Friday, June 23, 2006

Enter the final 16

Australia - Croatia: 2 - 2. Both my wife and I stayed up for the game. The big questions on the lips of everybody who is interested:

  • In what circus did they recruit referee Graham Poll? Ok, some of the Croats were being assholes, and I even saw one of their players push the ref around. That's appalling. However, three yellow cards for the same player?
  • Why was Mark Schwarzer on the sidelines for the match? I'm  trying to be fair to Željko Kalac, but fumbles with the most innocuous of balls did not make my wife nor I happy. We actually got nervous any time the Croatian strikers came near the Australian goal. "Oh, nooo. Oh, fuck. Oh, etc."
  • Australia, please set up the goals currectly before shooting. There were a lot of wasted shots. Crossing needs to be improved as well. The score could have been 3-2 or 4-2 in Australia's favour.

At the end of the day, we made it to the final 16. It would have been nice if we had entered with a win rather than a draw, but we're in. Now it's off to play against the Italians. Win or lose - I'm content.

For completeness, I should mention Australia's other match against Brazil on this blog. Yes, they beat us: 2 to 0.

But you probably know that already.