Flying boot of Foord wakes us up in middle of the night

Caitlin Foord, No 9, after kicking Australia’s opening goal against Brazil at the Mosson Stadium in Montpellier, southern France

It’s 2.46am. Tea’s getting cold. Tim Tams are gone. Barbara’s bunging it on. Marta’s shrieking like a skidding tyre. The Matildas are 2-0 down in a World Cup match that has enough knees and elbows and spitting intensity to be played in a favela. The temptation is to get to bed. Work in the morning.

The loss to Italy has been dispiriting. Here comes another. Oh, what a shame. The Matildas have been tucked away all year like a promising manuscript in the bottom of your desk drawer. It’s a novel set in France that potentially has the most glorious ending: Sam Kerr holding a trophy with a grin as wide as a set of AFL goal posts. They could have won the World Cup, this mob. They had the personnel but it’s nearly over before it’s begun.

The cat has dozed off. The children, too. Might as well join them. The thumb is on the remote — but if nothing else, the Matildas have fought fiercely enough to keep the eyelids open. You can feel a bizarre and foolish allegiance to a sporting side in the middle of the night. You can feel like you’re letting them down if you go back to bed. As if it makes any difference. Two-nil in arrears was a flashpoint. They could have limped out of the tournament. We could have rejected Ante Milicic as the poor woman’s Alen Stajcic at best, a coaching bum at worst. They were playing without success but they were also playing with heart and character and grit and grunt. You wouldn’t switch off until they did.

Poetry doesn’t win a lot of soccer matches. It just finishes them off. The pack horses have to do the tough stuff. The Alanna Kennedys. The Ellie Carpenters. The Elise Kellond-Knights. The Emily van Egmonds. The Chloe Logarzos. Most spectacularly to this eye, the Caitlin Foords. Kerr is sprinkled with magic dust — her every touch of the ball has wonder in it — but this wasn’t her game. And when the score finished 3-2 to the good, when the cat and the children and this observer were fist-pumping and running laps of the living room at nearly four in the morning, it was Foord who’d most gloriously captured the attention. Replaced in the dying moments because she was out on her feet, crimson in the face, she got the sort of applause awarded hardworking State of Origin forwards.

Kerr has said until she’s ocean blue in the face that this isn’t a one-woman team. We can see now that she’s right. The Matildas were all over Brazil like a Dally M suit for the first 26 minutes. They were awarded a penalty. About to go 1-0 up! It was reversed by the VAR. Then Brazil got a penalty as the hostility between the sides became palpable. The referee, Esther Staubli, needed all her Swiss cool to keep everyone in check. When Marta slotted home the shot from the spot, becoming the first footballer to score at five straight World Cups. She taunted the Australians and did an exaggerated round of low fives with her bench. In the space of a minute, a possible 1-0 lead had become a 0-1 debt. Cristiane’s headed goal for Brazil was a beauty and at 0-2, there was some bickering among the Matildas defenders. Nothing wrong with that. It was an urgent situation. Now or never.

In the 46th minute, at 2.46am in Sydney, the frenzied application paid off. Carpenter’s cross. Logarzo’s header towards Foord. The flying right boot of Foord. Goal. Game on at Stade de la Mosson. The TV stayed on in Sydney. Foord clenched her fists and roared. Come on!

In the middle of the night, you’d never seen the world so bright. Marta was knackered and unsighted in the second half. The Matildas ran and pushed and shoved and got their hands dirty. It was the only way. Logarzo scored from long range when Barbara was so preoccupied by the presence of Kerr that she forgot about the ball, which she was promptly retrieved from the back of the net. Two-all. The match-winner was controversial, another way of saying it might have been the wrong call, when the clearly offside Kerr was deemed to have not interfered before Monica’s own goal. She’d take it. Her side had played with great passion and skill.

The Matildas might not win the World Cup. It’s a heck of an ask. But they and we have lift-off. If they go down, they will go down swinging, and that’s all we can ask for. Kerr has set a combative tone and mindset. She’s more dangerous than Marta, more dangerous than any other player in the tournament. Her blood bubbles with competitiveness. If I had to list the five most enjoyable interviews I’ve ever done, she’d be one of them. There’s a lot of joy in that young woman. And a lot of audacity.

Telling the haters in the post-Stajcic era to suck on that one … bringing to mind Michelle Payne telling the blokes to get stuffed after she won the Melbourne Cup … the only surprise is that it’s taken her this long. “A bit of a rat bag,” was her grinning self-analysis for The Weekend Australian last year. “Not naughty. Just cheeky. I’ve always been like that.”

Her post-match interview was verbal shadow boxing at its best. Cop this.

“There were a lot of critics talking about us,” she said. “But we’re back, so suck on that one. We don’t listen to the haters. I love these girls, they’re something else. We knew we were a top-10 team. Now we’re back in it. Suck on that one … look what we did today.

“We had three different goal scorers and outplayed them most of the time. Brazil’s one of the best teams in the world, they’ve got the best player probably ever in the history of the game (Marta) … I’m so proud of the girls, honestly, it takes a lot of heart to come back and not turn on each other and I guess in the changeroom, if you heard us at halftime we knew that was going to happen.

“We were so positive. We could feel ourselves over-running them and I’m so proud that the girls stuck to it … So if people don’t, I guess.keep watching the Aussies, we’ll come get you like we did then.”