How a country NSW training pitch produced two Matildas defenders

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At one end of a rural town’s rugby league field, and just inside the fence which separates the grass from the greyhound track, is the Matildas’ most wholesome World Cup live site. It’s not Tumbalong Park in Darling Harbour or Melbourne’s Federation Square, but more important to those there. A few dozen people shiver under blankets and the stars, but the advertisement gives them a reason to come down: “Heaters supplied.”

When the folk of Cowra, a small town on the central tablelands of NSW, set up their own big screen to watch Australia’s fairytale march into the quarter-finals of the World Cup, they did so because one of their own, Ellie Carpenter, is part of the history makers.

It’s rare for a community with a population of just over 10,000 people to produce a player to make it on the world stage. What makes the feat even more incredible is that they’re also supporting another of the region’s exports, Clare Hunt, who grew up in the neighbouring farming district of Grenfell, a four-and-a-half hour drive west of Sydney. Its own population is just 2500.

When the late-blooming Hunt, who has been dogged by persistent injuries, made her Matildas debut earlier this year, she quietly went over to Carpenter at the end of the game. They knew a photo existed of the pair when they played for a Western NSW development side as kids, and they cheekily recreated it as fully-capped Matildas, defending alongside each other in the side’s back line.

“It’s amazing to be on this experience with Ellie and to see where she’s come from, from humble beginnings in a small country town as well,” Hunt says.

“I think it’s wonderful that we can both be role models for young kids in country towns chasing their dream. I think it’s important that they see us as role models and that they have a fearlessness about what they’re doing, and that they are brave in what they do, and that they continue to pursue what they do regardless of, I suppose, the hurdles that they have to jump over to achieve their dreams.”

Born just a year apart – Hunt is the older of the pair at 24 – they crossed paths as kids in underage development squads and also shared a passion for athletics. Their journeys have been different, Carpenter moving to Sydney for high school and a big-money move to Lyon in France, and Hunt spending the majority of her formative years travelling to and from Canberra for training and games, and shining in Australia’s women’s competition for Western Sydney.

But their country roots remain at the core, Carpenter a kid who would tell her parents the PeeWee motorbikes they gave her wouldn’t go fast enough, and Hunt having her dad James, a former first-grader with the Canberra Raiders, erect a soccer goal out of polypipe on the family’s sheep farm.

“You wouldn’t find two young girls reach the pinnacle of their sporting prowess from two towns as small,” Carpenter’s dad Scott says. “They’re representing a country of 20-odd million, but they’re just two kids from the bush.

“It’s pretty special, and it just shows you with the right support network around the kids, to give them the opportunity and guide them, anything is possible. People would always say, ‘it’s too difficult and you can’t make those teams from the country’. But this gives kids hope.”

Matildas defenders Ellie Carpenter (left) and Clare Hunt.

One of the region’s best junior coaches, Glenn Stedman, was first introduced to Carpenter when he was watching a kid with long, blonde hair scoring goals at a junior development day in Orange. He wanted to find out more about the speedy striker, and approached the child’s mother after a game.

“I thought, ‘yeah, fantastic. I’ve got to go see that girl’. I went and talked to mum [Belinda] and she said, ‘oh no, that’s [Ellie’s older brother] Jeremy’. His hair was halfway down his back! But that’s when I first met Ellie and then we kept in touch and monitored her. We eventually got her into a program and the rest was history.

“Now, we’ve just started a development program in Orange for girls and some of the looks on kids’ faces when you say, ‘have you watched the World Cup?’ They say, ‘yeah, how good are they?’ I say, ‘you’ve got one thing in common with Ellie Carpenter and Clare Hunt’. They say, ‘what’s that?’ We say, ‘you’re training on the same pitch they’re training on’. You should see the look on the kids’ faces.

“Ellie and Clare don’t forget where they came from. We need to get on the bandwagon and not lose momentum.”

Carpenter and Hunt at Matildas training before the World Cup quarter-final.Credit: Football Australia

Young’s Jim Glasheen was another who would hone the girls’ skill from a young age at weekly development sessions.

He was responsible for starting the town’s first all-girls team in 2002 to provide a pathway for his daughter and her friends, and also helped Test cricketer Nathan Lyon learn the art of soccer and being a junior referee.

“That’s one thing you can always say about country kids, they’ve got good families behind them and they’ve got plenty of support,” Glasheen says.

“There are a lot of kids out here who should probably go to the next level, but don’t have the funding. I’m just so proud of these two girls and I hope there’s more to come.

“And there are more Matildas out here, don’t worry.”

with Vince Rugari and Emma Kemp.

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