Matildas

Earlier this year I chatted to Cheryl Salisbury for The Women’s Game before the Matildas’ kicked off their 2011 World Cup campaign. Sadly, The Women’s Game website was hacked and the story was lost so I thought I’d post the full transcript of the interview. 

I was so stoked to get to speak with Cheryl, she’s an absolute legend of the game, in my opinion, Australia’s greatest ever footballer.

You’ve played in 4 World Cups. How does it feel to be watching this one from home?

I’m ok with it. I know there are a few of the girls that have been through my era, around about the same era that still struggle with watching it from the sidelines and missing out on World Cups and going away and things.

When I retired I had a little baby boy so like took a real different direction for me. So for me to sit back and watch, I’m happy.

There’s times when I still get a buzz from watching the girls play and miss that feeling of teamwork on the field and the buzz to play but I look around at my little boy and I’m happy to be where I am right now.

Australia is sending a very young team away to this World Cup, what are your thoughts?

In women’s football things tend to have a 4 year cycle. A lot of that’s to do with, well, sometimes it’s not a long career for women. It’s not well paid it’s not an actual money earning career path so a lot of the girls have careers outside of football or are at school or uni and things like that. There’s only so much you can do before you really need to start earning a living and looking after yourself financially for the future.

There’s been a lot of players that have come and gone from the game and left soon because they’re lawyers or accountants or physios or they’ve got careers of their own long term.

For these young girls to come in it’s not anything highly unusual.

There’s been times in the past after an Olympics or a World Cup where players have left the game or a new breed has come through. It seems to be happening more and more now that the youngsters of today’s generation, the seven players that are under the age of 18 that are in today’s squad, 4 years ago they were watching the World Cup as little kids, as young teenagers, that’s where their aspirations have started, or even earlier.

This younger generation has really come through at a fantastic time and just because they’re young… they’ve probably had just as much experience with the intensive training programs whether it be the QIS or NSWIS so in reality they’ve had a lot of experience with training to start with, plus with Youth World Cups and qualifiers and things like that, they’re not as inexperienced as you may think.

It’s certainly a different stage when you step up to a senior World Cup though, I think a few of them might get wobbles in the legs as they’re walking out with nerves.

Germany is a big football nation. How do you think the players will handle the huge crowds.

The kids of today they take a lot of all that in their stride.

Things are different from my early World Cup days, my first and second World Cup… where my fist World Cup in Sweden and there was a couple of thousand people at the game. Went to the second World Cup in 99 in the USA, we weren’t even playing the USA and we turned out to our first game against Ghana and there were 20,000 people already in the stands.

That was unseen in the day when I first started but these girls, they’re used to having big crowds and big stadiums even at Youth World Cups and Qualifiers through Asia you get good crowds so a little bit of that, they’re already used to.

Who are the players to watch out for in the Matildas? 

I think you’re always going to have your big name players, your Colette McCallums, your Lisa De Vannas.

I think that someone who could make an impact is Caitlin Foord from what I’ve seen recently she’s come a long way in the last year or two … where she’s filling in at national league playing every game or so to being a player who can really do something.

Sam Kerr is another one. She’s a young player just gets out and plays football for the love of it I don’t think she’d care of she was on a paddock out in the middle of nowhere or at the final in Germany. She just relishes the chance to get the ball at her feet and run with it and I think that’s something that women’s football in Australia hasn’t seen for a long time, someone who loves to run with the ball at their feet and Sammie and Caitlin Foord are the players that can really do that so I think they’re probably the two youngsters that I’m really keen to see how they go if they’re picked in the squad against Brazil in that first game.

Tell me a little bit about your first World Cup 

Things were a lot different when I first started playing. We really had no clue as to what other countries were really like. You got a few videos back then of a few different countries playing but it was really going in to the unknown. This was obviously way before the internet, no mobiles phones, no internet, those things didn’t exist. The information was a lot more limited in terms of what you could get hold of and what you could do in preparation for those games.

A lot of those games you just went in blind and had to rely on your own skills and just play. And also the amount of girls that played football back then, it was limited.

I played in a men’s team. In some ways it was a step black to play a women’s team, I was used to playing 25 year old men.

What’s your fondest memory from your World Cup appearances?

It’s gotta be scoring the goal that got us through to the quarter finals against Canada.

And that’s not just purely scoring the goal, it’s all the games before.  We were always the team that was Canada, we always got scored against right at the end. We could never just get that goal that would get us though or to win the game. It was always us that just never made it at that time and so for me, it was a lot more than just scoring the goal and going through, it was all those 3 World Cups and olympics that we never quite made… we never got there and finally we did. There was a lot more meaning than what was on the surface of that goal.

It was a fairy tale in some ways but probably 5 minutes or so before I scored that goal I knew I’d slightly torn a muscle in my leg so I knew that playing against Brazil was going to be highly unlikely and as it was I ended up with a different injury.

I don’t think I can have getting through to a quarter final and being physically fit to play it, it was a high and it was a low because I knew I was going to be struggling to play that next game.

Who’s going to win the 2011 World Cup? 

I think 3 countries have got just a good a shot as each other. You’ve got the Germans, USA and Brazil.

Brazil They’ve been so close for so many years and World Cups and Olympics they’ve always finished second.

The Germans, they’re on a roll, they won the last World Cup, they’re a strong team then you’ve got the USA. The history of the game is about the USA being in there for the gold, silver or bronze. I think that’s the only place they ever finish.

With those three, it comes down to who’s fit to play on the day when it comes to that final or that semi final to get through to the final. If their big guns are fit and able, that’s probably going to be a good sign. If everyone’s fit an able, anything can happen for those three. One of those three will win.

Want more? Read: Cheryl Salisbury is one of the most successful Australian football players. Pity she’s a woman, writes Erin O’Dwyer.