WE'RE NOT WORLD BEATERS YET, BUT WE'RE SO CLOSE

We're certainly entertaining, but the theory goes that to be a truly great team, you need to be able to execute a high tempo whenever necessary.

World Cup winners and Olympic champions command matches against lower ranked sides with ease, not because they have more talent than us, but because they're able to always exercise that talent to the required extent.

We've seen against packed, well organised defences that the Matildas aren't quite yet capable of this and tonight was another example. We spent 40 minutes slightly inside ourselves.

Ellie Carpenter was hesitant to bomb past her marker, Emily van Egmond was reluctant to go straight for those piercing crosses. Simon just wasn't quite ready to take the ball in the forward third and fire a shot on goal.

Part of the issue was Thailand's incredibly effective block, which tired as the match wore on. But another factor is we still seem a little timid at times. We played this match at serious pace and everyone knows we have high-quality players, but they still lack the confidence, the impetus and the desperation at times.

As fans will have noticed, it's not actually timid individual performances that have the greatest impact, it's the way this nervousness runs through the team when we're attacking. How many times did we work our way into dangerous positions in that first half just to either skew the shot, or more often, over or under hit that final pass?

Credit to Ante Milicic, after his half-time team talk we exploded and played phenomenal football.

But when we see a level of timidity in a world class team, that we almost never saw in the semi-professional days of Sarah Walsh and Cheryl Salisbury, we have to ask ourselves why these icons aren't more heavily involved.

Why aren't there more former Matildas in the Australian coaching set up? With Heather Garriock leaving Canberra United and Ash Wilson handing the reigns at Newcastle Jets back to Craig Deans, why on earth is there not a single woman set to coach in the W-League?

Why haven't more been encouraged to take up coaching badges or provide various technical support roles? What a sad indictment that is.

We look like we could really benefit from a greater focus on our passing in that final third, as it's the major weakness preventing us from beating the world's best teams.

But when we talk about consistency, a lack of visible, inspiring, passionate role models may be part of the problem.