The Wonder Matildas avoid death against Zambia, but will they make it out of their Olympic group in Paris?

The changing room outside the Stade de Nice was filled with a cacophony of sound and movement as Steph Catley sat down in a chair, squeezed a stream of water into her mouth and took a deep breath.

Tony Gustavsson was a few feet away, hastily preparing a slide projector that would display the images his analysts had taken just minutes before the terrified players had walked off the pitch and into the tunnel.

It was half-time of the second match of the Olympic group at the Paris Olympics between Australia and Zambia. Against all expectations, they were losing 4-2 to the lowest-ranked team in the tournament.

Catley, the captain’s armband wrapped tightly around her bicep, could have despaired at this point.

It was her first major tournament in charge of the Matildas, who were looking set for their earliest Olympic exit in more than two decades.

She glanced around the room, observing her coach and teammates. As soon as everyone was seated, Gustavsson began his halftime speech, his voice steady, his gestures direct, his eyes clear and focused.

The players spoke, too. Each of them knew exactly what was wrong. Each of them had ideas on how to fix it. What started as a sonic hum soon became a hardened battle plan, a map outlined by Gustavsson’s tactics and filled with the voices of the players.

Then, once the new tactics were clear, they talked about attitude. Catley knew that was where she was needed most. A natural leader — calm, articulate — she knew her job in the chaos of the game would be to keep her teammates looking forward. Staying positive. Not giving up.

But even a true believer like Catley must have thought the Matildas would need a miracle to get out of this pointless match.

And who could blame her for a potential lack of belief when she saw the ball fly into the Australian net just 40 seconds into the match, beautifully deflected off the boot of star Zambian striker Barbra Banda?

Sweat hadn’t even begun to form on Catley’s brow when her leadership was needed. She clapped her hands together, her face neutral, and shouted encouragement to her bewildered teammates: Come on, don’t look down. Here we go again.

The equaliser five minutes later, scored with a header by Alanna Kennedy, was less a cause for celebration than an administrative correction, induced by the frustration of a sudden need for quick redress.

The centre-back barely said a word as she ran across the soft grass and back to her own half of the pitch, eager to regain control of the game and hand it back to the Australians.

And they did. For about 15 minutes. But the luck that football almost always needs began to desert them.

Catley’s corner looked set to go wide but the ball was headed clear by the Zambian defender. Clare Hunt’s shot was poor but the ball was out of reach. Mary Fowler’s cross went straight to Katrina Gorra’s head but she headed it over the bar.

Little did they know that the tide of victory had turned in Zambia’s favour when Rachael Kundananji gave her side the lead in the 20th minute after a simple sprint behind Ellie Carpenter ended with a flat, powerful shot that bounced off the far post and into the net.

Seven minutes later, with luck on their side, Zambia made it 3-1 when Mackenzie Arnold’s deep free kick found its way straight to Banda’s feet as if placed there by an invisible hand. She then touched the ball and lobbed it past the entire Matildas and over the goal line.

The pendulum swung in Australia’s favour a minute later when Hayley Raso passed the ball to the far post, unchallenged. But the ball bounced almost as quickly as it looked, with both Raso and Caitlin Foord wasting one-on-one opportunities as the first half drew to a close.

How must Catley have felt when, just after the linesman had raised the board to signal four minutes of injury time, a series of unfortunate events from a corner kick meant the ball bounced off Banda’s leg, spun painfully around the fleeing Arnold and fell into the bottom corner of the goal, giving Zambia a 4-2 lead?

Was Matilda’s magic fading before her eyes?

Landing…

So she sat in her dressing room, breathed deeply, listened to the voices bouncing off the walls around her, and made a decision.

She had to keep going. She had to keep going. their going. Because what other choice was there?

“It was probably the loudest, most communicative locker room I’ve ever been in as a member of this team,” the captain said afterwards.

“We created a lot of chances that we thought we could have taken. I don’t know what the stats were in the first half, but I know we had some really good chances that we would normally have taken.

“So we knew we were going to create. We just had to put something on the scoreboard. And we finally did it.”

