AFL round 1 match review: Sydney v. Essendon at Sydney

After being vindicated after their victimisation as part of the political elite’s War On Sport ASADA investigation, Essendon were at full strength against Sydney at le stade olympique (in its not-quite-oval configuration) for the opening match of the season in the Emerald City.

And what a match it was. The Bombers came out of the blocks hard, racking up four goals (including rippers from outside fifty from a Jobe Watson run and an Adam Cooney set shot) and conceding none on the way to a twenty-six-point quarter-time lead. Cooney began the second quarter with a soccer in mid-air, while the Swans had to wait until the halfway mark of the term before Craig Bird could nab their first major. Their poor ball-handling on the rain-soaked surface and their lack of discipline hurt them, and Isaac Heeney, the star recruit from Maitland, was doing little to justify the hype bestowed on him.

The Same Olds took a twenty-two-point buffer into the long break, and added to it when Dyson Heppell capitalised on yet another fifty-metre penalty. They appeared to be practicing a variant of Pagan’s Paddock (perhaps we should call it Hird’s Backyard), pushing their forwards up to the edge of midfield and letting their superior wet-weather skills do the trick when the ball was loose in their attacking fifty-metre arc. High tackles at each end led to the sides trading goals, and Essendon’s advantage mushroomed to forty-one points in third quarter.

At this point, Sydney looked gone for all money. Buddy Franklin had done little, Adam Goodes was substituted off, and the fourth quarter opened with a collision between Franklin and Luke Parker which resulted in the latter being stretchered off with blood oozing from various temporary facial apertures. But the stoppage in play and a slight change in the weather altered the terms of debate, and i rossoneri were forced to try and slow things down.

Three unanswered Swans goals into the term, Franklin made a superb tackle on a surging Essendon forward. Behinds to Kurt Tippett and Kieren ‘Son Of Gary’ Jack reduced the margin to twelve, and two consecutive turnovers of possession gifted opportunities to Bird and Jack, who each kicked truly to level the scores, Essendon having failed to score since late in the third quarter.

The scores might have been level, but a tired Essendon outfit looked unlikely to score again, and indeed didn’t, instead trying to grind out a 60-all draw. But two more downfield thrusts from la albirroja settled the issue, Franklin goaling with fewer than four minutes remaining, and the boy from Maitland (of all places!) sealing it with fewer than two remaining.

Sydney 10.12.72 – Essendon 9.6.60

Goals: Franklin 3, Bird 2, Tippett 2, Heeney, Jack, Laidler, (Syd.); Cooney 3, Colyer, Daniher, Goddard, Heppell, Melksham, Watson (Ess.)

Best: Parker, Jack, Kennedy (Syd.); Heppell, Melksham, Watson (Ess.)

NRL round 5 match review: Canterbury-Bankstown v. South Sydney at Sydney

The grand finalists met in a rematch at the Cathy Freeman-John Aloisi Memorial Stadium and the sequel was even better than the original.

Both teams went into the match with 3-1 records, and it was last season’s runners-up who opened the scoring in the fifth minute when a double knock-on led to a scrum, which led to Curtis Rona being put through in the corner. When Sam Perrett took advantage of some poor defending to score in the other corner nine minutes later, the Bulldogs were up 10-0 and it was looking like turning into a rout.

The weather, however, was to be a constant factor throughout the match, and the Berries’ next two line breaks failed due to fumbles and poor footwork caused in part by the precipitation. They looked as if they would go into the sheds with a comfortable lead when an Alex Johnston kick was saved by Brett Morris, followed by a Glenn Stewart line break being quashed through Tom Burgess’ knock-on. The sight of the trainer strapping Greg Inglis’ knee was another worry for i rossoverdi.

In the thirty-ninth minute, however, the complexion of the match changed. A Canterbury infringement at the play-the-ball gave Souths a scrum feed, and the resulting passage of play put Isaac Luke over, but not before Sam Kasiano’s knee collided with his head, ruling him out for the rest of the match. Adam Reynolds, as is his wont, made no mistake with the conversion or the penalty, and the eight-point try put them two points behind.

