World Cup: How Canada’s media reacted to Ireland’s defeat

A major reshuffle by a Canadian leader under pressure dominated the Wednesday night and Thursday morning discourse in the Great White North. Veterans had been surprisingly demoted in what was seen as the first signs of desperation in the camp.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet changes, not so much a reshuffle as an overhaul, began around 9am Wednesday local time in the capital. At that exact moment a full daytime away and on the other side of the world, Bev Priestman had rung her own changes. The Canada manager reaped instant reward, finding the kind of stability and success that the country’s leader will likely have to wait a lot longer for, if it arrives at all.

It was no surprise given how things eventually played out amid the squalls of Australia’s west coast that Priestman was the one who won so many of the plaudits from the punditocracy. The manager’s name rivalled Trudeau in dominating the headlines across Canadian media as this place digested a World Cup victory over Vera Pauw’s Ireland that for 45 minutes and more looked sure to be a defeat. Where Trudeau had summoned fresh faces, Priestman called in her veterans to swing it Canada’s way.

“Canada’s old guard turned things around for the team against Ireland,” ran the very straight headline in the Globe and Mail, the country’s national newspaper.

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A (hopefully) brief segue before we really dive in: while Ireland’s print media landscape has taken more black eyes than Louise Quinn and suffered plenty of cutbacks, it can still put Canada’s in the Ha’penny place. The Globe, as it’s known, is in fact the only truly national newspaper in the entire country. The other claimant to such a title, The National Post, has been cut so far to the bone that a proper sports section no longer exists. The Toronto Star, which has suffered plenty of budgetary issues itself, is the Globe’s biggest rival but is in essence a metropolitan with national scope. The rest are all city titles.

What that means in terms of this World Cup, where the country’s beloved Olympic champions are intent on making a deep run, is that there is just a single print-specific writer on the ground in Australia charting it for The Canadian Press, the country’s wire service. The rest of the Canadian press pack represent the national broadcaster or TSN, the TV rights holder here, with a couple from football-specific online outlets. It’s a quirky set-up.

Our segue turned out to be not brief enough but that can happen. Best-laid plans and all that. Priestman was reminded of as much four minutes into Wednesday’s clash when Katie McCabe Olimpico’d her way into the history books. Having made the brave decision to drop 40-year-old captain, leader, absolute legend Christine Sinclair to the bench for the first time ever in a World Cup, the manager was likely shuffling a little uneasily already.

On TSN, commentator Luke Wileman had been reminding his co-comm Amy Walsh that she had played in the last Sinclair-less World Cup game all the way back in 1999. Then McCabe rudely interrupted the reminiscing. “The worst possible start for Kailen Sheridan and Canada here in Perth,” boomed Wileman. “I don’t think you’re expecting the Olimpico but you have to respect Katie McCabe’s left boot,” chided Walsh.

Polite to plenty of faults, Canada were showing much too much respect for Ireland in those early stages. Or as Cathal Kelly put it in that Globe analysis: “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.”

It was all going swimmingly for Pauw’s tigers until the Perth deluge really picked up and Canada’s life raft appeared seconds before the interval. “It was about the only thing that went right for the Canadians in the first half,” observed The Canadian Press’s Neil Davidson of Megan Connolly’s unfortunate OG.

After that, Priestman’s reshuffling decided matters. Her introduction of Sinclair, Sophie Schmidt and Shelina Zadorsky brought 634 caps of experience and made a world of difference. “A Freaky Friday-ing of the two squads,” according to The Globe’s Kelly. “All of a sudden, it was Ireland that looked like it had been chugging NyQuil in the locker room ... Led by Ms Schmidt’s passing vision, Canada was suddenly finding spaces where none had existed before.” (The Globe’s honorifics policy is Canadian politeness taken to the nth degree.)

“For Canada, cheers weren’t what pulled them through,” observed Shireen Ahmed for CBC. “For ... Priestman, it was bravery in her choices, and for the Canadian players, it was being cognisant of their own energy.”

The energy, the experience, all of it went Canada’s way in the second half. They now look forward to Monday’s meeting with Australia with renewed hope. “That’s the Canada that they need to be,” former international Clare Rustad said on TSN.

“If Canada wants to win,” concluded Kelly in the Globe, they will have to do it in the “traditional Canadian way ... with its willingness to absorb and then deliver punishment.”

Pauw and her players shuffle off the World Cup stage knowing just how punishing it – and Canada – can be.