Even if the women's football tournament at the Olympics were to change to an under-23 tournament Montemurro would still be turning to the old guard to fill the three overage player list spots for the Matildas, assuming the rules were to carry over from the men's tournament which would ultimately defeat the purpose of having it as a developmental tournament though.
We have enough under age tournaments to process players through those groups that we don’t need the Olympics to be another stepping stone. The bottleneck is occurring after the age of 23 or 24 when players are moving on from the domestic league to overseas leagues but then find themselves ignored because we keep playing the same ten or twelve players at a elite level.
If the bottleneck is occurring at that age range when players start to move overseas from the Dub then ideally the Matildas selection policy needs to prioritise giving players who fall within that age range like Holly McNamara, Izzy Gomez and Jessika Nash callups and subsequently game time as opposed to continuing to favour experience over youth and fielding the old guard in the playing list.
Agree that the Matildas were better in converting chances into meaningful shots at goal and finding the back of the net compared to in the first of our two friendlies but defensive areas are still somewhat problematic for us in terms of giving the opposition too much space and needlessly committing errors and turnovers which subsequently lead to us conceding goals.
We already have the under-23 Matildas which would constitute an Australia A side though.maybe we need an “australia a” side
Except it’s not exactly the same as you have to be 23 or under to play for them.
I was more so thinking to give the senior girls a break. They play a shit tonne of games already.
Many of the Matildas fringe players like Jessika Nash and Leticia McKenna fall under that age group though and it would serve the purpose of bridging the gap between the Tillies farm system and senior national team setup in addition to giving promising youth prospects who are being left behind by the current selection policy valuable game time and international experience.
Thanks for your insights.
They certainly played with more intensity than in the first game with the ball being played forward from midfield rather than the …stop…pass back ..that is a feature of van Egmond’s game. I also agree that playing Fowler as Ten with Raso on the right wing is the way to go.
Agree that Mary Fowler is better in the number ten role for the Matildas compared to Emily van Egmond and we should ideally be playing her in that role heading into the 2027 Women's World Cup.
It would seem that Montemurro believes the team which took us to 4th place in 2023 is still good enough to be competitive again in 2027.
Heading into the 2027 Women's World Cup there needs to be a balance between experience and youth in the playing list which Montemurro ends up naming and we need to be looking more at the Matildas fringe players like Leticia McKenna, Bryleeh Henry and Izzy Gomez as opposed to the likes of Emily van Egmond and Alanna Kennedy.
