LOSE WITH DIGNITY

The only thing more dispiriting than watching the Japanese coach high-five every one of his substitutes after the sixth goal sunk into the back of the net is knowing it was just a matter of time until the seventh.

There's a way to lose and a way not to lose. The Young Matildas just showed us all the worst way to lose a match.

The tactical approach was disgraceful; approaching a do-or-die semi-final for a spot in the U/20 World Cup on the line by holding 10 women behind the ball from the opening minute? It would be almost unforgivable if we were a minnow, let alone a female football powerhouse.

So why did Leah Blayney - who looked bored to tears throughout the match - approach it in this way? We honestly don't know, but 7-0 playing defensively is completely inexcusable.

We look back to the 5-1 shellacking to North Korea in the opening match in the hope that it would provide some reasoning, some obvious defensive fragility that a carefully planned counter-attacking game could excuse...but it doesn't.

We played our very best against the PRK when we were on the front foot. We started the match aggressively, with a high-tempo, gegenpressing philosophy, and we took the lead after 20 minutes.

We then sat back, dropped our heads and shipped goal after goal. A similar story against Thailand: we dominated when we were on the front foot and the second we took our foot off the gas, allowed the Thais straight back into the game.

We couldn't recover momentum after that against the Thais, who have proven themselves to be one of the weaker teams in this competition, so why would we have been able to against the Japanese?

But the more you analyse this match, the worse it gets...