The place have been you at precisely 8pm on August 12, 2023?
When Cortnee Vine’s deathly spot-kick marked the tip of a penalty shootout that gave grandmothers across the nation coronary heart assaults and those that lived a view of Suncorp Stadium dissolving into delirium and soundtrack of Down Below echoing across the floor that may eternally be etched into Australian sporting folklore.
An evening for the ages: The Matildas come collectively after the profitable penalty.Credit score: Getty Photographs
And secondly, the place have been you at 6.15pm?
On the 55-minute mark: the second Sam Kerr’s entrance shifted the earth on its axis and swept the contents of this nation – each desk fabric and pair of slippers and pint on bar tops – from their common resting locations by this one magnetic pressure?
From the second the Matildas skipper got here off the bench, till the tip of extra-time after which penalties, as soon as she had completed hers with medical precision and thumped her chest, she was the centre of this nation’s gravity.
She was an inexorable pull which drew in each French opponent in and even goaded their supervisor Herve Renard, beforehand unmoving in his technical space, into his trademark leap and squat – an incredulous movement reserved for probably the most tense mid-match moments.
Learn senior reporter Emma Kemp’s full evaluation right here.
