Football Ferns vs the ‘Tildas: Game One, Shell-Shocked
To be fair, there was no way that the Football Ferns should have even been close in that game judging by the run of play, let alone still leading heading into stoppage time. It had been an Australian barrage for the majority of the match and some excellent Ferns defending and some of the best out-of-possession structure we’ve seen from this team probably since at least the 2019 World Cup doesn’t take away from the fact that they rode their luck in getting to where they nearly got to.
It almost felt like destiny. The Ferns have not beaten the Matildas since 1994 but they were minutes away from doing so here in a truly hilarious game of football where Australia might as well have been hexed to still be goalless as the stoppage time board went up. There were golden chances spurned, there were brilliant saves from Vic Esson. Meikayla Moore and Claudia Bunge were immense in throwing their bodies between ball and goal at any opportunity. Posts were rattled. Offsides were called. You’ve never seen a game quite like it. The xG disparity was off the charts. It truly felt like the only logical answer as to how the Fernies were in a position to win that game was that they’d been blessed by some cosmic force.
Then they conceded in the 94th and 96th minutes to lose the match 2-1 and it turns out their luck had just been unevenly distributed. All the nasty dregs were awaiting at the bottom of the smoothie. The line between being blessed and cursed is really that thin sometimes.
Obviously this sucked. It was a brutal way to lose a game made worse by the feeling of inevitability as Australia won that final corner kick immediately after equalising. Somehow you just knew they were gonna score and then sure enough there was Sam Kerr (bravely) getting her head to a loose ball for the winner. The Ferns caught a wee bit too deep, a wee bit too fatigued, a wee bit too shell-shocked. So it goes.
But it’s a loss with several mitigating circumstances. Let’s keep it real and say that this was not a game that anyone should have had any realistic expectations of the Ferns winning. Against Aussie in Townsville with a huge crowd in attendance as the Ferns are still evolving into new coach Jitka Klimková’s coaching reign. These games are freebies where the development of the team’s style is more important than the results and we definitely saw plenty of development here. A steely backbone that wasn’t there the last time they played a notably better team (losing 5-0 to USA). Excellent defensive structure within their 4-3-3. All that committed defence.
Gotta slap an asterisk on the defensive showing overall given how excessive Aussie’s shooting stats were. A lot of those shots weren’t that threatening but there were still more than enough left over for the ‘Tildas to have been out of sight by half-time. They weren’t and that’s football for ya (as were the two late goals – football giveth and taketh and not always in equal measure). Ideally you’re not allowing that many chances though.
However this kind of battling effort in a game in which they were clearly outclassed was pretty positive. Especially given that they were without the services of Abby Erceg, Anna Leat, CJ Bott, and after the first twenty minutes Ria Percival too. The nature of the defeat was bad but the injury to Ria Percival lingers worse. Possibly the most important player in the team over the last couple years, Percival made it 29 consecutive starts for the Ferns with this match but a non-contact knee injury ended her night early and it’s a scary prospect but it could rule her out of football entirely for quite some time if it turns out to be as bad as it looked. The World Cup isn’t until July 2023 so 15 months is plenty of time to recover if we’re talking an ACL injury... but that’s a lot of footy she’ll miss in the meantime. Really worrying situation.
But we’ll let the medical processes unfold in their own time and leave that for now. The Ferns front three and midfield were as expected. Chance, Wilkinson, Satchell. Percival, Hassett, Cleverley. Katie Bowen would have been in the middle had she not been required in defence instead, starting not at RB as anticipated but as CB with Ali Riley switching to the right and Anna Green on the left. Greenie getting her first cap since New Zealand met Australia at the Olympics ten matches ago. Claudia Bunge the other CB. Victoria Esson earning her first ever consecutive start in goal in her fifth cap.
After Percival went off, Meikayla Moore came on with Katie Bowen moving into the midfield which gave things a slightly more natural feel. You might’ve thought someone like Rebekah Stott or Malia Steinmetz might be introduced without the need to shuffle the backline but Moore’s addition was actually quite important in getting past the early Aussie dominance and it was her switch of play that picked out Anna Green for one of the best goals you’ll ever see in your life...
Two side notes. First, was it a shot or was it a cross? Who cares. It went in. But for what it’s worth it looked to me like she intended to cross as the ball sat up for her but saw Wilkinson was tightly marked so just sorta smashed it instead. If you’ve seen Green’s delivery from those wide left areas for Capital Football these last couple National League seasons then you know a goal like that is not out of the realms of intent. Other side note... for sure she was offside. Would have been a moral tragedy if a marginal offside had ruled out a goal of such spectacular quality so ‘twas lucky that they didn’t bother with VAR this friendly international. One more reason why this game felt blessed in the Ferns favour (until it wasn’t).
