Matildas World Cup Campaign

[Gointocarlton]

England looked a class above.  The girls played with the grit that sees Australian athletes be competitive but there is no harm being beaten by a better side.

Carpenter would like to have had that second goal again.  Tried to feck around with it rather than just knocking it out.

Thats football.

They aren't European Champions for nothing, too classy across the field. Felt for Carpenter, she lost her way for a few crucial seconds. The 3rd goal was weak as piss by the Aussies, the English girl virtually walked it in unchallenged from the centre to almost the box and laid it off to Russo who knocked it in. The Maltidas will learn a lot from that loss, I think England go on and win it.

[kruddler]

Never looked like we'd win it.
Brilliant effort from Kerr to do her best, but not even she can outclass a team that good.

I reckon we'd take that if offered at the start of the tournament though.

[Thryleon]

They aren't European Champions for nothing, too classy across the field. Felt for Carpenter, she lost her way for a few crucial seconds. The 3rd goal was weak as piss by the Aussies, the English girl virtually walked it in unchallenged from the centre to almost the box and laid it off to Russo who knocked it in. The Maltidas will learn a lot from that loss, I think England go on and win it.

Hemp was a lot better in that moment than you give her credit for.  She drew in an opponent and threaded a perfectly weighted ball.  The finish sublime.  With Australia pushing for an equaliser they committed numbers forward and left the defense unprotected and you saw the English defenders do similar for Kerr's forward run. 

The reality is it's the hardest thing to get right, stay or go.  That through ball needs to be perfectly weighted and the run from the attacker perfectly timed or the ball goes to the keeper and attacker offside.

Kerr is a gun but she ultimately cost the game snatching at a shot that she would put away 95% of the time and should have made it 2-2 a minute earlier.  That's football.

[madbluboy]

Referee was terrible, set the tone early allowing blatant fouls, do they only get the cards out if you stomp on someone in the women's comp?

[PaulP]

Referee was terrible, set the tone early allowing blatant fouls, do they only get the cards out if you stomp on someone in the women's comp?

I tend to agree.

[LP]

Referee was terrible, set the tone early allowing blatant fouls, do they only get the cards out if you stomp on someone in the women's comp?

I was actually expecting us to be the more physical team, but it looked like we were worried about fouling, probably a function of the other night when the French opposition spent every other second flopping.

It seems to be an ongoing balance soccer fails to get correct, one game is overloaded with flops the next opponents leave the field battered and bruised without a foul. Perhaps we missed a trick with the US Referee versus a European or Sth American Referee.

Even so the Pommies were too good, too strong across the board they had no weak spots. Our coach sort of predicted this result, based on the amount of work we had to do to get there, it seems in this tournament doing the work early brings a real benefit!

Kerr truly looks a class above, I don't get why some people think she is not the best in the game, and how it can be that she is not the highest paid. She made the best defence in the world game look ordinary and could easily have ended up with a brace in a World Cup game!