The Ashes failure bingo card was ticked one-by-one on Tuesday morning.
A previously upbeat England men's managing director Rob Key sat among a throng of UK journalists, two days out from Christmas, trying to explain how this particular tour had gone so awry. What it might mean for their and the head coach's job and his. What it might say about the wider ecosystem of English cricket. Even promising to look into a drinking culture in the team, a nightmare of Ashes past.
Even the setting, a soulless and self-contained concrete-encased void in the depths of the MCG, seemed purpose-built for English woe. Naturally, it will be the setting for the press conferences for this week's fourth Test. And as soon as the test of the stadium's emergency evacuation warning interrupted Key lamenting England's batting in their first innings at Adelaide - "we should have got 500" - ladies and gents, we had a full house. It seemed to take about as long as the first Test.
The nature of the interruption settled Key, without dulling his contrition across an apologetic, initially wary 50-minute sit-down with the English media. His tone was necessary given the scoreline and timeframe, 3-0 down inside 11 days. There is plenty of anger within English cricket as to how a regime boasting of doing things differently have managed only to achieve the familiar Ashes tour capitulation in double-quick time. The danger ran towards them and met them more than halfway.
It was Key who set the wheels in motion for this era of English Test cricket, one that seems now to be entering its farewell weeks, At Melbourne and, from the New Year, at Sydney, they'll be facing an Australia team sensing a third 5-0 in six home Ashes, egged on by home fans who might well want it even more.
Back in 2022, Key appointed Ben Stokes as captain, though that was something of a no-brainer after Joe Root's resignation. The recruitment of Brendon McCullum as head coach, initially red-ball only before handing him the white-ball keys at the start of the year, was regarded as a masterstroke. This alignment of thinking, good vibes and on-field grizzle, helped to alleviate the strains of Covid-19, and everything went swimmingly at the start. Now, with 13 defeats and just 12 wins in the last 26 Tests since the start of 2024, and given the nature of this latest set of losses Down Under, reputations are long gone. Jobs might be next.
"My overwhelming thing, apart from the disappointment, is actually I feel like we're so much better than what we've played," Key said.
He acknowledges that is on him and the rest of the management group. Even on a superstitious level.
It was on day two of the first Test in Perth, with England Lions taking on CA XI at Lilac Hill that Key, watching the events at the Optus Stadium on his iPad - "I find you can't see anything at the ground, watching on TV is better personally" - decided upon to walk around the boundary's edge.
With England's lead in three figures, just one wicket down in their second innings, leaving his seat (bad karma in cricket when your team is batting) proved catastrophic. The result, defeat by the end of that day, was followed by a second eight-wicket defeat and a resolute but urn-losing loss at Adelaide Oval.
"It was the worst lap ever," Key said, ruefully. "You get back and we've lost five wickets. And it's that sort of thing - the hope that kills you.
"I must have said that every day almost in this series… just as you get to a position you end up getting yourselves in trouble a little bit. And it's bloody tough, as we knew. That's cricket, and I think that's my overriding thing. The players we had, we haven't helped them get to their best, and that's on us as a set-up."
Pressed on the specifics, Key gave three aspects: the lead-in to the Ashes, the lack of specialist coaches, and the decisions players have made on the field. He took the blame for the first two, while appreciating they had contributed to the third.
All three were a bone of contention ahead of the winter. At the time, those fears were ignored.
A number of the squad were involved in the white-ball series in New Zealand, with others tuning up in an indoor tent at Loughborough before heading out to join that T20I and ODI tour and train in the shadows.
England ended up losing both series, including all three ODIs. More pertinent was the form of their batters in the challenging, seaming conditions that New Zealand presents in October.
White-ball captain Harry Brook averaged 58.33 (a figure boosted by a remarkable century in the first match, alongside scores of 34 and 6), but other batters moving on to the Ashes struggled, including Joe Root (9.66), Jamie Smith (6.00), Ben Duckett (3.66) and Jacob Bethell (10.33). Their only chance to turn that tide ahead of the Ashes came at Perth's Lilac Hill - a glorified club ground - in a three-day match on a sluggish pitch, and against an inexperienced England Lions.
