Canada’s old guard turns tide against Ireland at Women’s World Cup

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For a minute there, you were getting acid flashbacks of Canada’s 2011 Women’s World Cup in Germany.

The national team had high expectations at that one, too. It had played well in the first game, but hadn’t got a result. It needed something out of the second game to remain in it. And then, against France, it lay down on the pitch and died.

That’s how Canada started against Ireland on Wednesday. It is difficult to express the simple lack of oomph from the Canadian team in the first half. You know how they give out MVPs? In that first half, there was some real competition in the Canadian squad for LVP. Ireland has the international soccer reputation of a snapping turtle – slow to attack, but impossible to shake off once it has got the chomp on you.

With that in mind, things could not have started any worse. Ireland’s star turn, Katie McCabe, planted a corner kick directly into the net in the fourth minute.

Where and when to watch Canada in the 2023 Women’s World Cup

You know when a corner kick should go straight in? Never. That’s a rule in soccer – no direct corner kicks into your own net. When they happen, the goalkeeper is always to blame.

Letting in a goal like that right off the start isn’t how you lose games. It’s how you get embarrassed in them.

From that point on, Canada’s outfield players wandered around the pitch like 10 people searching the front lawn for their car keys.

But World Cups turn on small moments. Late in that half, wildly against the run of play, Canada’s Julia Grosso took a speculative shot on net. It nicked an Irish player and slid inside the far post.

It’s like Wayne Gretzky says – you miss 100 per cent of the shots that don’t hit someone who has foolishly stuck out their foot while the ball is on its way toward the net.

That’s when Canada’s most important player of the game took over – Bev Priestman.

Ms. Priestman doesn’t play for Canada. Aside from being stentorian and very British, she doesn’t obviously do much. But she pulled the performance U-turn on Wednesday.

The lineup Ms. Priestman started for Canada was youth oriented. Who could blame her after watching Canada wheeze up and down the field against Nigeria in the opener? What this team needed was a little pep in its step. What it got instead was deer-in-the-headlights.

“The first 20 minutes – the occasion really got to them,” Ms. Priestman said afterward, which is being kind about it.

So at the half, with the score now tied, youth was excised from the team. In came Christine Sinclair (40) and Sophie Schmidt (35), veterans of all of Canada’s great soccer wars. Also, multiple Canadian player of the year Kadeisha Buchanan was subbed off. Something was clearly up with her – she’d been a pylon the entire first half.

If Canada had gone on to lose this match, these changes are where the bulk of criticism would have focused. Not because that would have been the biggest problem, but because it’s easier to rip a coach than a player.

What happened instead was a Freaky Friday-ing of the two squads. All of a sudden, it was Ireland that looked like it had been chugging NyQuil in the locker room. Its stiff defensive line grew wobbly. Led by Ms. Schmidt’s passing vision, Canada was suddenly finding spaces where none had existed before.

In the 53rd minute, Ms. Schmidt feathered a curling ball into Adriana Leon, the bull in every Canadian opponent’s defensive china shop. Ms. Leon muscled it into the net. It would end that way – 2-1 Canada.

Let’s imagine it had gone the other way – that Canada had seized up even worse in the second half. That Ireland, led by the match’s most vibrant player, Ms. McCabe, scored another. That Canada was essentially out of a World Cup a few people thought it had an outside shot at winning.

Where would Ms. Priestman be right now? On the bus, headed back to the team hotel, making some mental notes on how to clean up her résumé. Maybe a new cover letter – ‘Won the Olympics. And then did some other stuff.’

So what Ms. Priestman did at the half qualifies for the most overused adjective in modern conversation: brave.

Bringing out a couple of older, creakier players to revitalize a team that looked like it was already moving in slow motion took guts. The players scored the goals, but Ms. Priestman deserves special mention where credit’s concerned.

How’d they do it?

“We just went back to basics,” midfielder Jessie Fleming said. “Not letting them push us around.”

The book on Canada is out – harry its players relentlessly. Sneaky elbows, late challenges, flying tackles. Canada can play physical, but only if it has the upper hand. Once it feels aggressed, its fluidity dissolves.

This is where veterans come in. Former Toronto Raptors head coach Dwane Casey used to have a favourite term for this – “old-man strength.” He believed younger players were good for electricity, but old ones were better in a fight.

Now, a week after it started, Canada is in a fight. On Monday, it will face co-host Australia. In a perfect world, Australia is already through to the knockout rounds at that point and eases off. But the world is seldom perfect.

Canada may not need to win to advance – that depends on what happens in Thursday’s Australia-Nigeria game. But winning would be much better.

Whatever the case, Canada now understands how this will go. Other teams will try to beat it up, and it will have to beat them back.

This isn’t going to be Brazil or Spain versus the rest of the world – a slick, passing clinic. If Canada wants to win, it is going to have to win in what has always been the traditional Canadian way. With its willingness to absorb and then deliver punishment.