Oh, Marissa. How could you? Technical gaps are hard to bridge at a World Cup but not impossible. Teams have months of planning, everyone is together and motivated for the biggest event of their lives, there’s that indefinable secret sauce of maybe. The other crowd are better ballers? Okay. They still have to break us down.
Stupid has no comeback though. Stupid kills you every time. Marissa Sheva wasn’t having a great night against Australia – her passes were out of sync, her support running for Kyra Carusa seemed to constantly take the wrong exit at the Red Cow roundabout. But as long as she didn’t do anything silly in defence, it was fine.
That was because all Ireland wanted from the first hour of the game was to stay in it. They went through the first half like Geoffrey Boycott trying to build an innings. They were careful, methodical, unshowy. They tried to bore the record crowd to tears. It was a display of magnificent drudgery and they deserved all the credit in the world for it.
Because what else could they have done? Better teams than Vera Pauw’s will come up against Australia in this World Cup and make the mistake of adding to the spectacle. The Matildas are at home, they have a nation that’s been straining at the bit to get behind them, they have some of the best players in the world in their squad. The only sensible thing to do is turn the dial down against them rather than up.
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Which Ireland did. To the letter. Denise O’Sullivan got on the ball and danced her phonebox pirouettes and kept the play moving. Ruesha Littlejohn timed her tackles juuuust that little bit off, enough to get the ball, enough to make a plausible innocent face, enough to stay on the right side of the referee. The back three of Niamh Fahey, Louise Quinn and Megan Connolly moved in unison, like a table football defence.
And so they saw off the opening bowling. Australia didn’t force a chance worthy of the name in the first half. Their only true shot was from 35 yards, leaving Courtney Brosnan time to write a college thesis before it reached her. They had a couple of crosses but nothing alarming. Ireland’s seriousness of purpose was keeping them at bay as much as anything else.
Heather Payne was the prime example. The Matildas had clearly devoured the video of her display against France a fortnight ago and fitted her for a body bag after it. They couldn’t have been more brazen in targeting her side of the pitch had they all worn T-shirts saying: ‘We’re Coming For You, Heather.’
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But the Roscommon girl weathered every bit of it. She doesn’t have the most gifted feet in the squad but she stuck to her task and never stopped concentrating. A toe in here, a cannily-shadowed run there – all of it screamed of a player who had prepared her task to the last dotted i. That’s what Ireland needed, all across the pitch. It’s why they went in at the break on level terms.
Even in those early exchanges of the second half, you could see Ireland players treating their situation with such delicate care. Niamh Fahey got caught the wrong side on the edge of her box a couple of minutes into the second half but she picked her steps with such extreme care as she chased back that she was almost showboating in not giving away a penalty. This was the persona Ireland had adopted. It needed everyone to make it work.
The weakest link breaks the chain. The kindest thing you could say about Sheva is that she was maybe a bit unlucky to give away the penalty. There was no badness in her challenge on Hayley Raso. She wasn’t being cynical or underhand. Her eyes were on the ball, her legs got tangled and it looked more clumsy than malign.
But none of that matters. It was a stonewall penalty. Her crime wasn’t the foul, it was the killer lapse in concentration. When Kyra Cooney-Cross received the ball in space, Sheva had a decent position – she was inside Raso and she could see the crossing lane. But in that crucial half-second as Cooney-Cross went to play the ball, her weight was on her heels. Raso got in front of her and Sheva panicked and ended up clambering into the back of the Aussie striker.
Just like that, the game changed. What had been a delicious grind, a perfectly beautiful stinker, suddenly had no choice but to turn into a rollicking good game. Ireland had to change it up. Sheva was replaced by Abbie Larkin, Pauw went 4-4-2 and from there until the final whistle, they forced corners and made chances. The best of them came in injury-time, Louise Quinn just not getting enough purchase on her header.
It’s hard to say that Ireland deserved a draw because clearly the goal gave Australia the permission to sit back and invite them on. But what we can say is that they had done everything they needed to and all they had set out to do.
Sheva’s penalty concession was such a needless way to mess up all that good work.
