One of Australia's greatest celebrity exports, Hugh Jackman, believes the Socceroos' World Cup opposition can underestimate them at their own peril, claiming the underdog tag will play into Australia's hands.
The Aussies celebrate John Aloisi's third goal by ripping each other's faces to shreds. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Source: AP
FOR the next few weekends, as part of our build-up to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, we're going to bring you some exclusive extracts from one of the best Australian books ever written about football.
The book is called World Party, its author is respected freelance football writer Jesse Fink. and its subject is the Socceroos' brilliant Germany 2006 campaign. Fink travelled to Germany as both fan and reporter, recording all the colour and excitement, while gaining direct access to the players.
His hard copy book, entitled 15 Days in June, was published soon afterwards. It has since been rebadged as World Party, updated and made available in digital format. World Party just hit #1 on iTunes, and when you read some of the passages we're running, you'll understand why.
THIS WEEK: Our amazing first ever win in a World Cup finals match.
LET'S SET THE SCENE: Australia played Japan in the city of Kaiserslautern at its first match in the World Cup finals since 1974. We had never scored a single goal at the finals. Halfway through the first half, Japan notched a dodgy goal despite what appeared to be interference against Aussie goalie Mark Schwarzer.
Shunsuke Nakamura denies Mark Schwarzer a fair chance to defend a goal. In fairness, though, Australia should have conceded a penalty later through Tim Cahill which the ref somehow overlooked. Source: AP
Things were looking grim, until … we'll let Fink pick up the action with about 10 minutes to go.
THE E-BOOK EXTRACT: With just ten minutes left on the clock, it seemed Australia's great adventure was already over. Hiddink had run out of options. The Socceroos had promised so much, fought for so much territory, but there was no getting away from the gnawing feeling that they'd been shown up as pretenders by a team they'd expected to beat. The Australians weren't letting the Japanese rest for a second. Even if they nabbed a late goal, a draw wasn't going to be enough now. They'd left it too late. Or so they thought.
In Japanese Rules, former Japan coach Dettmar Cramer explained what the samurai called zanshin: 'It looks good if you take a sweeping cut [with a sword] at someone, and then just turn your back. But the fallen victim might summon up his last morsel of strength, and come back at you. So after you've taken a sweeping cut, you must remain alert until he has taken his last breath. That is zanshin. Japanese soccer does not have that.'
Typing furiously and barely raising their eyes to look at what was happening on the field, the correspondents for Australia's dailies began finessing the doomsday dispatches they'd started writing even before half-time. Where was Hiddink's famous luck? He had a nickname in Holland — 'Guus Geluk' or Lucky Guus. But the Aussies couldn't take a trick. Were we instead seeing 'He Stinks!', the inglorious nickname Korean fans had given him before his miracle run in 2002?
Then, almost on cue, it happened. Eight minutes of mayhem. The sort of eight minutes a football fan would be happy to have once in a lifetime.
This was before the game. He was hopping crazy afterwards. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz) Source: AP
In the centre of it all was one man, Tim Cahill, a player who just years before couldn't even get a game for Australia. The son of an English father and a Samoan mother, he'd been persuaded to turn out for a Western Samoa under-20 side as a substitute when he was 14, playing just a handful of minutes. That was enough for FIFA to declare he'd never represent Australia, the country of his birth, the country he'd grown up in, scampering around the suburban fields of Sydney. For close to a decade he'd fought for the right to wear the green and gold, even threatening to go to court. He'd been on the scrapheap. One of those what-if players, like Craig Johnston, Tony Dorigo and Josip Simunic, who could have played for Australia but didn't. Then it all changed. A policy backflip. An FA Cup goal. A contract with Everton. A call-up against South Africa. When Cahill ran onto the field in the 53rd minute to replace Bresciano, he was still surfing a wave that he didn't want to get off.
Now, there were just six minutes of normal time left on the clock. A long throw-in. A scuffed shot. A scramble in the area. Goal. Cahill ran to the left corner flag, sucked the screams of 20 million Aussies into his cheeks and shadow-boxed like a champion whipping up the crowd before a title fight.
Corner flags across the world shudder in fear when Tim Cahill is near. AFP PHOTO / TORSTEN BLACKWOOD Source: AFP
He didn't overdo the celebration. He knew the battle had only just begun.
A kid who'd come up through Millwall, the toughest club in England, with five reds and 70-odd yellows in his club career, Cahill had never been afraid to ride his luck. He returned down the ground and almost instantaneously chopped down Komano on the edge of the box after the winger had jinked in off the goal line. It was a foul. But Essam Abdel Fatah, the harried Egyptian ref, was probably still trying to figure out if he'd been right awarding the first goal to make a decision. Minutes later, Takashi Fukunishi was played into space by Shinji Ono. He steamed into the box, sidestepped Neill and let rip. The ball missed the inside netting by inches. Now there were just 60 seconds left. The play returned to the Australian half. John Aloisi, on for Wilkshire, collected the ball on the edge of the box, and laid it up square. Cahill was there. He tapped the ball forward with the bottom of his heel and swung his leg back like a golfer chipping onto the lip of a green. Goal. Australia had the lead for the first time in the match.
Cahill has now scored 31 times for Australia in 67 appearances. Source: News Limited
Now it was Japan that had run out of time.
The third from Aloisi, a left-footed, defender-boondoggling slalom, was just too much for Japan to process. What had they done to deserve such misery? What had we done to deserve such fortune?
True story. When John Aloisi's daughter was little, she used to run around the room with her shirt over her head because she'd seen her dad do it so often on the telly. Source: News Limited
Goal. Goal. Goal. 3—1 to Australia. Zico dipped his head. Three points, his three points, had been stolen from him by a team he hadn't rated at all. When the whistle blew, the sound of delete keys being tapped frenetically on journalists' laptops was only drowned out by the cheering.
Want to read the rest of Jesse's book? Just $3.99 and it's all yours!
TITLE: Our three goals. Enjoy.
SIZE: 650x366px
CAPTION: Hope this happens again in Brazil
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