Well, like millions of others I arose in the wee small hours to watch the World Cup final this morning.

I guess I was a bit perplexed. I didnt know who to barrack for, all I knew is I didn’t want Italy to win, so I ended up cheering for the French.

Maybe I’m bitter and twisted, but I still cant quite forgive Italy for their “diving” defeat of the Socceroos. If the circumstances had been different, there would be no question about me supporting Italy, given that my kids live in the centre of “little Italy” in Melbourne and I have lots of Italian friends………..but they weren’t and having watched all of the Italian games, I find the “diving” aspect of their game “poor form”.

Yet again though, it worked…………

So Italy are the champions, despite all of the scandal about match fixing going on at home, despite their relatively ‘lack lustre’ performance in a number of games………the defensive game won out and I think that’s a shame for the game.

On reflection, the games I enjoyed the most over the past weeks are the games where teams tried to score, not the games where teams tried to stop the other team scoring…………..and that is the Italian strategy.

Of course luck has a lot to do with it. Luck of the draw, luck of the referee you are allocated, luck of the umpiring decisions and the luck of your passage through the finals.

France were very unlucky last night. They played better than Italy but were unable to score after their initial goal. The missed penalty occured because the ball didn’t bounce as they would have wished………………and the game was over.

So, to all the teams who inspired and enthralled this predominantly Aussie Rules supporter…………….thankyou. To Croatia, Togo, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Argentina, Ukraine and all of the other teams who played action packed attacking games that kept me enthralled………Thankyou

THANKYOU to the georgeous Lucal Neil, Tim Cahill, Harry Kewell and JOHN ALOISI and all of the other Socceroo boys who did Australia proud…………..

I’ll never forget the vibe of being among 20K+ of my countrymen and women singing the national anthem at ’stupid o’clock” in the morning in Federation Square and Lygon Street in front of the big screen, with my daughter and her friends………….

What a ride! Roll on the Asia Cup!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 10th, 2006 at 1:52 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.