Tilly season: Gustavsson’s plan to blood young Matildas a gift for rampant Canada

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Mary Fowler received a pass near the top of the box and turned to shoot. It did not go into the net – Kailen Sheridan’s gather was far too comfortable for that – but it was at least heading in the right direction. This was 73 minutes into Saturday’s game against Canada, and it was the Matildas’ first shot on target.

It is hard to remember a match in which Australia, known for their attacking aptitude, did not register a single shot on target. The last time the Matildas failed to do so in the first half of a match was Tony Gustavsson’s first in charge: a 5-2 friendly loss to Germany in 2021.

But Saturday’s 5-0 defeat to Canada – whom they beat 4-0 at the World Cup – was sketched in shades more reminiscent of last June’s 7-0 drubbing by Spain. The reason was to do with Gustavsson’s selections on a slippery night at Langford’s Starlight Stadium. The coach, fresh from overseeing a historic home World Cup semi-final run and a trio of Olympic qualifying wins in Perth, sought to use this international window to test young players.

It made sense – the international calendar between now and the Paris Games next July offers little room for movement in the way of depth-building, with further qualifiers in February and fine-tuning from there on in. A pair of away friendlies doubling as a farewell tour for football GOAT Christine Sinclair is an ideal time for experimentation.

But the thing with experiments, based on the evidence available after the first of these friendlies, is that in order to be useful, it generally helps to set it up in a controlled fashion. That might look like fielding one young, inexperienced player in each line and allowing them to try and shine within a structured environment. It is how many of the Matildas mainstays made their entrance and developed into world-class players.

Most recently, one can look at the likes of Kyra Cooney-Cross maturing alongside an established midfield partner in Katrina Gorry, or Cortnee Vine being played on the wing with support from Steph Catley and Caitlin Foord. A blend, perhaps, designed to build chemistry.

Mary Fowler takes on Vanessa Gillies.Credit: Getty

On Saturday, Gustavsson’s version of giving young players a chance was throwing a second-string XI (barring perhaps Clare Polkinghorne, Aivi Luik and Tameka Yallop) in the deep end and asking them to show him what they can do with little on-field support or direction.

From an outsider’s perspective, it appears somewhat futile. It is hard to gauge the potential of debutants Charlize Rule and Sarah Hunter when neither are debuting in circumstances that might be considered typical of the Matildas, both in personnel and playing style. One can only imagine how it might feel for the players themselves who, instead of gradually building minutes within a stable, slightly altered XI, have all been sent out with each other. Against the Olympic champions.

Rule and Hunter were among six players with fewer than 20 caps, and 281 of the starting line-up’s combined 429 caps belonged to Polkinghorne and Yallop.

What happened was not dissimilar to that harrowing loss to Spain: the Matildas were torn to shreds. They had one-third of possession, mostly inside their own half. They finished the first half with no shots on goal to Canada’s 13 and, by the time Fowler notched the first 17 minutes from full-time, the hosts had scored five goals. The full-time statistics read 19 shots to two.

Simi Awujo and Courtney Nevin battle for the ball.Credit: Getty

The difference in cohesion during the last half-hour, when Gustavsson brought on Fowler, Cooney-Cross, Gorry and Kennedy, was palpable. And there were perhaps viable reasons for keeping on the bench senior players whose workloads have been heavy since the World Cup, particularly given the slew of injuries which had already forced the absence of Sam Kerr (foot), Mackenzie Arnold (arm), Charli Grant (hamstring), Holly McNamara (ACL) and Vine (hamstring). This was also played in slippery conditions on artificial turf, warranting concerns more might succumb.

Gustavsson reasoned that “sometimes growth hurts, as long as you know why you’re doing it”, and pointed to the final 30 minutes of Rule’s shift as “very impressive” and an important takeaway.

“We said we wanted to go extreme today and really test ourselves against one of the best teams in the world,” Gustavsson said. “Try to play out from the back, try to break lines, try to combine, to see where we are in that process, both as a team but also with individual players. And that cost us. We knew it could cost us.

“You’re always going to be criticised for not testing new players, or testing too many new players at the same time. There’s always going to be opinions out there, but we had a clear plan going into this camp, and we wanted to use one game for the players who haven’t played that much, and one game with more continuity and closer to the starting line-up that we had at the World Cup.”

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