Players from Denmark Soccer Club make trip to Perth to meet Nordic counterparts at World Cup training session

Two worlds collided when soccer players from the small coastal Great Southern town of Denmark in WA brushed shoulders with their Nordic counterparts at a World Cup training session on Sunday. The Danish national women’s soccer team is in Perth ahead of their FIFA Women’s World Cup opener against China, and held an open practice at the Kingsway Regional Sporting Complex in Perth in front of keen spectators. A total of nine junior and senior players from Denmark Soccer Club made the trip up to the city for the opportunity to meet professional players from the 13th ranked team in the world. Earlier this year Denmark Soccer Club launched a video message in conjunction with Tourism WA, the Shire of Denmark and Denmark Chamber of Commerce, encouraging the Northern European nation’s players to visit, even pledging to paint the town red and white in support of their World Cup campaign. Denmark Junior Soccer Club president Becky Winter said there were hopes of the team making an appearance in the Great Southern but a busy schedule and long travel distance made it impractical. “Nine of us got to go up there and watch the training session, it was a great experience for all of us just to be able to do something a little bit different was great,” she said. “There was an initial hope they would visit and we did speak to a few of the players up there and an assistant manager about it. “He said they would have loved to have been able to come down here but the trip might have just been a little bit too far.” Denmark resident Kingsley Gibson donated specially-made shirts for the local team which were then gifted to the Danes after their training session in Perth. “We approached to give them the T-shirts after the session and soon after they had all realised it was us that were behind the video message,” Winter said. “They were lovely to us, their coach Lars (Søndergaard) came out past the security gates, thanked us for the support and said the team really enjoyed the fact they had people in Australia supporting them. “We had a mix of ages as well as girls and boys come up, it was a wonderful experience. “It was especially good for the young girls to see that it’s not just a male sport, women also play at a really high standard. “It showed the younger ones that they are just humans like everybody else and that anyone can take on professional sport. “Denmark was really lucky and fortunate to have Karys (Aplin) from the recreation centre to get the Instagram post up and running as well as Tourism WA who came up with the original idea.” Perth was selected by Denmark as its base for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023 following site inspections by team representatives in 2022. Kingsway Reserve and DoubleTree by Hilton Waterfront are hosting the team as a central location and training site for the duration of the team’s group stage matches. The Danes play two of their three group stage matches at HBF Park in Perth, firstly against China on July 22 before facing off with Haiti on August 1.