Hello everybody and welcome to live coverage of Australia v England from Stadium Australia in Sydney. Kick-off in this Women’s World Cup semi-final clash is 8pm AEST/11am BST.
If you’re reading this in Australia: this is fun, isn’t it?
If you’re stopping by from England, you’ll be familiar with the sense of nationwide giddiness after last summer’s Euros.
If you’re tuning in elsewhere in the world, I hope you get to experience a tournament like this in your neck of the woods sometime soon.
The 2023 Women’s World Cup is delivering in spades, and it has turned Australia Matildas mad. There hasn’t been a sporting bandwagon on this scale since Sydney 2000. A group of footballers, most of whom were unknown to the majority of the population a few weeks ago, have become one of the most successful unifying forces of their generation.
And the manner in which they have brought the country together has been beautiful to watch. It has been authentic, unselfconscious, welcoming, and joyous.
This fixture is the perfect case study. Whenever a v separates Australia and England it comes loaded with centuries of baggage. Not tonight. This is not the Ashes or a proxy battlefield on which to settle historic scores. For thousands of kids staying up past bedtime on a school night they will neither know of, nor care about, the almost exclusively male rivalries that contaminate other contests.
This rivalry dates back only to 2015 and consists of just four previous matches, none of which took place with any great consequence. As Mackenzie Arnold told reporters the other day, this is “just another game”.
But what a game it promises to be. The tournament hosts against the European champions in front of a full house at Sydney’s Olympic Stadium. Australia in their first World Cup semi-final, England aiming to make it third time lucky after near misses in 2015 and 2019.
It’s going to be a cracker.