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My disappointed body hit the mattress somewhere around 2.00am Sydney time on Wednesday morning.
The two-hour wait for the Group D matches would be too much to bear and I hoped the Optus streaming service would hold up well for the replays at some stage on Wednesday afternoon.
The Socceroos are out of the World Cup. A scenario of which we were all fearful prior to the tournament yet hopeful we would avoid with new rudder Bert van Marwijk steering a thoughtful and strategic campaign.
In the end, despite opportunity, the ball didn’t find the back of the net from open play. No matter how firm and resolute in defence, modern football requires something more. Something that the Peruvians showed us quite instructively.
Without a host of chances, they used explosive speed and skill at close quarters to convert their best moments to emotional, nation-lifting goals. Well played Peru. After so long without World Cup success it was fun to see people celebrating the win.
Peru’s Paolo Guerrero celebrates (Gian Ehrenzeller/Keystone via AP)
A terrific image of Mark Milligan was doing the rounds on social media the following morning, as he sat with his kids on the pitch lamenting what will be his final World Cup and potentially, his final match for the Socceroos.
As The Australian’s Ray Gatt rightfully pointed out with a classy tweet, football is just a small part of our grander journey and ultimate place in the universe. It was a nice perspective.
In the end, it’s only a game. You live to fight another day. This photo says it all. Lovely. Mark Milligan with his girls. pic.twitter.com/Pnzv4KpuHg
— Ray Gatt (@Gatty54) June 26, 2018
Even so, it still stung and endless speed bumps, pot holes and mountains will undoubtedly appear in the Socceroos’ path, as they do it all again and attempt to qualify for Qatar 2022.
Before that of course, lies the small matter of an Asian Cup campaign in the Emirates, where the Socceroos will enter the tournament as defending champions and one of the undoubted favourites.
With all the kerfuffle around Lucy Zelic’s efforts to pronounce names accurately and professionally, I had been paying closer attention to social media than the week prior.
As the sun rose on Wednesday, the fallout from the Socceroos loss was there for all to see.
What struck me was the instantaneous joy and satisfaction of many, as soon as the Socceroos were eliminated.
Considering some of the rather cringeworthy front and back-page coverage that major newspapers had run before the game, I thought the entire nation was aboard. Surely the emotive calls for Tim Cahill to play meant that ‘all’ Australians were embracing this moment and willing on a team with whom they had finally fallen in love.
Tim Cahill of Australia celebrates (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
He was perhaps the only player that many people having a ‘fling with football’ actually knew, but who cares. The ratings suggested another step forward.
More people than ever were consistently watching matches, live sites were insanely fervent and after all, wasn’t this engagement with the national team and the luring in of the uninitiated exactly what that advertising campaign was intended to achieve?
One could have been mistaken for feeling everyone was on board.
It appears that was not the case.
I was greeted with an array of sentiment and emotion online and what follows is some of the most compelling evidence to suggest that for many, the ‘fling’ was well and truly over.
My morning began with, “What was the point in the Socceroos even turning up?”
An appalling start really and a line that was bounced off grotesquely by another, “They are the Carlton of the World Cup!”
Potentially all summarised by the fatalism of the following, “We should just give up. There’s no point being represented because we’re a joke”.
By this stage I was hooked. What had these people’s parents done to them?
Socceroos Mile Jedinak and Mark Milligan. (SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images)
It grew. “Ninety minutes or so of my life I can’t get back’, suggested that a win makes the time well spent and a loss sees it wasted. Not quite the spirit of competition methinks.
One poster sought to raise what they felt was a pertinent question about the Socceroos loss and the subsequent future of the game in Australia. “How long until we give up on the World Cup and soccer fades into irrelevance here?”
It sounded more like their erotic dream than a question based in thought or reality.
Genuinely funny was a post on a football Facebook page that critiqued Australia’s individual performances. “Mulligan worst in match.”
Enough said.
Stupidly, I scanned hundreds and hundreds of comments, wasting an entire hour of my life. Some were on football pages, others just random twitter moments and many stemmed from general sport pages.
Two struck me as summative and telling; one quite funny, the other not so.
[latest_videos_strip category=”football” name=”Football”]
A friend of mine whose son is quite a competent striker, comes to the game from a rugby background and is still somewhat mystified by the intricacies of football.
“I’m sick of these soccer players rolling around on the ground, I’m going to bed”, which pretty much expressed his view and the attitude of many people ‘having a fling’.
I guess football isn’t for everyone.
More disturbing was the following which conveyed the vast chasm between a football fan and, well, whatever you call someone responsible for this.
“Well that’s sh*t……..back to not giving a f*ck about soccer then.”
Sob.