Katrina Gorry Extract

Allen & Unwin
4 days ago
5 min read

Read an extract from Katrina Gorry's memoir, releasing June 3.

Katrina Gorry by Katrina Gorry with Robert Wainwrig

PROLOGUE

The Numbers Game

It wouldn’t be much of a football team if everyone was the same type of player, would it?

We need agile goalkeepers, resolute defenders, nippy midfielders, pacy wingers, tall forwards and instinctive strikers. There must be speedsters and chasers, tacklers and dribblers, passers and headers, and savers and scorers.

A successful team is made of eleven individuals whose on-field roles and relationships have traditionally been defined by our jersey numbers—the goalkeeper is always number 1, fullbacks wear 2 and 3, centre backs 4 and 5, defensive midfielder 6, wingers 7 and 11, central midfielder 8, and striker 9.

In my junior days I wore number 10, which signifies chief playmaker and attacking midfielder, but when I moved into senior teams I had to start again and work my way up through the ranks.

Other numbers creep into the game depending on the size of the squad. Number 13 was my first jersey when I joined Melbourne Victory as a seventeen-year-old and played off the bench. I got the number 8 jersey at Adelaide United the following year, and played as an attacking midfielder whose job was to score goals but also provide a link between attack and defence.

By the time I joined my home club Brisbane Roar a few seasons later I was given the coveted number 10 shirt because I had become a more senior and successful player.

When I was selected to play for the Matildas in 2012, I was back at the bottom of the heap. The number 10 jersey was taken so I decided to do the next best thing and show my desire to improve. I chose number 19 because 1 + 9 = 10. Over the years since, I have often played the number 10 role depending on the team structure and tactics.

In 2024 things changed again when I went to the Olympics with the Matildas. It was my first Olympics since my daughter Harper’s arrival and I now wore the number 6 jersey, which not only was Clara’s playing number, but also signified my adjusted role in the team as a defensive midfielder or, as then coach Tony Gustavsson described it, the team’s quarterback.

I have been described as ‘a whirring, bustling ball of metronomic energy in the centre of the park’. It makes me happy to be seen that way because that is how I see myself, as a player prepared to run and run and run for the team. Individual goals are a joyous moment, but so too is making a tackle to turn the ball over, or setting up a goal through a chain of passes.

I love sprinting back as fast as I can to make a tackle, to exert myself to a new level. I even tried to push myself in one match to get cramp because I hadn’t experienced the burning sensation before, which made me feel as if I wasn’t working hard enough. When I finally got a cramp, my groin seized up and I couldn’t walk after the match. I remember thinking, ‘Ah, so that’s what everyone is talking about.’

But I am more than a footballer.

I am a mother. I am a partner, a daughter and a sister. I am gay. I am small and I am Australian. I am fierce. I am loyal. I love my family and my friends. I can be funny and cheeky, but I can also be vulnerable and emotional.

These are all the things that make up me, as Coco Chanel once wrote: ‘A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.’

It’s a bit strange that I’m quoting a fashion designer, given that my favourite outfit is a tracksuit and I hate dressing up, but her observation sums up the most important things in a person’s existence—their identity and ambitions.

They are such powerful words but so full of complexities.

I was christened Katrina-Lee, not for any particular reason other than Mum liked the name Katrina and hyphenated names. The name Katrina-Lee appeared on some of my early team sheets and archived match results, but these days I don’t use it.

The reason? Because that’s the name that Mum would use if I was in trouble, which was fairly often when I was a teenager: ‘Katrina-Lee, what have you done? Katrina-Lee, get in here. Katrina-Lee, where are you?’ You get the idea.

I don’t see myself as particularly rebellious or naughty but I have always tended to push boundaries, particularly when someone tells me I can’t do something. It becomes a challenge—‘Yeah, well I’ll show you.’ It began as a child when I was told that girls can’t play football.

It probably got me into a bit of trouble as a teenager, at school and with my parents. But I’m older and more mature now and tend to make wiser decisions about what to challenge and why. I pick my fights a little better now. Although some people, including my dad, Peter, would say that I still need to learn a little discipline on the field. I have been known to get a little feisty on the pitch, most notably during the pressure and emotion of the World Cup matches in 2023.

Most of the time I’m known at home as Trine or Trina, while friends call me Mini because at 154 centimetres (five foot one inch), I am small. It doesn’t bother me. Never really has. Rather, it has been a driving force in my life inspiring me to achieve more than people think I can achieve.

Several coaches told me that I was too small to ever be selected to play for the Matildas, and at the time of writing this I’ve played 107 matches in national colours.

There has always been another burning desire in my life. I told my family and friends when I was thirteen years old that I wanted to be a mum and do it by myself. It was a strange thing for someone so young to say. Most women want a wedding and a partner and security, but I wanted to do it on my own because I’d decided that I didn’t need anybody else. I’m not sure that I fully believed that back then but, when the time came, that’s what actually happened.

But then my identity evolved again. I unexpectedly fell in love with a Swedish girl and, suddenly, the teenager who didn’t need anyone now wanted to share her world and life with a partner. Not only that, but we had another child, Koby, so now we are four.

I grew up with eight brothers and sisters—well, seven brothers and one sister to be exact. I once told my stepmother, Michelle, that I loved being in a big family because I could always find someone to play with, but family is more significant than that to me. I have my family members’ names tattooed on my body because they mean so much to me. I love their company and their support; I love their similarities and adore their differences.

My parents, Linda and Peter, still follow me to virtually every match I play. It’s not because they live and breathe my wins and losses (although they do) but because they are proud of their daughter and who I am.

These are some of the things that make me who I am.

This is me.

An extract from Katrina Gorry by Katrina Gorry with Robert Wainwright.

Available June 3 wherever books are sold.