Matilda madness

Women's soccer is not your bowl of cornflakes. OK, so we get that.

Maybe you don't like it because you're an American who hates your own country's team because they HATE AMERICA; why, just look at how they protest racial injustice and don't sing our anthem and espouse all those horrible "woke" values, like diversity and equal treatment and standing up for the marginalized instead of picking on them like a proper American.

Maybe you think no one cares about the women's World Cup because YOU don't care about it, or because it's too "woke" (that word again), or because you just don't like soccer generally.

Well. I've got a name to throw at you, in that case.

Courtnee Vine. 

She's an Australian women's player and last night she turned an entire nation into an insane asylum with one swing of her leg. Deep into the night, after 90 minutes of regulation and 30 more of extra time and an excruciating 19 penalty kicks, she buried the 20th PK of the night, and Australia, the host nation, advanced to the World Cup semifinals for the first time in history.

Cathy Freeman Park in Sydney went bonkers. People standing outside Cathy Freeman Park went bonkers. People in bars, people watching on outdoor big screens, people in airplanes ... they all went bonkers.

It was exactly what sports is supposed to be at its best, what it's supposed to stir in us, how it's supposed to make us feel. And it's ecumenical in a way almost nothing in this contentious world even approaches.

For instance, a lot of those howling and screaming and jumping around last night were men, I noticed. In case you thought only women cared about women's soccer.

Sorry, Gomer. The Matildas are every gender's team, it seems. ("Oh, no!" you're screaming. "Not more woke gender stuff!"). After they upset France last night they had more followers than the Aussie men's team on social media.  

Oh, yeah: And Cathy Freeman Park was sold out for Australia-France. Which has hardly been unusual in this women's World Cup.

You may think women's soccer is boring and irrelevant, in other words. But a whole bunch of other people aren't missing what you're missing.