Wounded Matildas brace for ultimate pre-World Cup test against England

Tuesday marks 100 days left in the countdown to the Women’s World Cup. Bright and early on Wednesday (4.45am AEST) is the Matildas’ second-last match until it starts, their final friendly before Tony Gustavsson names his 23-player squad, and easily their biggest and most important test during his topsy-turvy reign as coach.

For a tournament that for so long has hovered harmlessly over the horizon and always too far away to fret about too much, it suddenly feels very real.

Time is running out for Sam Kerr and the Matildas ahead of the Women’s World Cup.Credit: Getty Images

Time is running out. Fast. A sense of anxiety and meaning is now overlaid on everything: the little details in the way the Matildas handle different opponents, the wins they bank or defeats they succumb to, the performances put together by players on the fringes of Gustavsson’s World Cup squad calculations. And it won’t stop, either, when they all return to their clubs after this showdown with England because every domestic game they’ll play over the next two months carries with it a risk of injury, and therefore disruption and heartbreak.

You can sense the tension getting to Gustavsson, which is only natural. Usually so chipper and giving in his press conferences, the Swede has this week elected to play ducks and drakes over the fitness of some of his key players, refusing to disclose the specific reason why Sam Kerr was reduced to an unused substitute for Australia’s limp 1-0 loss to Scotland last week, and pointing out that it is not the responsibility of national teams to provide information when others are injured while with their clubs.

Kerr is expected to face the Lionesses, and Gustavsson is likely to roll out his strongest possible team to play against them, but the Matildas will still be without almost 700 caps of experience: Elise Kellond-Knight, Steph Catley, Caitlin Foord, Alanna Kennedy, Emily Gielnik and Chloe Logarzo missed this squad due to injury, while Emily van Egmond and Holly McNamara have been “medically withdrawn” and sent back early to their clubs.

Australia’s depth will again be exposed, only this time against a team far more capable of exploiting it than Scotland; indeed, England’s biggest problem is that they have too much quality to fit into a 23-player squad.

Tony Gustavsson is playing ducks and drakes when it comes to injuries to key players.Credit: Getty

Which means it will probably be a question of how many goals Australia will lose by at Brentford’s Gtech Community Stadium, the 17,000-seat capacity venue in London’s west where tickets for this match sold out within 24 hours of going on sale. England are, in contrast, happily settled, strong and coming off a win on penalties over Brazil last week in the Finalissima, a new quadrennial clash between the champions of Europe and South America, played in front of 83,132 people at Wembley.

Sarina Wiegman’s side are among the favourites to win the World Cup; the Matildas, outside of a small bubble of eternal optimists in Australia, are not. They will probably have a puncher’s chance of going all the way, but absolutely everything would have to go right for them between now and the final on August 20, and home-soil advantage would have to lift them to another plain to give them the “Cathy Freeman moment” Kerr is desperate for them to enjoy.

But instead of peaking at the right time, there is now the very real possibility that they will actually take losing form into it. There was a sense the Matildas had genuinely turned a corner with that promising seven-match unbeaten run, but injuries and absences have since interrupted their momentum. If they couldn’t get past Scotland – who failed to qualify for the World Cup – the Lionesses may deliver another harsh reality check.

After that, there is only one more friendly to be played, on July 14 in Melbourne against world No.5 France, who seem to have been rescued from a typical bout of French pre-tournament disunity by the appointment of Herve Renard, the mastermind of Saudi Arabia’s biblical upset over Argentina at the recent men’s World Cup and one of the shrewdest coaches in the international game. Then it’s Ireland at Accor Stadium.

Gustavsson’s job, as ever, will be to look past the scoreboard after these 90 minutes in London and take away whatever he can about individual players, and whether they can fit into his World Cup plans, but also about the vulnerabilities of England, who loom as Australia’s probable round of 16 opponents if the hosts finish second in Group B behind Canada – then apply what he learns when it matters, to the bigger picture he says he has always been focused on, and pray to the football gods that his injured stars heal quickly. There’s no time to do anything else.

Australia play England from 4.45am AEST on Wednesday. The game will be broadcast on Channel Ten and Paramount+.

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