Back to Earth: They're Bigger, Faster, Stronger

After spending the day on Durban beach, we sat in a hotel watching the Ghana v Serbia game – didn’t see anything Australia can’t cope with in the next two games. Ran into an old friend, Keith Ward, who has tickets from beginning to end for himself and his wife, Diane, even the final, won in the initial ballot. He is staying wherever the Australian team is playing.
The game finishes around 6pm and a few hundred Aussies gather on the promenade, decked in flags and blow-up kangaroos, and we make our way along the beachfront the kilometre or two to the stadium. We meet Germans along the way, and a group of them form into a mob of kangaroos and start hopping around. They think it’s incredibly funny and it is, so I’m not sure who is the victim of that joke. The Aussies chant, “You lose World Wars, we drink beer, do-dah, do-dah,” and we think that’s hilarious. We’re so thrilled to be there on a warm evening, we think everything’s funny.
The stadium is spectacular, maybe the most stunning I’ve ever seen. It appears transparent, so from the outside you can see the banks of seating inside. It has a massive arch running its length. When you walk into the main entrance, there is a gap in the seating, and you can see inside the entire stadium. There’s something thrilling about a football pitch bathed in floodlights at night in a big stadium before a major game. Quite breathtaking.
It’s again packed – these stories of unsold tickets are only at games in small cities between low profile countries. The Australian crowd is defiant and confident, memories of 2006 fresh, and we belt out the National Anthem, one of the few songs heard above the incessant vuvuzelas.
The moment the team is announced, I’m filled with dread. Richard Garcia is the main striker, supported up front by Cahill. No Bresciano, no Kennedy. They must have been seriously slack at training to lose their place to Garcia. I’ve seen him play many times for Hull in the EPL this year, and he is nothing more than a steady club player. Not only can’t he score, but Hull was relegated this year. If he’s our best attacking option, we’re in deep do-dah. In fact, he’s what Mile Sterjovski was for the 2006 team – someone the manager picks for a reason I am never able to fathom, and the fact that Sterjovski then returned to Australia to become a mediocre player for Perth demonstrates my point.
So after a couple of dozen qualifying games, where Australia has played with a lone striker, we play 4-4-2 with a non event like Garcia up front, against one of the best teams in the world. Two years to sort out the team and its formation, and on the world stage, we start this an experiment. Without Bresciano and Kewell, this team has little capacity to score.
And the Germans put on a footballing masterclass. It’s not only that Australia does not play well, but the Germans are brilliant. I’d go so far to call it one of the most fluent displays I’ve ever seen. The two Australian holding midfielders, Grella and Culina, who are usually at least solid and hard-working, are completely lost. I can recall times in my own modest football ‘career’ when I’ve played midfield, and the opposition is so good that it feels as though the game is being played around you. Once it became apparent that we were being destroyed, it was hard not to admire the artistry. The Germans seemed so big and fast, with little Aussies occasionally irritating them by yapping at their heels, before they found another player in open space. In the past, when Australian sides have not been as skillful as the opposition, they have at least matched them physically. The Germans were simply fitter, bigger and faster.
The Aussie sections of the crowd fell into silent disbelief. This was the game we would ‘get something out of’ before beating Serbia or Ghana. Cahill off and out of the next match. We suddenly realised the dream of an England game in the next round may be over in a few days.
And so we trudged out of the ground silently, making our way to the coaches for a midnight flight back to home base in Cape Town. The plane was full of sullen and exhausted Aussies, nobody speaking, we had been awake for 24 hours and seen our lads hammered. The guy next to me had been drinking from the moment he arrived in Durban, and wanted to vomit. I handed him his own vomit bag, plus mine. “Aim down there,” I suggested, and he nodded, and he assumed the brace position for the two hour flight. He made it without any projectiles, but slurred, “That was the worst flight of my life.” I was by now grateful to arrive unsplattered.
It’s cold and wet in Cape Town, and 4am by the time we arrive back at the hotel. Everyone is exhausted. Shattered. None of the “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi” that we blasted out with supreme confidence a few hours earlier.
It’s not only Pim and the Aussie team who need to believe again, but we’ve got a good break of 6 days for the enthusiasm to seep back, and we’ll be in there again, chanting, “Stand up for the Socceroos.”