A WAVE OF fear must have came over Chloe Mustaki when she tweaked her knee during Ireland’s World Cup training camp back in Dublin.
Mustaki previously tore her ACL on the eve of her potential international senior debut in 2020 and went through a particularly long, arduous road back.
Thankfully, history has not cruelly repeated itself.
Her knee was strapped in the build-up to the send-off friendly against France, and the Birmingham City star was not risked — but she’s fully fit and good to go if called upon in Australia.
“It’s all good. I just tweaked it in training about 10 days ago before the France game. With the history there, I needed to take care of it.
“I have done so much rehab over the years to protect my knee. I haven’t had much trouble with it since I tore my ACL. Tempo is high and intensity is high, and your body just takes a while to keep up with it.”
Mustaki’s story is remarkable, really. She stared death in the eye at the age of 19 when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a type of blood cancer — making a full recovery after intensive treatment.
Shortly beforehand, she had captained the Ireland U19s at the 2014 European Championships. With her football career finally back on track, she was struck down by the dreaded cruciate ligament knee injury.
And after another testing club season, in which she missed a bulk of Bristol’s run to Championship glory, she finds herself World Cup bound. Has it all sunk in?
“I think now that we are here, it has. A few weeks leading up in Ireland, it still felt a bit of a far-fetched idea that we were heading to a World Cup, but touching down in Australia, being in Brisbane and having the buzz around, it is fantastic and it feels like we are a part of something special.”
Mustaki’s brother lives in Melbourne, so he and his partner are travelling to Sydney for Thursday’s opener against Australia. Her mother is also making the long journey out for what will be an historic occasion for Irish women’s football.
The Matildas are much fancied heading into the showdown, boosted by recent friendly wins over European champions England and France. They’ll have the advantage of home support in the 80,000-plus capacity Stadium Australia, though Irish fans are expected in their numbers, too.
“At the end of the day, we relish being the underdogs and give them hell as much as we can and hopefully come out with the right result,” Mustaki vows. “We are not here just to participate, we have got a hell of a squad and we are going to prepare as best we can and see what the outcome is.
“Of course, it’s in their home nation, they will have a massive support there and they will have prepared very well for us. It will be a battle but we will be ready for it and we love being the underdogs.”
What about the crowd? How do you prepare for that?
“I don’t think I have an idea of how insane it is going to be. I am trying not to think about it too much, trying just to concentrate on the football.”
The biggest crowd Mustaki has played in front of is just over 12,000; an almost capacity crowd at Gamla Ullevi Stadium, Gothenburg, last April when Ireland secured a monumental draw against Sweden. In fact, it was her first competitive senior start.
Basically: embrace the occasion, but play the game, not it.
“At the end of the day, when you walk onto the pitch, everything around you just fades away. It will be surreal, and we won’t really believe it until we see it, because it is something that only Katie [McCabe] and a few others have experienced and we might never experience it again, that amount of people, so we have to savour it.
“It will be an unbelievable experience in many different ways, but we are here to do a job, do the business.”
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