Aussies: Glorious in defeat!

We lost at Dunkirk but that doesn't stop us celebrating or remembering our fallen heroes, and we lost in South Africa.

Pim Verbeek blew the World Cup in the first game in Germany perhaps caving into all the incessant media about how we must play over the previous years perhaps not. Perhaps he thought Jason Culina on the left for the first time ever was a plan, Richard Garcia should take on the Germans with Tim Cahill up front.

His plan his failure.

In truth we should have beat Ghana as we always knew we had to, even before the German debacle and if Luke Wilkshire had scored a point blank sitter we would have. If Josh Kennedy had followed up the rebound we would have won as well.

Against Serbia it was too much. We could have been crying in our beer but for the brilliance of Mark Schwarzer who saved us again and again. Why?

Because Pim exposed our defence by pushing David Carney and Wilkshire forward. Oh we loved it, particularly in the second half but we could have been, should have been two down.

And then the great Aussie spirit. We ran, we chased and through Tim Cahill and the wonderful Brett Holman we had some wonderful World Cup moments. Brett Holman's moment was full of joy.

Could we get another? I thought we could. I thought the Germans would score again against Ghana though in truth they were lucky to be ahead.

And so Big Mark hero of the Qualifiers again and again dropped a realtively simple shot and we were out.

Craig Foster looked like a goose in this World Cup calling for the head of Pim so early, or maybe so late. Les Murray draped in green and gold the same. Fozzie is a commentator with passion I've never seen. Is he well?

Mike Cockerill lost the plot also; trying to deflate the team and Harry Kewell. Very strange reporting from Cockerill once again. At least he wasn't commentating.

But mostly the Aussies are happy this morning. We're all delighted at our performance, heroic, brave etc etc

For me we went out and the last two games showed how we can play. A wasted opportunity, shades of Italy down to ten men four years ago.

But for now we all THINK we did great.

I think with hindsight we've underachieved. I didn't think Pim could get us to this level especially after the warm up games, maybe Pim didn't either.

Enjoyed the ride. Who's going home tonight.