Returning to her first professional club Central Coast Mariners, the Matildas forward is ready to answer her critics.
Standing on the sideline of Lang Park in Brisbane, her muscles warm and her socks pulled tight to the knees, Kyah Simon was ready to enter the field for the Matildas in the dying stages of their Women's World Cup quarterfinal against France.
She made the squad cut-off — an achievement she said was "miraculous" — and felt that everything was on track to get her first minutes for Australia in over a year. "And the last thing I wanted to do was bring attention to my situation, because there's already noise — and there's always going to be noise, it's a World Cup — but what amplifies it is if you have another couple of injuries and there's suddenly more focus on you, when otherwise you might just fly under the radar."
"I've never been in the position where I've put on a Matildas jersey and never actually taken part on the field," she said. "But the thing that trumped everything for me is I got myself back to the fitness level that I needed to get myself selected. That's the thing that I'll hold my head high and say that I was able to do that: to defy the odds.
Having seen out her contract with Tottenham Hotspur in England, the Sydney local has returned to A-League Women for the first time in four years as the big-name, Tameka Yallop , Lydia Williams , Chloe Logarzo , Emily Gielnik and Elise Kellond-Knight who have signed for Australian clubs to help boost the profile of women's football in the afterglow of the World Cup.
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