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Thus spoke Football Australia.
After five months of distended speculation over the status of Sam Kerr, whose January ACL tear seemed to all but eliminate her from Olympic contention, Australian football's governing body has finally confirmed that the Matildas striker will have to miss yet another major football tournament through injury.
Exactly why it has taken so long for this news to be made solid is unclear.
After all, Kerr is only half-way through her expected rehabilitation to repair a ruptured ligament in her knee, which typically takes eight to 12 months to heal fully. Some athletes have returned faster than that, while others have taken longer. It depends on a lot of things, some of which is in Kerr's control, and some of which is not.
And sure, she may be back in her squeaky white sneakers, jumping around with her Chelsea FC team-mates as they lifted their fifth consecutive Women's Super League title over the weekend.
But Kerr is certainly still some time away from dusting off her football boots, and even longer, you'd think, from returning to the form and fitness that saw her win basically every individual award on offer last year. Indeed, her own dad Roger told ABC three months ago that Kerr would not make it to Paris.
Further, FA are staffed by some of the leading experts in knee injury prevention and rehabilitation in football, meaning they understand and appreciate the time it takes for high performance athletes to return to pre-injury levels. They also, surely, would not want to risk pushing their most marketable player to return to international competition before she, or her money-making knee, is ready.
So why the delay the inevitable?
Maybe, like so many others, FA just didn't know, and were hoping beyond hope that Kerr would miraculously recover in time, the sinews in her knee determined to knit back together faster thanks to the sheer collective desire of them all to get back on the grass in green and gold again.
But with a two-game friendly series against China fast approaching — the team's final games on home soil before heading to Paris, and the last chance head coach Tony Gustavsson will have to figure out his final 18-player squad — they apparently could wait no longer.
Will it ever be thus? The 30-year-old's body feels like it is breaking down, overloaded with games and punished with repeated injuries that have sidelined her for what has now become the better part of the last year.
Kerr is only getting older, and the games she plays will only continue to pile up as more competitions are squeezed into an ever-crowded calendar, so perhaps a bigger and more worrying question is whether Australia's most famous footballer will ever return to her old self at all.
We all remember that old self: the one that the Matildas depended upon during their last Olympics, in Tokyo, when Kerr almost single-handedly carried Australia into the bronze medal match.
Having scored three of her team's four goals across a difficult group stage that included the USA and Sweden to scrape into the knockouts, she then spear-headed a Matildas side that battled through one of the all-time great Olympic matches, scoring two of Australia's four goals in their 4-2 extra-time win over Great Britain.
While their tired squad was neutralised by a merciless Sweden in the semi-finals, Kerr then mustered enough energy to score once more in the Matildas' 3-4 loss to the USA in the third-placed play-off.
Six goals in six games. Over half of the team's tournament total. A gravitational force every time she was on the field. And a player who has only gotten better in the three years since then.
But in two months' time, the Matildas will have to navigate another "group of death" without the player who helped them escape its clutches many times before.
No group is an easy group in a 12-team Olympic tournament, but facing two traditional powerhouses in the USA and Germany, and a rising force in Zambia, will be particularly tough with a team that has still not quite figured out who they are in a post-Sam Kerr world.
Indeed, the USA and Germany will be particularly motivated in Paris, having tumbled out of last year's World Cup in rather humiliating fashion at their earliest ever respective stages.
Both nations will be keen to return to the medal dais, as they have done several times before, while surprise-packet Zambia aren't one to count out, especially led by two of the most exciting attackers currently in the game in Barbra Banda and Racheal Kundananji.
Get through there in first or second spot and the Matildas could face reigning gold medallists Canada, rising stars Colombia, World Cup penalty-shoot-out-trauma team France, Asian heavyweights Japan, or even a Nigeria or Brazil depending on the balance of the other two groups.
Will Australia have the talent, the depth, the smarts, and the legs to battle past all of them and make it to the same stage they did in Tokyo — or possibly, as many hope, even further?
The past two international windows have given us a glimpse into the alternatives spinning off in front of the Matildas.
Veteran striker Michelle Heyman did well to fill the striker gap against Uzbekistan back in February, while Mary Fowler, Caitlin Foord, and Hayley Raso stepped up against Mexico, as they did during the World Cup as they bought Kerr's injured calf time to heal enough to join them on the pitch.
The inclusions of Kaitlyn Torpey, Sharn Frier, and Cortnee Vine provide more options for the Matildas' speedy transition play out wide, though the motor of their midfield in Katrina Gorry remains in doubt as she rehabilitates an ankle injury.
Clare Hunt returns to shore up the back-line after a few months off the grass, though Aivi Luik misses out with a hamstring. Courtney Nevin and Winonah Heatley are included for some defensive cover, but Amy Sayer was sacrificed to the ACL gods along the way.
Who, then, we will see later this month as Australia take on the reigning Asian Champions China? What version of the Matildas' post-Kerr metamorphosis will we get?
And how confident will they — and we — be with whatever we see, so close to what could be their last shot at an Olympic medal?
There is one more international window between this China series and the start of the Games, with an additional match rumoured to be scheduled in Europe before the team enters a training camp to prepare.
Exactly what kind of Matildas team emerges from it will be, like Sam Kerr's rehab, a long and torturous waiting game.
"This window will be a tough one for me and my staff in terms of evaluating players, where they are, and then the final selection process for Paris," Gustavsson said.
"I think everyone can do the math here and understand that obviously the Olympic roster will be based mostly out of those that are in this upcoming May/June camp.
"We have looked at providing cover in each of the different positions and ensuring the player profile for those positions enhance the squad. We are pleased and confident we have those options across the pitch.
"We want to use this camp to summarise the evolved playing style we have built upon in the last couple of months: to go back to what we did at last year's World Cup and the core things we did well there, and then add the layers we have worked on since.
"Then we will see if we can get more of a complete overview of where we are positioned, work on nuances and details, and get some answers of where are we and what do we need to keep working on come the Olympics."