TWENTY-THREE YEARS after Sonia O’Sullivan showed there is dignity in finishing second-best at Stadium Australia in Sydney, the Ireland women’s national team asserted her truth.
This was a classically diligent, physical and rudimentary Irish performance, but the extent to which they first limited Australia and then discomfited them augurs well for the rest of the group. The knockout rounds remain an eminently reasonable thing.
And yet the encouragement they take from the game will be leavened with regret. Marissa Sheva’s glistening cheeks told that tale: she wept on the bench having heedlessly conceded the penalty from which Australia won the game.
Courtney Brosnan was otherwise unworked, although Australia were defanged by the pre-game bombshell they had kept shrouded from the rest of the world. Sam Kerr hurt her calf at training yesterday morning and yet sat blithely at a press conference hours later, looking ahead to the game and answering questions as to whether she would be performing celebrating somersaults in celebration.
All of Australia were instead sent into a lurch 75 minutes before kick off, when the Australia team was posted without Kerr’s name featuring. Kerr, the Matildas’ social media team said with exquisite understatement, was out with a calf injury.
And so Kerr sat on the bench as the teams lined up in the tunnel, the scale of the achievement betraying itself on Irish faces as they fought a losing battle with their game face, which were creased and cracked with smiles; grins curling their way across Irish faces as the roars rose around the ground.
And rightly so, for this was the dream without a dictionary. Millennial Irish boys could grow up knowing that it was possible for them to play at a World Cup but girls of the same age had no such precedent: today’s Irish smiles were wordless expressions of an achievement that before now didn’t have a vocabulary in which it could be articulated. Regardless of what Ireland go on to do at this tournament, these players have given the country an entire mode of expression. This is plainly a great sporting achievement.
And amid it all, trust RTÉ to fail to provide the backing sounds. The first-half was an omnishambles. If you were fortunate to have had the option to watch on ITV, imagine RTÉ’s commentary as Gabriele Szabo and the pictures as Sonia: painfully, teeth-grindingly, eternally, ahead. The problem wasn’t fixed until half-time, after a nation sighed its breath.
Vera Pauw had fewer problems to address at the break. The first-half went according to the script. Sure, Ireland hardly attacked, but they earnestly kept their shape and prevented Australia from so much as threatening to score. Heather Payne was targeted at right wing-back but her performance typified Ireland’s opening half: dogged and rigorous and utterly uncowed. On the other flank, Katie McCabe went to war with Hayley Raso. Australia manager Tony Gustavsson waved and raged on the touchline like King Lear on the heath, furious at Ireland’s physicality. Ireland certainly brought the fight, and it is baffling to understand how Colombia could have been so much more physical than Ireland in the abandoned friendly game last week. Did they come armed?
Gustavsson predicted Ireland would concede late in each half but instead the Matildas struck at the start of the second. Sheva’s push in the box on Raso was a venial sin, but it was clumsy and without the level of mitigation needed to employ VAR. Australia didn’t have Kerr to take the spot kick but they did have Arsenal’s Steph Catley, who flew it into the top corner in a penalty that literally nobody could save.
Maddening is the fact it was Sheva who was back-tracking on Raso in the first place. Ireland’s great attacking compromise is the fact they play McCabe at left wing-back, and, ordinarily, she would have been following Raso. Instead McCabe was on the edge of the box and Sheva’s work ethic was undermined by her clumsiness.
Abbie Larkin and Lucy Quinn provided effective spark off the bench for Ireland, and in spite of their lack of forward guile, only the harshest judge would quibble had Ireland got a draw. True, the bulk of Ireland’s chances – and half-chances – came from set pieces, though Payne miscued an opportunity amid a penalty box scramble, while the chance fell to the person late in stoppage time. Ireland won an Australian goal-kick and Larkin pulled the ball back into the box for McCabe who – on her left-foot – could finish only tamely at goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold.
That Amber Barrett remained on the bench while Louise Quinn was beckoned up front will cut ice in the post-mortem, but Pauw’s job as manager is to compensate for Ireland’s relative lack of quality and narrow the margins as best she can.
That’s precisely what happened today in Sydney. Ireland get zero points, but belief they can upset Canada and keep this heady show on the road for longer still.
