It will be surreal – Chloe Mustaki cannot believe she will play at a World Cup

Chloe Mustaki has not fully accustomed to the reality that in just three days she will walk out on the pitch at sold-out Stadium Australia as a member of the first Republic of Ireland squad to feature in a Women’s World Cup.

The 27-year-old’s extraordinary journey to this point has been down a road rife with obstacles, from her cancer diagnosis at the age of 19 to a devastating anterior cruciate ligament injury in 2020 and the lonely Covid-19 lockdown recovery that followed.

But when the Republic’s plane touched down in Australia it all began to crystallise for Bristol City defender Mustaki, who hopes she can tune out the noise of over 80,000 majority-home supporters expected to attend her side’s July 20 opener against World Cup co-hosts the Matildas.

“I don’t think I have an idea of how insane it is going to be,” she admitted during a training session at Brisbane’s Meakin Park.

“I am trying not to think about it too much, trying just to concentrate on the football. At the end of the day, when you walk onto the pitch, everything around you just fades away.

“So, if we can just concentrate and focus and stay connected on the game, whoever is playing on that pitch, hopefully we can come out with the result.

“It will be surreal, and we won’t really believe it until we see it, because it is something that only (captain) Katie (McCabe) and a few others have experienced and we might never experience it again, that amount of people, so we have to savour it.”

Skipper McCabe, who plays her club football with Arsenal, has played big games at major venues like the FA Cup final at Wembley and a Champions League semi-final at the 60,704-seat Emirates, which the Gunners sold out for the first time in May.

Mustaki, on the other hand,