Karalee player helps build Australian profile

Kristen Burrows

AHEAD of the first women's world championships, Karalee product Kate Lutkins said she wanted to help make a name for Australia in futsal. Having returned home, the 20-year-old can rest easy after Australia finished sixth from 12 teams at the week-long tournament in Spain. "I think we made our mark," a weary Lutkins said of the team's impact on the world stage. In her Australian debut, the home-grown girl was the second youngest on the Aussie team, which came within a goal of beating the eventual champions. The Aussies won the first two games against Italy and Paraguay, before being knocked from the top four by the host team Catalonia. "It was a really unlucky quarter-final, we should have won it," she said of the close encounter and what she described as the best game of the tournament. "We were up two-nil but we just didn't want it."

Given her first taste of a major international competition, Lutkins was in awe of what the rest of the world had to offer. "It was just awesome," she said. "Most of the teams had totally different styles." However, she admitted some slight rule changes made it a little bit more difficult, but managed to cope. One rule she found difficult to manage was the use of slide tackling, which is illegal in Australia. "We didn't adjust to that one," she said. "We just thought it was so dangerous, people were getting hurt. "It was quite frustrating (the different rules), we were getting penalised and you wouldn't know what for." Despite arriving back in Australia stiff and sore, Lutkins was back on her local court a day later.