The second half, however, opened with little sign of a Rabbitohs comeback. Canterbury extended their lead in the twelfth minute of the period when Josh Morris’ chest and hands were on the right end of a kick, and Trent Hodkinson’s conversion put the score at 16-8. Souths responded soon after, front-rower David Tyrrell getting on the end of a deflected grubber kick and grounding underneath the posts.

In a brutal war of attrition at a rain-soaked Stade Olympique, that would turn out to be the final try. Both teams had bombs defused in the in-goal area, and a Canterbury play-the-ball infringement resulted in Souths being held up over the line and then blowing a kick. A South play-the-ball infringement well within goal-kicking range soon followed, but i biancoazzurri gambled and went for the try. When that failed, Souths ran the ball down the pitch, drawing a penalty from Canterbury’s Lancastrian prop James Graham. Reynolds’ kick tied the scores and one readied oneself for that David Gallop-induced abomination, golden point extra time.

The post-penalty kick-off, which looked to be sailing out of bounds, was inexplicably misfielded by two Rabbitohs players. The line drop-out was long, but not long enough to prevent Hodkinson from getting within field goal range and putting the Bulldogs ahead. When Reynolds tried the same from an impossible situation forty-five metres out, he was cleaned up by Graham, charging in to smother the kick. The fracas, if you will, that followed resulted in a report, a sin binning, some crowd trouble, and the awarding of a penalty to Souths. Bryson Goodwin did the honours for the injury-ravaged reigning premiers, and another chapter in this great rivalry was written.

Canterbury-Bankstown 17 – South Sydney 18

Tries: Rona 5’; Perrett 14’; J. Morris (C.-B.); Luke 39’; Tyrrell 59’ (S. Syd)

Conversions: Hodkinson 2/3 (C.-B.); Reynolds 2/2 (S. Syd)

Penalties: Reynolds 2/2; Goodwin 1/1 (S. Syd)

Field goals: Hodkinson (1/1)

Cricket World Cup final match review: Australia v. New Zealand at Melbourne

The television promos for this match promised a ‘trans-Tasman showdown’ – an exceedingly rare thing in a sport in which the two countries didn’t play each other between 1946 and 1970 and in which the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy never quite attained the aura of the Bledisloe Cup – but the match didn’t really live up to its billing.

The wrestling to the ground of a streaker by Victoria’s finest just as the Kiwi anthem-singer was belting out the first phonemes of “E ihoa atua…” turned out, in retrospect, to be one of the more interesting events of the day. Fifty-over cricket has been polluted by whack-everything-for-six types like AB de Villiers, but it isn’t much more exciting when the wickets are tumbling.

There was a bit of that early on; indeed, Mitchell Starc rocketed one into Brendon McCullum’s off-stump in the first over to send the quintessential modern batsman back across the ditch for a duck. The Black Caps probably wished they hadn’t sent themselves in to bat when Martin Guptill fell for fifteen runs (bowled Maxwell) and Kane Williamson for twelve (caught and bowled Johnson), leaving the co-hosts 3 for 39 in the thirteenth over.

It was almost 4 for 66 in the twentieth when umpire Kumar Dharmasena gave Grant Elliott out leg before wicket off Glen Maxwell’s bowling, but the Kiwis wisely interpreted the Sri Lankan’s hesitation in putting his finger up as a good reason to use one of their challenges, and the third umpire reversed the decision. After being given a lifeline on fifteen runs, Elliott would go on to anchor the New Zealand innings. He and Ross Taylor put on a three-figure fourth-wicket partnership, slowly getting the run rate up and surviving until the thirty-sixth over.

The South African Marais Erasmus did his thing with the video replay and the Snicko, and found Taylor caught behind off James Faulkner’s bowling for forty. At 4 for 150, it looked like the men in black and electric blue might post a decent total after all, but the Tasmanian bowled Corey Anderson for a silver duck in the same over, and in the next, Michael Clarke caught Luke Ronchi at first slip off the bowling of Starc, sending the ex-Western Australian (who was, however, born in New Zealand – namely in the same town as was Joh Bjelke-Petersen) back to the pavilion for a fourth-ball duck.

