When Tom Sermanni first took charge of the Australian women's national football team, they weren't playing in front of sell-out crowds.
They weren't even called the Matildas.
Sermanni's first home game as coach of the Female Socceroos, as they were still known back in 1995, was played in front of a handful of spectators at a training ground at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra.
His last was in front of a capacity crowd of 25,125 next door at GIO Stadium on Monday night.
That's a record not just for a women's football game in the ACT but any football game played in the nation's capital.
It's the highest attendance of any sport at GIO Stadium in almost six years.
"It's bizarre," Sermanni reflected, following his final match as interim coach before Joe Montemurro steps into the role.
"It's just been a phenomenal experience. I've never witnessed a crowd such as the Matildas crowd.
"I kind of pinch myself when I go out and stand in front of it before the game starts.
"I just can't believe I'm back and had the privilege to be back in this environment."
As he ends his third, and probably final, stint at the helm of the Matildas, the landscape of women's football in Australia is unrecognisable from when he first encountered it.
That's largely down to Sermanni, 70, himself.
In his first tenure, from 1994 to 1997, the charismatic Caledonian led the Matildas to their first World Cup.
But it was his contribution off the field that had the biggest impact.
From a small office in the Canberra suburb of Hackett, Sermanni and a team of two or three running the entire women's program established the foundations for the National Training Centres that would incubate the golden generation of Australian women's football.
"I think that was one of the things, if I look back, that we created that I feel was really beneficial," he said
"And the second thing was the W-League. I think the W-League has been really instrumental in giving opportunities to domestic players that might not have had opportunities if we didn't have that league."
In his second stint, from 2004 to 2012, Sermanni handed debuts to a crop of young players - including the likes of Sam Kerr, Steph Catley and Caitlin Foord - who took the Matildas to another level and nearly a home World Cup final in 2023.
But the decision to can the National Training Centres program in 2014 set back the development of new talent and left a shortage of new players coming through to replace them, Sermanni lamented.
"We need to put resources into development," he said.
"You don't notice your development collapsing overnight. It takes time, and then all of a sudden, we turn around and say, we've got all these great players, but they're 30-plus."
Now unemployed, the longest-serving coach of the Matildas doesn't know what his future holds, but he left the door open to continuing his relationship with Football Australia.
"We've had some chats, but there's been no particular concrete role. So I think everybody will just wait to see what happens when things change and things start to happen again," he said.
"If there's something there, fantastic. If there's not, I'll be quite happy to leave the building and relax."
