When the news broke earlier this week that Mary Fowler had unexpectedly withdrawn from the Matildas' squad for their upcoming friendlies against Germany and Haiti, many of the knee-jerk reactions across media and the wider community were laced with frustration.
Why would Fowler, who's in terrific form and fitness with Manchester City in England, pull out of a rare international window in which Australia will face some of the best players in the world, just nine months before a Women's World Cup, with no public explanation?
Does she not understand how significant these friendly opportunities are for the team and its coach, Joe Montemurro, who's had hardly any time with them since being appointed last year? What could possibly be more important than this?
Barely a day had passed before the "personal circumstances" behind her withdrawal began swirling in the tabloids and online: she wanted to return to Australia to spend time with her partner, NRL player Nathan Cleary, who had broken his leg in a recent game and was recovering from major surgery.
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Cue the judgement, the dismissiveness, the second-wave-feminist fury of giving up your hard-earned work for -- eugh -- a man.
Now, let's imagine for a moment that Fowler is not a generational Australian talent. Let's strip back the celebrity, the effortlessness of her football, the projected role she might play for the Matildas and global sport over the next decade. Remove the aspirational role-modelling, the Barbie doll and magazine spreads, the name on the back of the shirt.
Let us instead consider this young woman within the parameters of the life she has repeatedly told us she is living. Football is Fowler's job, and whether playing for a club or playing for her country, it does not overshadow or usurp her other priorities: family, creativity, personal expression, inner balance.
As far away as Fowler feels from most of us, she feels about her job just like most people do. It's something that has its challenges and its rewards, which she is good at and can grow in, which allows her to travel and try new things, and which helps pay her bills.
It is not -- despite the uproar of this past week -- her everything.
It used to be, as she often spoke about when recovering from her ACL tear a few years ago. But those days were dark and difficult, throwing her mind and body out of whack in the pursuit of other people's ideas of what a successful footballer looks like, what they should do, how they should live. For someone who is just 23 years of age, this kind of self-reflection and wisdom is enviable.
If it is true that Fowler has withdrawn from the upcoming window to support her partner, whose injury could end his career and force him into his own existential reckoning, is that not a good enough reason? Would anything be a good enough reason for the nay-sayers?
If you or I were to find ourselves in the same situation, would we not drop everything we were doing to support the person we loved?
Further, how much of the vicious judgement being targeted at Fowler is down to the fact she is a woman athlete? Would the same level of vitriol be on display if the person in question played for the Socceroos, turning down an international call-up to take care of his hospitalised partner? By contrast, he would almost certainly be praised for his clear priorities, admired for holding firm those boundaries, celebrated for displaying a healthy masculinity in which family comes before sport.
The expectations and pressures the public forces upon athletes -- particularly the Matildas -- needs deeper interrogation. Have we become so entitled to these players, to watching them perform these parts on this grassy stage, that we've forgotten, or simply don't care, that they are people first?
Mary, can I have your shirt? Mary, can I have your boots? Mary, can I have your freedom to choose how you live your life?
The slow objectification the Matildas have experienced over the past few years, in parallel with their meteoric rise, has not only affected Fowler, but multiple other players as well. From Cortnee Vine to Katrina Gorry, they have taken time away from the national team and its hall of warped mirrors to recentre themselves, to find purpose and value and identity somewhere else.
What does this say about us? About how we cage these athletes within our own ideas about duty, success, commitment, or sacrifice; about why sport turns people into products by stripping them of their humanity when they need it most; and about whether this is a fine and normal way for fans and pundits to think and behave?
We may never know the reason why Fowler withdrew from this window. The fact is that we don't need to know, we don't deserve to know, and we don't have a right to know. It is not some moral or professional failing for a person with a job to take a break. The only failure here is on the part of those who appear unwilling to let them have one.