The Matildas: You have to love these brave, tenacious goal-orientated women. Their outfits, not so much. Photo: File.
You have to feel for those Matildas. In the scheme of things, losing the semis play-off, in front of rather a lot of people, is probably the least of their worries.
First, the name. Would they have lost had they been called, I don’t know, maybe after a queen of the jungle rather than a swag carried by an itinerant yob through the middle of the Australian bush?
Well, at least that’s what Banjo Paterson reckoned back in the 1890s when he wrote that catchy little number. Waltzing about somewhere in the middle of nowhere, preparing to confront, no less, a jumbuck in his tuckerbag. Sounds painful.
It was hard enough for those fabulous, tough, determined women to carry the nation’s hopes on what you would have to describe as some pretty impressive sets of shoulders. Wearing those vomit-yellow shiny shirts can’t have made it easy. Yep, green and yellow/gold are the colours but why not, for special occasions – like when more than 11 million people are watching you – opt for pink. Look what it did for Barbie.
But the colour just adds to their box of woes. Yes, they may be just material woes, literally because most of their issues hem from the cloth, but they’re important.
OK, let’s start from the bottom. Those socks. They could only have looked worse had the girls opted to wear them with sandals rather than those sparkly shoes. Then the shorts. My dear, what sort of confused items of trouserware were they? Too short for some, too long for others – they should have just legged it. A nice twirly frock, even a yellow one, would have been preferable. (Waltzing Matildas … get it?)
But what you had to feel the most sorry-ness for was Sam Kerr’s calf. There was so much bull surrounding it. Would it make it to the semis? Would it like a drink of milk? What could be the udder reason it refused to behave? These questions and so many more will be answered in the next instalment of … What A Load of Cow Manure.
I can’t understand why The Calf didn’t have its own Instagram page/barn. It could not have been more scrutinised had it been before the chief cattle judge at the Sydney Royal, for, duh, Best In Show.
I almost get The Hair. Why they all scraped it back so far off their noggins that it looked like it was going to escape altogether.
What I didn’t get was why camerapeople were allowed to get so close to the girls, usually at the most inopportune moments when they had forgetten the words to the national anthem. Did you see how close some of those cameras came in? I thought they were going to start squishing pimples. Really pore form.
Despite dealing with all this – and the slight issue of missing out on a rather large fancy Cup – these women, were, simply The Best – sorry, was that a code violation?
People who had never seen women’s football before are now fans. A nation united. Merch ruled – and when Sam Kerr took off her jersey to give it to that little girl, didn’t you just want to adopt her? (Sam not the kid.)
When the announcer bellowed that Sam had given away her jersey, I feared for a moment it might have been her calf, but, thankfully no.
Now that’s the sort of thing that wins you Best in Show.
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