Mary Fowler returns for Matildas ‘Enjoying her football’ after a considerable time away from the game due to a mental health break.
Mary Fowler will return to the Matildas squad for the SheBelieves Cup after sitting out international friendlies on home soil late last year to refresh mentally and physically.
Australia’s 23-man squad for the event in the United States later this month includes the standout forward; World Cup hero Cortnee Vine and captain Sam Kerr were left off the roster.
With five goals and three assists in her last five WSL games for Manchester City, Fowler has been in excellent form since choosing to leave the Australia squad for friendlies against Brazil last November.
“She’s playing very well, she looks on top of her game, she looks fit, she looks healthy,” Matildas interim head coach Tom Sermanni said. “She looks like she’s enjoying her football.
“She’s still some ways away from what I would call reaching her prime. She is already a world-class footballer. A football career is a journey, in many ways, and she’s on a really good trajectory on that journey at the moment.
“I want her to really step up in the national team and, if you like, lead by how she plays in the games. That’s important, but it’s also important for us to remember that she is getting good experience at the moment, but she’s still, in relative terms, quite a young player.”
In order to give the 31-year-old Matildas captain Kerr more time to recover from a major knee injury, Kerr has once again been left out of the team. Her appearance in a London court on Monday on charges of inflicting racially aggravated intentional harassment, alarm, or distress following a night out in January 2023 had nothing to do with her absence. Kerr entered a not guilty plea. The trial goes on.
“She’s still injured, she’s not ready to play again yet,” Sermanni said. “I had some video of her and her physio over at Chelsea last week, doing some fairly strong running, so she’s in the process of coming back.
“But I would still suggest, from an injury perspective, it will probably be sometime in March before she’s back on the field.”