Even when she’s not there, it’s impossible for the Matildas to avoid the spectre of Sam Kerr.

On Saturday night, she watched from afar as her teammates played a game that would have been perfect for her: loads of chances, lots of crosses, plenty of opportunities in which Australia’s injured skipper could have used her world-class aerial ability or innate poacher’s instinct to convert and make the first leg of their Olympic qualifier against Uzbekistan a lot less tense than it needed to be.

They got there in the end, winning 3-0 and turning Wednesday night’s second leg against Uzbekistan at a sold-out Marvel Stadium into a homecoming party. Even coach Tony Gustavsson has started imagining what the atmosphere might be like. They’ve qualified for Paris 2024; it’s just not official yet.

But as ever in sport, heartbreak is only just around the corner. One of the many anomalies of Olympic football is that squads are restricted to just 18 players, rather than the usual 23 (or more) in FIFA tournaments. Gustavsson has probably picked his 18 in his head already. It mostly picks itself. He has probably even practised the difficult conversations he’ll need to have with those who aren’t in it.

But the unexpected re-emergence of wildcard Michelle Heyman has given him something to think about on the long flight home from Tashkent.

As anticipated, the Matildas lined up as they did when Kerr was injured during the Women’s World Cup: without a traditional striker. Instead, they played with a ‘false nine’, where the player positioned at centre forward (Emily van Egmond, sometimes interchanging with Mary Fowler) drops deep into midfield in an attempt to confuse defenders.

Michelle Heyman is back with the Matildas - can she make it to the Olympics?Credit: Getty

The only difference was that Caitlin Foord couldn’t start on the left wing due to load management concerns, so Gustavsson boldly named a debutant, Kaitlyn Torpey, to play there instead. The problem was that Torpey is a defender – even though she ended up wearing Kerr’s vacant No.20, and actually did quite well despite playing out of position, albeit lacking the selfishness of a natural forward.

When you zoomed out and looked at the composition of Australia’s attack, it made complete sense why it wasn’t working. All credit to Uzbekistan for their terrific defending in the first half, but there was nobody out there for the Matildas who truly specialises in putting the small round thing into the big rectangular thing with a net attached to it.