Sam Kerr says Matildas ready for Asian Cup to start tomorrow after New Zealand wins

New coach. New clubs for many. New players compete for space with existing players. Some conversations were about the aging core group, about transition and young blood.

Some comments were about waiting. While awaiting the appointment of Joe Montemurro, Tom Sermanni spent much of the year overseeing a team treading water as best a highly placed coach can.

More recently the question has been one of those times. Its lack. The way Montemurro raced against him. We’re trying to overhaul the gameplay with minimal contact over a few short windows.

Time is now up and the Matildas play their final friendly match before the Asia Cup opener against the Philippines in Perth on March 1.

The two-match series against New Zealand turned out to be a training series rather than a hard-fought victory like last month’s 3-0 defeat against England, but it still served its purpose.

For the players, 5-0 and 2-0 victories at Gosford and Adelaide respectively were 180 minutes of confidence ready to be bottled and move into the lead.

For the fans, this was an opportunity to enjoy watching the national team enjoy themselves again and play with a freedom not seen in a long time.

For Montemurro, this was an opportunity to “solidify an idea” to add to his repertoire. Football The Ferns played deep enough to allow Australia, despite goal-scoring errors, to “paint pictures of what we can achieve in the Asian Cup” against more defensive opposition.

And Montemurro’s free-flowing philosophy, Described as Total Football by Amy SayerIt hurt a team that was taking a new approach.

“I think we’ve upgraded the squad a lot now as a whole; we’ve got a good group of players who can adapt to different areas, get into different situations, understand the style and ideas we’re trying to put forward,” Montemurro said.

“And I’m in a privileged position to say, ‘Okay, I want to play a little bit more proactively in these areas, or I want to be able to protect these areas.’ I can do that because we have the quality of players to do that.

“I wish the tournament was next week, I’ll be honest with you. The excitement, the energy, the football, the growth that’s been in camp this week. And just the players themselves, they’re a really great group.”

Kerr (“we’d like it to happen next week too”) joked that it was the medical team’s fault that the striker was able to play the first half at Coopers Stadium in Adelaide – his first home appearance for two years – after suffering a calf injury on Friday.

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“It was just a minor glitch,” Kerr said. “I was planning on coming into this camp and doing two 90s. I played my first 90 a few weeks ago at Chelsea and then I had that a few days later. So it was just bad luck. “To be honest I didn’t have any indication that it was going to happen and I planned to come here and get as many minutes as possible.

“Come February I hope to be able to get back to 90 minutes again. And again. And again. It feels good, so I wanted to keep going. It’s a bit of a strange injury, a very minor injury, but I think you have to be careful about it, especially where I’ve been for the last 18 months, unfortunately.”