The Socceroos, presumably in homage to
Coldplay, unveiled their All Yellow strip (with green socks) as they resumed
their World Cup qualifying campaign against Tajikistan on a cut-up Adelaide
Oval surface seemingly covered in big strips of green masking tape. Piling up a
cricket score against the hapless and wounded Central Asians, they ploughed on
ahead of Jordan at the top of Group B.
The sizeable crowd were barely in their
seats when Massimo Luongo opened the scoring in the second minute, taking his
chance from outside a chockers penalty area. Ten minutes later, captain Mile
Jedinak converted a penalty occasioned by keeper Alisher Tuychiev
professionally fouling international debutante Apostolos Giannou.
The Socceroos kept firing balls into the
penalty area – twenty-three by the fortieth minute to Tajikistan’s one –
without adding to the 2-0 scoreline, and the visitors had two players
stretchered off. Looking très
haut-couture in their white shirt with thin
green-then-red-then-green-then-red-again chevrons, they were looking competent
enough at the back until they came undone after the interval.
Defender Davron Ergashev was cautioned for
collaring Giannou in the box, substitute captain Mark Milligan putting i gialloverdi 3-0 up. Nathan Burns had a
few chances before tapping in an Aaron Mooy cross in the sixty-seventh minute,
and the subsequent introduction of Tom Rogić, on for Luongo, fired up the
Socceroos’ offence. Within five minutes, the Celtic man had netted a brace: the
first a Wembley-Tor from a Mooy free
kick, the second an opportunist extra-areal strike.
Not done yet, Rogić hit the bar in the
seventy-fifth minute, and his team would hit the woodwork twice more. Burns’
second goal completed the rout, a mere training drill on the road to Russia.
Australia 7 (Massimo Luongo 2’; Mile Jedinak [pen.] 13’; Mark Milligan [pen.]
57’; Nathan Burns 67’, 87’; Tom Rogić 70’, 72’) – Tajikistan 0
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