Coast star tackling the world’s best

THE Matildas’ Elise KellondKnight has transferred her beautiful mind to the pitch.

Kellond-Knight’s academic achievements have levelled her in the same class as the highly educated former Brazil soccer star, the late Socrates.

She is a pharmacist – perhaps Cleopatra the Alchemist would be a fitting nickname iff she was Brazilian – while Socrates had a doctorate in medicine.

Cleopatra, according to legend, was credited with creating the alembic, which was used for distilling chemicals in the third century.

Kellond-Knight owns a Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science and is in the process off earning a Master of Pharmacy.

“Football has gotten in the way and I haven’t been able to finish the masters,’’ KellondKnight said from Edmonton.

“When I take up a subject I get involved. I’m like a sponge, I want to know everything. “It helps in football. “Some of the coaches have said ‘I have a confidence in you’ because when they tell me something to do you don’t need to tell me twice, I know what to do.

“I also do work in the Amcal chemist on Hope Island and they have been brilliant in giving me time off for football.”

Kellond-Knight is by far one of the most intelligent footballers in the world today.

It’s a deep-seated soccer intelligence that KellondKnight refers to as being part of her upbringing on the Gold Coast.

Being a leftie also has its benefits, with scientists prov- ing they use the more creative side of the brain. “I study the game,’’ she said. “When I was really young I was also left-handed but my mum (Jan), she was a school teacher and she trained me to write with the right hand.

“I think if she let me be I would have been completely left-handed.

“I throw left-handed, I play golf with the right hand, cricket with the right hand, and I reckon we’re (left-handers) balanced, share it around.”

But her rise to the top comes from humble beginnings on the Gold Coast.

The Southport-born Matildas screening midfielder smiled profusely when talking about her first soccer club, the Runaway Bay Hawks.

She joined the Hawks boys’ team as a three-year old following in the footsteps of her brother, who is three years older and she still lives in the same house.

“I was ridiculously young,’’ Kellond-Knight said.