The All Whites have been made to rue their missed chances after a narrow 1-0 defeat to Australia in their international football friendly in Brisbane on Thursday.
New Zealand began the match as considerable underdogs, ranked 64 places below their World Cup-bound opponents in the FIFA rankings.
But it was the visitors that dominated the fixture, creating better goal-scoring opportunities as well as more shots on target.
The possession was shared but it was New Zealand that looked the more likely to break the deadlock, with Tim Payne and Andre de Jong missing golden opportunities.
However, against the run of play, Socceroos winger Awer Mabil pounced on a loose pass by Joe Bell to cut inside and fire in the game's only goal from outside the box.
All Whites coach Danny Hay was disappointed by his team's poor finishing but encouraged by their play.
"Well, the history books will say it was 1-0 to Australia, that's generally the end of the story," he said.
"I thought it was a highly-competitive match, it probably could've gone both ways and even when you got Guus Hiddink saying, 'You deserved at least a draw', it probably says a lot.
"It's disappointing after the Costa Rica result, where I thought we were very, very good - outstanding. And to lose again where I thought we dominated for large periods.
"This is part of our evolution. We've got to become far more clinical in the attacking third and that's just something we're working on developing and that's going to happen over time.
"We created a number of chances, I think the majority of the chances that Australia created were generally off the back of mistakes from us. But again, they're mistakes where we are trying to do things that we think are right."
Having traditionally been a team that relies on brute strength and size to outmuscle their opponents, the All Whites are moving away from that to benefit their midfield stars.
European-based pair Matthew Garbett and Elijah Just terrorised the Australian defenders, with entertaining interchange play and attacking intent.
All Whites goalkeeper Oli Sail was pleased by his team's performance and thought they controlled much of the game.
"[The] performance was once again pretty impressive, the courage to build up from the back, showed courage on the ball in tight spaces," he said.
"I thought, if we looked at it honestly, box to box, we were the better team. But as we continue our evolution of a team that plays some really attractive football, it's also important to look back at our history of how we used to win games by being the better team in both boxes.
"We continue to move forward and take the right steps in terms of the type of football we're playing, and box to box, I'd argue we were the better team, we can be happy with our performance.
"But at the end of the day, football is decided by both ends and they were just more clinical when they had the opportunity."
The All Whites will play Australia in the second and final friendly of the series at Auckland's Eden Park on Sunday.
