Fresh from a clean sweep of friendlies against New Zealand, the Matildas are shacked up at the Gold Coast preparing for both the upcoming friendlies against the DPR Korea (ranked 5th in the world and 1st in Asia) and the Asian Cup.
To see the Matildas train on the Gold Coast...
The latter handily doubles as a 2011 Women's World Cup qualifier, for which the 14th-ranked Matildas have drawn what is effectively the group of death, cementing the Australian underdog tradition of travelling the trickiest path to World Cup qualification, .
But talk of a group of death seems a little out of place in the 30-plus-degree Gold Coast heat, particularly as the players were too busy ribbing each other when we arrived. Apparently they record such information as how many hours of sleep they get daily on a team sheet and someone — precisely who, they were trying to find out as we walked up — recorded theirs against someone else's name.
The Matildas' Gold Coast training pitch is right next to the water's edge. As in, so close that you expect there to be someone out in a dinghy paddling around collecting stray balls deflected over the not-really-tall-enough fence. When I asked him about it, national coach Tom Sermanni smiled and shook his head that except for perhaps a quick dip to retrieve them, there isn't really a punishment for sending balls into the drink. I suspect, though, that there'd be plenty of good-natured heckling to accompany it.
It's this easy camaraderie that freshly minted Matildas captain Melissa Barbieri notes is part of the focus of their training camp. That and working to develop cohesion as a team with quite a few new faces, with this emerging and youthful team a testament to the strength and showcasing of the W-League.
Barbieri pays particular credit to Aivi Luik, who's been playing in the US for years but who has settled straight in to the Matildas and to Servet Uzunlar, who's gone from being a midfielder to a defender with fantastic results. 'She was put there because they ran out of defenders for Sydney FC,' Barbieri says, 'but she's got something really good out of it. She's stepped up and it's a Matildas berth for her.'
Speaking of stepping up, Barbieri is incredibly humble about being awarded the captaincy. 'It's a huge honour,' she says. 'You get a little bit nervous when you think of the enormity of it all. But when you bring it back down to we're just a group of girls trying to achieve some goals together, it kind of falls back into place of grounding me a little bit.'
As goalkeeper, she's in a unique position to oversee and offer encouragement and strategic advice during the game. 'I can just see a lot of it and I've got time to help them off the ball,' she says. 'Having the view does really help. But also the loud voice gives a better element to it all as well,' she chuckles. Not that anyone's telling her to shut up any time soon. 'They're very open-minded about the yelling,' she says. 'It's not for me to hear my own voice or anything like that. It's for us to play better and more cohesively.'
And playing cohesively they are. They proved their mettle against New Zealand twice in vastly different conditions last week, which Barbieri admits is a huge confidence boost. 'We've got that good base now, but we're not kidding ourselves. New Zealand and North Korea are not even in the same planet when it comes to football, unfortunately for the New Zealand team. We have to be realistic about where we're going: into Asia.'
But they're not over-estimating their Asian Cup opponents either. 'We're not talking about the "group of death" or anything,' Barbieri says. 'There's a harder group and there's an easier group. The harder group isn't much harder than the easy group. So you just get one tougher team that you have to make sure you're on your game [for]. I think it's actually better, because you get two hard games instead of just the one. Or three hard games instead of just the two.'
And, she says, they have other things to work on before the Asian Cup. 'We've got to look at ourselves first and make sure that we're plugging up all the holes. We've got new players in new positions. You can't even think about other teams until we've looked at ourselves.' But, she says, they also have their eyes on the prize. 'We're not aiming for anything less than the Asian Cup. We want that trophy in our hands.'
The Matildas want the trophy, even if it means enduring a little pain to achieve it. Which means that ice baths are par for the course. 'Yeah they're torture,' Barbieri laughs. 'Really. Six minutes [of torture],' she says. 'They fill the bathtub up with ice. It's not too tempting when you sit there looking at the ice. But once you get in, after about two, three minutes, you're numb and your feet stop hurting and your toes stop hurting. 'Really, she says, trying to sell it to me, 'once you feel the benefits of it, the girls ask for it all the time. The benefits outweigh the six minutes of terror. Which is actually only two or three, because once you go numb that's it,' she laughs. Clearly I don't look convinced, because she follows it with: 'We have the benefit of not having to go full body, because the girls mostly use their legs.' Well, that's one way of looking at it.
Given how much they travel for work - New Zealand last week, the Gold Coast this week, Brisbane next, China for the Asian Cup, and then back into the weekly cross-country commute for the W-League come September - the Matildas must surely be pros at packing, yeah? No. 'I am a terrible packer,' Barbieri says. 'I have to have everything. I have to have just in case, or what if I need this, what if I need that. I need all my gadgets. I need all my technology — my laptop, my iPhone, my iPod. I've got to have speakers for the change rooms. We're all pretty good at packing. It's the keeping the weight down that's the problem,' she says.
Based on the strength of the training session I saw yesterday morning (where, for the record, no balls ended up in the water), here's hoping they have to worry about keeping their weight down packing for the 2011 Women's World Cup in Germany after qualifying via the Asian Cup. In the interim, we can catch them in action playing a friendly against the DPR Korea at Ballymore in Brisbane on March 6. Ticket holders for the Socceroos v Indonesia match on March 3 will get into the Matildas game for free.
To see the Matildas train on the Gold Coast...
