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The beautiful game can be cruel at times.
Football Ferns forward Jacqui Hand was the width of a post from giving her side the first-half goal the nation desperately wanted against Switzerland in Dunedin on Sunday.
She said the agony of elimination from the World Cup was still raw as she reflected on a rollercoaster tournament that finished with a 0-0 stalemate.
“I’m devastated for sure,” she said. “Heartbroken.
“But it’s football, and you win some and you lose some.
Alessandra Tarantino/AP
Switzerland’s Julia Stierli left, and New Zealand’s Jacqui Hand, run for the ball during the game in Dunedin.
“But I think we’ve got a lot of positives to take out of this tournament. I’m super proud of the team.
“It was amazing [the support in Dunedin]. You could feel every single time we touched the ball, they were behind us. It was incredible.”
In front of 25,497 fans, the Football Ferns gradually took control of the game midway through the first half and were desperately unlucky not to take the lead when Hand hooked a shot over Swiss goalkeeper Gaelle Thalmann only to see it strike the post.
Hand, who also hit the post against the Philippines and had a goal disallowed for an offside infringement in the same game, ruefully re-lived the moment that could have been enough for the Football Ferns to progress to the knockout stages.
“I hoped it was [it was going in],” she said. “I just smashed it with everything I had, and unfortunately just the post.”
Impressive centre-half Katie Bowen was another player who gave everything. The 29-year-old had tears in her eyes as she talked about how far the Football Ferns had come – and how close they were to making history.
“I’m truly gutted,” she said. “This was my fourth tournament, and so many times – it sounds terrible – but we’ve known we’ve been going home in the last game.
“So it had been kind of ‘go out there and have fun’, but we knew that there was actually a chance that we could achieve our goal and getting out of the group tonight.
“So it really stings that we kind of fell short, especially with the performance against the Philippines.
“We shot ourselves in the foot a little bit.
“So, yeah, I’m just really gutted but really proud of the team, proud of the heart that we showed and the fight that we showed.”
The Football Ferns weren’t told about the progress in the other game in Group A, with Norway taking an early lead against the Philippines at Eden Park in Auckland before winning 6-0, though they were told they needed to win.
That result meant the Swiss could sit back and settle for a point, something they were happy to do.
Bowen said that changed the complexion of the contest.
“They also changed their formation into a diamond midfield, and then we were outnumbered in our midfield and that made it difficult.
“We weren’t explicitly told that Norway won, but we were told that we needed to win, so it wasn’t a huge point of focus for us, the other result.
“But yeah, they [Switzerland] changed some things, and we struggled a bit.
“We struggled to get some quality chances in the second half, which is obviously what we needed.”
The Football Ferns threw goalkeeper Vic Esson into the Switzerland penalty box for the frantic final stages, and she almost became an unlikely heroine with two headed chances.
But Esson conceded that the Ferns’ 1-0 loss to the Philippines on Tuesday was the result that was likely to keep the Football Ferns awake for years to come.
“I’d say so,” she said. “Football is defined by tiny moments, and there were a few moments in that game that changed the result.”
Football Ferns – FIFA Women’s World Cup
Football Ferns 1 (Hannah Wilkinson 48’) Norway 0. HT: 0-0
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