Australian captain and FIFA Player of the Match, Willa Pearson, praised the Aussie spirit of her team after the CommBank Junior Matildas secured a hard-fought 1-1 draw against Chile in their historic FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup Morocco 2026™ debut.
Competing at the tournament for the first time in Australian football history, the CommBank Junior Matildas were forced to come from behind after Chile's Kiara Concha opened the scoring in the 33rd minute.
Australia responded in the second half through substitute Charlotte Bradshaw, who converted a Sakura Leong delivery in the 63rd minute to score the nation's first-ever goal at a FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup™.
"We talk about Aussie spirit all the time, and that's definitely what we showed today," the Sydney FC defender said.
"Obviously, we conceded, which is not what we wanted, but everybody got up. We had a little team talk afterwards, and we were like, right, it's time to go. It's time to start going again."
Pearson explained that a major focus of the team's preparations leading into the tournament was around regaining composure after either scoring or conceding a goal. Particularly 'winning' the following minutes.
"We talked about it in our meeting before the match. If that does happen, if they score, if we score, we also need to win the next 10 minutes. We need to make sure we don't concede again, or we score again."
"After Chile scored, we came together, and we said we need to win the next 10 minutes, and that's what we did."
The collective mindset was evident, particularly during the team's energetic pre-match huddle led by the vocal captain.
