okay, you’re stressed, let’s bring it back and think about the present.”
Originally published as Women’s World Cup 2019: Lydia Williams’ journey from Outback kid to Matildas goalkeeper
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