When Teresa Polias was a kid she could juggle the ball more than 3,000 times. “I’d set challenges, starting at zero,” she says. “I’d run in and say ‘dad, I got 10’. Ten developed into 100, then it was a real want for more.”
At the average rate of about 1,000 touches every 10 minutes, the future Sydney FC midfielder would be at it continuously for a good half-hour. “If you look at the world record though,” she continues, “it’s ridiculous, crazy. It’s like 100,000 or something. I’m not going to guess who it is, but I think it’s a Brazilian.”
It used to be a Brazilian. In 2003, Martinho Eduardo Orige kept a football in the air for 19 hours and 30 minutes, which was a world record until 2010, when English freestyler Dan Magness matched and raised him with 26 straight hours.
This segues into a mention of a brilliant Diego Maradona balancing-tricks-while-lying-down video, before she catches herself: “I shouldn’t have said that. I was such a weirdo, but it did really make that love for the game grow in me.”
Other backyard drills, such as consecutive passes on a wall, were diligently tallied, and skills she had learned from various academies drawn on diagrams. Sometimes all the action played out inside her pre-adolescent head where, while the ball was physically at her feet at her family home in Sydney, she was figuratively scoring in all sorts of big games all over the world.
Polias calls this “imaginative play”, and if that sounds like a term generally used by a primary school teacher it’s because she is one. She is also the W-League’s most experienced player, with an all-time record 145 appearances including 18 in finals and seven in grand finals. Save for two years with the Central Coast Mariners at its inception, all of those have been for Sydney. In the Sky Blues’ title-winning 2012-13 season she played every minute of every match. It was the same in 2018-19, by which time she was also club captain. Having seen other players hop around clubs – sometimes fruitlessly – in search of game time, she has never had an urge to up sticks.
Polias is Sydney FC, just as she is the W-League. Which is why 2021-22 will be notable by her absence. She is pregnant with her first child, and taking an indefinite break. It is not a retirement, rather a pause to reflect and reassess once she and her partner Foti have got their heads around parenthood – an experience somewhat intensified by the pandemic and Sydney’s lockdown.
As she says, she doesn’t want to close the door only to reopen it. “When I close that door, I want to close it for good,” she says. “I still love the game and I was still able to perform well, so I’ll just see how I bounce back from the pregnancy and if I can physically do it. That’s the sort of a challenge of love. I’ve always wondered if I could do that … I’m curious, so just thought I’d leave that open.”
At 31, she is not old, yet still has a career spanning two generations of footballers. “Can you believe I played with Ellyse Perry?” she says. “We met at youth stage in the state team, and to see what she’s gone on to do is incredible. We still check in with each other here and there, so it’s nice we’ve maintained that connection.
“I also played with Matildas who paved the way, like Heather Garriock and Lisa De Vanna. She’s a legendary Matilda. She basically put them on the map in the last decade and a half.”
Polias, too, is a Matilda. A part of the 2015 World Cup squad without playing, she was recalled for the 2019 Cup of Nations before narrowly missing the cut for the World Cup in France. Her 11 international caps have been big moments in her career, as have her W-League trophies. But they are not the only moments she will remember years down the track.
“The obvious answer is titles but … I don’t like putting so much praise on titles and owing all your success to titles,” she says. “There’s been hundreds of moments, like sharing it with your family. The pride and joy I see in my dad every weekend when he comes to the games is just, you can’t really explain what it means to me. The same with my partner, they’re like best mates and they love enjoying the game together. My family have been there for the big moments as well. They’ve shared it with me.”
The logistical and financial challenges faced by female athletes are well documented and no different for Polias, whose experience juggling two careers concurrently – at Sydney FC and McCallums Hill Public School – has become more challenging with each step women’s football takes towards the professionalism it has long desired. Where university timetables could be managed around training and games, full-time work does not offer the same level of flexibility, especially when player welfare dictates teams fly interstate a day or two before matches.
“I was finding it a lot more difficult, particularly the last season or two, to juggle both,” she says. “But I know that that’s a positive thing as well for the game. It goes to show how much, how far women’s football’s come.
“I’d like to think that what’s available now is the minimum going forward and anything less than that is not acceptable. I’m a football lover but when I started playing I always knew in the back of my mind it couldn’t ever be my living … although it is going to fill your soul and make your heart happy, when it comes to, you know, survival it won’t help you to keep going.
“I would love to see one day that young girls can be safe in football and look at it as a real career path. The idea is that one day women don’t have to smash themselves just to try and achieve their dreams.”
