By Ian Ransom
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australia bowed out of the Women’s World Cup title race with the sting of a lost opportunity against England, but the co-hosts will look back in pride at a campaign that rallied a nation around them.
The home fans at Stadium Australia and a record TV audience that watched Wednesday’s 3-1 semi-final defeat will wonder what might have been had the Matildas stayed strong in defence after their captain Sam Kerr’s stunning equaliser.
England’s second goal may haunt Ellie Carpenter, whose failure to clear an innocuous long ball opened the door for Lauren Hemp to swoop.
Lax marking also helped Hemp set up Alessia Russo’s sealer that put England into Sunday’s final against Spain and left the home team in tears.
Distraught midfielder Katrina Gorry worried the Matildas had let the nation down after building them up on their first run to a World Cup semi-finals.
While tough to swallow for the players ahead of Saturday’s third place playoff against Sweden, Gorry may have been marking them too hard.
She may find solace in the tributes and condolences offered by fans and media in the aftermath.
“The joyride is over, but the glow will long remain,” sports columnist Greg Baum wrote in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper.
“Once the hurt subsides, and it will, the prevailing sentiment ought to be not disappointment in falling so near to the grail, but pride in getting so close.”
In all but the loftiest metric – winning the tournament – the Matildas scored highly.
Australia were the lowest-ranked side in a semi-finals hogged by European powerhouses.
They can now count themselves among the global elite, having long craved that status but never quite delivered on the world stage.
With Kerr sidelined with a calf injury through the group phase, the players overcame their traditional reliance on their captain’s scoring and leadership, banging in six goals in their wins over Olympic champions Canada and Denmark.
The 3-2 group stage defeat against Nigeria put their campaign in peril but their “backs-to-the-wall” response to thrash Canada and reach the knockout phase lit a fire under the tournament.
Australia had craved an iconic moment to capture imaginations, and Cortnee Vine delivered when she slotted the final kick of the penalty shootout win over France in the quarter-finals.
Kerr’s wonder goal in the semi-final will likely be replayed by generations of fans to come.
Once a sport team, the Matildas became a cultural movement, booting the more popular winter sports of rugby league and Australian Rules football off the back pages of newspapers.
Fans packed out pubs and live viewing sites across the country, while politicians scrambled to link themselves to the squad, promising a public holiday if they won the whole thing.
Since being awarded the right to host the tournament with New Zealand three years ago, Australian soccer officials have promised repeatedly that the World Cup would leave a strong legacy for the game.
Kerr spoke of changing minds.
“A lot of people have said Australia is not a footballing nation. We’re going to show them that’s wrong and football is on the rise,” she said.
Kerr might feel it was mission accomplished given the record crowds and TV viewership figures.
The semi-final drew an average of 7.13 million viewers on the channels of host broadcaster Seven Network, the highest viewership ever recorded by research firm OzTAM, which launched in 2001.
The thrill of the Matildas’ run will not fade quickly, even as locals turn their attention to the upcoming finals series for Aussie Rules and rugby league.
Long-term, it remains to be seen whether the World Cup has moved the needle for a sport in Australia that has modest professional leagues and struggles to retain talent.
Ange Postecoglou, the former coach of the national men’s team, hoped the Socceroos’ 2015 Asian Cup triumph on home soil might prove a game-changer, but found it caused barely a ripple.
“It’s about the game taking advantage of that and making an indelible footprint in the sporting landscape here, which we know is always challenging,” he said last month.
“Hopefully, this time it takes advantage of it.”
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Jamie Freed)