Elliott survived another scare on seventy-three, Erasmus throwing a disputed leg before wicket decision back to Dharmasena, and the Australians’ performance in this newfangled thing called a ‘batting powerplay’ (taking three scalps and restricting the Kiwis to fifteen runs) augured a walkover. The forty-first over saw Mitchell Johnson bowl Daniel Vettori, whose batting prowess at the death of an innings had been on display in the semi-final against the Proteas in Auckland, and when Elliott finally fell in the next over (after scoring eighty-three runs before misjudging a lovely delivery from Faulkner and edging it to Brad Haddin), it was all over for the Black Caps.

The Kiwis’ total of 183, the historically-minded noted between the innings, was the same as that posted by Kapil Dev’s Indian team at Lord’s in the 1983 final, when the West Indies underestimated their opponents and managed to end up all out for 140. But Clarke’s men would be making no such mistake. There were hiccups along the way: Trent Boult got the wicket of Big Bash League star Aaron Finch, caught and bowled for a fifth-ball duck, in the fifth over, and David Warner survived a tenth-over appeal.

Nothing came of these early scares, and Warner and Steve Smith casually chipped away at the target, taking ones and twos wherever they could find them. When Warner was dismissed for forty-five in the thirteenth over (caught Elliott bowled Henry), it left Australia 2 for 63. The captain would come to the crease in his final one-day international at the last moment the Black Caps looked to have any sort of a chance.

From there, the match settled into the regular pattern of fifty-over matches these days – the bowlers not really trying to take wickets and the batsman not really able to get the ball past the full-court press along the boundary ropes. Clarke’s was the next wicket to fall – in the thirty-second over, bowled by Matt Henry for 74. At 3 for 175, Shane Watson and the still-at-the-crease Smith had little left to do, and the crowd of ninety-three thousand saw i gialloverdi stroll to a seven-wicket win with sixteen overs and five balls to spare.

Faulkner’s performance as what our friends across the Pacific would call a ‘closer’ earned him the man of the match award; while Starc was named player of the tournament. Yes, dear readers, after a tournament in which one-day cricket finally jumped the shark due to the number of ridiculously high totals and swashbuckling displays of six-hitting, they gave the player of the tournament award to a bowler. Even after the re-election of the premier who negotiated with the Lindt Café gunman and the Abbott government’s threat to remote indigenous communities, perhaps there is still some justice left in the world.

RIP Phil Hughes and contro il cricket moderno!

New Zealand 183 (45 overs) (Grant Elliott 83; Mitchell Johnson 3/30) – Australia 3/186 (33.1 overs) (Michael Clarke 74; Matt Henry 2/46)

A-League/AFL crossover guernseys

This is a little experiment in designing football guernseys, something which I have wanted to do for a long time but have only recently taught myself how to do properly. Armed with Microsoft Paint and some blank templates downloaded from the Bigfooty guernsey design board, I set about creating an Aussie rules guernsey for each of the ten A-League teams (based on the strips shown here). The rules I set for myself were that each guernsey must use the colours of the relevant A-League team (with one exception: see Melbourne City below), and the design must have been worn in the AFL, VFL, VFA, SANFL, WAFL, or interstate matches.

Film review: Australian Rules

Released in 2002, Australian Rules represents one of the few attempts by filmmakers to use the greatest game of all as a muse. (Wikipedia lists only five films ever made about the code.) Like all good sports films, it isn’t really about sport, instead using it as a jumping-off point to explore deeper social and political issues.

The film takes place in the fictional Eyre Peninsula town of Prospect Bay, home to a football club (the Magpies), a pub, a runners-up medal in a 1993 Tidy Town competition, and little else besides. The first scene takes us into the club’s dressing rooms, where coach and local butcher ‘Arks’ (as in ‘I’ve arksed you blokes a thousand bloody times’) is giving his pre-match address. He is against handballing, “buggerising ‘round the flanks”, and general “finessin’”, i.e. every tactical innovation made since Ron Barassi strutted around Arden Street in a blue suit, and instead commands his charges to “go the guts”. A sign on the wall reads ‘NEGATIVE THOUGHTS CREATE NEGATIVE RESAULTS’ (sic).

