Kennedy knows the pain of defeat

It’s been three years since Alanna Kennedy almost felt the ground disappear beneath her feet at the Olympic Games.

Alanna Kennedy battles with Italy’s Ilaria Mauroin their World Cup game on Sunday

It’s been three years since Alanna Kennedy almost felt the ground disappear beneath her feet.

There she stood on the spot in Belo Horizonte, knowing a misfire would end it for the Matildas, who were one measly kick away from a historic Olympic semi-final.

Australia were down 7-6 on penalties and their central defensive rock, then 21, was carrying the weight of a country. A few painful seconds later, 60,000 Brazil fans had dissolved into a mass of frenzied delirium. She had missed.

For all Kennedy knew, every bit of air might have been sucked out of Estadio Mineirao. The tears arrived only slightly ahead of a consoling Sam Kerr, and then the rest of the team. Penalty shootouts always suck for someone, no matter how good a player you are.

“At the time it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me,” Kennedy told The Australian.

“Now, looking back on it, we’ve had penalty shootouts and players have missed and we’ve lost.

“I think just the magnitude of the situation and it being an Olympics made it horrible. No one really asked me about it for a long time. I feel like it was just avoided.”

There’d been other moments during those tense, tightly wound 120 minutes where the game could have been won and lost well before Kennedy stepped up to the plate.

In the shootout, Marta and Katrina Gorry’s efforts had been saved. Brazil’s goalkeeper Barbara was getting away with murder, moving early and unpunished off her line almost every time.

Kennedy, now 24 and an established world class centre-back, watched the replay for the first time about three months ago.

“I wasn’t avoiding it, it just really didn’t come up. I think people were avoiding it for me … which is fine,” she said.

“I didn’t feel the need to watch it. I can remember it in my head so I didn’t need to see it. But it happens to the best players. At some point the penalty shootout has to end. I did a breakdown of that a while back and what it taught me the most was that I don’t want to go to penalties. I’ve got to do as much as I can in the game to not let them score so we don’t end up in that situation. But if we do, I’m ready to take another one.”

Kennedy hasn’t taken a single penalty for club or country since. But she has played Brazil and exacted a sort of vengeance by beating them every time, including that 6-1 Tournament of Nations thrashing two years ago.

The old-time rivalry has exploded since the last Women’s World Cup, when Kyah Simon scored to send the Matildas through to the quarter-finals — the first-ever knockout-stage World Cup win by a senior Australian team, male or female.

Four years later in France, the Canarinhas are the less fancied, and that’s before considering Marta is coming back from injury and no guarantee to play on Friday morning. The six-time FIFA world player of the year is also Kennedy’s Orlando Pride teammate and “one of the best people I know”.

“We have a good relationship but that doesn’t matter when we’re playing each other,” Kennedy said.

The Daily Telegraph