Last June, as the full-time whistle ebbed away into the night above Spain's Huelva Stadium, Mackenzie Arnold picked up her water bottle, stared into one of the clinically bright floodlights, and let out a deep sigh.
The Matildas goalkeeper had just conceded six goals, including three in less than 15 minutes, in what was one of her worst-ever tallies in a single game for club or country. And she had only come onto the pitch at half-time.
It was, on paper, a humiliation: a 7-0 defeat by a dazzling Spanish side in their final stages of preparation for the 2022 Women's European Championships, which they were expected to win.
Thrown into the fire after an injury to starting goalkeeper Teagan Micah, Arnold had a rare opportunity to impress head coach Tony Gustavsson.
The Swede hadn't played here since January's Asian Cup, in a fairly rudimentary 18-0 win over Indonesia.
Her last game before that was in September of 2021 where she was pulled off at half-time in a 3-2 loss to the Republic of Ireland.
Spain, then, was her shot at redemption.
What she got, instead, was a reckoning.
Arnold's national team career has always been one played in the shadows of others.
Despite being part of the Matildas for more than a decade, earning her first cap in 2012, the West Ham shot-stopper has rarely started more than a handful of games for them in a single calendar year.
Melissa Barbieri, Lydia Williams, and now Teagan Micah have always, for one reason or another, sat ahead of her in the goalkeeping pecking order.
It is not unwarranted.
Arnold's performances have oscillated wildly in that time — sometimes even in the same game — such as her 2019 Asian Cup semi-final match against Thailand where her own mistakes almost saw the Matildas knocked out of the tournament, with only her three penalty shoot-out saves to get them through in the end.
Her rollercoaster career for Australia stands in stark contrast to that of club level, where she is a three-time A-League Women Goalkeeper of the Year, having helped Brisbane Roar to two trophies, while also being one of West Ham's stand-out players in the two most recent Women's Super League seasons.
And she knows it. As Arnold admitted recently, she has struggled to translate her club form into the national team over the past few years.
Following that 7-0 loss to Spain, Arnold did not start another game for the Matildas for the rest of the year, with a chorus of fans and media back in Australia questioning the purpose of the entire exercise: What does anyone learn from a thumping like that?
It has been, undoubtedly, something that has eaten away at Arnold's confidence. But she has never shown it, at least not publicly.
As Gustavsson said earlier this week, Arnold has been a "phenomenal teammate", and has taken it upon herself to work on her game at club level and find ways to crash through the ceiling that has always kept her from reaching her full Matildas potential.
This month, at the 2023 Cup of Nations tournament, that ceiling finally started to crack.
Starting three consecutive games for the Matildas for the first time in her career, Arnold's stand-out performances against Czechia, Spain, and Jamaica — where she conceded just two goals and made nine key saves — saw her named Player Of The Tournament.
While her selection for that award does pose deeper questions around Australia's defensive capabilities, it also points to the bigger project that Gustavsson has been working on over the past year — accelerating the development of peripheral players in order to build the team's current and future depth.
Because Arnold wasn't the only player thrown into the deep end in that Spain annihilation.
Also included in that June squad were the likes of Cortnee Vine, Charlotte Grant, Clare Wheeler, Courtney Nevin, Larissa Crummer, and Amy Sayer.
Eight months on, all but one of these players (Sayer) saw game time during the Cup of Nations.
Two in particular — Vine and Grant — played some of their best football in a Matildas jersey, with Vine starting all three games in this window and Grant providing a genuine challenge for the soon-to-return Ellie Carpenter.
Nevin's ongoing appearances following her trial-by-fire against the USA in November of 2021 have also proven her deeply-needed defensive versatility.
Katrina Gorry was in Huelva that day, too, as she began her return to the national team following pregnancy and a loss of love for the game. Now, the midfielder is arguably in the form of her career and has become almost undroppable at the base of Gustavsson's midfield.
Alongside her is Kyra Cooney-Cross, another peripheral player who, at just 21 years old, has nudged out more experienced midfielders like Emily Van Egmond and Tameka Yallop to secure her spot in the team, including starts in each of the past seven games.
And the project is still continuing. In this international window, we've seen the emergence of 23-year-old centre-back Clare Hunt, who debuted as a substitute against Czechia last week before starting against both Spain and Jamaica despite having never been called into a senior Matildas camp before.
Alex Chidiac, too, cemented her spot as a true game-changer off the bench, scoring a delightful goal against Jamaica and helping set up another in their win over Czechia.
Arnold's Player of the Tournament performances over these three games epitomise this deeper work that Gustavsson has been doing over the past two years, casting the net as wide as he can — calling over 50 players into camp since he assumed his role — and throwing them into the flames to see how they respond.
"We need answers," Gustavsson told media following that pivotal 7-0 loss to Spain.
"Not short term, and especially not for me. I'm going to be scrutinised now, but it's not about me; it's about the long-term legacy, '23 and beyond.
"Not just about preparation for the World Cup, but investments past that World Cup. And I think the answers that we got now is a wake-up call for a lot of people."
So while this Cup of Nations tournament was framed as a dry run for the upcoming Women's World Cup, getting the players acclimatised to different styles, the logistics of travel and preparation, and the various formations and systems they'll likely play this July, a second — and arguably more important — purpose was to test just how much deeper the Matildas' squad has become.
In the end, several of the players who were thrown into the fire of Huelva have come out the other side hardened, forged by the heat and pressure of the past year, with some even challenging the players they only ever deputised for.
It's those players — the Vines, Grants, Arnolds, Cooney-Crosses, Gorrys and Chidiacs — that, this month, have shown they are moving from the periphery to the centre of this and future Matildas teams.
"I came off a couple good performances for West Ham leading into this tournament, and I think it was just the mindset that it was almost like I had nothing to lose at that point," Arnold said afterwards.
"The opportunity came up and I wanted to grab it with both hands, which is something that I haven't done in the past.
"I've been doing a lot of work overseas and thankfully was able to bring it into the national team and hopefully I can keep going in that direction.
"Confidence-wise, it's a really big boost for me, especially not having played in the national team for a while now. But I think I'm just happy that I was able to bring my club performances into the national team, and it's probably the most crucial time to do that so I'm really happy with myself personally."
So eight months on, as Arnold looked up into the lights of McDonald Jones Stadium in Newcastle with the Cup of Nations' Player of the Tournament trophy in her hands, it turns out she did answer a very important question. It just wasn't the one we realised we were asking.
