Caitlin Foord is set to play her 150th Matildas match against Mexico in Sydney on Tuesday night, a milestone that will make her only the sixth Australian to reach 150 international appearances. For a player who has spent more than a decade in the green and gold, it is a marker of staying power as much as talent.
That is why the search for the matildas game tonight matters now: Foord goes into it with 149 appearances and 40 international goals, and only Emily Van Egmond and Alanna Kennedy among the current squad have also reached the same landmark. Foord said she remembered Heather Garriock being presented with a plaque at her 100th match and thinking it would be cool to do the same one day.
“I think the first time you put on a Matildas jersey, you don’t really know how many times you’re going to get that opportunity,” Foord said on Monday. “To put it on 150 times tomorrow, it’s a massive honour.”
The milestone also points back to how quickly Foord established herself. Tom Sermanni asked the then 15-year-old to train with the senior Matildas at the end of 2010, and she scored after coming on in a friendly against New Zealand in Gosford that year. Sermanni later said she looked as if she would blow away in a small wind, but by the time she had run at defenders for 10 minutes at the 2011 Women’s World Cup in Germany, he knew she was ready for the tournament; she went on to play every minute and was named young player of the event.
Since then, Foord has added three more World Cups, three Olympics and three Asian Cups to her career, and she has won the Champions League with Arsenal. Her 150th cap comes at a difficult moment for the Matildas, who lost the first match against Mexico 1-0 in Newcastle on Saturday, leaving the Sydney meeting to carry more than ceremonial weight.
Foord said the bigger goal remains winning something with this group. She called that the target and said it would be special to achieve it with this squad. For Tuesday night, though, the immediate measure is simpler: whether her 150th appearance becomes just a personal landmark or the start of a response after Saturday’s defeat.
