Australia’s Matildas football team ready to live up to Taylor Swift-like hype in Paris
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Australian team fans celebrate victory at the end of a friendly women's football match between the Matildas and China at Accor Stadium in Sydney on June 3.
PHOTO: AFP
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MELBOURNE – Having enjoyed a fan frenzy to rival a Taylor Swift tour, the Australian women’s team are ready to live up to the hype and grab a first Olympic football medal for the nation at Paris, according to forward Michelle Heyman.
The 35-year-old will be suiting up for her second Olympics and times have changed since she enjoyed a run to the quarter-finals at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.
Eight years ago, the Matildas toiled in obscurity between major tournaments, battling for sponsors and media coverage, with fans struggling to name any player apart from captain Sam Kerr.
But after hosting the 2023 Women’s World Cup and going all the way to the semi-finals, they head to Paris after a run of 14 sold-out matches in the hulking stadiums of their home nation.
Heyman missed the World Cup after spending years in the international wilderness, but plunged into Matildas-mania with her recall to the squad in February.
“It’s wild. Off the field, it’s just completely chaos, like it is wild to know how big the Matildas name is,” she told Reuters.
“It’s like being Taylor bloody Swift to know that you can’t walk down the streets now that everyone knows who the Matildas are in Australia.”
In June, a crowd of 76,798 watched them beat China 2-0 in a friendly at Sydney’s Stadium Australia, a record attendance for a women’s football match in the country.
Their first Olympic group match against Germany is at the 67,000-seater Stade Velodrome in Marseille.
Expectations are high, but the Matildas, ranked No. 12 in the world, have been drawn in one of the tougher groups.
Apart from Rio gold medallists Germany, Australia face four-time Olympic champions the United States, and Zambia in Group B.
Australia made their maiden Olympic semi-finals in Tokyo in 2021, but lost to Sweden and were beaten for the bronze by the US.
The Australian men’s team failed to qualify for Paris, so the Tony Gustavsson-coached Matildas will carry the country’s hopes of a first football medal alone.
The players are embracing that burden, said Heyman.
“Every team qualified for the Olympics is a top contender, so that includes ourselves,” she said.
They will have to do it without their talisman Kerr, who suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury at club side Chelsea.
Arsenal defender Steph Catley will lead the squad and Heyman will hope to be the focal point of the attack.
Heyman retired from international football in 2019 after missing the World Cup squad that year, but Kerr’s injury opened the door for her “second life” as a Matilda.
She scored five goals in two Olympic qualifiers against Uzbekistan in February and found the net again recently facing China.
Heyman feels she is a wiser, more rounded player than the one who struggled with niggling injuries and quit in frustration five years ago.
As more of an “old-school No. 9”, she offers a different threat than Kerr and is a familiar face in a squad boasting plenty of Olympians.
Kyra Cooney-Cross, Mary Fowler, Katrina Gorry, Teagan Micah and Hayley Raso will also be competing at their second Games.
Catley, vice-captains Emily van Egmond and Ellie Carpenter, Mackenzie Arnold, Caitlin Foord, Alanna Kennedy, Clare Polkinghorne and Tameka Yallop will become three-time Olympians in Paris.
“The lucky thing with myself is that I’ve played with them for a numerous amount of years, so they kind of remember how I used to play,” said Heyman.
“So it’s easy for me to just slip back in.” REUTERS
