By Emma Kemp
In January, Tom Sermanni found himself in the bizarre position of providing a player to an opposition World Cup team.
Matildas coach Tony Gustavsson had visited Western Sydney Wanderers training to take a look at Clare Hunt, and Sermanni, the club’s head of women’s football, provided a glowing appraisal of the centre-back’s obvious talents.
The only thing was that Sermanni – a former Matildas coach who gave a number of the current squad their debuts – had signed on to work with Bev Priestman’s Canada, whom Australia will play in Monday night’s final Group B clash.
So when Gustavsson starting chatting openly about his team, the Scotland-born coaching veteran had to stop him before he revealed any sensitive information.
“We started just talking generally about players,” Sermanni says. “And I thought, ‘Woah, I better be careful here because he’s coaching [Australia] and we’re in the same group’.
“I said, ‘Tony, just to let you know, I’ve started working with Canada again. I just want to make sure that we don’t have a conversation, and then you come and say that you wouldn’t have said that if you’d known’.
“He just went, ‘Oh’. I think he was taken aback a wee bit.”
Tom Sermanni at the 2019 World Cup in France during his tenure as head coach of New Zealand.Credit: Getty
Sermanni’s standing in women’s international football cannot be overstated. The 69-year-old has coached the Matildas over two stints, first in the 1990s and again from 2005-2012. He has also led the United States and New Zealand, and previously worked for Canada as an assistant and technical consultant in 2014 and 2015.
It was last September that he was with Priestman at the Under-20 Women’s World Cup in Costa Rica. “And that’s when she asked if I wanted to come back in and work with the team throughout the World Cup. So it kind of just happened very casually.”
The casual nature of it meant there was no publicity, and that when he saw Gustavsson he had do the full disclosure thing.
Sermanni and Gustavsson have known each other for about a decade since crossing paths during Sermanni’s stint with the US team.
Tom Sermanni with a young Caitlin Foord during his Matildas days.Credit: Orlando Chidoo
“Personally, we had a good connection, as in he’s easy to talk to,” Sermanni says. “And an obvious football person with a good, in-depth knowledge of the game, and how he sees the game and wants to play the game.”
Gustavsson describes Sermanni as “a big piece of this World Cup” because of his Matildas legacy.
“Tom is actually a good friend of mine,” says Gustavsson, who was a guest coach at one of Sermanni’s US training camps 10 years ago. “It wasn’t too far away that we were actually going to work together.
“I met him plenty of times since arriving here [at the Matildas] and educated myself about everything from grassroots football to future Matilda programs.
Clare Hunt playing for the Wanderers in January, around the time Tony Gustavsson was considering calling up the defender to the Matildas.Credit: Getty
“Thomas is a great man. He’s a phenomenal man. Heart in the right place. He knows a lot also about these players. He’s been a huge part of these players’ careers. So in that sense he helped me a lot.”
After the damaging loss to Nigeria on Thursday, Gustavsson now finds himself under an unprecedented amount of pressure, with his tactics and selection decisions under intense scrutiny. To have any real surety of keeping the Matildas in the tournament - and likely the chance of keeping his job - he must now steer Australia to victory over Canada and Sermanni in Melbourne on Monday.
Australia, who sit third in Group B with three points, will at least offer access to media on Saturday, which had been scheduled as a closed day ahead of Sunday’s pre-match press conference.
But Canada, who sit second behind leaders Nigeria (both on four points) and whose campaign may also hinge on this next result, have confirmed they will not do any media aside from the compulsory match day minus one press conference.
The Tokyo Olympic gold medallists, who beat Ireland 2-1 on Wednesday, have also been navigating a simmering pay dispute with the Canada Soccer Association.
“That disrupted things a little bit,” Sermanni says. “But the great thing about the Canadian team is that they’ve got some really great senior players like Christine Sinclair and Sophie Schmidt, who lead the environment, and the players coming in follow that lead.”
When Sermanni sits in Canada’s side of the dugout on Monday, he will do so with a particular connection to the opposing camp.
And – though it might feel conflicted – will watch Hunt with pride at the way in which the 24-year-old, who grew up on a sheep farm in rural NSW, has gone from uncapped hopeful five months ago to an indispensable pillar of the Matildas’ defence.
“She’s done fantastically since she’s gone in there. And well deserved. She’s got great focus and a really great attitude. Very much a typical country attitude to things. She gets on with it, doesn’t get fazed, just really grounded.”
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