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Posted: 2023-07-21 23:28:09

What if? What if? What if?

The words of Matildas head coach Tony Gustavsson echoed around the silent conference room at Stadium Australia following Australia's tense 1-0 win over the Republic of Ireland on Thursday night.

Like the ticking of the tell-tale heart beneath the proverbial floorboards, the repetition paralleled the throbbing anxiety that swept around the stadium when, just an hour before kick-off, it was revealed that captain Sam Kerr had withdrawn late due to an injury she'd sustained two days earlier.

Suddenly, the media conference that she and Gustavsson had given the day before the match had a bizarre feeling of unreality to it.

A woman athlete wearing blue laughs into a microphone while a man wearing a black hat sits in the foreground

Kerr and Gustavsson gave nothing away at the media conference the day before the opening game. (Getty Images: Maddie Meyer/FIFA)

Sitting there on the Wednesday night, both of them knew exactly what had happened: They were there in Brisbane when, during a gentle warm-up before their final training session, Kerr peeled off from the main group after feeling a pull in her calf.

Yet when previewing the match to a packed media room, they pretended otherwise. They joked and jibed with each other, speaking in the present and future tense about what they were expecting, rolling out the carpet of a future that they knew they would not walk down.

It was, in hindsight, a surreal moment. Kerr occupied this strange in-between space on that stage, both there and not there at the same time. This was the same space she occupied for the entire next day, in the headlines and the newsreels and the conversations of thousands of fans making the pilgrimage to Olympic Park to see her.

She was still present in all of our realities — still very real in all of our minds — until she wasn't.

After the match, in which Australia clearly struggled without her, Gustavsson was asked whether he had planned for "the worst-case scenario".

"You always want to be on track and focus on the positives but, as a coach, your job is also to look at different scenarios," he said.

"What if a centre back goes down? Or what if an outside back goes down? Or what if we play without Sam [Kerr]?

"We've had a couple of opportunities to play without her in this two-year preparation. I think it was important for the team to feel those 30 minutes against France in the send-off game, when it was 0-0 and both Sam and Caitlin [Foord] stepped off. We managed to win 1-0.

"But you don't go there too often with those thoughts as a coach because you just get nervous if you do that."

Nobody ever expects the worst-case scenario to happen, of course. All those rehearsals — against France, say, or last year's disastrous window against Spain and Portugal, where Kerr was one of several senior players deliberately rested — are always based on hypotheticals. On the imaginary what-ifs.

Sam Kerr celebrates a goal for the Matildas against Spain.

Sam Kerr has become so crucial to the Matildas that it's hard to imagine them without her. (Getty Images: Matt King)

There is a kind of comfort created in these imaginary friendly spaces. As a coach, you can play around with tactics and formations, try out different characters in different roles, and act out different scenes, like a child digging through a dress-up box.

Yet those games are always played safe in the knowledge that the sword and cape will eventually be returned. That this was all just pretend. That you won't actually have to live out your worst-case scenario.

But on Thursday night, that is exactly what happened. The imaginary became real: Sam Kerr, the Matildas' star player and face of her home World Cup, was injured.

She'd be out not just for this record-breaking opener against Ireland, but also potentially for the next game against Nigeria as well. Two games in which Australia had to secure results before the final group-defining game against Canada.

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