"We feel she's ready. She feels she's ready" - After 13 months out, Matildas attacker Holly McNamara ready to return for City

Melbourne City coach Michael Matricciani won't start Holly McNamara in her return from an ACL injury against Canberra this weekend but has no qualms about the "30 to 40 minutes" she's targeting.

After 13 months on the sidelines, Holly McNamara will make her much-anticipated return to A-League Women table-toppers Melbourne City against Canberra United this Sunday. And while one might think that a player coming off their third ACL injury in a young career would be tempered in their return, coach Michael Matricciani’s observation of the Matildas' attacker in training suggests she’s ready to hit the ground running.

McNamara, 21, re-aggravated an ACL injury that she initially picked up in her right knee as a 15-year-old in a win over Newcastle last November, carried off the field in tears after she went down in the process of scoring a 92nd-minute winner. Coming just days after she’d earned a re-call to the Matildas, that injury arrived just under two years after she’d ruptured the ACL in her left knee in a 2-1 win over Sydney in February of 2022 and that came a few years on from a foot stress fracture that delayed the start of her A-League Women career.

Now, though, McNamara, whose talent is such that she is still regarded as one of Australia’s most exciting attacking prospects despite her numerous stints on the sideline, is set to return to the pitch ahead of schedule — half an hour against City’s U15 boys side last week serving as a final test she passed before being named in this week’s squad to face Canberra.

“We're very confident and we think this is the right time to put her in,” said Matricciani.

“When I came in three months ago, the conversation was that her recovery was going a little bit slow and that it was going to be around Christmas, maybe early, Jan. [But] she's been ticking all the boxes and her strength testing is very high and balanced on both sides of her body. That's very important when coming back.

“Everyone's very confident that she's ticked all the boxes. She's very confident. She's been in full team training for four weeks now. She's played an internal match against under-15 boys, which is a high intensity, a lot higher than what we play in our league. So we're very confident.”

The three-time Matilda, a member of Tony Gustavsson’s squad that went to the Asian Cup just a month before her 2022 ACL injury, won’t start for City on Sunday, still needing to both build up her physical capacity and work her way back into a team that sits atop the table.

Matricciani flagged that 30 to 40 minutes would be her most likely contribution this coming weekend, with that likely to rise quickly as she refamiliarises herself with the cut and thrust of competitive football in the weeks that follow given the relatively high baseline of conditioning the club maintains.

“Conditioning-wise, we do a lot of conditioning games,” he said. “On Wednesday, we played a 26-minute conditioning match. We've been building her. We're pretty confident she's got 30 or 40 minutes in her, and then we'll slowly build from there. But depending on the match, we never calculate when a sub is going to be needed so whenever we think she's needed will be the time we bring her on; what's best for the side.

“The girls were a little bit hesitant with her when she started full contact about four weeks ago. But if anything, she's been very physical to our players. So she's not scared. She gets stuck in, she feels very confident, and there's been a lot of contact happening over the last two, or three weeks in challenges. Everyone's fighting for spots in our team. So we encourage that in training. So we feel she's ready. She feels she's ready.”

Boosting City’s efforts to manage McNamara’s return to the side is that they’re doing so in a position of strength, particularly in the attack.

Not only did Matricciani’s side take advantage of Brisbane’s loss to Wellington to vault into first place on the table over the previous fortnight’s split-round, their 13 goals pace the league and they kept their first clean sheet of the season in their last hitout – a 2-0 win over Western Sydney.

The coach noting that he was “seeing better movements, better combinations, [and the] timing of the runs are getting better,” City’s 3.2 expected goals (xG) was their highest of the season in the win over Wanderers and their 0.7 xG conceded was their most miserly of 2024-25.

Five players -- Mariana Speckmaier, Lourdes Bosch, Alexia Apostolakis, Rhianna Pollicina, and Kathryn Harvey -- have all scored multiple goals City this campaign while Leah Davidson and Bryleeh Henry both netted maiden international goals during the Matildas' wins over Taiwan last week; Karly Roestbakken and Laura Hughes also a part of Sermanni’s squad for those games.

“We're not relying on her,” Matricciani said of McNamara. “She's going to add to the quality that we have in our squad. We all know she's a super player. Is she going to come back after nearly 13 months and [immediately] be the Holly that we knew before? Probably not, but if she does, great.

“But the most important thing is that she comes out, she feels confident in her body, she enjoys her football, and she tries to help the team win. And that's been her mentality the last couple of weeks as we've been planning to get her right for this match; she's just excited to be back. As we are.

“We have an almost fully fit squad. There are probably about 19 players up for selection this week, which is a good headache for me to have. We're very proud of the girls who went away on international duty and represented Australia. A couple scored as well, which is great, and hopefully, they bring that goal-scoring form back to us as well.

“We also had TJ [Vlanjic], who went and represented Serbia, who unfortunately lost to Sweden, who are a world-class side, in their Euro qualifiers. She's back now with us, ready for this week as well.”

After winning their first two games of 2024-25, Canberra’s bright start to the campaign has faded in recent weeks, with Antoni Jagarinec’s unit coming into Sunday’s game on a three-game winless run.

Jagarinec will be back in the dugout at AAMI Park after missing his side’s 2-1 loss to Central Coast due to personal reasons – assistant Ahmed Ugool in charge of that game – and Matricciani is of the view that he’s coming back to a side unlucky to lose that game and who will pose a new challenge this Sunday.

“When we look at the stats and I re-watch the match against Central Coast they just played, they dominated the ball,” he said. “They had mid-50 % possession, they had 23 shots to seven. Over the course of that match, for me, they were the better side and deserved to win. Credit to Central Coast, they found a way to win, and that's always a sign of a good side.

“Tactically they do things differently than a lot of other teams in the league. If they do the same, we will be prepared. If they change then we'll have to adapt.”

Header Image: Melbourne City