Key admits an error in judgment in sending so many of the Ashes squad on that New Zealand tour, having believed he could balance the demands of the red- and white-ball sides.
Having focussed primarily on England's Test revival since 2022, their limited-overs fortunes had waned dramatically in the same timeframe. England suffered a humiliating 2023 ODI World Cup campaign as defending champions, before losing badly to India in the semi-final of last year's T20 World Cup, with the next edition around the corner in the New Year. Key confirmed England had turned down the opportunity to play a warm-up match against a representative Australia XI in Adelaide.
"I was of the opinion with our preparation that we'd go to New Zealand for the white-ball stuff. I've been criticised quite rightly for focussing too much on Test cricket. So you're trying to hedge your bets a little bit and go, right, okay, 50-over cricket can be a good opportunity where you get competitive cricket, where batters in particular can start to find form, if you're Joe Root, people like that.
"We ended up in tough early-season conditions out in New Zealand, where the batters probably did more harm than good ... Ben Duckett, people like that. So then you feel like you're chasing it a little bit, because one part of it's gone, then you can't flip your preparation and go, 'oh, by the way, now we need to play loads of games'.
"We had a choice of whether we went to Adelaide and played against an Australian team there, or just went to Perth and tried to control the preparation ourselves. They said to us, 'actually, if you go there, it's not going to be the WACA or Optus, you're going to end up at a club ground'. And I said, no, it's fine. We feel we can control that preparation better."
The lack of a dedicated bowling coach since the end of the 2022 summer - James Anderson, Tim Southee and David Saker, currently with the team, have assumed the role in the last 12 months - meant an inexperienced seam attack have been found wanting. Barring an impressive start in the first innings of the series, they have lacked consistency and cohesion. There is also no fielding coach, with Paul Collingwood, who used to oversee that, no longer with the group.
The players have had autonomy, which is a principle that Key, McCullum and Stokes were aligned with, not least because - in theory - it gave them the scope to play the cricket that came most naturally to them. But it speaks to the overall frustration that Key indirectly took Brook to task, as an example of a player making "dumb" decisions over the last month.
"There's a real difference between aggression and dumb," he said, "and sometimes we take dumb options: looking to ramp bowlers very early on when you're on 10. Stuff like that is dumb cricket. Looking to hit a wide half-volley hard is fine. That's there to hit."
Though he didn't single out the vice-captain by name, it was a clear reference to the stroke that Brook had attempted against Scott Boland when on 7 during the second-innings chase in Adelaide. Brook exposed all three stumps and ended up cue-ending the ball to square leg. He was eventually bowled leg stump by Nathan Lyon while attempting a reverse sweep - a shot that had been working for him in his innings of 30.
"It makes me cringe sometimes saying it but, you know, we talk about absorbing pressure, soaking up pressure, understanding moments, realising when the game's on the line and that moment can go either way. Too often we take the wrong option. And that's where we've got to get better. And that's what cricket is really.
"I don't think we've ever hidden away from that, to be honest, but it's a real fine balance between taking away weapons from players and saying, 'Don't do this, don't do that, don't do this.' That's where Brendon, I think, works bloody well at just speaking to players one-on-one and just trying to make sure that they make better decisions and not stupid decisions. It doesn't always look like that, but it's hard."
The dressing-room remains unified, if dismayed. Faith in the process leading into the fourth Test is said to be sound, but the proof will be on the field. England are now without a five-match series win in four attempts against their biggest rivals, drawing 2-2 at home with India (2025) and Australia (2023) and losing the corresponding away series. Key acknowledges the team's evolution has stunted.
He is unsure if he will retain his post. A decision on his future will need to be made at ECB board level, with chair Richard Thompson currently in Australia, and chief executive Richard Gould due to return in Sydney. For now, however, he continues to back McCullum and his ethos, provided the lessons of this tour are learned.
"Brendon's always looking to evolve, really, always looking to change," Key said. "When we've sat down and said, "Right, how are we going to improve? How are we going to get better?" At no stage has he ever said, "No, no, I'm only doing it this way." There's no question we have to evolve it again really.
"There's been some brilliant moments along the way. I still feel like there's plenty of life in this whole thing now, but we have to evolve. We have to make sure that we're doing things better."