‘All we needed was each other’
Bronze medallist squad is that rarest of teams: Unselfish, committed, loving, graceful
SAO PAULO — If you thought what unfolded on the field, where the Canadian football women beat Brazil 2-1 to win their second consecutive Olympic bronze medal, was beautiful, you should know what happened off it.
You should know the stuff these girls and women are made of.
This is that rarest of teams: Unselfish, committed, loving, graceful.
As the baby of it, 17-year-old Deanne Rose of Alliston, Ont., said “We knew all we needed was each other.”
She enters Grade 12 this fall, but like all the kids, she has been schooled by the sage old hands.
One of them, veteran Rhian Wilkinson, said, “This was probably my last game.”
Personally, she said, she had a tough tournament; she didn’t play at the high level she expected of herself.
She must have worn the disappointment in herself, or the fatigue of it, on her freckled face, or she must actually have said something, because Melissa Tancredi told her, “Let us carry you over the finish line.”
Wilkinson was near tears, blinking hard, just repeating it.
“I can’t help but look back,” she said, not just to the 2012 team in London, but to “the women who gave as much as we do, but got no rewards.”
Then she looked forward, to the kids — Rose, with her wicked wheels who scored the first goal and set up Christine Sinclair’s second and almost scored another herself; the indomitable Ashley Lawrence, Janine Beckie and Jesse Fleming — and said, “I’m just so excited for the future of this program.”
And of head coach John Herdman, Wilkinson said, “We are lucky to have him, the passion he has for the game — and for us. You can see what he’s done (with the development of the program) already.”
Herdman, senior Canadian soccer officers said Friday night, has been locked up “to the 2020 Games, and beyond.”
All in all, Wilkinson said, “It’s a really cool time to be a female in soccer in Canada.”
Everyone knew that for Tancredi, 34, these will be her last Games. So when, in the second half, she trotted off an Olympic pitch for the last time, young Beckie replacing her, she took a minute and waved to the crowd. She was saying goodbye.
As soon as she reached the bench, Tank, as she’s called, was wrapped up in Herdman’s embrace, and then by everyone else.
Diana Matheson, also a veteran if one with a teenager’s legs, was red-eyed and tremulous. It was an emotional year for this team, she said, especially for Sinclair.
It was Sinclair’s name that seemed to catch at her throat.
“I’m just so thankful for what we do and the people we do it with,” she said.
Usually, the team has a special message, or speaker, before a game. This time, Matheson said, it was Herdman.
“We’re so lucky to hear that guy talk every day,” she said, smiling.
When the game was over, and the players went into the locker room for a fast shower before the medal ceremony, the volunteers formed a guard of honour for them.
Brazil was certainly the favourite of the crowd (at 39,718, easily the biggest of the women’s tournament), but this was the third game for Canada at Corinthians Arena, and they weren’t without admirers here.
Many of those fans stuck around for the medal ceremony.
At the heart of everything, as it has been for 16 long years, is the great one, the captain, Sinclair.
At the final whistle, the camera caught her bursting into tears.
“Yeah,” she said, still full of tears at the post-game press conference.
“It’s been a hard year for me. I put everything into this, sacrificed things… I was not going to leave here without a medal. There were days where I didn’t think I’d be here.
“There are moments when you think, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ ”
But, she said, she has amazing friends, an amazing coach who stuck by her and helped her.
They carried her across that finish line. That’s what they do.