Superstar Sam Kerr‘s 100th game for the Matildas didn’t go to plan this morning, with the Australians going down 3-2 to the Republic of Ireland at Tallaght Stadium.
In what was the first meeting in history between both nations, the Irish were gifted the dream start.
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A Lucy Quinn free-kick hit the post before taking a deflection off Australian goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold for the opening goal in just the first three minutes of action.
It was ruled as an own-goal by the Australian goalkeeper.
The Matildas hit back through young star Mary Fowler, who knocked through a rocketing strike at the top of the box before Denise O’Sullivan reclaimed the lead for Ireland.
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In the shadows of half-time, 18-year-old Fowler notched her second goal for the Matildas, which came courtesy of a big deflection to beat the keeper.
Then less than five minutes into the second half, Quinn headed off a corner to give Ireland back the lead.
The win for the Irish ended a horror seven-game losing streak.
Meanwhile, the loss for the Matildas will be a hard one for the Australians to take in, considering they owned 71 per cent of possession and had four more shots on target.
“I do think we were off from the whistle,” said Matildas coach Tony Gustavsson. “I even said it a couple of minutes into the game: we’re late, we’re late to everything.
“We had 50% passing accuracy in the final third. That means every second pass we gave the ball away in the final third. Then the crossing accuracy was 20%, [which] means two out of 10 crosses made it to the target. So it’s not that we didn’t create enough opportunities to create chances, but we didn’t create enough chances because we gave the ball away.
“The amount of technical mistakes I think must be some kind of record since I came on board.
“We felt really motivated going into the game because there’s been a lot of focus on Sam Kerr’s 100th game, and we said we wanted to leave our captain with a memory for her life. She’s going to remember this game for the rest of her life; we wanted to leave our captain with positive memories.
“But it didn’t look like that tonight. We didn’t look energised and passionate the way I’m used to seeing this team, and that’s not okay.”
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