Mackenzie Arnold: 'I went there thinking the Matildas camp was a holiday camp'

If the NRLW had started years earlier, Mackenzie Arnold may be donning a Brisbane Broncos jersey instead of a green and gold Matildas one.

The 29-year-old grew up dreaming of playing alongside her hero, Queensland great Darren Lockyer, for her hometown and spent hours kicking the oval ball with her brother.

But that wasn't going to happen, so she chose the next best sport on her list. A decision Tony Gustavsson would be grateful his star goalkeeper made.

"I'm a big rugby league fan, so I always wanted to play rugby league for the Broncos and that was never going to happen, Mum was never going to put me in that sport," Arnold chuckled.

"I honestly thought I was going to be playing with Darren Lockyer until then. My brother played growing up and ... I didn't really have any role models in football like I did with rugby league.

"I grew up playing football with the boys at school and a couple of them were family friends and ended up joining the Burleigh Bulldogs at the time. So I think the next best thing was football and I really enjoyed that, but it was more of a social thing for me to be honest."

The West Ham goalkeeper spent her first several years on the outfield until, again, her hand was forced and she fell into something she would grow to love and excel at.

Arnold was trying out for a representative team and they needed a goalkeeper, she convinced her parents to let her do it - under the condition she wore a mouthguard - and the rest is history.

"They didn't have a goalkeeper at the time and the coach sort of I think I must have been 13-14 and a coach went up to my mom and said look, she'd probably not going to make it as a fullback but we do need a goalkeeper," she told Optus Sport.

"I just jumped in goals just for the sake of it and coming from rugby league with my brother kicking the ball to me, for however many years that was, I wasn't scared of the ball.

"My mum still said no ... and then the following year, I had to join my first girl's team again, they needed one and I would just jump in and see how I liked it, and I ended up loving it."

Macca - as she's known by her teammates, friends and family - is known for her easy-going attitude and back then, her lack of knowledge of who the Matildas even were.

So much so, she didn't realise what she was in for at her first Australian camp as a teenager.

"My first camp I think was under 17s and I was 15 or 16, and I had gotten picked up from the nationals that we did in Coffs Harbour," Arnold said.

"They said, 'Do you want to come along to a camp?' and I honestly could not tell you what it was at that time. I was like, 'Oh yeah, my friends are going. Sure. Why not?'.

"Looking back now. It was actually the last camp to be selected for pre-qualifiers which was a trip to Indonesia or whatever it was and I completely bottled it. I went there thinking it was a holiday camp. I didn't really know who the Matildas were and it was just a disaster.

"I was in a QAS at the time and I went back and Jeff Hopkins, who was the coach, he's said, 'What's happened?' I said, 'I've got no idea. I had no idea the importance of it'.

"From that moment, he said to me, 'This is something that you can actually make a career out of, you realize that?' At the time, I was like, 'No, absolutely not'. I didn't have a clue.

"That was when I started training with the Clare Polkinghorne's, [Alicia] Ferguson at the time, and that was when it got a lot more serious for me."

From there, she set her eyes on a career in the world game.

She went on to play in the A-League Women - or the W-League as it was known then - for Perth Glory, Brisbane Roar, Western Sydney Wanderers, and Canberra United. Followed by her Matildas debut back in 2012.

The WSL star has struggled for game time in the national set-up since her debut against Chinese Taipei, managing only 34 caps, until recently.

Arnold shone in the Matildas Cup of Nations win, taking home player of the tournament honours, and throwing her name in the ring for a start at the FIFA Women's World Cup next month on home soil.

Her dedication to the team, however, has never waivered over those years on the bench for her country. The former Arna-Bjørnar puts her recent form in Gustavsson's side, putting her above the preference list over Lydia Williams and Teagan Micah, to her move to the Hammers.

Despite going to two previous World Cups with the Matildas, the 2023 edition in Australia and New Zealand offers her a chance to play her first minutes at such a tournament.

"Being in the position that I am now and looking back on the career that I've had with the national team and not having the most success that I would have wanted, [this World Cup's] really, really special to me," Arnold admitted.

"This section of my career I would say I'm really starting to come into my own, I think this is the first time that I really felt part of the team and that I belong there. I've always felt like I belong but I never really felt like yeah, that spot's mine.

"I obviously know I still have a lot of competition with Lydia [Williams] and Teagan [Micah] and that's never been forgotten, but I'm just worrying about myself and know that the mindset I'm in now is where I wanted to be for a long time. So I'm really happy that I've gotten to this spot and I think that if I can take it to the World Cup, we could have a really successful World Cup."

Alongside West Ham, she credits the league in England itself for improving the mental side of her game.

As well as a multi-year career and a full-time league that means she doesn't have to move and do the old Australian summer in the ALW and winter in the NWSL move.

"It has helped my mindset more than I can put into words, and I think I'm very appreciative of West Ham for doing that," she said.

"It is probably the first time that I've felt like a club has sort of felt like home to me and somewhere that I felt myself wanting to stay, which I think has helped my performance for sure.

"It's more the mindset that I was struggling to take into my national team games and I think after facing some of the best football players in the world in this league it just gives you that confidence and changes your mindset into thinking that you're more than capable of doing this, you can compete with the best players in the world.

"As much as it sucks to have been in that mindset, it has definitely helped me to get where I am now. It's my personality, it always has been, I'm just a little bit too easygoing sometimes and that has gotten me into trouble a couple of times but I've had to go through that and know what it takes now to be at this level.

"Thankfully, the lessons I've learned have helped me in that sense. It would have been great if it was two to three years earlier but we have the World Cup in a few weeks and I feel like I'm in a pretty good position."

Arnold has 40 days' to secure her spot between the posts for Australia's first game against Ireland on July 20.

Originally published for Optus Sport on June 14, 2023