Barely a year out from the 2027 Women’s World Cup, Matilda’s midfielder Katrina Gorry has announced she will take a break from football to spend time with her family.
The 33-year-old finished her time with West Ham United in May and has remained a free agent since. After being linked with a return to the A-League Women, including reported interest from hometown club Brisbane Roar, Gorry instead confirmed on Thursday that she would not play again until 2027.
“For now, I’m choosing family and embracing this next chapter with the people I love most,” Gorry wrote on Instagram.
“This isn’t goodbye, it’s simply a pause. I’m already looking forward to returning to football in 2027 and doing everything I can to earn the chance to wear the green-and-gold again.”
The decision will rule Gorry out of the Matildas’ remaining fixtures in 2026, including October’s friendly against Germany, and leave her without club football heading into a World Cup year.
Australia’s tournament begins in Brazil on June 24, giving Gorry a relatively short window to return to competitive football and push for selection.
For one of the Matildas’ most experienced players, the decision comes at an important stage of the World Cup cycle. But it also follows several years in which Gorry has spoken openly about learning to give football a different place in her life.
Gorry has previously detailed her experience with an eating disorder, which developed during a period when the demands of professional football had become closely tied to how she viewed her body.
She has spoken about regular weighing and body-fat testing within elite sporting environments, and how a focus on those numbers gradually affected her relationship with food and her own performance.
At its worst, football was no longer something Gorry was enjoying. She later said she had reached a point where she was ready to stop playing altogether.
Her decision to become a mother changed that relationship.
Gorry underwent IVF as a solo parent and gave birth to her daughter Harper in August 2021. She has since credited pregnancy and motherhood with changing the way she viewed her body after years spent assessing it according to the demands of professional sport.
“The appreciation that I had just made me realise how amazing our bodies are and what I put it through for the couple of years before that,” Gorry told ABC in 2023.
“When I reflect on those times, to see how much I’ve changed, I don’t even feel like the same person really.”
She returned to professional football only months after giving birth and was recalled to the Matildas in 2022.
Her return also presented a situation the national team had not previously encountered. There had never been a baby regularly travelling in a Matildas camp.
Gorry’s mother, Linda, travelled with the team to care for Harper while Gorry trained and played. When Gorry was still breastfeeding, Linda would remain close to the change rooms so Harper could be brought to her when needed.
Former Matildas assistant coach Melissa Andreatta later said the staff wanted to ensure Gorry and fellow mother Tameka Yallop could continue their professional careers without feeling they had to choose between football and their children.
The support around Gorry became an early example of what accommodating motherhood could look like within the national team environment.
It was particularly significant given Gorry had once questioned whether becoming a mother would end her international career.
Instead, the years after Harper’s birth became some of her most consistent in a Matildas shirt.
Gorry was a central figure during Australia’s run to the semi-finals of the 2023 Women’s World Cup, starting every match of the tournament. She later returned to the Olympic stage in Paris in 2024, having missed Tokyo while pregnant with Harper.
Her family also grew during that period.
Gorry met former Swedish footballer Clara Markstedt while playing for Vittsjö GIK. Markstedt gave birth to their son, Koby, in June 2024, and the couple have since married.
Gorry’s experiences with motherhood, her eating disorder and her life away from the pitch became central subjects of her 2025 memoir, Katrina Gorry: A Matildas hero’s story of football, motherhood and breaking down barriers.
They have also informed the way she has spoken about football in recent years.
Before Harper, Gorry had spent more than a decade inside professional football environments. After becoming a mother, she said having something outside the game allowed her to enjoy it differently.
“Football is no longer my entire life,” she wrote for Professional Footballers Australia shortly after Harper’s birth in 2021.
That context gives her latest decision a different dimension.
There are clear football implications. Several months away from club and international competition will make Gorry’s path to the 2027 World Cup more difficult, particularly with limited time to regain match fitness and make a case for selection before the tournament begins.
Her announcement recognised that uncertainty.
Gorry did not say she expected to return to the Matildas. She said she would return to football and do everything she could to “earn the chance” to represent Australia again.
For now, her focus will remain away from the national team.
After finishing with West Ham and spending much of the past decade balancing the demands of professional football with a changing life outside it, Gorry will spend the remainder of 2026 with her family.
Her return to football is planned for 2027.
