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FIFA World Cup 2006"Australia v Italy"Kaiserslautern, June 25th 2006
By AST tour member Barry Jardine
I should have known that Monday was not going to be our day – after i had left the AST tour, I arrived at Kaiserslautern railway station at 1.30pm (from Heidelberg where I stayed a couple of nights after 2 nights in Innsbruck –very nice) and then proceeded to take 3 hours to actually get into the ground. Had to catch courtesy bus to Ticket Collection Point (miles out of town!!!), stand in queue for 1.25 hours in hot sun and then caught bus back – not to the ground but to the railway station. Then, the long walk from the station to the ground, up the 100’s of stairs to the stadium and then to the stand.
Atmosphere at the ground was still great though I don’t think quite as boisterous as previous Socceroos matches – perhaps not quite as many Aussies or maybe just a realisation that there was so much at stake in this match. Still, the noise when the team entered the ground and at the national anthem was fabulous and the crowd really got behind our team.
Having all seen the match, there is no doubt we played extremely well. However, the team which scores the goal(s) wins the matches. I didn’t think that, with the amount of possession we had and with an extra player for 40 minutes, we took enough opportunities to either shoot or send over telling crosses from either wing where we had the ball very frequently. As for the penalty, we were absolutely stunned – not so much regarding whether or not it was warranted (on reviewing the re-play I have my serious doubts!!!) – but we could not believe that any team deserved to lose like that in the very last minute of the game. I think Guus was just waiting for extra time (and to be sure of who was wilting under the very hot sun) before unleashing Josh Kennedy up front and then we might have seen the crosses coming over to him to put real pressure on the Italians! Hard to be harsh on Guus as, had this occurred, he may well have again been labelled a genius.
The atmosphere after the match was quite surreal. Apart from acknowledging the team when they came over to the Aussie supporters after the match, the crowd just simply sat in virtually stunned silence – an incredible contrast to the sheer jubilation at the end of the Croatian match. Amazingly, the Italian supporters were also remarkably subdued (I think they realised that they had “got out of jail”). I abandoned my plans to go back down into the town for the post-match festivities and decided to immediately head back on the train to Heidelberg. The walk to the station was unbelievably quiet and, again, when we merged with the Italian supporters closer to the station, very few of them were showing much emotion (extremely strange for Italians). The train trip also was extremely quiet and very much emphasised the end of a dream for the Aussie supporters. |
Lucas Neil & Brett Emerton
C'mon Aussies! |
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