Women’s World Cup: Time for the Matildas to exit the bubble and enter sporting history
Come inside the Matildas’ bubble. How are they performing like the pressure of a hometown World Cup doesn’t exist? Because in here, it doesn’t.
The Matildas have covered more territory than the Leyland Brothers. Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane. But they’ve really only been in one place at the World Cup. Their bubble.
It’s a bubble created by coach Tony Gustavsson. A bubble meticulously designed to protect his players from so much hype it could do their heads in. A bubble letting them concentrate on the only things that truly matter. Preparing. Winning. Recovering. Preparing again. Hopefully winning again. Recovering again.
A bubble purposefully keeping them at arm’s length from the public. A bubble shielding them from a bombardment of questions, intrusions, pushings, probings, proddings and spotlights from the media. No player is allowed to be interviewed one on one. Nor are friends or family members. That’s unheard of.
Gustavsson calls it the red carpet he’s laying out for his players. All they have to do is toe the line all the way to the pitch for Saturday’s blockbuster quarter-final against France in Brisbane.
The bubble has extended to Gustavsson copping the criticism for the loss to Nigeria but his players getting all the credit for the wins. He’s the bodyguard.
“It’s the role of any coach and leader to take the hits when the team has them,” Gustavsson says. “Nothing is about me. It’s all about the players. I will always be there to protect them. Whatever they need. It’s my job and I’m going to do everything I can to help roll out that red carpet for them to walk on so they can only focus only on football and their performance. It’s my job.”
Fifteen minutes of Matildas’ training warm-ups are all you’ve seen on TV. Players are doing press conferences but the less experienced Matildas are spared.
Young Mary Fowler has barely been sighted. She has her own little bubble inside the big bubble. This is new territory for a player like her. Too much public exposure may stick a pin in her bubble. Burst the bubble.
No-one has broken ranks, players or staff. Fan days are kept at bay. The most revealing footage comes from the players’ personal Instagram accounts. Snapshots from the bubble.
There are no leaks in the good ship Matildas. You wouldn’t know if Sam Kerr prefers a flat white or a cappuccino.
This is how they live. They fly to a new city, they’re whisked through the airport and onto a bus, they’re holed up in their hotel, they catch another bus to training each morning, they go back to their hotel after lunch. Nearest and dearest are in the bubble with them.
Senior players watch World Cup games on TV, talking tactics, plotting the downfall of the next foe.
Others stay alone in their rooms. Ellie Carpenter leads the manicures that lead to so many green and gold fingernails come kick-off.
They converge for team meetings, sometimes a dinner, individual physio sessions come and go. They do this day after day, a sporting Groundhog Day, before running out to play.
How are the Matildas performing like the pressure of a hometown World Cup doesn’t exist? Because in the bubble, it doesn’t. Trespassers will be prosecuted. They’re acutely aware of the thunderclap of nationwide support but, in the bubble, you don’t really see it or hear it and so you cast it aside.
While we’re out here, going gaga, they’re in there, on their own, quietly going about their business. Nothing leaves the bubble and more importantly, nothing gets in. No outside influences, no unnecessary commitments, no hysteria, no well-meaning jibberers and no potentially ruinous distractions.
Under lock and key inside the bubble is Gustavsson’s plans for Kerr against France. Start her? Plonk the world’s best player on the reserves bench?
It’s hard to think of a bigger selection call in Australian sport. Debate about Test cricketer David Warner’s position is a frivolous chat by comparison. Kerr has been bubble-wrapped but she’s the heart, soul and striker of the team. This is a World Cup quarter-final. She’s been injured. What to do with her?
A penny for Gustavsson’s thought bubble.
He scoffs at the suggestion Kerr’s inclusion may harm the Matildas’ cohesion.
“I definitely would never ever see Sam as a disturbance to the team,” Gustavsson says. “I want to be very clear now to say if Sam is fit to play 90 minutes, she’s starting. There’s not even a question and the team knows it.
“We’re talking about Sam Kerr here. Whether she is ready to play 90 minutes plus extra time, that’s to be decided tonight. But there’s no question whatsoever that if she is, she’s starting.”
The tension is bubbling to the surface. Here’s Gustavsson’s description of recent bubble life. He told the Matildas his starting XI at 7pm on Friday.
From the end of that meeting until when they arrive at Brisbane Stadium on Saturday, he leaves them to their own a bubble. A no-coaches bubble.
“I very seldom talk to the team or players on game day,” he says.
“ ‘You need to think about this and this and this’ – that’s normally a coach’s stress being passed on. You trust the players on game day. It is their day.”
We know what’s happening outside the bubble. The popularity is extraordinary. Wallabies coach Eddie Jones says he wants his team to be like the Matildas.
Their shirts outsell the Socceroos’ by two to one. They’re doing something the blokes have never done: contest a World Cup quarter-final – and they’re doing it for the fourth time. France just wants to burst all our bubbles. “We know tomorrow we are not only playing against one team,” says Les Bleues coach Herve Renard. “We are playing against one nation.”
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