By the point Alanna Kennedy will get to the tip of her sentence, itemizing all of the issues the Matildas did effectively of their 3-2 loss to Nigeria on Thursday night time, she is out of breath, glassy-eyed and desires to be wherever else however right here.
The central defender is the primary to move by the blended zone beneath the eerily quiet Brisbane Stadium; the primary sacrificial lamb thrown to a ravenous media pack that asks her to dissect and analyse and justify the sport when all she desires to do is cry.
“I simply suppose it was moments,” she says professionally, wanting previous dozens of pairs of pecking eyes on the chilly gray wall behind us.
“There was [a] massive second proper earlier than half-time the place we gave up a aim. Clearly the third aim was a second.
“However for majority of the sport, we performed effectively. We possessed the ball effectively, we moved them round so much, we created probabilities and put them underneath lots of stress of their again third.”
That is the place she takes the quivering half-breath, her voice starting to catch in her throat.
The recent tears that spilled down her cheeks moments earlier within the dressing-room are threatening to flood again and she or he must default to the script they’ve all memorised for moments like this.
“It is clearly a irritating end result, however there’s lots of positives to take out of the sport,” she says.
And she or he’s proper, there have been lots of positives.
Australia dominated Nigeria on paper: they’d 28 photographs to 11, 15 corners to 2, 467 passes to 270, 27 final-third entries to six, and 43 touches within the opposition field to fifteen.
They scored the opening aim on the finish of a blossoming first half, with Emily Van Egmond — who’d are available in to exchange the concussed Mary Fowler — nonchalantly guiding the ball into the online following a surgical Caitlin Foord move.
Australia held onto the ball effectively and recycled it patiently, pulling Nigeria backwards and forwards throughout the sector, attempting to tempt them out of their construction.
Hayley Raso and Cortnee Vine discovered areas to dart into, profitable nook after nook after nook, whereas Foord regarded sharp on the flip with the ball at her ft.
Tony Gustavsson highlighted as a lot afterwards, armed along with his conventional piece of paper scribbled with fast statistics spat out from his analyst’s laptop.
“In case you have a look at our attacking recreation … we created sufficient probabilities to attain much more targets,” he mentioned matter-of-factly.
“In case you have a look at among the stats, we had double the quantity of final-third entries than our common. We had double the quantity of field entries than on common. We had 28 photographs, we scored two targets.
“So our attacking recreation was a lot, a lot improved in comparison with the Eire recreation, which I am glad about.”
He is proper. Kennedy is true. They’re all proper. However what does any of that matter if you misplaced the one quantity that counts?
What knowledge is obtainable to seize the devastation of that, and the worry of what may occur subsequent? What do you do when the controllables turn into uncontrollable?
Match soccer is sort of a fun-house mirror — it warps and magnifies and refracts, typically bending whole video games out of practice.
What regarded like a dominant efficiency from Australia now seems like considered one of their most uneasy in latest months.
Triangulated by the prism of the ultimate rating, the match took on new awkward angles and uncomfortable questions: how a lot has Australia inflated its expectations of this staff? How assured are we actually that they’ll handle their means by this momentary damage disaster? How ought to we reply to the sudden reminder that this staff’s event hopes can nonetheless fall sufferer to fumbling human error or sheer, dumb luck?
If Ellie Carpenter had positioned her leg barely in another way, would the cross from Rasheedat Ajibade have spun off her in the way in which that it did to arc completely onto the foot of Uchenna Kanu on the again put up?
If Emily van Egmond had climbed just a bit increased within the air to move a Nigerian nook additional up the sector, wouldn’t it have fallen to Ajibade, whose personal head speared it in direction of the again put up for Osinachi Ohale to bundle into the online?
If Mackenzie Arnold had known as somewhat extra loudly, would Kennedy have headed the ball past them each, inviting Asisat Oshoala to nip in between and neatly rating Nigeria’s third?
Or had been the moments that misplaced Australia this recreation really discovered elsewhere — within the locations our funhouse-mirror eyes can not see?
Have been they within the second balls that Kyra Cooney-Cross and Katrina Gorry stored lacking by midfield, falling as a substitute to Nigerian ft to shortly launch ahead in transition?
Have been they within the inches of air that carried the handfuls of photographs from Foord and Vine and Raso and Gorry over the crossbar as a substitute of underneath it?
Have been they within the selections Gustavsson made to convey on a defender instead of an attacker, solely to show a defender into an attacker, after which to convey on an precise attacker when it was all however too late?
Is there any level in asking these questions when the ultimate group recreation is three days away and it is immediately modified from a formality to a must-win and what appeared like a bunch the Matildas may ease by is now one they might barely make it out of?
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Kennedy is standing right here holding again tears and attempting not to consider all of that.
“I believe, for us, we’ll have a look at [tonight] as a optimistic; we’ll use that mentality,” she says, as you do in these moments when the choice is simply too grim to think about.
“Clearly the sport strikes shortly, so it’s a must to transfer on from these moments. To look again on, it is disappointing, however in the end the stress we put them underneath and the mentality we had in direction of the tip of the sport was unreal from the ladies.
“We’re seeking to preserve that very same optimistic mentality shifting to the Canada recreation.”
You sense she is saying these items to persuade herself as a lot as to persuade the remainder of us.
After coming into this event using a wave of positivity — particularly in comparison with the opposite groups of their group — the Matildas are teetering on the sting of one thing deep and darkish and vastly chilly.
They would possibly recycle their traces about specializing in the soccer, blocking out the noise, not letting themselves be overwhelmed by the stress of all this.
However Thursday’s loss towards Nigeria instructed a really totally different story, simply as Kennedy’s face did.
