Behind every Football Fern is a football idol - someone who galvanised their love of the game and inspired the way they play. Suzanne McFadden talks to four Ferns about their heroes.
Brianna Edwards: Kailen Sheridan
From afar, Wellington Phoenix goalkeeper Brianna Edwards has always admired Canada’s keeper and Olympic gold medallist, Kailen Sheridan.
“I’ve always watched her play. I saw her sitting on the bench for a while, then one day she just broke onto the scene,” Edwards says. “She’s an amazing player who people thought had come out of nowhere. I see myself like her a little bit too.”
Edwards, 20, also bided her time warming the bench for the Phoenix to be their No.1 keeper this past A-League season. Australian-born, with a Kiwi dad, Edwards was also called into the Football Ferns for the series against the United States earlier this year.
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She first saw Sheridan play in the National Women’s Soccer League for NJ/NY Gotham, before she was traded to the San Diego Wave for 2022.
“I really look up to her hard work and the way she composes herself,” Edwards says. “She has such a huge character and stature in the Canadian national team and in the NWSL, and I think that’s something I aspire to be.”
Sheridan, 27, won the Golden Glove as the best keeper at the 2022 Concacaf W championship – allowing just one goal in five appearances – which secured Canada’s place in this year’s FIFA World Cup. It’s also where she stamped her mark as Canada’s No.1 keeper, “and her career has built from there,” Edwards says.
“When Canada played the Matildas in Sydney last year, I went and watched her and she was incredible. I haven’t met her yet, but to train with her would be out of this world.”
The reigning Olympic champions have drawn Group B for the World Cup, along with co-hosts Australia, so will play their pool games on the other side of the Tasman.
If Edwards makes it into the Football Ferns squad of 23 for the pinnacle event, she’ll be channelling her hero. “Kailen has a very big presence, which is something I try to have. She’s a very well-rounded goalkeeper, she can use her feet, and she’s really good at taking crosses. She’s the whole package deal.”
Hannah Wilkinson: Abby Wambach
Growing up, Hannah Wilkinson only got to see professional men’s teams playing on TV, so she loved watching Ruud van Nistelrooy in his Manchester United days. The Dutchman is still considered one of the best strikers of all time.
“But as I got older and realised female players did exist, my idol became Abby Wambach,” the 113-cap Football Fern says.
“The better I got at playing, the more I found I was playing similarly to her. She was strong and tall, really good in the air. Very aggressive, very goal hungry – the kind of player I wanted to be just like.”
Others saw it too - football writers comparing Wilkinson’s style of play to the American striker and 2015 FIFA World Cup champion, who scored 184 goals in 255 appearances.
For a while, Wambach held the world record for the most international goals scored across men’s and women’s football, only eclipsed by Canada’s Christine Sinclair. (To compare, the most prolific international scorer in men’s football is Cristiano Ronaldo, on 122 goals).
Then in 2013, one of Wilkinson’s dreams came true – playing against Wambach in a New Zealand-USA match in Columbus, Ohio.
Wilkinson scored the equaliser in a 1-1 draw, while Wambach had two shots at goal go begging (one, a penalty saved by Ferns keeper Erin Naylor).
“I got to swap jerseys with her - I was so stoked. And I actually have that jersey still,” says Wilkinson, who’s scored 28 international goals.
“I thought she was amazing, the way she could guide a ball from a cross with her head. So aggressive, so intent and never satisfied. I think I’ve followed in those huge footsteps – because I’m never satisfied.”
Although she retired in 2015, Wambach continues to make her presence felt in football – as a part-owner of Angel City FC (Football Ferns captain Ali Riley's club) and as an activist for equality and inclusion.
Claudia Bunge: Marta and Rosie White
When Claudia Bunge met her larger-than-life childhood hero, Brazilian legend Marta, in an elevator, she was taken aback by how little she was.
The six-time FIFA Player of the Year is 1.63m – 10cm shorter than defender Bunge.
“It was my first Football Ferns tour and we were playing in a tournament with Brazil, who were staying in the same hotel as us. She was in the elevator with me, and I just smiled and said hello," Bunge recalls. "She was so much smaller than I thought she'd be.”
Which is probably natural when the footballer you’ve looked up to as a kid is a player of Marta’s standing.
“She was the superstar of football for such a long time; she’s been to five World Cups,” says Bunge, an Olympian aiming for her first World Cup.
“She had that Brazilian flair - you’d see the men like Pele with it, but I hadn’t really seen women play like that. I started watching videos of her, and she was so technical but had a lot of fun when she was playing.
“She was definitely not your traditional footballer. Watching her in the last World Cup, she’s was quite emotional on the field – and she was wearing lipstick.”
(“The colour is of blood, because we had to leave blood on the pitch,” Marta said in 2019 when her vivid lip colour made world headlines.)
Bunge also had a hero much closer to home: recently retired Football Fern Rosie White.
“When I started to watch the Football Ferns play, it was Rosie White. She was a striker who always had a great eye for goal, and as a Kiwi, she was someone I could directly relate to,” Bunge says.
“She came to a camp while I was quite young - a lot of the Ferns today were in that camp. And we got to pick her brain. I asked her who was the hardest team she'd play against, and at that stage it was Japan.
"We played together [for New Zealand] a couple of times and she’s great to play with, too.”
Kate Taylor: Annalie Longo
Kate Taylor still has the pink shirt handed to her by her idol, Annalie Longo, and the photograph that captured the moment in time.
“I was 12, playing in a Canterbury tournament out at Waimak [Waimakariri], and she was doing the shirt presentations at the end of the tournament. She gave me this pink FIFA shirt, which was pretty cool,” the New Zealand U20s captain says. “I still have it at home, along with the photo. And we both look exactly the same.”
But Taylor admits it feels a little strange to now be training and playing with her hero in the Football Ferns, a veteran with 127 caps.
“She’s in there right now,” Taylor laughs, pointing at the changing room after a Ferns squad training.
“Back then, I just thought she was an amazing Football Fern, who was playing where I lived in Christchurch. She’s still pretty awesome. Now she’s in my team which is definitely quite weird. But she’s still my hero now.”
From that U14 South Island tournament back in 2017, Longo recognised Taylor’s talent and took her under her wing.
“After that she became my coach, but I now realise I wasn’t as grateful as I should have been. I didn’t really understand how awesome that was – for my idol to be my coach - and how it doesn’t happen to many people,” says the Canterbury United Pride and Phoenix defender.
“But to have played with her for a few years now, it’s really cool.”
