I’m getting some grief from the Poms I work with who question the legitimacy of Australia’s claim to a spot in the World Cup (personally I think they’re just jealous that they don’t have Warney on their panel of pundits. Heh heh.) Yes admittedly football comes a distant fourth to the three other football codes in my country and yes we do call it soccer but given these limitations I reckon we play some pretty mean football. A number of the Australian squad play in England’s Premiership so we can’t be too awful. Today was a chance to show what we Aussies are made of and I’m glad to say we didn’t let ourselves down.

I’ve watched what feels like a ton of games in the last 9 or so days of the World Cup but today was the first chance I’ve had to watch the Aussies in action. (I missed the first because I was … ahem … working at the time.) Playing their second World Cup match in this year’s competition they had a pretty tough challenge ahead of them in Brazil. The match wasn’t actually on until 5 o’clock today but seeing as how patriotic Australians are the venue, Temple Walkabout, was guaranteed to be heaving very early on. It actually opened at 12 and that’s what time we decided to meet. It turned out to be a very good move because I’m fairly sure by 12.30 all available seating was taken and by 13.30 the Walkabout was pretty much full to the brim. Walkabouts have a pretty dodgy reputation as a bar but its a great venue for big sporting occasions like today. There a huge number of screens around the place and one giant screen at the back so I’m sure most people were okay with seeing the game.

So, we had about five hours until the match actually started and although there was an early match on, Japan v Croatia, it wasn’t the most interesting of matches and barely kept our attention. It probably didn’t help that the commentary was muted so although we could see the match its always more interesting having that commentary. So we had to entertain ourselves by reading magazines and watching adverts like the one on the right.

Finally it was Australia’s turn.

The build up to the match was pretty amazing with everyone really getting into full cheering gear. It must be noted that although the majority of the people in the bar were Aussies, there was also a small contingent of brave Brazillian supporters. It was great to see that as much as they were taunting us with all their insanely annoying whistling and braying and just general cheering, most of the people around them remained in good spirits and good natured.

Having been to two England matches I have observed some small differences in the two groups of supporters. Today’s crowd was definitely much louder than the crowd’s at either of the two England matches I’ve been to so far and it seems that the crowd today was just so into the match with face paints, tattoos and specially made shirts to show their commitment to our team. Not to mention cheering every single challenge and possession of the ball. Perhaps the difference is that our appearances so far in World Cups have been pretty rare so we have plenty to cheer. This is not to say that English supporters aren’t loud in their own right and just as passionate but in today’s crowd I just felt something a little special.

As for the game itself we did eventually go down to Brazil 2-0 but I don’t think the score really represents how the game really was. I don’t claim to know much about football but even I could see that Brazil are still not in top form and Australia really gave them a good go. Unfortunately we couldn’t capitalise on some great chances to score. Let’s just hope we can overcome the Croats later on this week to guarantee ourselves a spot in the second round.