We soon realise that the Magpies’ colours are supposed to symbolise the town’s racial divide. (This is probably why they wear Collingwood’s evenly-coloured stripes instead of Port Adelaide’s predominantly black ‘prison bar’ guernsey.) It is the week of the Grand Final, and with Prospect Bay’s Aboriginal ruckman having been arrested, his duties fall to the central character, Gary ‘Blacky’ Black (Nathan Phillips), an autodidact who immerses himself in books such as A More Powerful Vocabulary, and a sentimental bloke who feels alienated by the harden-the-f***-up culture of rural Australia.

The deterioration in race relations in the town is already underway when the Magpies’ indigenous contingent turn up with only ten minutes remaining until the opening bounce, almost missing another of Arks’ inspirational addresses. Prospect Bay’s opponents are Gundaroo, playing in red guernseys with a white yoke (an uncommon design – one would expect a South Australian team to go with North Adelaide’s red with white ‘V’). Blacky is losing every ruck duel (even copping a few in the old Jatz crackers), and the score is 15.10.100 to 6.4.40; it seems like a rather high-scoring game but is perhaps realistic given the parched nature of the turf. Race is the fuel for an all-in brawl (a Gundaroo players taunts his opponent with the line “you and your black mates”), and the Magpies go to the sheds battered and bruised.

Sports films often suffer from predictability in terms of their on-field outcomes, and this one is no different. Blacky leads his team in doing some of that “finessin’” that Arks dislikes, realising that his team’s height disadvantage isn’t conducive to moving the Sherrin down the middle of the field, and instead distributing the ball diagonally to indigenous speedsters like his best friend Gumby. The credit for the tactical switch must, however, go to Blacky’s mother, Liz, who in an earlier scene at the family dinner table, used sauce bottles for goalposts and a loaf of bred for the centre square to demonstrate how the Magpies might use space to neutralise their opponents’ superiority in the air.

Long story short, the Magpies win by one point, 18.15.123 to 18.14.122. An Aborigine kicks the winning minor score, and while the other thirty-four players are seemingly in Prospect Bay’s forward fifty (flooding apparently being the only post-Whitlam tactical innovation that Arks has absorbed), Blacky gets knocked out blocking a counter-attack by Gundaroo’s ruckman. Cut to the post-match clubroom celebrations, where the Magpies’ president (played by the guy who was in those Beaurepaires ads years ago) informs us that it is the Bays’ first flag in thirty-eight years, while another local dignitary waxes lyrical about the joys of football, noting sagely that “whenever men get together, great things happen”.

This is where it all kicks off. Dumby appeared to the naked eye to be the Magpies’ best player on the ground, but the Gray Medal is instead awarded to a white player. Blacky begins a fling with Dumby’s sister, Clarence, while Dumby and a cousin lead a robbery of the clubrooms which results in his being shot by Blacky’s father. As the town’s white population are in denial about the shooting, Blacky makes the trek across the highway to the indigenous reservation to attend Dumby’s funeral, stealing the Gray Medal beforehand to ensure that his friend would be buried therewith. Having been discovered in bed with Clarence, things come to a head between he and his father. After some random violence and some this-town-ain’t-big-enough-for-the-two-of-us standoffs, the father leaves in his rusty old car and Blacky is free to carry on his budding relationship with Clarence.

In terms of its portrayal of the culture of football, Australian Rules kicks a goal. There is the way in which the local club serves as the focal point for the civic life of towns like Prospect Bay (due, in part, to the fact that Australia’s comparative lack of local government areas leaves most localities without the mairie that characterises small-town France). Then there is the antediluvian tactical obscurantism of Arks’ ‘go the guts’ philosophy, inevitably outmoded by the space-creating barcelonista style used by the Magpies in the second half of the Grand Final in a perfect metaphor for the way in which the influx of Aboriginal players has altered the game. There was the awkward running through the banners (country footballers not being as well-versed in this art as the chaps on Mr. McLachlan’s circuit), the speechifying at the post-match presentations, and the roles played by women in football.

