How the beach and touch footy brought Michelle Heyman back to football

It was the decision that could have changed the whole W-League landscape in 2021.

Michelle Heyman, emerging from a COVID lockdown spent in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, was loving life by the beach and getting her slowly returning competitive fix via a Tuesday night social touch football competition.

Having grown up on the New South Wales south coast, the coastal air was clearing Heyman’s mind of the fog that initially drove her away from the Matildas, and then away from football altogether. Her body wasn’t recovering from injury, and her mind was well past potential breaking point.

But she loved playing touch footy. Her inner elite athlete battled with the idea of post-match beers, but she was loving the team environment again.

Then one day, she kicked a football.

She hadn’t had anything to do with the round ball game since the end of the 2018/19 season, where she managed just one goal in 12 appearances for Adelaide United.

“I was about to sign up for another season of touch,” Heyman explains.

“And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s weird.’ So then I took the ball to a park for a bit of a kick around, and then I started dribbling it while I was running, and I realised that I just missed that connection with the ball.

“And it all went from there.”

‘I called Vicki and asked for a job’

What she nonchalantly summarises into “it” was a full-blown W-League comeback. The then-former W-League goal-scoring record holder had self-seeded the idea of a return to the game.

Heyman was sure she could do it. But it took her partner to remind her the path might not be quite as simple as just slotting straight back into the highest competition in the country.

“I said to Christine my partner, ‘I think I’m going to do it … what are your thoughts if I go and play W-League again?’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Don’t you need to play a league before W-League? You can’t just walk into it!’

“And I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, maybe you’re right.'”

Undeterred, Heyman spoke with former Young Matildas coach Vicki Linton, who herself was in the process of becoming Canberra United’s new coach.

“She [Linton] was all on-board with it, but she said, ‘Michelle, there is no way you’re going to come from not playing anything straight back into a W-League team,'” Heyman says.

An NPL stint with Sydney University alongside Nicki Flannery and Grace Maher was the next step, in which Heyman discovered her two good mates were planning Canberra homecomings of their own, from Melbourne Victory and Newcastle, respectively.

“I had coffee with Nicki and Grace, and they both said, ‘We’re going back to Canberra,’ and I kind of felt a bit jealous because I’d not had that conversation yet. But I told them I wanted to come back, too.

“We built this little thing away from everyone, and then I just did it. I called Vicki and asked her for a job.”

It’s fair to say that not too many coaches have former league scoring record-holders calling to offer their services.

“I had a pretty good resume,” Heyman laughs.

But Linton knew her body of work well anyway, and followed Heyman’s progress with Sydney Uni eagerly. By this stage, the idea of a comeback was all over social media, and though Canberra United could barely contain the secret, Heyman’s return to the lime green no.23 shirt was still one of the last announcements the club made.

Australian football’s original golden girl was back.

The benefit of time away

As far as comebacks go, Heyman’s was top shelf.

She found the net twice in regulation time against Adelaide United in Canberra, but her old club led 3-2 very late in the game. Laura Hughes found an equaliser in the first minute of injury time, but the home side wasn’t done.

As she has done so many times in a glittering career, Heyman found the dramatic winner to secure a 4-3 win. The clock showed 90 + 3 minutes elapsed. After a couple of disappointing seasons, there was instantly a new air of excitement about Canberra United again, and Michelle Heyman was back doing what she did best.

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“It was such a nice feeling. To hear my name and number get called and to hear the crowd, it was just something dreams are made of,” Heyman said of her return to the game.

Heyman started the W-League season seven goals shy of Sam Kerr’s new record of 70 goals, and when the question arose as to whether the record was on her radar, Heyman said matter-of-factly: “I need seven goals.”

With the record now hers again – she passed Kerr’s mark a fortnight ago against Perth – she confirms how much it drove her to succeed in the comeback.

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“A lot,” she says, equally matter-of-factly.

“It’s my job to score goals.”

And now that it’s done, there’s a great relief that’s been freed.

“I felt very confident that it was going to happen, and now it’s just fun. It was fun before, but it was a bit daunting because of everyone else. Everyone was thinking you’ve got to get this record, and it was a big thing for everyone else on top of my shoulders. Now, it’s more about how many more can you get?”

Michelle Heyman is back, and she’s a joy to watch. Her smile is back to its infectious best, and her love of the game is there for all to see on the pitch, and just as importantly, on the score sheet.

When this season is done, someone somewhere will raise a toast to the healing powers of time away from the game, the Sydney eastern suburbs beaches and Tuesday night touch football.

The W-League has its headline star once again.