THINK AUSTRALIA, THINK Sam Kerr.

Ireland will have to keep the Matildas captain and Chelsea star well shackled if they are to make the dream start at their first World Cup.

Over 80,000 tickets have been sold for the opener at Sydney’s Stadium Australia on Thursday night, and there’s no shortage of hype around the co-hosts.

The team ranked 10th in the world are in fine fettle, having enjoyed statement friendly wins over France and England of late, and are widely backed to go deep into the tournament.

Vera Pauw’s Ireland will be looking to spoil the party, a result appearing hard got. But they’ve enjoyed similar scalps before. Stopping Kerr, her incredible movement and her service, will be key to that.

Louise Quinn has had some “serious” battles with her through the years, the pair locking horns in the WSL and in Ireland’s 3-2 friendly win over the under-strength Australians in September 2021.

“It’s rare but I felt like I got one up on her with the Irish team in Tallaght and that is something that I will carry forward with me,” Quinn told the Irish media in Brisbane in the build-up to the abandoned warm-up game against Colombia.

“She’s very impressive, very strong, easily one of the best strikers in the world now. For me, you concentrate on the whole thing but I definitely have an individual battle on my hands — that is essentially what I want.

“What I want to so is to not let her score essentially. Keep her out of the game. She really creates moments out of nothing but it has to be 100% for the 90 minutes.

“I can’t wait for the challenge to be honest, this is what you play for, to play against the very best in the world. And she is one of the best. We’ve proved before against Australia that we can put something up against her and she was on the pitch that day and had her chances.”

Quinn smiles when it’s put to her that Kerr was “pissed off” in Tallaght. With 63 Australia and 54 Chelsea goals to her name to date, she was held scoreless on her 100th Matildas cap.

“Listen, a team isn’t shaped around one player,” she stresses. “We didn’t go out to say, ‘Let’s piss her off a bit.’ It’s how we play, it’s how we defend, how we stick together, close off players and threats from where it comes.

“And that means cutting it off at the source at times. We all know she is fantastic in the air so it is about cutting off the supply from crosses. It’s going to change every game. We’re not saying she is the [only] one to watch.

“[Caitlin] Foord and [Steph] Catley, we can try and get as much info from Katie as possible on that. You see their qualities. We need to cut from the source, frustrate them and defending is one of our strong points and it’s what we do after that.

“They’re an incredibly talented team. It’s defending from the top, we start from there.”

Ireland are sweating on the fitness of Denise O’Sullivan, with an update expected on Monday, but full focus remains on Thursday night.

In Sydney, Ireland centurion and Birmingham City captain Quinn will realise an inconceivable World Cup dream. And that has slowly but surely sunk through various different moments over the past few weeks.

“I had a really random one after the Zambia game and we had a weekend off. And I was just chatting to my girlfriend about something, and I was saying ‘I’ll do that after I get back from the World Cup.’ And I actually stopped for a second and realised that yes, I am going to a World Cup.

“I had to stop for a moment. I got emotional. Because we’ve been talking about this all along but now it’s really confirmed. It hit me. We were just getting the dinner ready and chatting, ‘We’ll do this after the World Cup. It was really bizarre, a really emotional moment and I didn’t think that was going to happen.”

It’s happening.

• You can read The 42′s sit-down interview with Louise Quinn here>