Sermanni hails performance

Matildas coach Tom Sermanni hailed the performance of his team after breaking its FIFA Women’s World Cup finals hoodoo, in beating Ghana 4-1 in Hangzhou last night.

Matildas coach Tom Sermanni hailed the performance of his team after breaking its FIFA Women-s World Cup finals hoodoo, in beating Ghana 4-1 in Hangzhou last night.

The Matildas picked up their first ever win at a World Cup finals tournament, having previously registered just two draws in their previous nine matches.

It was a dominant performance by Australia and could quite easily have won by more, but missed several guilt-edged chances towards the end of the game.

However that did not seem to worry Sermanni, who was obviously delighted for his players and that it has put his team in a good position going into the final two group matches against Norway and Canada.

“I'm delighted to finally get a win, and even more so because of the quality of our performance,” Sermanni told the official 2007 FIFA Women-s World Cup site.

“Ghana are a strong team and I would say the scoreline probably reflects a bit harshly on them given the possession they had. But I always felt we were the more dangerous of the two sides.

Sermanni was particularly pleased with the number of chances the team created and the fact that his strikers are creating a headache for him in the upcoming matches.

“We created a lot of chances and, with players like Collette (McCallum) who can pass the ball so well, we are always going to be strong in possession - or at least we should be.

“We're a far stronger team than in 2003, we have players who have been together for a while now and matured well as a group. As today showed, we also have a very strong group of strikers.

“I have a selection dilemma now after Lisa (De Vanna)'s contribution but we have always tended to rotate our strikers anyway, and you will definitely see a few different strike partnerships from us as the tournament progresses.

“The good thing now is that we know that, no matter what happens, we'll still be competing for a place in the next round come our third match.

The match was particularly special for Collette McCallum, who was named the Star Player of the Match. McCallum was instrumental in midfield and played some brilliant balls forward for her strikers to run onto.

“That was my first match at a senior World Cup and it's a great feeling, I'm delighted for the whole team,” McCallum said. “I'm fortunate to have some great strikers who make excellent runs into space for me to pass to, and I'm also lucky to have a pretty good left foot.”

McCallum has never played against the highly ranked Norwegians, but is confident that Australia will be able to match them on Saturday.

“I don't know much about Norway but we've played some very strong teams in the AFC over the past year or so and I'm confident that we'll be able to beat them. I'm sure we'll be watching some videos over the next couple of days.”