Women’s Asian Cup: Matildas captain Sam Kerr not dwelling on knock-out defeats, insists best is yet to come

Matildas captain Sam Kerr is not focusing on the ghosts of major tournaments past and the myriad of heartbreaking, knock-out stage losses her side has suffered across her career.

Instead, Kerr is comforted not just by memories of backs-to-the-wall games Australia have won, but that the best is yet to come for the current side ahead of Friday’s Women’s Asian Cup quarterfinal clash with North Korea at HBF Park.

The pressure attached to the Matildas is palpable as they prepare for the high-stakes encounter, knowing a win takes them to within a game of the final but a loss will prolong their 16-year major silverware drought.

Australia’s 3-3 draw with South Korea in their final group stage game deprived them of top spot and a potential stay in Sydney for the remainder of the tournament.

While quarterfinal previews have hearkened back to the Matildas’ quarterfinal exit at the hands of South Korea at the 2022 Women’s Asian Cup, after a late goal punished them for not converting chances in a game they dominated, Kerr said she and her teammates were not thinking about that.

“We’ve not really talked about the losses; we’ve talked about the ones we’ve won,” Kerr said.

“The girls have brought up the Canada game at the last World Cup, where we had to win to go through and it could have ended in tears that night, but the girls went out there and smashed it.

“The thing we’ve tried to focus on is those moments and what we felt like in the big games where we’ve gone through: the Brazil game in the Canada World Cup, games when everything was on the line, it was do-or-die, that’s what we’ve tried to focus on.

“You can think about the heartbreak and stuff, but I don’t actually think it’s valuable in these moments; you need to think of the positives.

“The Canada game last World Cup was a big one for us, the Great Britain game at the Olympics, we’ve tried to really talk about what made us feel good in those games where we went out and did well, rather than the negatives of previous tournaments.”

While Sunday’s draw with South Korea may look like something of a reality check, Kerr said there was a lot of confidence to take from the fact the side had not yet hit their straps.

“We’ve been building ourselves up in the tournament. I don’t think yet we’ve had our top performance, but we’re saving that for tomorrow,” she said.

“Every game, we’ve got better and hopefully that’s the case for tomorrow, we can have our best performance in the tournament and go through.

“It’s a good sign that we haven’t peaked too early and the best is yet to come.”

In their Group B loss to China, North Korea were physical and even went to the lengths of walking off the pitch in protest of a Video Assistant Referee decision to award a goal against them.

Kerr said they needed to stay calm should their opponents dip into the dark arts once more.

“China did it really well, and probably just based on the fact they focused on themselves and it can be frustrating and all of that, but that’s part of football now,” she said.

“As professionals who have played for many years now, we are used to it, and we’ve talked about it a little bit obviously, because there’s few girls on the team that haven’t played in the Asian Cup before.

“It’s probably nice to see a little bit of it the other day, just based on the fact we now know what we can expect.”