Referee Roberto Rosetti, pushes away Australia's Harry Kewell after showing him a red card during the World Cup match between Ghana and Australia in Rustenburg on June 19. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith)
There’s no doubt 2010 was a big year for football in Australia. It’s easy to throw statements like that about, but Australia’s performance at the 2010 World Cup was always going to say a lot about the code. Throw in the announcement on our 2022 World Cup bid and you get what I mean by ‘big year’.
There was a lot riding on these two separate events.
Unfortunately for Australia on both occasions we didn’t get the outcome desired.
Knocked out at the group stage in South Africa, receiving just one vote in Switzerland. It was disappointing.
But by the same token, by no means should Australia feel any shame.
For whatever reason, the football media in Australia always seek to monitor the code’s progress. That’s been the way since the Crawford Report and its reforms.
Had these two events gone in our favour then it was expected football’s profile in Australia would have progressed and escalated at a steep rate. There’s no doubt the actual prospect of a World Cup in Australia would have had people talking, even 11 years out from the event.
But to expect football’s profile to progress forever on a steady upwards curve is a little unrealistic. There’s always going to be hiccups as the code goes about ambitiously building and developing.
And while the outcomes of these two events wasn’t as hoped, there will be positives to come from them.
Australia’s World Cup bid can be used as a learning experience for future attempts, while it also puts the nation on the map. We’ve heard it plenty of times before, but it took Sydney three attempts to finally win the Olympics.
And the Socceroos’ performances in South Africa showed we belong in football’s showpiece event; despite that one disastrous evening in Durban, we certainly held our own. (That’s good for our international reputation.)
Indeed, one of Australia’s downfalls is our own high level of expectation because when you fall, you fall hard.
In my opinion we were naïve about our chances of beating Germany at the World Cup. And when we were humbled 4-0 in our first group game the fallout was pretty brutal. Headlines such as ‘Shockeroos’ summed it up.
The same thing occurred with the doomed World Cup bid. Even though it seemed the United States had our bid covered in every department there was a quiet confidence about Australia’s chances.
Then again it was Qatar who ultimately got up but weren’t our expectations a little naïve? The fallout, again, didn’t do football any favours.
In both instances the nature of the defeats probably increased the scrutiny. Receiving just one vote in Zurich and being so comprehensively outclassed by the Germans (who could easily have scored seven or eight) in Durban didn’t look good.
But there were more positive stories for football in 2010, particularly the Matildas breaking through and winning the Asian Cup.
As well the performance of our next generation of Socceroos in China at the Under-19’s AFC Championships where they finished runners-up was great.
Both those teams can look forward to World Cups in 2011.
As well, the expanded A-League saw record aggregate attendance numbers in the 2009/2010 season, which means more people are engaging with the competition, even if average crowds are down. Also the A-League product appears to have improved, with the standard of technical and tactical play lifting in 2010.
And looking ahead to 2011 now, ensuring the sustainability of the A-League must become a priority for the FFA.
If we are to look at 2011 then the next few weeks present some exciting events too, with Australia set to be confirmed as the host for the 2015 AFC Asian Cup on January 6.
Plus the 2011 Asian Cup kicks off for Australia on January 10 against India and the Socceroos must fancy themselves a chance of winning some silverware.
Ironically, there’s some symmetry in those upcoming events to those which occurred in 2010, except this time it won’t be on such a grand scale for Australia.
But maybe small steps is the way to progress. Maybe we’ve got to sink before we can swim. There’s no shame in that.
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