As the saying goes, it’s easier to sack one person than to sack 18. Especially when it’s 18 slaaay kween! DEI poster girls.
The Matildas’ Olympic dream is over.
Let’s face it: it was dead on arrival.
Scrutiny will focus on all facets of the preparation for the tournament, a wide-ranging review is expected into the management of the team and there has been discontent in the Matildas camp about coach Tony Gustavsson.
The Olympics is almost certainly his last campaign given his contract is about to expire.
Yep, easier to sack one person…
They came to these Olympics publicly declaring their intent to finally secure a medal, and now they have crashed out from the Games.
They are the nation’s darlings but now face serious questions around a disastrous Olympics campaign.
The ‘nation’s’ darlings? Or just the darlings of the chattering classes?
For most of us, the hype around the Matildas has always seemed ridiculously overblown. When former Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk blithered about a bronze statue of the team after last year’s World Cup, plenty of Australians were given to wonder what, exactly, finishing in fourth place merited a statue.
“A Gold/First Place is a statue and over the top celebration worthy achievement, anything below is good, have a celebration or two, then move on,” wrote basketballer Andrew Bogut. Many others saw it as a ridiculous excrescence of the Everyone Gets A Prize mentality.
Then again, female AFL player Tayla Harris got a statue for nothing more than flashing her growler during a high kick, and then having a good cry when people tittered on social media.
Oddly, women who actually won things, such as Cathy Freeman, Lauren Jackson, Ellyse Perry, or Sally Pearson, have yet to be honoured with statues. As for a statue of Australia’s undoubted greatest-ever sportswoman, Margaret Court, the chatterers would be tearing it down before you could say, “Reeeeee!”
As for the Matildas, perhaps if they spent less time preening on social media and making fatuous TikTok videos, they might win something, one day.
Perhaps Gustavsson should have taken a leaf out of his players’ books and publicly ‘come out’, like England’s Gareth Southgate.
Southgate managed to coast along as a chattering class darling despite the team under his tutelage never actually winning anything, only finally admitting defeat and stepping down after England’s hilarious Euro 2024 loss to Spain last month. Turns out, it wasn’t going to come home, no matter how desperately the coach came out.
But at least Southgate forged a team who could take a knee for every fashionable DEI nostrum, before you could say “Saint George” (Floyd, of course). But all the Rainbow Laces and teary girly-diaries aren’t going to count for jack if your team is just shit.
Which brings us back to the Matildas.
France has been nothing but a messy, bumpy ride for the Matildas.
In reality, the Matildas were built to peak for the 2023 Women’s World Cup on home soil.
So, fourth was their peak?
Yeah, hold off on the statue.
