By the time it was over – three grueling, painful, exhausting hours later – the feeling around Brisbane Stadium was not so much joy or euphoria or even relief, but a kind of lethargy. Not vertigo from the heights Australia has now climbed, but something closer to nausea, from the twisting, winding road that took the host nation to the clouds.
This World Cup has had no shortage of drama: late twists and surprise finishes and a delightful streak of unbridled excitement. Australia’s final win over France on Saturday kept a proud tradition alive.
The World Cup has also had at least one penalty shootout that tested the boundaries of realism. By that count, Australia may have pushed the United States microscopically into second place. The raw truth of the matter was that the hosts eventually ran out winners, 7-6, when substitute Cortnee Vine relentlessly converted the final 21 penalties to send Brisbane — and the rest of the country — in raptures at the prospect of Australia’s first World Cup. semifinal, against England on Wednesday.
In this case, it is fair to say, the facts require a little explanation.
Over the past three weeks, the Matildas’ progress has consumed Australia. Tony Gustavsson’s team is on the front cover of every newspaper. His players’ faces beamed from television commercials and billboards and news bulletins. Sam Kerr’s fitness or otherwise has become a national obsession.
The team’s games have become must-see television, setting various audience records, usurping high watermarks from the country’s more traditional, more entrenched ball sports, Australian rules football and rugby.
Hours before kickoff, Brisbane was filled with fans decked out in Australian green-and-gold: jerseys and commemorative T-shirts, mostly, but some fans had to improvise.
One man is wearing a bright, canary yellow suit, an asset that raises more questions than it answers. In the bars of Lang Park, the area immediately around the stadium, there were two people wearing a surprising — some might say excessive — amount of pineapple-themed clothing. No one seemed to think. The color scheme is on the right lines.
Much of that, of course, can be attributed to fairly universal characteristics. Australia is a sporting nation, accustomed to expressing its identity through its prowess on the field. It is, like anywhere else, the kind of place that enjoys a big event, a chance to let its hair down, to host a party for the rest of the world to watch.
The effect, however, is multiplied by how compelling a story the Matildas have become. Kerr, the country’s great star, injured his calf on the eve of the first game and is racing to find some semblance of fitness in time to feature – albeit in a reduced role – in some way in the tournament.
The team, its confidence seemingly diminished by the loss of Kerr, lost to Nigeria in its second game, and for a while it seemed that the jamboree for which it had spent three years preparing was the most regrettable kind of anticlimax. A spirited victory over Canada averted that fate; a win over Denmark in the round of 16 ensured it would survive until the final week of the tournament, at least.
But Australia remains absolutely determined to wring every last vestige of emotional energy from its fans. Its meeting with France was fascinating and intriguing, but it was also tense and fraught at all times, a game played exclusively on the narrowest of margins. Twice, early on, French defender Maëlle Lakrar could have swallowed up a nation. Twice, Australia survived, Gustavsson’s players gritted their teeth and clenched their fists until they turned the water back on.
It’s less a game of patterns and pressure and more of surges. When Australia came, Mary Fowler was at its heart. He might have scored three times against France, maybe more, but was denied twice by the reflexes and reactions of Pauline Peyraud-Magnin, the French goalkeeper, and once – most impressively – by the quick thought defender Élisa De Almeida, who broke loose. back to deny Fowler an open, decisive goal.
“I want to watch it back to see what the hell I was doing,” Fowler said, with more self-criticism than strictly required.
Kerr’s introduction, after less than an hour, was greeted as if it were the decisive act. Kerr’s arrival could, these days, be felt before it was seen: There was a roar as he came out to warm up, another when he returned to the substitutes’ bench, and a third as he prepared himself to entering the field. He was no more than 30 seconds when he created an opportunity for Hayley Raso; this, the stadium decided, is when it all comes together.
Maybe that’s too simple. France not only held, but seized control. An Australian own goal was ruled out for a push by Wendie Renard before Australia’s Steph Catley had to clear an effort from close to, if not on, her own goal line. When the penalties came, the crowd greeted Mackenzie Arnold’s simple saves with the enthusiasm normally reserved for goals. At the other end, the Australian corners inspired a noise that seemed to shake the foundations of the stadium.
Even by those standards, however, the penalty shootout was completely different. Arnold called it a “roller coaster.” Vine joined the “whirlwind.”
Certainly, it ticks almost every box: a goalkeeper introduced specifically for the shootout, to no small effect; a substitute brought on for the same purpose who missed, as substitutes brought on only to take penalties seem to have an alarming frequency; a goalkeeper who took what could have been the winning penalty, but missed; a player who takes his attempt twice, and fails to score both times.
Australia had two chances to win it, and lost both, before Vine stepped up and finally sent the stadium – and the country – into raptures. As he walked to the penalty spot, he said, he didn’t hear any noise from the crowd. When he scored, it all came rushing out, a thunderous tinge of desperation, the energy a little frantic.
For the players, the scale of their achievement felt somehow vague, impossible, as if they couldn’t quite see how far they had climbed. Their focus, instead, is on what lies ahead. “The vision is always to go all the way,” said Caitlin Foord. “I still believe we’re just getting started.”
Quite whether the country has the emotional energy for that remains to be seen. Three hours after this game started, nearly 50,000 people streamed out of Brisbane Stadium, happy and proud, of course, but sick and thirsty. Making the semifinals of a World Cup is a test of courage, as much as anything else, for the players and for the fans. It is a special kind of suffering. Australia will be looking forward to more of this in four days, and it can’t wait.