The film is also a feast for those of us who enjoy the visual side of football. We see Blacky training in a Melbourne guernsey, Arks in the old Port Adelaide prison bars, and one of Blacky’s younger brothers in the yellow-sash-on-royal-blue strip of pre-merger West Torrens. Dumby, we learn from his choices of guernsey, is a West Adelaide man, training in the Bloods’ erstwhile milanista red and black stripes and being buried in their more recent Essendonesque sash design. The on-field action scenes look staged, but at least capture that beautiful sound of boot striking Sherrin and that even more beautiful sound of flesh hitting drought-ridden turf.

Super Bowl XLIX match review: Seattle v. New England at Glendale, Ariz.

In the navy blue corner were the Seattle Seahawks, the stingiest defence in the league, in terms of points, yards, and passing yards conceded. In the white corner (as they were wearing their away strips) were the New England Patriots, led by quarterback Tom Brady, who along with coach Bill Belichick was making his sixth appearance in the Big Dance. The bookmakers in Las Vegas couldn’t separate them going into the match, and we were in for one of the all-time greatest Super Bowls.

Seattle kicked off, and the first quarter was a scoreless affair in which the two teams traded early punts before the Patriots spent most of the second half of the quarter in possession, only for Brady to miscue a pass and for Seattle back Jeremy Lane to make the interception.

The early stages of the second quarter saw more of the same, before Brady threw an eleven-yard touchdown pass to Brandon LaFell in the sixth minute. A seventy-yard Seahawks drive then levelled the scores, Marshawn Lynch needing three bites of the cherry to rush the ball over the line. With thirty-one seconds remaining, an eighty-yard Patriots drive was converted, and the NFC champions looked like replying with a field goal before opting instead for a throw. With two seconds to go, scores were tied at 14-14, and one couldn’t wait for Katy Perry to get on with her halftime performance so we could enjoy the second half of this magnificent tussle.

The third quarter saw the Cascadians take a ten-point lead. Their first drive led to a field goal, but they pressed forward again after intercepting the football on the halfway line. Forty-seven yards later, and with under five minutes remaining in the period, quarterback Russell Wilson only needed a short pass to find wide receiver Doug Baldwin. The Patriots would need to mount the largest fourth-quarter comeback in the history of the event in order to take home the hallowed Vince Lombardi Trophy.

The end of the third quarter and the start of the fourth were a punter’s delight as both teams took turns at failing to convert on the third down. Les bostoniens had the first real chances of the quarter; Brady unsuccessfully tried to find his wide receivers LaFell and Julian Edelman in the end zone before eventually hitting Danny Amendola in the eighth minute. Quickly regaining possession, they took less than six minutes to find another touchdown, this time through Edelman, and with two minutes left, the beaneaters were ahead 28-24.

The Seahawks needed to advance the ball eighty yards in those two minutes. Another solid run from Lynch got them to within fifty, but Wilson’s next few passes were incomplete. Desperately needing some yardage, he scoped out wide receiver Jermaine Kearse. Kearse and his opponent went for the ball, Kearse got a hand to it, fell down, and caught it on the third attempt after it had bounced off each of his thighs in succession. With this, Seattle had possession five yards from goal, and they could taste victory.

The Wilson-Lynch combination was once again the preferred route to the end zone, but the latter was tackled within a yard of the line. And then it happened. Wilson threw to Ricardo Lockette on the goal line, but the Patriots’ cornerback Malcolm Butler hip-and-shouldered him out of the way, intercepting with twenty seconds remaining. After all the hype about Brady, it would be an undrafted, community college-educated rookie from Vicksburg, Mississippi who would prove the match-winner.

