By Emma Kemp
If you’re wondering why you haven’t seen a Sam Kerr backflip recently, the answer might be pretty simple. “I turned 30 a month ago,” Kerr said on Monday, a day after scoring a hat-trick sans her trademark celebration.
In truth it probably has more to do with her recovering calves – both of them – but the Matildas captain was still in fine enough fettle to contribute three of her side’s eight goals in Sunday’s Olympic qualifier against the Philippines, in one of Australia’s finest performances under Tony Gustavsson.
Has it set the benchmark less than a year out from Paris 2024?
“I’d love to score eight goals every day, but it doesn’t always work like that,” Kerr said. “But it was an amazing performance by the girls. But, honestly, we haven’t played in Perth in a while and the Philippines was the big game.”
Sam Kerr celebrates scoring one of her three goals against the Philippines at Optus Stadium on Sunday.Credit: Getty
Kerr, Charli Grant and Lydia Williams were on hand at the Perth Soccer Club on Monday to help announce a joint Football Australia and CommBank community football fund for girls and women.
The trio snuck up on a group of junior players, eliciting screams when they realised who had come to visit.
The Matildas enjoyed a recovery session on Monday in Kerr’s home town of Perth.
Gustavsson, who made 10 changes to his starting XI on Sunday, has hinted he could field a mix of the line-ups used against the Philippines and in the win over Iran. Australia have already secured passage to the third phase of qualifying but will still treat world No.38 Taiwan seriously on Tuesday night.
He was keen to both reward in-form players with a starting spot while also using the three-day turnaround to prepare his squad for the tight Olympic schedule – should they qualify.
“I think you’re going to expect a mixed line-up because I’m going to base that line-up off performance, which we will use to rotate and almost have like a 50-50 split,” Gustavsson said.
“The problem is that I have more than 10 starters now, because more than 10 players actually deserve to start.”
Sports news, results and expert commentary. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.Watch every match of the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League and UEFA Europa Conference League on Stan Sport. All the action streaming ad-free, live and on demand, with select matches in 4K UHD.
