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Tuesday 18 December 2007

Steve Bryant writes in Football Fever in the Telly today.

Good to see Steve Bryant, local Canberra football legend, writing a wee post in today's Daily Telegraph.

I don't agree with what he says. I'd rather see Australia playing 14 games of World Cup Qualifiers every four years and MISS out on World Cup qualification then play two games against the fifth placed South American side, even if we are now capable of beating that fifth placed side these days.

Great to see another Canberra football fan in print....I think that makes two of us now!!!

Read Steve's article below:

Steve writes:

Don't start moaning now about the group of death for us to go through to the World Cup Finals.

The Australian game has been complaining more than 20 years that it's not fair, yet now we are having a go about the draw for qualifying through Asia.

In the past, as we all know, we had to realistically play two games-one away and one at home- against the fifth placed South American side.
Looking at that, we can match anybody on our own soil with our right team playing and with the right coach can go to any place in the world and be smart enough to come away in not too bad shape, which I thought was something of a luxury.

Now we are looking at playing full-strength international sides where most of the time we will not have our full complement, in hostile places with immense heat and possibly having to use A-League players who do not have any experience of such environments and maybe just aren't good enough.

We should have kept quiet about he back door entry we formerly had because most international sides would be laughing if FIFA said to them, "play two games win on aggregate and you have secured a place in the World Cup."

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