The Canadian women's national team has announced that it will be returning to home soil in 2020, for a friendly match against Australia to take place on Tuesday, April 14. The match will go down at BC Place in Vancouver, with the women's team returning to British Columbia for the first time since a 2017 friendly against the United States (a 1-1 draw). Canada also played two games at the 2015 Women's World Cup in Vancouver, beating Switzerland 1-0 in the round of 16, and falling 2-1 to England in the quarter-finals. Australia sits one spot ahead of Canada in the latest FIFA World Rankings, with the Matildas ranked seventh and the Canadians very close behind in eighth. The two sides last met at the Rio 2016 Olympics, when Canada triumphed 2-0 in Group F action. This friendly will be a homecoming for Canada, after they compete in the Concacaf Women's Olympic qualifying tournament next week in Edinburg, Texas, followed by the Tournoi de France, scheduled for March in Calais. With Christine Sinclair chasing the international goalscoring record (with that 185-goal plateau firmly in her sights for the Olympic qualifiers in February), this friendly would be a fitting opportunity to honour the Burnaby native in her home province. It'll also be an additional opportunity for the squad to prepare for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan — pending a successful qualification campaign, of course. According to Canada Soccer, their agreement with Football Federation Australia also means that they'll travel down under at some point for an away friendly against the Matildas. Canada has played Australia 16 times in women's international games, with a record of six wins, three draws, and seven losses.

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