Matildas coach Joe Montemurro set to make more changes to Australia's team for return clash with Panama
Despite sitting 41 places lower than Australia in the world rankings, Panama beat a Matildas team missing a host of stars – including Steph Catley, Alanna Kennedy, Caitlin Foord, Ellie Carpenter, Clare Hunt, Kyra Cooney-Cross, Charlotte Grant and injured pair Mary Fowler and Sam Kerr – 1-0 in Bunbury on Saturday.
More young talent is set to get an opportunity in game two of the series at HBF Park, with Alex Chidiac, Kaitlyn Torpey and Emily Gielnik having since departed camp, and free agent Micah, who was forced off in the defeat after a crunching second-half blow left her dazed, ruled out.
'We're not going to take any risks,' Matildas coach Joe Montemurro said.
'She (Micah) will be fine. It's just a little bit of whiplash, (but) we just don't want to take any risks. There's no need to.'
Montemurro is happy to further experiment with players and combinations in just his fourth game in charge as he bids to build Australia's depth ahead of next year's AFC Women's Asian Cup.
'It's been great to be able to do it at this level because we can gauge exactly where we're at,' he said.
'I haven't really looked at (Saturday's result) as a loss. I've looked at it as more information for us to go forward.
'We're trying to lift the way, lift the style, lift the football, and we want to do it without negative results, but it's probably one where … when you make a lot of changes there's going to be a little bit of instability, but I still have belief in the process and still have belief in the way going forward.
'We've got a bank of information that will help us go forward.'
Montemurro suggested the learning experience that the next generation of Matildas were being exposed to was priceless.
'It's like everything – you don't lose, you learn,' he said.
'You learn from these situations. It's a perfect opportunity to learn, because it's not a do-or-die game. It's not a game that we are going to lose points on, or lose our status in a competition situation.
'It's a game where it was always prescribed that we were going to make a lot of changes.
'The good thing about it is players, individually, who were given an opportunity, can look at themselves and learn and understand.
'We focused on the take-outs of (Saturday's) game because there were some good passages.
'It just wasn't continuous enough, and it probably wasn't, at times, football-intelligent enough.
'Understanding international football, understanding when a team does break up the game and tries to stop rhythms and so on … we have to be better mentally and even as a coaching staff, we have to be prepared for these opportunities.
'For me, the perfect way of learning these levels of international football is through an experience we had the other day.'
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