SYDNEY — Australia feels as if it has spent the past two weeks hopscotching from fretful to relieved to frenzied to delirious to the preferable kind of berserk. Evidence seems to mount daily on how people have gone gaga for their Matildas.
There’s a daffy debate stirred by the prime minister about a potential national holiday should Australia win this World Cup, the yammering probably unwise given the two rigorous rounds remaining. A Brisbane newspaper, honoring super-duper-star Sam Kerr, deftly rewrote its masthead last weekend from the familiar Courier-Mail to Kerr-ier-Mail. It’s possible to walk a sidewalk among the gold-and-green throngs and see a father and daughter with the daughter’s hair dyed half-green and half-gold — sure, yeah, predictable — but with the father’s beard identically dyed.
