They are no longer England. England disappeared overnight. A subtle tonal and linguistic shift began to occur from the moment the final whistle blew at Stadium Australia, and the runes of Wednesday’s blockbuster World Cup semi-final began to take shape. At that point Sarina Wiegman’s team stopped being the familiar faces in the draw, the mother country, the cultural brethren. They are the Poms. And if you’re unclear on the difference then clearly you haven’t watched much international sport between the two countries. England is the place you go on holiday. The Poms are the guys whose noses you want to crush into the dirt.
“I’ll talk to my players and staff and see what the rivalry is,” Wiegman said on Saturday night, a comment that suggested the England coach is perhaps not overly familiar with cricket, rugby league, rugby union or netball. Even darts had its own little Ashes moment at the World Matchplay in Blackpool this summer when the Australian No 1, Damon Heta, strolled into the arena wearing the famous baggy green cricket cap and was immediately greeted with a spray of boos, jeers and songs of “same old Aussies, always cheating”.
Football has remained largely untouched by any of this historical baggage, by virtue of the fact that Australia never really seemed to show much interest in it. No longer. If the thought of home glory being snatched away by the old enemy is bad enough, then it scarcely bears comparison with losing to the old enemy at a sport they apparently discovered about six weeks ago. These are the stakes, and we haven’t even mentioned Sam Kerr or Lucy Bronze or Caitlin Foord or Lauren Hemp yet.
From England’s point of view, there is another significance to the opposition here. In April, Australia beat them 2-0 in a friendly at Brentford, a game that remains the sole defeat on Wiegman’s 37-match record as England coach. It is a run in which they have beaten virtually every other major power in the game. And while Australia will doubtless take inspiration from that victory, achieved without the injured Foord and Steph Catley, the more interesting legacy of that game – in an era when non‑European rivals rarely meet outside major tournaments – is what England may have learned from the experience.
On the face of it, the game in Brentford was a textbook burglary. England had 71% possession and 15 shots to five, but in driving rain never really looked like breaking down a well-organised and counterattacking Australia side. Kerr was in her element, heading in the first goal from a long ball that was poorly controlled by Leah Williamson and then setting up the second for Charlotte Grant after Esme Morgan failed to close down her cross.
First, the mitigating factors. England had just come off a gruelling 120 minutes and penalties in the Finalissima against Brazil at Wembley. Millie Bright and Alex Greenwood were both missing with injury. Kerr’s first goal would probably have been ruled out if VAR were in operation, and Grant’s second went in only via a nasty deflection off Williamson.
Wiegman paid the Australians a kind of backhanded compliment afterwards by describing them as “very physical and well organised” and said: “They were a little bit lucky.”
But long before England had even left the Brentford Community Stadium, they realised they had been outplayed by the smarter side, and were determined to prevent it happening again.
“This defeat brought us so many lessons,” Wiegman would later say. “It has, most of all, showed us the urgency to do some things better. The experience we had against Australia showed us we really need to be tighter on the ball and prevent the counterattack because then they can harm us.”
The first lesson was in defence. Despite the subsequent injury to Williamson, the 22-year-old Morgan has not played another minute in the England defence, with Greenwood and Jess Carter – superior one-on-one defenders with good recovery speed – preferred.
Indeed, at this World Cup England have at times defended a good deal deeper than they did in their pre-tournament friendlies, wary of getting caught by pace on the break. This also partly explains the shift to three centre-backs, who are better equipped to cover the channels and track Foord, Mary Fowler and Hayley Raso when they peel wide.
The other point to make is in terms of tactics. Later in the game Wiegman brought on Rachel Daly to play up front alongside Alessia Russo, shifting the 4-3-3 to a 4-4-2 that matched Australia’s system and generated a number of decent late chances. Later still Carter came off and England went to a 3-5-2 and, again, Australia looked less comfortable than they had for much of the match. Against predictable opponents, Wiegman decided to embrace unpredictability, and while it may not have made any difference to that game, it offers a template for how England may approach their biggest game since the European Championship final last summer.
So yes: this is a game of traditional enmities, classic rivalries, old bloodlines. But in a sense it is also about evolution, the search for tiny competitive advantages. Australia will have a home crowd, the momentum and the sense of mission, the feeling that this is their time, no earlier and no later. England, for their part, are engaged in a different journey: a process of tweaks and improvements, of making mistakes and then making sure never to make the same mistake twice. “We’d rather it happened now than at the World Cup,” Walsh said after that game in April. From a distance, it almost feels like a prophecy.
