In a few days time, Australia will play Germany in a friendly at Mönchengladbach. The last time these two teams met was during the World Cup campaign.
The heavy defeat of the Socceroos in Durban probably generated the highest number of column inches out of any of the games Australia was involved in and set the tone for the coverage of the rest of the World Cup.
I thought now would be an appropriate time to share my thoughts about what happened that night.
This is not another piece analysing the game and what went wrong as far more qualified people than I have already done this. What this piece is about was the experience from my perspective. The build up. The let down. The aftermath.
If sharing is caring, then consider this some sort of group therapy to exorcise a few demons and get some things of our chests as fans.
Having arrived in Durban a couple of days before the World Cup started we had begun to settle in for the upcoming few weeks where our days would be filled with five hours of world quality football.
It may have been the middle of winter but the daily temperature always seemed to reach the mid 20’s and the ocean was warm enough for swimming. Durban was the perfect place to be based for the upcoming campaign.
We had been at the Fansite on Durban beach in the middle of the 25,000 strong crowd to see South Africa score the opening goal of the World Cup. The atmosphere was fantastic but as Australia’s opening game drew nearer, there was a feeling that ‘our’ World Cup was about to begin.
The day before and the day of the game against Germany had seen a continual build up of both the number of Australians flooding into Durban and the media covering the event. As we were staying at the tent city, the cricket ground which we were calling home for the next few weeks had become the focal point of much of the coverage.
There was no shortage of obliging Australians decked out in green and gold to fill the background of the numerous crosses the TV networks made. Chanting ‘Simon Hill’s a silver fox, do-dah, do-dah’ as he struggled to keep a straight face certainly made you feel a part of it all.
As kick-off drew closer, most Socceroo fans would have been watching the second game of the day (I think it was Serbia v Ghana) either at our camp, the Fansite, or at one of the bars around town.
As I sat watching the big screen, I felt my left leg shaking from nerves. I wanted Australia to put in a good performance to show the world that 2006 hadn’t been a fluke.
Around me inflatable boxing kangaroos mingled with green and gold safari suits that had been made-to-order in Singapore en route to South Africa.
When it came time to leave camp for the stadium, I tried to comprehend everything that was happening around me.
The road to the stadium had been shut down for us so we marched and filled the air with the sounds of vuvuzelas and chants.
My personal favourite was ‘Where’s your Ballack, where’s-your-Ballack, where’s-your-Ballack’ sung to the tune of Bassment Jaxx’s ‘Where’s your head at’. The enjoyment was compounded when one German fan responded by saying that Ballack was only one player in the German squad and that football was a team game so we should not assume that one player’s absence would be critical.
This was to be proven correct in a few hours, but I don’t think that particular German grasped the idea that facts should never get in the way of a chant involving a fantastic play on words and music.
The chanting continued all the way to the magnificent Moses Madhiba stadium. Over the coming weeks it would prove itself to be a great football venue and a magnificent piece of architecture (I never knew I could take so many pictures of the massive arch that sat over the stadium).
This game was the first time we had been inside the stadium, and the moment I first saw the pitch sent shivers down my spine. We had arrived and everything seemed to be in place for a wonderful football experience to unfold.
We took our seats and soaked it all in.
The first inkling that something might be awry was when the squads came out for their warm-up. As the Australians went about their drills it became apparent that this was to be a very different starting 11 that what we had expected.
When the team line-ups were read out it was clear that the normally conservative Dutchman had surprised us all.
The national anthems were sung and the referee blew the whistle to start the game.
And then it all went wrong.
What unfolded over the next 90 minutes of play is almost a blur in my memory. The early goal, the clinical way the German’s dismantled the Australian team, the sense of frustration, disappointment and shock.
After a particularly wonderful passage of play that lead to a German goal, a fan sitting in front of us stood up, turned around and said ‘That’s how you play football, Soccer-oos!’.
None of us had the energy to return fire.
The final whistle blew and we began to file out of the stadium.
The snippets of conversation I overheard as we walked back to camp ranged from shock right through to anger. Some of the gnashing of teeth and howls of protest did go over the top as that night Germany were just a better team than us. Soon we were to be joined by England and Argentina in the ‘Germany scored four goals against us at South Africa 2010’ club.
And with most things with football, the next day brought us three new games and the competition rolled on. The rest of the Australian campaign came and went (more stories for another time), the final was played and Spain was crowned the champion.
It was at a Bill Bailey show a few months later that I finally came across a description that summed up my feelings of Australia’s performance on that night.
To paraphrase Mr Bailey (who used this particular joke to describe the English team, but I think it equally applies to the Socceroos that night), the Australians played like old men, with injured backs, working in a warehouse, who had been given conflicting instructions about where to put things.
Since then, Australia has moved on from the World Cup campaign and in a lot of ways many fans have as well. There is also a hope that when Australia and Germany meet in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the game will be a bit less one-sided.
I had been a little too young to fully comprehend Johnny Warren’s tears in 1997. It was all too distant in 2001 with Tony Vidmar’s tears. But on Sunday 13 June 2010 I completely understood the tears I saw on the face of an Australian fan as he sat on the steps outside the stadium in Durban.
Sometimes, football hurts.
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