American author Earl Nightingale once said, “Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with emotion and repetition will one day become a reality.”
Our Socceroos share their bunker in San Pedro Sula with all that watch on eagerly at home.
In times of stress, we can do one of two things.
The first would be to crawl into the dark and take on an unhealthy pessimistic jibe at our chances. In this case perhaps falling back to blaming Ange Postecoglou or leaning towards excuses about the logistics of travel, tactics, formations, and selections.
Nightingale would see this as the prime example of the so-called “toxic” atmosphere around the sport choke-holding the national team.
The second approach, even if some would see it as farcical or even pointless, is to believe in our passionate truism of the Australian sporting spirit.
It wasn’t just Tim Cahill’s forehead that got us to where we are. It was the collective manpower of an entire nation willing on our boys to break open the heavens when skies seemed to darken and the road looked an impasse.
Have no fear in our concentration. Our Socceroos are completely focused on what needs to be done.
None of them would have the gall to be distracted by the artillery of confusion surrounding the camp.
Trust in our footballing ability to get us over the line as we saw in Sydney weeks ago. We saw first-hand something we hadn’t seen since the Chile match at the Confederations Cup, where we fought for a well-earned point and perhaps left disappointed without all three.
It is that same commitment, leadership, grit, determination, passion, and fight that must be unleashed to rise above our fears.
Chartered flights and slick hotels, as we saw against Syria, don’t give anybody an edge in these qualifiers. What gets teams over the line is their pure will to fight until the end.
Our lads aren’t ones to be caught up in the media hype.
Honduras striker Anthony ‘Choco’ Lozano, who boasts seven goals for Los Catrachos, has fired warning shots at the Australians in preparation for the match.
“We cannot let them go alive from the Olimpico,” Lozano told newspaper La Prensa in a warning to the Australians to be prepared to put their bodies on the line on Saturday.
There hasn’t been a shortage of swirling news pieces to act as distractions to the team. Ange Postecoglou’s status unknown, Tim Cahill’s injury worries and the obvious away-day hostility of Honduras fans in the coming match are eye openers for the team.
Even our media’s portrayal of San Pedro Sula, slating it for its flaws, did nothing to ease the arrival of our boys on their journey.
But our lads haven’t ever been fazed by what is written in notepads or typed up on laptops and only care about the football played on the pitch in green and gold. It is a great compliment to Ange Postecoglou and his preparation for matches.
Along with the much-needed influence of captain Mile Jedinak and legend Tim Cahill, Postecoglou has always been able to evoke the spirit of the Socceroos of past and present, what it means to wear the sacred colours.
Bear in mind that this belief will not waiver as we prepare for our campaign. We at home mustn’t think about the worst-case scenario because it isn’t what our Socceroos will even care about.
Like Nightingale said, “We become what we think about most of the time. That’s the strangest secret.”
So let’s think positively.
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