Kyra Lillee Cooney-Cross (born 15 February 2002) is an Australian soccer player who plays as a

midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

for Hammarby IF in the

Damallsvenskan The Damallsvenskan, Swedish for ''ladies all-Swedish'' and also known as OBOS Damallsvenskan for sponsorship reasons, is the highest division of women's football in Sweden. It is also referred to as the women's Allsvenskan. The term Allsvenskan ...

and represents Australia internationally. She has previously played for

Western Sydney Wanderers Western Sydney Wanderers Football Club (colloquially known as Western Sydney, or simply as Wanderers) is an Australian professional soccer club based in the Western Sydney region of Sydney, New South Wales. It competes in the country's premier ...

and

Melbourne Victory Melbourne Victory Football Club is an Australian professional soccer club based in Melbourne, Victoria. Competing in the country's premier men's competition, the A-League Men, under licence from Australian Professional Leagues (APL), Victor ...

in the W-League.

Early life

Cooney-Cross was born to Jai Cross and Jessica Cooney in Herston,

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , establishe ...

. Jai played football at semi-pro level in Queensland with Sunshine Coast and he wanted his daughter to grow up with a ball at her feet. Usually playing with older girls and boys, at the age of 13, she started at

FFV NTC The Football Federation Victoria National Training Centre (FFV NTC) is run by Football Federation Australia and Football Federation Victoria, in Melbourne, for Victorian youth players. Up to 2010 it was run by the Victorian Institute of Sport. P ...

and a year later trialled for the Mini Matildas. Cooney-Cross attended Ballarat High School as well as Surf Coast Secondary College in Torquay, Victoria before dropping out to pursue her dream of soccer.

Club career

Cooney-Cross spent three years in Ballarat City between 2013 and 2016, playing under the tutelage of Ballarat City coach Tessa Curtain. In 2017, she was signed by

for the 2017-18 W-League season. On 28 October 2017, she made her debut for the club in a 2–1 home win against Canberra United, playing the full 90 minutes in her first competitive league match. On 29 December 2017, she scored her first ever goal for the club in a 3–1 home loss against

Newcastle Jets Newcastle United Jets Football Club, commonly known as Newcastle Jets, is an Australian professional soccer club based in Newcastle, New South Wales. It competes in the country's premier competition, the A-League, under licence from The Australian ...

, heading in at the 28th minute mark behind Jets goalkeeper

Britt Eckerstrom Britt Ellen Eckerstrom (born May 28, 1993) is a retired American soccer player who played as a goalkeeper for Portland Thorns FC of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). She previously played for the Western New York Flash. Club career Pe ...

. By the end of the season she played in Victory's all twelve games, scoring two goals. In the 2018–19 season, she was part of the W-League premier title winning squad, though she was only able to play in four of the twelve matches. She moved to

for the 2019–20 season, where she scored in her debut, a free-kick at the 92nd minute mark of a 2–1 home win over Adelaide United. In December 2020, following one season at Western Sydney Wanderers, Cooney-Cross returned to Melbourne Victory. On 11 April, Cooney-Cross scored directly from a

corner kick A corner kick is the method of restarting play in a game of association football when the ball goes out of play over the goal line, without a goal being scored and having last been touched by a member of the defending team. The kick is take ...

in the 120th minute of extra time to win the 2021 W-League Grand Final, beating season premiers Sydney FC 0–1. On 15 March 2022, Cooney-Cross transferred to Hammarby IF in the Swedish

, together with teammate Courtney Nevin, signing a two-year contract.

International career

In August 2016, Cooney-Cross was part of the Australia U-17s who participated in the 2017 AFC U-16 Women's Championship qualifiers, scoring six goals, the first four of which came against Palestine. She was later named in the squad for the

2017 AFC U-16 Women's Championship The 2017 AFC U-16 Women's Championship was the 7th edition of the AFC U-16 Women's Championship, the biennial international youth football championship organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for the women's under-16 national teams of ...

finals, where Australia was knocked out in the group stage, their only points coming from a 3–2 win against

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

. Cooney-Cross scored in the 78th minute of the game to bring the scores level to 2–2, before Sofia Sakalis scored the winner in the 83rd minute, to help Australia finish third in the group. In October 2018, Cooney-Cross scored the first three of her six goals of the 2019 AFC U-19 Women's Championship qualifiers. On 4 June 2019, she was named as a standby player for the Australian squad participating in the

2019 FIFA Women's World Cup The 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup was the eighth edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup, the quadrennial international Women's association football championship contested by 24 women's national teams representing member associations of FIFA. I ...

. On 15 October 2019, she was named in the Australia U-20 squad participating in the 2019 AFC U-19 Women's Championship. She scored Australia's first goal of the tournament in a 5–1 opening match loss against

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

, heading in at the 16th minute mark from an Indiah-Paige Riley cross. Cooney-Cross made her debut for the

Australian women's national soccer team The Australia women's national soccer team is overseen by the governing body for soccer in Australia, Football Australia, which is currently a member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and the regional ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) s ...

in a 3–2 friendly loss to Denmark on June 10, 2021. Cooney-Cross was selected for the Australian women's football Matildas soccer team which qualified for the

Tokyo 2020 Olympics The , officially the and also known as , was an international multi-sport event held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some preliminary events that began on 21 July. Tokyo was selected as the host city during the 1 ...

. The Matildas advanced to the quarter-finals with one victory and a draw in the group play. In the quarter-finals they beat

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

4–3 after extra time. However, they lost 1–0 to Sweden in the semi-final and were then beaten 4–3 in the bronze medal playoff by USA. Full details.

Honours

Club

;

* W-League : ''Premiers (1)'' 2018–19 * W-League: ''Championship (1)''

2020–21 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cooney-Cross, Kyra 2002 births Women's association football forwards Australian women's soccer players Footballers at the 2020 Summer Olympics Living people Melbourne Victory FC (A-League Women) players Olympic soccer players of Australia Western Sydney Wanderers FC (A-League Women) players A-League Women players Hammarby Fotboll (women) players Australia women's international soccer players Sportswomen from Queensland Soccer players from Brisbane Damallsvenskan players Expatriate women's footballers in Sweden Australian expatriate sportspeople in Sweden Australian expatriate women's soccer players