There was still some business to attend to before the Patriots could ceremonially tip the Gatorade bucket over Belichick’s head. With the line of scrimmage set a yard from the Patriots’ goal line, Brady had to advance it out of the end zone lest he concede a safety. The Washingtonians’ eagerness got the better of them, however, and for moving forward before the ball was snapped they conceded a penalty, ensuring that Brady needed only to take a kneel on the last play to run the clock down. The first attempt to run that play witnessed a good old-fashioned all-in brawl, as both sides traded blows but the officials saw fit to penalise Seattle for its instigation. After an outstanding season in which they emerged victorious in the gruelling defensive struggle that is the NFC West, the Seahawks went home empty-handed, while Brady took his rightful place in the annals of American sport, six times a Super Bowl quarterback, four times a world champion, and three times the Most Valuable Player in this, the greatest show on earth.

Seattle 24 – New England 28

Touchdowns: Marshawn Lynch 13’ Q2; Chris Matthews 15’ Q2; Doug Baldwin 11’ Q3 (Sea.); Brandon LaFell 6’ Q2; Rob Gronkowski 15’ Q2; Danny Amendola 8’ Q4; Julian Edelman 13’ Q4 (N. E.)

PATs: Steven Hauschka 3/3 (Sea.); Stephen Gostkowski 4/4 (N. E.)

Field goals: Steven Hauschka 1/1 (Sea.)

Asian Cup final match review: Australia v. South Korea at Sydney

Both sides lined up for their respective national anthems. The John Aloisi-Cathy Freeman-Sam Burgess Memorial Stadium was a sea of yellow with islands of red. We were perhaps ninety minutes away from the greatest triumph in the history of Australian soccer. The clichés and the hype were coming thick and fast.

Son Heung-min had the first chance when he pushed the ball through Mile Jedinak’s legs in the second minute, and the Bayer Leverkusen man would be a constant menace for the home side. A foul on Mark Milligan five minutes later gave Jedinak a shot on goal, but his set piece curved onto the top of the net. Both teams pressed hard in the first fifteen minutes, and a crowded midfield ensured that neither could get the ball into their final third with any regularity.

The opportunities came sporadically, but they seemed to come more often for the Taegeuk Warriors. (According to Wikipedia, taegeuk, which is what that yin-and-yang circle-y thingy on the South Korean flag represents, means “the ultimate reality from which all things and values are derived”. No, I don’t have a clue what that means either.) Mat Ryan had a nervous moment midway through the first period, when he had to act quickly to close down Lee Jung-hyup. Kwak Tae-hwi headed a free kick just wide of the goal a minute later, and a quick counter-attack saw Robbie Kruse find Tim Cahill, but the legendary goalsneak’s shot was well saved. Constant Korean pressure made the Socceroos look like the Wallabies, so often were they forced to kick the ball into touch.

The Aussies needed to try something. Ivan Franjic got a bit physical, as is his wont, and Kruse swapped flanks with Mathew Leckie. But the tide started to turn the way of les diables rouges; Son had at least two shots in the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth minutes. When Jason Davidson was cautioned in the forty-first minute for engaging in the usual argy-bargy that goes on at corners, it looked like the Koreans had won a penalty, but the infringement occurred just outside the box and the resultant free kick, which took so long to organise that the referee’s spray had evaporated, was unthreateningly chipped into the chest of the allegedly Anfield-bound Ryan.

It was all South Korea, which meant, as it so often does in o jogo bonito, that Australia would be the ones to score. Trent Sainsbury found Massimo Luongo twenty-five metres from goal and with red shirts in front, behind, and to the left of him, yet the Swindonian somehow got two touches of the ball before firing the ‘Roos ahead.

Australia had enjoyed nearly fifty-five percent of the possession in the first stanza, but would need to hold out for another half against a formidable Korean attack. Leckie was the recipient of two counter-attacks, having no-one to pass to the first time and having his shot saved on the second occasion. In the sixty-fourth minute, Cahill was replaced by Tomi Jurić for the second time in as many matches, and Lee Keun-ho came on for the visitors, only to receive a baptism of fire courtesy of one of Jedinak’s ferocious tackles. Two minutes later, the captain picked up Australia’s fourth yellow (after Franjic, Davidson, and Matthew Špiranović); the performance of the Iranian referee Alireza Faghani was starting to be reminiscent of the 2002 World Cup, when the Koreans marched all the way to the semi-finals on the back of some dubious officiating.

