First the injuries came for Chloe Logarzo, Lydia Williams, and Charlie Rule, and we did not speak out because they hadn't played for the Matildas in a while anyway.

Then they came for Katrina Gorry, Clare Hunt, and Courtney Nevin, and we did not speak because they were replaced by Sharn Frier, Winonah Heatley, and Emily Gielnik, and maybe Wednesday's friendly against Mexico could be used to test out other players instead?

Then they came for Aivi Luik, and we did not speak because surely seven injuries would be enough for a single international window and the universe can't be that cruel.

Then they came for Gielnik. The player who had been called in as an injury replacement herself and had barely been in camp for a week. And now speaking out has become a matter of urgency.

With the Paris Olympics less than three months away, and just one more national team camp scheduled in late May against China, the Matildas' recent influx of injuries has become less of a blinking red light and more of a wailing, spinning siren.

This feeling is not new for long-time Matildas fans. Squad depth has been a point of anxiety for several years, with Football Australia admitting as much in its 2020 Performance Gap Report showing Australia had, at that time, one of the shallowest national team squads in international women's football, with a much larger jump for fringe or emerging players into the core side than many other comparable national teams.

Closing this gap and creating squad depth has been one of head coach Tony Gustavsson's two primary responsibilities since taking over in late 2020 (alongside progressing as far as possible in major tournaments).

Players such as Clare Hunt, Mackenzie Arnold, Kyra Cooney-Cross, Charlie Grant, Cortnee Vine, Amy Sayer, Michelle Heyman, Clare Wheeler and Katrina Gorry have all been uncovered or reinvigorated under Gustavsson, with two fourth-placed finishes in the Tokyo Olympics and last year's World Cup to show for it.

But the pool of players below the Matildas — namely those being developed at A-League Women level — are still scrambling to catch up, going through their own growing pains as the domestic competition lengthens and professionalises.

Whether it is advancing quickly enough to keep up with the standards now required of international-level players, though, is a more urgent question as the current core players get older and their bodies become less resilient.

Australia isn't the only team grappling with such a crisis of depth exposed by injury.

A number of teams which have qualified for this year's Games are experiencing similar issues, and while the exact causes and consequences of their respective injuries are as varied as the injuries themselves, the one common denominator is that, over the past few years, these top-level players have been playing more football for their clubs and countries with fewer opportunities to rest in between.

According to research conducted by FIFPro, the global players' union, one of the biggest problems facing the future of the women's game is the global match calendar: the puzzle of how local, regional, and international competitions are pieced together in something resembling a yearly schedule.

Increasingly, more governing bodies are wanting to squeeze more competitions (and thus, more commercial opportunities) into this calendar, such as UEFA introducing the Women's Nations League, or the AFC re-starting its Women's Club Championship last year.

This has happened so rapidly, though, that players who started out as amateurs or semi-professionals and were rarely given the resources to develop from a young age, have suddenly been thrust into full-time football.