Jess Fishlock said an emotional farewell to international football as Wales were beaten 2-1 by Australia at the Cardiff City Stadium.<\/p>\n
Fishlock played for 92 minutes as she won her 166th and final cap, but there was no happy end to the midfielder’s sparkling Wales career thanks to a late Australian winner from Caitlin Foord.<\/p>\n
In truth the result was not of great significance, for this game will be remembered as the end of an era, with Wales left to contemplate the future without their most influential player.<\/p>\n
Fishlock, wearing the captain’s armband, performed with the blend of quality and endeavour which has made her a Welsh footballing great, before waving goodbye to a crowd of more than 11,000 as she was substituted in added time. <\/p>\n
It seemed for a while as though Wales would send Fishlock off with a draw against the team ranked 15th in the world, after a memorable first international goal from 18-year-old Mared Griffiths cancelled out Courtney Nevin’s opener.<\/p>\n
But as Wales faded in the closing stages, Foord steered home Kyra Cooney-Cross’ centre to give the visitors victory.<\/p>\n
There had been an early fright for Wales when Katrina Gorry, one of a number of WSL players in the Australian team, struck the top of Safia Middleton-Patel’s crossbar from 20 yards.<\/p>\n
But Rhian Wilkinson’s side settled, with Ceri Holland seeing a decent penalty appeal turned down – after Clare Hunt’s clumsy challenge – before her cross almost teed up Fishlock for a 49th international goal.<\/p>\n
Wales’ growing momentum was halted by a soft Australian goal, as Sam Kerr \u2013 playing her first international since 2023 \u2013 could not get a touch on Courtney Nevin’s curling free-kick and the ball missed everyone before bouncing into the net.<\/p>\n
Yet Wales responded admirably, with Hannah Cain denied by Matildas keeper Teagen Micah before the equaliser came.<\/p>\n
Fishlock was involved, taking a touch to tee herself for a shot only for Clare Wheeler’s challenge to send the ball rolling to Griffiths.<\/p>\n
The Manchester United youngster was facing away from goal, but glanced over her shoulder before lifting a shot on the turn over Micah and inside the far post.<\/p>\n
But there was to be no Fishlock fairytale, as Australia’s best spell was rewarded with the late winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jess Fishlock said an emotional farewell to international football as Wales were beaten 2-1 by Australia at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-224896","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}