The Matildas wanted to create their own Cathy Freeman moment. They did — but not in quite the way they expected.
abc.net.au/news/matildas-semi-final-loss-to-england-not-about-finish-run-towards/102739458Sam Kerr didn't know what she was going to do when she turned her body towards the empty grass and started to run.
But for most of the preceding hour, when she wasn't tumbling into the grass, crashed into by Lionesses players who knew from experience that this was the only way to stop her, she was doing a lot of watching other people play football. A national newspaper had printed free cardboard cut-outs of Kerr's face to every buyer, her name had been splashed across banners and bulletins, her backflip turned into T-shirts and tattoos. This was meant to be Sam Kerr's World Cup, but she had spent most of the past two weeks watching it pass her by.
75,000 boos barrelled around Stadium Australia as the young midfielder's photo appeared on the big screen, the feverish home fans trying to recreate the wall of noise that had helped the Matildas outlast France in the penalty shootout. As soon as the ball touched her bright pink boots, the tide of sound around the stadium began to rise.
We all felt it. This generational talent, this heart-and-soul captain, this role model to millions, this wise-cracking kid from Perth, finally being given the moment she had been waiting for. And so Kerr did, barely a minute later, picking up the ball and driving past the bodies that had transformed from steel to fog, coiling her left leg back to unleash another shot but winning a corner that came to nothing instead.
That has been the story of the Matildas in this miraculous World Cup: a group of sufferers and sacrificers, a group that has lost crucial players and even more crucial games, and that has had to do it all with a gasping domestic sport laying heavy and limp in their arms.
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