Australia loves an underdog. Australia loves a rebel or a larrikin. Australia loves outstanding athletes. Yet one of its greatest still remains relatively unknown and unloved by many.
Lisa de Vanna will today join a very select group in Australian football playing her 100th international game when the Matildas face the might of the USA in the opening game of the FIFA Women’s World Cup. She should be held up as one of Australia’s greatest female athletes. She receives the respect of many of her piers and those in football, but sadly not the respect she deserves.
In any sport a player who can make you shift in your seat when they receive the ball or come to the wicket, or step up to the mound, deserves not only respect, but admiration. De Vanna has possessed that attribute from a very young age. She has so much ability, so much talent, that you know that anything can happen when she receives the ball. She can turn a game in a moment.
Yet de Vanna has hade her run-ins with authority, and sadly has been judged by those. No one prepared to judge her on her footballing ability alone. Why was Shane Warne forgiven on so many occasions, yet a female footballing genius is not afforded the same?
The odds have always been stacked against de Vanna and that is what makes her lack of recognition even more baffling. She grew up in Perth when there were very few opportunities for female players to make it to the elite level in football. Had she been born on the East coast one cannot help but ask if she would have reached the 100 cap milestone much earlier.
Like most geniuses she was, shall we say, “different.” She was driven and struggled to understand how others who professed the same ambition as her, were not as committed. They didn’t all eat, drink and breathe football, some did not train as much or some as hard. They did not test their skills against men, as de Vanna did in order to improve.
Losses hurt de Vanna deeply. She takes them personally. Yet they inspire her to push herself harder next time around.
She has now been handed the joint captaincy by coach Alen Stajic, a decision that surprised some and which shocked others on the outside of the game. Yet it could be an inspired move. De Vanna at 30 is more mature now, but still as determined. She wants success for Australia and still hurts at the loss to Sweden in the quarter final of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Germany in 2011, a game she believes the team were capable of winning.
Stajic by showing faith in de Vanna may well have found a way to unlock her personal talents and also a way in which to help him instil belief in her team mates, that success is achievable at this tournament.
This group of young ladies have immense talent. They should have had far more investment in the past four years than they received from the FFA. Many of them know that, and that will be one spur to push them through each game and onto success. The FFA talked about focussing on the women’s game, yet that investment still falls a long way behind the men’s game, despite being Australia’s most realistic chance of global honours.
De Vanna is likely to wear the captain’s armband as co-captain pending the fitness of Claire Polkinghorne in the opening game. She has come a long way since her debut in 2004.
Tonight she will look to inspire and drive every player to push themselves to their full potential. Let us hope that she is successful.
Lisa de Vanna has always been committed to the cause and let us hope that that commitment over the past ten or more years will finally be rewarded with results that match hers and her team mates talent in Canada. Maybe then she will receive the respect her talent deserves.