But the referee’s performance reached farcical proportions in the sixty-eighth minute, when Kruse went down with an Achilles injury, a recurring problem for him, and was cautioned for simulation! The Queenslander received treatment on the sidelines, but such was his determination to be part of history, as well as his Joel Selwood-esque tenacity, that he was back on the pitch within minutes, desperately trying to will himself back to fitness before failing to do so and having to be stretchered off.

While this was taking place, there were counter-attacks and counter-counter-attacks, no-one scoring but the Taegeuk Warriors came closest with a bungled cross in the seventy-third minute. Soon after, Franjic became the second Socceroo casualty, limping off after executing a tackle and being replaced by Matt McKay. (The other Australian substitution had been used minutes beforehand, when James Troisi came on for Kruse.)

Leckie soon combined with Troisi, but there too many red shirts at the back. Son misfired a free kick in the eighty-third minute and failed to get on the end of a long ball from a counter-attack two minutes later. More excellent Korean defending denied Troisi and Luongo just before the end of regulation time, and a tired Socceroo outfit was vulnerable to a well-timed counter-attack. Captain Ki Sung-yueng picked out the ever-dangerous Son, who equalised in the first minute of injury time.

The talking heads were talking about Iran in 1997 and Uruguay in 2001 and Japan in 2011, but this blog kept the faith. We would win it – we would just need to wait another thirty minutes.

Luongo was pinged for a handball, then couldn’t get his pass through to Troisi, then Jedinak shot over the bar. Ryan denied Son at the other end. In the final minute of the first period, Jurić was boxed in by a flock of braying Korean defenders, chiefly Kim Jin-su, at the point where the line marking the y-axis of the penalty area is perpendicular to the goal line. He managed, somehow, to keep the ball both in play and away from his opponents, and hit a perfect pass across the face of goal for Troisi to hammer home.

There were another fifteen minutes, and with los diablos rojos constantly pressing and three Socceroo defenders on yellow cards, there were no guarantees that the home side could hold out. Ki made it a little bit easier for us when he had a free kick inside his own half and decided to waste the opportunity by going for the long-range shot. In the one hundred and fourteenth minute there was piece of Australian sporting déjà vu, when the Geelong-born Špiranović blocked a Korean attack in a matter reminiscent of Matthew Scarlett’s famous toe-poke to deny St. Kilda in the dying moments of the 2009 Grand Final.

The men from the peninsula still weren’t finished. Ryan was again called upon to save a speculative set piece in the one hundred and nineteenth minute, and the tension of the final added minute was only relieved by an offside call. ‘In Ange We Trust’ read a banner in the stands, and after years of underachievement under fly-by-night foreign coaches preaching totaalvoetbal while timidly parking the bus, our trust in the man from South Melbourne was rewarded.

Ryan and Luongo were rewarded by being named as goalkeeper and player of the tournament respectively. The former, whose Club Brugge team are seven points clear of Anderlecht at the top of the Pro League, has been scouted by Liverpool, but surely the latter must now be headed for greener pastures than the County Ground. The former Oceanians lifted the Asian Cup to the strains of We Are The Champions – sung, of course, by Freddie Mercury, native of Zanzibar, who are members of the Confédération Africaine de Football but not of FIFA.

Postecoglou may have been getting ahead of himself after the match when he speculated that an Asian nation may soon challenge the European-South American stranglehold on the World Cup. Nonetheless, he has brought us a step closer to that dream, and this Socceroo team have taken a tournament of which few in this country were aware and placed it at the centre of the Australian sporting consciousness. Bring on 2019!

Australia 2 (Massimo Luongo 45’; James Troisi 105’) – South Korea 1 (Son Heung-min 90+1’) (a.e.t.)

Cautions: Ivan Franjic (Aust.) 6’; Jason Davidson (Aust.) 41’; Matthew Špiranović (Aust.) 59’; Mile Jedinak (Aust.) 66’; Robbie Kruse (Aust.) 68’

Man of the match: Trent Sainsbury (Aust.)