Gruesome ankle injury ends Football Fern Nicole Stratford's Olympic dream

Football Ferns defender Nicole Stratford has been ruled out of contention for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics after suffering a gruesome injury in a “freak accident” in training.

The three-cap international faces a minimum six-week recovery time after dislocating her right ankle while competing for the ball with another player while in camp with the Football Ferns in Auckland last week.

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Stratford said the ill-timed injury, which left her ankle “disfigured”, was not as bad as it looked, suffering some ligament damage but escaping without any fractures.

“It was just a freak accident really,” she said.

“When I went down I realised it probably wasn’t quite right and when I looked at my foot it was disfigured to some extent, but it wasn’t overly painful, it was just stuck there.

“I was reasonably relaxed about it, all I knew was that it was going to be popped back in at some point”

The timing could not have been any worse for Stratford though with Football Ferns coach Tom Sermanni set to announce his 18-person squad for Tokyo on Friday.

She said the injury would also impact her work with the police and search and rescue.

“95 per cent of my life over the last six months has centred around football and police and I also do search and rescue as part of the police, and it’s amazing how one five-second incident can take all three of those things away, because I can’t do any of it now.”

Stratford has been the beneficiary of another player’s misfortune before and although the timing of her injury “was a tough one to take”, the 32-year-old said would it now open the door for someone else.

She was called into the squad for the Women's World Cup in 2019 when Meikayla Moore ruptured her Achilles on the eve of the tournament, and had never played for the Football Ferns at that point.