Football: The Matildas need to win four matches in 13 days. That’s the near-impossible task facing Sam Kerr

Sam Kerr walks during Matildas training in Brisbane on Wednesday. Picture: Getty Images

The beautiful game. The dear thing. Her brow is furrowed. Glass is half-emptier than full. A brutal World Cup schedule may reduce Matildas captain Sam Kerr to cameos.

I’ll put two bob on Kerr making an appearance at some stage. She walked around Brisbane’s Perry Park on Wednesday without the aid of a Zimmer frame. She didn’t have strapping on her injured calf. Laughed louder than a kookaburra at dawn. Stretched without her calf muscle snapping. All positive signs. And yet the knockout stage of the Cup is a crammed sequence of sudden-death matches that will force the Matildas to win four matches in just 13 days to peel off one of the biggest victories since the yachties on Australia II won the America’s Cup in overtime. Not an ideal workload for anyone with a dodgy leg.

A crystal ball is all Kerr can kick around for now. A cloudy one. What we do know is that going back-to-back-to-back-to-back is going to hell and back for a fully fit footballer, let alone one nursing an irksome injury that can return at any tick of the clock, any tap of the ball, any side-stepping change in direction, any variation in pace, any leap for a header, any cartwheel or somersault, two forms of celebrations now placed on ice, you must assume. The best Matilda might come off the bench.

Coach Tony Gustavsson was asked for an update on Kerr on Wednesday. He was told Matildas fans deserved clarity on a vague situation. “I think you’re right,’’ he replied. “We want to show tremendous respect to our fans out there because they are massive in terms of supporting us and we want to be in this together. But I also know the fans want what’s best for the team, and the best for the team is to focus on the game tomorrow with the players that are available.”

Sketchy details were becoming no clearer. In Gustavsson’s defence, with injuries like this, nobody really knows until they know. You know? Which will be in Melbourne before Monday’s game against Canada. “It’s a calf injury for Sam that will be assessed after the Nigeria game,” Gustavsson said. “I don’t know more than that as of now. We will have an evaluation of Sam before the Canada game and most likely, just a heads-up now in advance, we won’t be able to give you an answer to that until a day before the game. We want to wait until the last minute to see where she’s at in terms of availability.”

Steph Catley is the stand-in skipper against Nigeria on Thursday evening. It was this week five years ago that she lost her father, Lesley, to cancer. “Going through a moment like this, it’s massive for family as well. It does make you think about people who have passed. I had a lot of messages today from family and friends saying he would be very proud. He’d absolutely love to see what I’m doing now and what our team is doing. He’ll be cheering very loudly and watching on. Definitely.”

The real headache for Kerr is the gruelling schedule at the back end of the Cup. If you map out the Matildas’ path to the final, an advancement that can’t be take for granted when you look at the red-hot sides lighting it up, their round-of-16 clash will be on August 7. Their quarter-final will be on August 12. Their semi-final will be on August 15 or 16. The final is on August 20 at the cavernous joint where they first got their show on the road: Stadium Australia. Point being, four emotionally draining and physically demanding matches in less than a fortnight is a major workload.

Lionel Messi’s Argentina jinked, jived and survived four games in 15 days to prevail at the men’s World Cup last year. Their triumph had Argentines in raptures, and a Matildas victory will spark Kerr-inspired cartwheels from Broome to Bermagui, and Mackay to Monkey Mia, but the tournament is a sprint to the finish for which she may be unready.

Messi wrote on Instagram last year, “World champions! I dreamed of it so many times, I wanted it so much I still can’t believe it. It is the strength of all fighting for the same dream that was also the dream of all Argentines.”

Kerr would love to type something similar on August 20 but for now, her Instagram features an old post about being unavailable. Enter Fowler. Woops, exit Fowler. Gustavsson was so shocked he forgot to wait until tomorrow night to reveal her absence.

We’re being beautifully pithy there. He can do and say as he pleases. Half-truths, selective truths, not exactly lying but not exactly being honest, he’s doing what he thinks is best for the Matildas. “To thine own self be true,” Shakespeare wrote. The beautiful game is all about winning and Gustavsson is trying to win a World Cup.