Poletti 
Matildas interim coach Tom Sermanni on the sidelines of Matildas vs Argentina in Melbourne on Friday May 30. Photo: Marcus Robertson/Round Ball Australia
With new Matildas coach Joe Montemurro looking on from the stands of GIO Stadium as Tom Sermanni coached the last game of his interim stint, the national team impressed with a 4-1 victory over Argentina.
One player who stood out the most was Amy Sayer, who made her first start for the Matildas in 549 days (a 5-0 loss to Canada in December 2023), after she recently returned from an ACL injury.
The Matildas forward scored a brace inside the first half (14th and 36th minutes), showcasing her skill-set with two very well-worked goals.
Sermanni said that Sayer was being monitored by him and the national team set-up as she was going through her recovery and coming back from her injury.
“She started to play some significant game-time and started to play well in Sweden, and the other thing which helped is that we’ve had quite a few players missing from this camp due to injury,” Sermanni said.
“When you put all those factors together, it was a fairly obvious call-up for us to be honest.”
Emily van Egmond and local star Michelle Heyman, who got a rapturous applause when she came onto the field in the second half, both found their way onto the scoresheet in what was ultimately a very clinical performance, as Sermanni handed out one final Matildas cap in the process to Isabel Gomez.
With over 25,000 in attendance on a rather cold Monday night to a game in the nations capital, one can not help but wonder how to actually attract people into attending Canberra United games, when the appetite is clearly there from the public to cheer on Heyman in action.
It becomes a more pertinent question when you look at the current state of Canberra United, a foundation club of the A-League Women that Heyman plays for, which has been in a state of flux for multiple years around its ownership situation.
Despite the report from The Canberra Times in March of an ownership offer, its future was still unclear for most people until Monday night, before Heyman gave an update on the future of the side when she was asked about how she was dealing with the situation of being a player without an A-League Women contract, in part because of Canberra’s situation.
“I’ve had plenty of conversations with the new owners, and I’m pretty happy with what’s going on, so just waiting on the APL to just release everything, so [I’m] feeling confident within Canberra United,” Heyman said with a smile.
On a day that saw a 10-month wait for a new Matildas coach end and the side deliver a dominant display amid a celebratory farewell to one of Australian football’s greatest servants, it somehow seemed fitting that the previously retired Matildas and Canberra striker would drop the biggest news of the day at the very end of it.
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