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It’s a tired, overused sporting cliche, but for the Matildas, a certain four words has never been more pertinent.
The four words in question?
Backs against the wall.
Yet the scenario wasn’t quite as, shall we say, gentle for Tony Gustavsson’s side.
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They faced the frighteningly real prospect of being dumped out of a home World Cup at the very first hurdle.
If you took one glance at social media in the wake of the 3-2 defeat to Nigeria, it was an endless stream of negative, doubtful takes.
The loss was labelled as a disgrace, a humiliation, a national embarrassment.
Take your pick.
It could have been so, so easy for the players to have gotten swept up in the negativity.
The weight of the nation’s expectations could have crushed them.
The Matildas couldn’t have served up a more emphatic reply to the doubters with a four-goal demolition of the Olympic gold medallists Canada.
Even with the immense pressure going into the game, centre back Alanna Kennedy revealed neither her or any of her teammates were fazed about the occasion.
“Obviously we thrive under pressure,” Kennedy said.
“We ideally wouldn’t have wanted to have been in that position, but we’re always going to fight to the end.
“It’s the Aussie mentality, we love the challenge and I think when our backs are against the wall, that’s when we really show our character and who we are as a team.
“We were never going to shy away from tonight.”
Shy away they most certainly did not.
Every Matildas player looked to get on the ball and run at the Canadians whenever the appropriate opportunity presented itself.
Nor did they shirk the dirty, gritty defensive work required to keep out their Group B rivals as they kept a second clean sheet of the tournament.
One player who actively embraced both sides of the game on Monday night was Hayley Raso, who earned player of the match honours for her two goals.
Raso scored her first World Cup goal in the 9th minute which gave her, her teammates and the crowd an instant injection of euphoria.
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The Real Madrid winger started as she meant to carry on and never stopped running at Canada’s left back Ashley Lawrence.
Raso concurred that the Matildas almost need those types of do-or-die scenarios to bring out the best in them.
“Yeah, we definitely do [play well when under pressure],” Raso said.
“We knew we needed to come out with a lot of energy. We wanted to turn around the performance from the game before.
“We always fight, we’ll fight for each other, we work hard.
“We had our backs against the wall and we showed what we can do when we do.”
For Raso, she is a member of a core group who have been in the Matildas set up for several years and has faced her fair share of must-win matches.
But for Clare Hunt among others, they were yet to experience a game of this magnitude with so much on the line.
The centre-back, who has less than 10 caps to her name and is one of seven players who were yet to play at a World Cup, has displayed a maturity beyond her years despite her relative lack of International experience.
If anything, she embraces these types of cutthroat scenarios with open arms.
“I think we love pressure, we thrive under pressure,” Hunt said.
“I think with the week that we’ve had in terms of building towards that and coming off a negative result against Nigeria, I think it was a big turnaround and showed that we have character and we have resilience.
“I think we can use that in our efforts in the Round of 16 and beyond that point.”
Granted, it is one thing for the players to collectively share this mentality.
Gustavsson was not the coach who embedded it into the minds of this current crop and it will likely be a leading trait for many squads to come after he has left the post.
But the Swede has done a commendable job at harnessing it with his players whether it be out on the training ground, in team meetings or a pre-game rev-up.
Speaking in his post-match press conference, Gustavsson could only marvel at just how good the Matildas have become at digging themselves out of the well at the perfect time.
“I think this team have proved time after time with that never say die attitude that they can come in big when it’s needed the most,” Gustavsson said.
“I think that says something about the team.”
Now that the Matildas have qualified for the knockout stages, every game they now play is indeed do-or-die.
Gustavsson’s side have proven they can rise to the challenge when it presents itself once so far at this World Cup, they now just need to do it four more times.
But, as Kennedy, Raso and Hunt rightly said, this is when the Matildas are at their most dangerous.