Klimková nailed it with the Moore substitution. The rest of her subs were a bit more in the It’s Only A Friendly category rather than the Win At All Costs category and that’s another factor to keep in mind when thinking on how the Ferns let it slip right at the end. Liz Anton and Gabi Rennie came on at half-time. Malia Steinmetz, Ava Collins, and Grace Jale were scattered in throughout the second half. Katie Bowen slid into a back three by the end which made sense given the room that Aussie were able to create with underlaps inside the fullbacks... though two CMs may also have contributed to how open Emily van Egmond was for the cutback equaliser.
Let’s think on those second half subs some more. Anton is 23 with 8 caps. Steinmetz is 23 with 6 caps. Grace Jale is 22 with 5 caps. Gabi Rennie is 20 with 11 caps. Ava Collins is 19 with 5 caps. Claudia Bunge is also 22 and was making her 8th appearance for the national team but a) she started the game and b) she’s won two A-League grand finals so has way more experience in massive pressure cooker games. The team that ended the game did still have centurions Ali Riley and Hannah Wilkinson out there but it was very young, very fresh, a lot of them never having been in a situation quite like that before. It’s a massive learning experience. That’s how we’ve gotta look at it.
Would they have held on with Ria Percival playing ninety? Maybe. Maybe not. Same deal with Erceg and Bott and Leat and whoever else. Should still mention that Steinmetz and Jale in particular had really nice impacts when they came on with their physical and disruptive midfield play. If this is what it takes for some of those players to learn how to hang on late in tough games then it’s not the worst time to be absorbing those lessons – the equaliser had been coming since the first seconds of the match, so it goes, the winner though... the Ferns really should have played that one smarter ensured they left Townsville with the point that their efforts (if not the overall flow of the match) deserved.
Great to see Klimková get the squad all together in a circle after the final whistle to ensure that heads didn’t drop too far. You want players to be disappointed with the way it ended because, well, it was disappointing. But you also want them to realise how well they did to get that close and have the clear heads necessary to acknowledge where it got away from them and how they can solve those dramas next time. To build upon this.
Coming into this match, Vic Esson had played in two of the last 19 Ferns games. The Ferns had also only kept two clean sheets across the last 19 fixtures. They were the same two games. Esson so nearly made it three outta three here and even without extending that stat she still comes away with her reputation enhanced by some supreme saves in a variety of situations. Even her distribution was pretty slick. One area of concern was in getting crowded out at set pieces, trying to come out and punch the ball but getting blocked off and leaving her goal exposed. The Sam Kerr goal was an example of that (as well as being an example of Kerr being single-minded in going for a loose ball against a slightly hesitating, and already stunned, defence).
Anna Leat is the best goalkeeper that Aotearoa has right now but she’s not on this tour and nor was she on the last one. In her absence, Vic Esson has done absolutely all she can to stake her claim and after three great performances in a row – the 2-0 win over Korea, the 0-0 vs Czechia, now this one – you’ve gotta think she may have nudged ahead of Erin Nayler in the pecking order. Granted Nayler’s likely to get her right of reply in game two.
Other than Esson, it was Meikayla Moore and Claudia Bunge who were best of park for the kiwis. Massive defensive showings from them with blocks and clearances all over the show. Also some nice composed midfield play from Katie Bowen in particular. Liv Chance had some useful moments too. More than anything it was the way they defended as a unit that stood out. There’s buy in with what JK is preaching, don’t worry about that.
However with the ball we didn’t see a lot to write home about. Other than the Green goal which came outta nothing, there was a Liv Chance strike off target early second half and not much else. A couple decent pressing opportunities in there yet we hardly had any possession in the Aussie half. Didn’t see as much progress in unlocking the potential of Wilkinson and Satchell up front as was hoped. And there’s still a huge difference between the Ferns and a team like the Matildas in terms of touch. Not quite clinical enough with passes. Panicked decisions. They’re getting better but it takes time. The Matildas have superior players after all, let’s be honest.
But those moments do let the team down. Even defensively, there were so many times when a Ferns player made a great read to get a foot into a challenge but didn’t fully win the ball. Then a ‘Tildas player could roll and recover and suddenly we’re a player short leaving space when we already don’t have much pace in the squad. That lack of pace is a sneakily crucial weakness, by the way. Contributes to a lot of their problems.
At any level, when you lose like that, it quickly becomes less about what happened and more about how you react and respond. Even more so at the top level. Pretty handy then that the Ferns have another game in a couple of days and that their best performance in all three JK tours so far has come in the last match. They almost did something entirely unexpected in game one and regardless of how it got away from them they still got themselves in that position, up 1-0 with only a couple more minutes of stoppage time to go. Forget what came next, that alone is encouraging. Now to build on that in game two...
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