But it was only then that Zambia put the Australians’ faith to the real test, scoring their fifth goal in the 54th minute after Banda’s free-kick had found the blond and white head of Kundananji, the only player in a green shirt to break through the wall of yellow fur.

Gustavsson had had enough and decided to try and make his own luck. A triple change in the 57th minute saw the introduction of experienced striker Michelle Heyman, a player whose presence here was shaped by Lady Luck herself. The 35-year-old retired in 2019, but an unfortunate ACL injury to Sam Kerr saw the former Olympian return to the Paris squad.

And she brought some of her happiness with her.

Less than a minute after coming on, a lucky mistake in the Zambian penalty area sent the ball straight to Heyman’s feet. With her back to goal, the striker instinctively kicked the ball with her heel, sending it unexpectedly into the shin of a retreating Zambian defender who slotted it into the net to make it 5-3.

And so the pendulum swung. Caitlin Foord had a goal that was ruled offside a minute later, but it didn’t matter. In the 64th minute, Australia were awarded a free kick just outside the Zambian penalty area. Catley, feeling the tightness of the armband, stepped up and fired a low, powerful shot straight at the Zambian goalkeeper’s bright pink shirt.

As the ball flew through the air, she felt her stomach tighten: Musole would surely catch it, and the Matildas would once again have to face Zambia to defend against her counterattack.

But she didn’t. Miraculously, the ball slipped from Musole’s fingers and bounced, almost comically, off the white paint.

The Matildas’ luck returned in waves, as a late VAR review into an accidental kick to Caitlin Foord’s foot awarded Australia a penalty, which Catley calmly slotted into the net to equalise.

The pendulum didn’t so much swing back as completely detach itself from the game itself, flying into the nearby Mediterranean. The gang raced down the pitch, chasing a long ball, but Kennedy threw her long legs in the way and stopped the counterattack just in time.

Foord raced down the left-hand side before firing a perfect pass to Heyman, whose shot deflected off the Zambian defender’s stomach.

Minutes later, the striker broke through three green shirts in midfield before passing to substitute Kaitlyn Torpey, who ran in behind the defender and sent a low cross across the end line, but the ball was intercepted by Musole before reaching Foord’s feet.

Kennedy fired a shot at Banda just outside her own penalty area, which earned her a yellow card and another goal from a set piece, but Arnold deflected the ball in the air.

And then came the moment, the clarity amidst the chaos. With the clock ticking to 90 minutes, Catley gathered the ball in the Zambian half and looked up.

Yellow and green jerseys swirled, crackled and popped all over the field, but through it all she could see Heyman, with her signature white flame hair, racing along the defense and heading toward the goal.

Catley dug her foot into the rubber, slicing a perfect pass through two lines of players and into Heyman’s path. The striker touched the ball in the box, opened her hips and slid the ball past the diving Musole into the net.

It was miracle after miracle after miracle, stitched together by perseverance, tactics and the famous motto “never say die”.

“When you coach a group of players like that, you never stop believing,” Gustavsson said later.

“Is it a crazy game? Yes. But to be 5-2 down in the 55th minute, I don’t think any team has ever done that in a football tournament, men’s or women’s.

“But that says it all about the ‘never give up’ attitude in this group.

“We’re focused on the spirit and the energy that it gave us to do that and turn the game around, going 5-2 down to Zambia and still winning the game. That’s our focus now.”

It was this deep self-belief that was missing the last time the Matildas were at this stadium, in 2019, when the semi-final of the Women’s World Cup fell through their fingers in a penalty shootout against Norway.

Catley was the only player to score that day. But much has changed since that nightmare in Nice. Australia’s newest captain banished the ghosts of her team with an unforgettable match shaped in her image: a game of relentless positivity, of forcing her own happiness, of living the spirit for which this team has become so beloved.

The full-time whistle was a kind of catharsis, freeing the Matildas from the grip of potential disaster. They escaped, somehow, the way they had done before, with magic and miracles working somewhere beneath burning muscles and sweat-soaked shirts.

How much longer will it last? They needed more than one miracle in Tokyo, qualifying for the quarter-finals as the third-best team in third place – the very last team to slip through the closing doors of the knockout stages – before coming from behind twice against the favoured Great Britain side to crash into the semi-finals.