Matildas have no shirts!!! Fire up

I say; Can you feel the passion, the big game, it's getting close. Bring your blokes in, and your sons, everyone. Australia are playing.

Tonight the Aussies can make history...again!

Grab anyone, anyone who loves sport and plonk em down at 6:50pm for the National Anthems of Australia and Canada.

Come Australia fire up for The Matildas!!

The Matildas team manager is Jo Sanders, she'll be on the bench next to Assistant Coach Robbie Hooker. Jo gets to travel the world organising the Matildas and Young Matildas.

Jo, the Matildas team manager, has sent us this update....what no shirts?Hey football fans

What a few days it's been.


The story of the shirts is too long to relay now, the summary is that all of our playing shirts were destroyed by the hotel laundry on Sunday, after much angst and many meetings and emails and calls, replacements from Australia are on their way here now, they will be police escorted from the airport and arrive at the stadium around 2 hours before the game (yes, VVIP shirts!).

I will be the most relieved looking person around before the game!

Then there's the typhoon story which was just as long - the matches in Shanghai and Hangzhou are affected, for some time it looked like ours would be too (the last round games are meant to be played at the same time), but FIFA's decision is that our match will proceed tonight and Norway v Ghana will be played tomorrow night (and yes, for football heads, that does give Norway an advantage - but the "force majeure" provision was enforced so our protests were to no avail).

So we have to wait in Chengdu until Friday (normally we move the day after a match), once we know the Norway result, before we move on to our next city.

Anyway I'd better press on. Our documentary crew - who have been following the team since earlier this year (watch out for it early next year on SBS) want to film a re-enactment of the shirts saga - watch out Hollywood, here I come! (not really, they just want to ask me a few questions ....).

Thank you so much for all your good luck and congratulations messages in the last few days. Apologies I haven't been replying individually, life is one big exciting hectic ride at the moment.

I'm sure you all know already, apparently the press are doing a pretty good job back home covering the Matildas. The game is on at 5pm Chengdu time, so 7pm Sydney time. Biggest game ever. Aiming for our first quarter final berth at a World Cup. Can I write the word exciting again?

Ciao for now, enjoy the game and cheer LOUDLY!!

Cheers, Jo