"A little reminder to everyone here what happened against Thailand at the last tournament …"
Tony Gustavsson's comment – and all its dark, traumatising memories – hung heavily in the air during his pre-tournament press conference.
How could we forget?
Of all the crucial Asian Cup matches the Matildas have ever played – the loss to China on penalties in the 2006 final, the victory over North Korea to lift the trophy in 2010, the heartbreaking 1-0 loss to Japan in the dying minutes of 2018 – there is one game more than any other that lingers like a spectre over Australia's major tournament history.
The 2018 semifinal against Thailand.
It was the beginning of some sort of end for the Matildas, the drawing back of a curtain, the laying bare of the doubts and fractures that had been lingering just behind their shiny surface.
Australia sailed into that tournament on a wave of public adoration. They'd won the inaugural Tournament of Nations towards the end of 2017, which included their first-ever defeat of reigning world champions USA. They eased past their main Asian rivals, Japan, too, with Sam Kerr scoring a hat-trick in a 4-2 win.
A series of celebratory demolitions of Brazil and China followed, with the Matildas scoring 19 goals in five games and conceding just five. It was, in many ways, a golden period for this "golden generation" of players that climbed to fourth on the world rankings under former head coach, Alen Stajcic.
But then cracks started to appear.
In early 2018, Australia flew to Portugal to participate in the Algarve Cup. An opening 4-3 win over Norway — which would avenge the loss by knocking the Matildas out of the Women's World Cup the following year — preceded a string of underwhelming performances, including a 0-0 draw and 2-1 loss to a Portugal side ranked 30 spots below them.
Despite the Matildas' frailties this tournament began to expose – particularly when facing organised defensive teams, and their failure to keep clean sheets — there was a kind of collective papering over of those cracks then. We turned our gaze elsewhere, towards the more exciting parts of this side like the meteoric rise of Kerr and the teenage phenomenon that was (and is) Ellie Carpenter.
A 5-0 friendly win over Thailand was wedged between the Algarve Cup and the Asian Cup, but it was little more than a lid placed over a pot of simmering vulnerabilities.
There was a growing feeling that Australia was just a few games away from some sort of catastrophe that would force the team, finally, to reckon with its weaknesses.
And so it was.
The 2018 Asian Cup group stage began with a 0-0 draw against a defensively resolute South Korean side. What was nominally the Matildas' strongest starting 11, spearheaded by the rip-roaring Kerr and Lisa De Vanna, was largely reduced to speculative crosses and shots from a distance.
An 8-0 thumping of Vietnam in the second group match once again acted as a bandaid; a quick, smooth covering-up of a deeper, festering wound.
The final group game came against the side that would ultimately lift the trophy: Japan.
Early chances were scuppered by Kerr and De Vanna, who faced a phalanx of defensive discipline. The reigning champions scored just after the hour through a series of neat, choreographed passes that sliced open Australia's own scattered back line.
It took an 86th-minute fumble from Japan goalkeeper Ayaka Yamashita and a quick pivot and shot from Kerr to secure the equaliser that saw Australia through to the knockouts.
And then came the Thailand game.
A game where many of the threads that had begun to fray over the past year suddenly, disastrously, unravelled.
Twenty-six ranking spots separated Australia from the team that would come within minutes of eliminating the Matildas from the competition they were expected to dominate.
Australia took the lead in the 17th minute after an Emily Gielnik cross was headed into Thailand's net by its own defender, Kanjanaporn Saengkoon.
But three minutes later, the Thais were level.
Having sat in deep, defensive blocks, the Thai players sprung one of their first counterattacks of the match through winger Kanjana Sung-Ngoen, who nipped in behind the isolated Alanna Kennedy and lobbed a long ball over the outstretched arms of goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold, the ball slipping through her hands and bouncing over the line.
Sung-Ngoen had an almost mirror-image chance towards the end of the first half, zipping into the open green space behind Kennedy and fellow-centre back Laura Brock. Arnold careened off her line and attempted to smother, but the Thai striker wriggled away and charged towards goal. Australia's scrambling defenders ensured their subsequent shots were blocked and the teams went into half-time locked at 1-1.
Stajcic replaced Brock with the speedier Steph Catley on the right side of a back three, but just after the hour mark, the Matildas once again showed they could be their own worst enemy.
A wild, back-spinning clearance from Arnold and a disastrous first touch from Kennedy saw the ball drop into the path of winger Rattikan Thongsombut, who rocketed it into the top corner to make it 2-1.
Australia pushed and prodded for an equaliser, but aside from a Chloe Logarzo shot that fizzed over the crossbar, created little else.
As the clock ticked perilously into stoppage time, the Matildas won a panicked corner. Poetically, it was Kennedy who atoned for her error and saved Australian blushes, storming into the six-yard box to head the ball home in the 91st minute for 2-2.
The Matildas would eventually defeat Thailand on penalties (but not before misses from Emily Van Egmond and De Vanna) and qualify for their third consecutive Asian Cup final, which they lost to Japan.
More than any other, that match was the distillation of many problems Australia had struggled to address over the years, from a porous defence and difficulty dismantling deep-lying defences to individual technical errors and failures of decision-making. All of these were laid out in the cold, punishing light of tournament football, and signalled to fans and players alike that a deeper reset was needed, a realigning of the bones.
On Friday morning, we saw the start of that process. Having excavated the problems that 2018 semifinal against Thailand exposed, combing through them like an archaeologist with a toothbrush, Matildas boss Tony Gustavsson has now begun to, hopefully, fix them.
Indeed, his final 23-player squad was built almost with that Thailand game in mind. The selection of players like Holly McNamara and Cortnee Vine was justified due to their "line-breaking" capabilities, their talent at cracking open tight lines of defenders.
The two tournament debutants started Friday's rematch against Thailand and, as though proving Gustavsson's point, were the most penetrative and busy of Australia's heavily rotated 11.
With pace and dribbling, the two wingers regularly stretched the Thai defence, while also cutting towards the by-line or inside to central channels to deliver low crosses into the penalty area in place of ambitious, looping long balls.
We also saw changes at the other end, with Catley pulled into centre-back alongside the indefatigable Aivi Luik. The two veteran defenders were flanked by youth on either side in Courtney Nevin and Charlotte Grant — the two clearest understudies to Australia's current full-backs Catley and Carpenter — while Vine's speed was also utilised at right-back for a period in the second half.
However, despite the direction these moves gestured towards, the ghosts of the past still lingered over Friday's game; the lack of clinical finishing, gasp-inducing defensive errors, the loss of concentration that resulted in Thailand's last-minute goal.
While Australia dominated almost every statistical category including possession (73 per cent to 27), corners (14 to two), crosses (37 to four) and shots (24 to six), the match — like that 2018 semifinal — served as a reminder that football is won and lost in moments of brilliance and breakdown, and that opportunities can be lost as quickly as they are found.
That added layer of pressure will be laid on the Matildas' shoulders on Sunday night, when they face South Korea in a must-win quarterfinal.
And while the Koreans' history against Australia does not fall in their favour — having lost 13 of their 19 meetings — we must never, as Gustavsson said, forget the Thailand game, whose lessons continued to echo out.
"We can't take anything for granted," Gustavsson concluded after his pre-tournament reminder of that fateful match in 2018.
Indeed.
