The Matildas have gone down to Canada for the second time inside a week following a performance described as “flat” and “unimaginative”.
After Canada won Saturday’s friendly 5-0, Wednesday’s 1-0 result looked better on paper, but still left fans with questions about the team ahead of next year’s Olympic qualifiers against Uzbekistan.
Leading football pundit Andy Harper was left disappointed by what he described as a “pretty anaemic” performance from Tony Gustavsson’s side.
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“The scoreboard was a marked improvement from the weekend, but in relative terms, was the performance that much better? I’m not quite sure,” he told Channel 10.
“For the best team we’ve got minus Mackenzie Arnold and Sam (Kerr), it was so flat, so unimaginative.
“We’ve been told that we’re trying to re-engineer the way we play to take the team to the next level and that’s understandable and fine, but the two-game window provided very little evidence of how that’s gaining traction.
“Saturday’s game is almost irrelevant now because none of those players got to feature again to see how they would go.”
The match was decided by Quinn’s 40th minute header after the Matildas failed to clear a corner kick, and skipper Steph Catley was unimpressed by the manner in which her team conceded.
”In the end a set piece cost us and that’s not good enough, so lots to think about and improve on,” she said.
“We’re trying a few different things, a few different ways of playing, and sometimes that has growing pains.
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“There’s times in the game where we’re not controlling it, but when we do it looks pretty good, so there’s definitely positives to take out of the game.”
The matches against Canada were the final fixtures before February’s two-legged Olympic qualification tie against Uzbekistan, and former Matilda Grace Gill said Australia could not afford to get ahead of themselves.
“It’s not given. It’s not granted that qualification is going to occur,” she told Channel 10.
“The Matildas can’t get their eyes to the Olympics because they’ve got to get their eyes past Uzbekistan in the first instance.
“I think it’ll feel like a disappointing result, not for the scoreline, but for the performance.
“When it came to the second half it looked like the Matildas became tired, they became leggy, and there could’ve been a few more changes to inject some energy into the team.
“I don’t think we saw enough given the quality we lined up today. It’s fair to say they dominated the game on balance.”