IAN HERBERT: England may need street-fighters to hold off Australia

08/13/2023

IAN HERBERT: England may need street-fighters to hold off hosts Australia after overcoming physical Colombia

England capitalised on Colombia’s failings and will need to do more vs Australia
Wiegman’s side have become team of scrappers in the absence of missing stars
Millie Bright and Alex Greenwood’s partnership should sustain optimism

The most vivid portent of what lies ahead was evident long before kick-off, when about 5,000 people, mainly Australian, sat spellbound under the eucalyptus trees outside this stadium, watching the host nation progress to the semi-finals.

That match went on so long that the arena was empty when England warmed up to face Colombia, a game which felt like a secondary event.

Such is the national obsession with Australia’s Matildas that a headline across the cover of the country’s Saturday Telegraph said ‘On the Edge of Immortality’.

The team’s win over France attracted the biggest TV audience of any team event in Australian history and a long-awaited Aussie Rules match was bumped off one of the main networks when it went into extra time.

Now the Aussies have the prospect of a semi-final against the old enemy. ‘Hype’ won’t even begin to describe things between now and Wednesday, when 74,000 people, mainly Australians, will pack out this place.

Hosts Australia are in the semi-finals of the Women’s World Cup after beating France

The Matildas will go head-to-head with the Old Enemy England after they beat Colombia

No better preparation for England’s players, then, than a semi-final played out before a rabid South American contingent whose ‘Vamos Colombia’ chants echoed around the vast bowl, along with howls of derision for every English touch of the ball.

Not to mention the Colombian physicality — cynical and vicious, some of it — which at times made the match look like a street scene from the meanest streets of Bogota.

The Colombians had a broad weaponry, as Rachel Daly and Lauren Hemp could testify. Daly received a nasty little pinch on the face. Hemp found herself floored by something not dissimilar to a bag of concrete.

The perpetrator in chief on both of those occasions was Ana Guzman, the 18-year-old youngest member of the team. Her jowly-faced manager Nelson Abadia viewed it all with a benign air of apparent satisfaction.

The Colombians had a broad weaponry, as Rachel Daly and Lauren Hemp could testify

There are words for such a team of such cynicism, not all negative. It’s a measure of the trajectory the women’s game is on that malevolence can and will play a part now. It’s a measure of the street-fighting quality in England that they saw it off.

You wondered where it was all heading for them after Monday’s narrow win over Nigeria. It was hard to remember a poorer performance in recent years from a senior England team, men’s or women’s, with forwards and midfielders looking too startled to drive ahead or place a forward pass. But this was a team with spirit restored, emerging from the stunned shock of six days ago to meet the physical challenge and create.

We are witnessing a diametrically different England team to the one we saw last summer, where the mercurial finishing of Beth Mead and clever invention of Fran Kirby, both now missing, took your breath away.

The loss of those two players and, at least until a final, Lauren James, has made this a team of scrappers, not artists painting pictures across the pitches of this World Cup.

Yet the winners are not always the aesthetes at times like this. Staring down the collective will of the Australian nation will require collectivism and spirit to prevail. The quarter-final revealed an abundance of both in England.

A repeatedly worked set-piece routine was an emblem of their fight. Alessia Russo, Daly, Millie Bright and Lucy Bronze lined up in a row, one in front of the other, hustled and barged by Colombians, and as the ball was sent in, drove ahead in all directions, confounding the South Americans as to where the ball would be delivered.

Hemp was the ultimate street-fighter, though — bouncing off the challenges as she worked across the flanks. She was wrested to the ground in an elbow lock. She was thumped by a second bag of Guzman’s concrete. Her face was flushed with the sheer effort even by half-time.

It is the absence of an English cutting edge which is the worry. England capitalised on glaring Colombian failings but will need to manufacture more if they are to defeat the hosts. The Matildas did show in their rather fortunate defeat of the French that their defence can be exploited.

Alessia Russo, Daly, Millie Bright and Lucy Bronze were barged by Colombians in physical a match on Saturday

With Sam Kerr, Mary Fowler and Caitlin Foord on the horizon, Millie Bright and Alex Greenwood’s revelatory partnership should sustain our optimism. Without the two interventions Greenwood made late on, the Aussies might not even be considering the Poms today.

Australia have retained the Ashes and beaten England in netball’s World Cup final, but a win for those in yellow and green three days from now would surpass all of that.

Sarina Wiegman expressed puzzlement with journalists’ talk of this rivalry and said she would ask her players about it. ‘It’s probably going to be bigger than I imagined!’ she said. Yes. You could probably say that.

Millie Bright and Alex Greenwood’s partnership should sustain optimism against Sam Kerr (L)

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