Sam Kerr's milestone Matildas match is a reminder of the Asian Cup's other lessons

You couldn't see it at first. 

As the broadcast camera slowly panned across the sweat-soaked players of Australia and Indonesia, lining up to bump fists and shake hands following Friday's opening group game of the Asian Cup, there was another, smaller line forming just off-screen.

In the cool, lengthening shadows of the Mumbai Football Arena, several Indonesian players waited patiently, like fans at a meet-and-greet, to get their photo taken with Sam Kerr.

The Matildas captain had just scored five of Australia's 18 goals – their biggest-ever haul in an Asian competition and one of the biggest score-lines ever recorded in international women's football – but you wouldn't have known it from the grins that lit up the young players' faces or the gentle bows of respect they showed.

Such is the status of the player who has now become Australia's all-time leading goal-scorer, galloping past Socceroos legend Tim Cahill's previous record of 50 to currently sit at 54.

That she did so in fewer games than Cahill, all the while overcoming countless other barriers that women footballers face throughout their careers, is a testament to just where Kerr sits – or ought to sit – in conversations about Australia's greatest-ever players.

It's a shame, then, that this wasn't the major talking point in the afterglow of Friday's match.

Instead, the post-mortems scythed through head coach Tony Gustavsson's squad selection and rotations: the benefit of fielding his strongest starting XI against the tournament's lowest-ranked side, the worth of substituting seasoned veterans in place of inexperienced youngsters, and what, if anything, can be learned from an 18-0 carnage.

«I'm really disappointed tonight, if anything,» former Matilda Georgia Yeoman-Dale