Mighty Matildas’ magical night captivates a nation

Where were you at exactly 8pm on August 12, 2023? When Cortnee Vine’s deathly spot-kick marked the end of a penalty shootout that gave grandmothers around the nation heart attacks, and those who lived a view of Suncorp Stadium dissolving into delirium, the soundtrack of Down Under echoing around a ground that will forever be etched into Australian sporting folklore.

And secondly, where were you at 6.15pm? At the 55-minute mark: the moment Sam Kerr’s entrance shifted the earth on its axis and swept the contents of this country – every table cloth and pair of slippers and pint on bar tops – from their regular resting places by this one magnetic force?

From the second the Matildas skipper came off the bench, until the end of extra-time and then penalties, once she had finished hers with clinical precision and thumped her chest, she was gravity personified.

Kerr was an inexorable pull which drew in every French opponent in and even goaded their manager Herve Renard, previously unmoving in his technical area, into his trademark leap and squat – an incredulous motion reserved for the most tense mid-match moments.

Kerr doing pretty much anything qualifies as a leap-and-squat moment. It qualifies as a moment that sends such high-voltage tingles down the spine you slip a disc in the stands. It qualifies because it typifies the climax to a dance that might have been choreographed especially for Kerr.

A night for the ages: The Matildas come together after the winning penalty.Credit: Getty

This tournament, with its ebbs and flows and injuries and critiques, then recoveries and praise, had been funnelling towards this very moment. Yes, Kerr played her first minutes in the last game. But this felt different. As if the planets were aligning. As if France were destined for the black hole and the Matildas their deepest run in World Cup history.

This will sound like sacrilege but, in a way, Kerr’s untimely injury has given the rest of the team deserved attention. At the start of this tournament, many in Australia did not know the names of many players in their national team. Slowly, with each match Kerr was sidelined, the education took place. A curriculum of names and positions and star turns disseminated with each match they played and she didn’t, and a swathe of new supporters it brings with it.

“That Caitlin Foord, she’s underrated isn’t she,” they say. “How about Mary Fowler’s right boot? How about Mary Fowler’s left boot?”

The best of Mary Fowler.Credit: Getty Images

Cue rusted-on football fans getting all uppity in defence of players they’ve known were very good for a very good while. Does it really matter, though, if everyone else got there in the end? If all and sundry in Suncorp Stadium are decked out in full green and gold paraphernalia and singing Waltzing Matilda in unison to the rhythmic vibrations of a didgeridoo?

This is the Welcome to Country under darkening Brisbane skies. Where crowds on Queen Street cheer and take videos of the team on a match day walk in town, and small children on the stadium concourse say “it’s the moment we’ve been waiting for”.

Where 49,461 hold their collective breaths as, 12 minutes in, Maelle Lakrar somehow sidefoots over the crossbar from two metres out. And where Hayley Raso runs through Sakina Karchaoui just as Katrina Gorry runs through Grace Geyoro, and then Raso reasons with the referee like a school student promising a teacher they won’t cause any more trouble.

This match was tighter than the space inside a blown-up balloon – one prick of the pin and all the air will come rushing out. Fowler almost blew it up with that right boot of hers, but the inside of De Almeida’s thigh was having none of it.

How to reconcile the train wreck of emotions which accompany such a seminal match? That impression that Australia absolutely should win their quarter-final. That anything less would not meet expectations. But also that to make the semi-finals would exceed expectations. In what world can both of these things be true?

But football can be an irrational sphere, where the deranged take root and the implausible occurs. Pre-match, Craig Foster declared this to be the biggest game in Australian football history. Bigger even than the Socceroos’ famous 2005 World Cup qualifier against Uruguay. He commentated that one – he would know.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese was on Twitter too, challenging France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, to a bet. “If the Matildas win tonight, you’ll support Australia in the semi-finals,” Albanese tweeted. “If France win, I’ll support France. Deal?”

Macron tweeted back an hour later: “The World Cup is brilliantly co-organised by you, Australia. It’s an honour to face the Matildas in the quarter-finals today, but no worries: Les Bleues will take the lead! Deal.”

No deal, monsieur. No deal.

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