"What if this was the opening game in the World Cup, with 80,000 people in the stands, being frustrated?"
It was the question Tony Gustavsson posed in the dressing-room in his half-time talk on Thursday night as the Matildas were locked 0-0 with Czechia after a rusty, sluggish opening 45 minutes.
A few half-chances aside, Australia struggled to create clear opportunities in their first game back after three months. Their midfield was regularly smothered, some players were rusty or jet-lagged and Sam Kerr was effectively double-marked, suffocated off the ball as soon as she looked at it.
In fact, it was Czechia who created the more dangerous of the chances in the first half, with two one-on-ones forcing Matildas goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold to come to the rescue. As the half-time whistle blew, Central Coast Stadium hummed restlessly, nervously.
With this Cup of Nations tournament framed as a "dress rehearsal" for the group stage of the Women's World Cup this July — from facing three different opponents in a short space of time to managing player loads and exploring squad depth and versatility — that practice run also extends to moments like these: What happens when Plan A crashes up against an opponent who prepared themselves perfectly for it?
"We managed the first half really well. We played as a compact team and we didn't really let the opponent in too much," Czechia head coach Karel Rada said when asked afterwards about his game plan.
"We pressed against the opponent pretty hard and, as a result, we gave the Australian team quite a hard time as well, and actually created two opportunities that, unfortunately, we didn't convert.
"In front of their goal, particularly, that was the [Australian] weakness that I observed."
The Matildas have been here plenty of times before: Where, having failed to capitalise on a period of dominance in the first half of a match, they soon run out of energy, ideas and, most of all, patience, often resulting in an end-of-game calamity.
We saw it, for example, in their panic-stricken Asian Cup quarterfinal against South Korea, a game where Australia padded stats for an hour but lacked the final product, resorting — as the clock wound down — to route-one: "Hail Mary" long passes to Kerr and a prayer that she would, somehow, save the day.
That lack of game management ultimately led to the loss of concentration that saw Ji So-Yun score the winner.
Gustavsson said as much earlier this week, emphasising how much the Matildas have been working on in-game management over the past two years, assessing the situation in front of them and deciding, together, what to do, especially when the pressure is mounting.
And it was here, with Australia prodding and probing with the ball at their feet, trying to find angles and channels to pry open, moving the chess pieces this way and that. But, for all that work in the opening 45, there had been just one shot on target to show for it.
"We've seen it before in football, how difficult it is to break down [a team] when there's no space," Gustavsson said post-match.
"It takes two to tango. We need space for our runners, but we didn't really get that momentum going.
"Playing a low block is a process. You need to wear a team down, and maybe it opens up in the last third. Then it takes patience and belief."
Patience was, of course, the whole point of the exercise.
Czechia had been chosen deliberately because of their stubbornness, because of the strength of their defence, because they are tough to tear apart.
The purpose of this game, for the Matildas, was learning how to do so methodically; to assess the puzzle, test its edges and gaps, and find new ways to solve it for themselves.
It wasn't just Gustavsson asking for patience at half-time, though.
Despite not wearing the captain's armband on Thursday night — instead bestowing it on veteran defender Clare Polkinghorne, who broke the record for the highest number of Matildas caps with 152 — it was Kerr who led from within in the sheds beneath the grandstand.
"It was her half-time speech," Gustavsson said. "What we're asking now is key in the World Cup: It's how we respond to first halves like this.
"One of the reasons we planned to play the Czech Republic is we've seen what they've done to top opposition before. We tried to look for an opposition that were … physical, well-organised, difficult to break down.
"If we let that [affect] us emotionally, we probably don't see the second half. And Sam spoke about that: 'Don't freak out, don't stress out, believe in the plan, believe in the process, believe in your team-mates. Let's go out, but we need to do better.'
"So it was belief in what we're doing, but also that push."
Evidently, it worked. The Matildas came out in the second half looking far brighter, sharper, more convinced by their own capabilities.
Despite lacking minutes with Manchester City in recent months, Hayley Raso burst to life down the right wing, scoring two quick goals in the opening 10 minutes before substitute Alex Chidiac introduced a fizzy unpredictability that helped set up Sam Kerr's third, with Polkinghorne clipping home the fourth as the half wound down.
The goals weren't "Hail Marys". They were varied, choreographed and designed in ways that responded to the conditions the Czechs had created for them, exactly the kind of thing the Matildas struggled to do this time last year.
And the players weren't the only ones who showed the type of in-game management they've lacked in the past, either. Gustavsson and his coaching staff did, too.
After seeing Aivi Luik struggling at centre-back, for example, they made the bold decision to bring on 23-year-old debutant Clare Hunt — only just called into her first Matildas camp — to partner Polkinghorne in defence.
It was a master-stroke, with the two Clares ensuring that Mackenzie Arnold barely touched the ball for the remainder of the game, all while keeping the team's third clean sheet in a row and potentially offering another solution to Australia's eternal centre-back conundrum.
"We had a coach meeting in the middle of the day and challenged ourselves and said: 'We have to treat this like the World Cup'," Gustavsson said.
"We have to make decisions like the World Cup. We need to train in-game management, read the game, make decisions.
"We haven't really trained that much, but [Clare Hunt's] presence mentally showed me that she was ready. She has carried herself in a very mature way. She's beyond her years.
"This might be too big of a headline, but I'm not sure I've seen this type of debutant in my two years in this team.
"If you think about it, it's 0-0 against [the] Czech Republic. It's a World Cup year. She hasn't played a minute. She goes in at half-time into a team that struggled in the first half, and she looked like she's done nothing but playing with us."
A year is a long time in football and, when the Matildas were bundled out of the Asian Cup almost exactly 12 months ago, it felt like one of the lowest ebbs the team had faced in recent memory.
Faith in Gustavsson began to fade then, made worse by several more underwhelming results in the following eight months.
Now, with five wins in a row and some of the most convincing football they've played since he took over, those early periods — the deliberately difficult opponents, the understrength teams, the rotation and experimentation, even at the cost of the numbers on the scoreboard and faith from the public — appear to have been the necessary grind; the stubborn, difficult opening 45 minutes to Gustavsson's longer game.
Whether the next 45 look the same as they did against Czechia on Thursday night, though, is anybody's guess.
