australia

It was billed as the No. 1 team in Africa vs the No. 1 team in Asia. Unfortunately for us, we were thoroughly outplayed. Not the performance you want in our last hit-out before the Asian Cup. Egypt are ranked No. 11 in the world at the moment though. Osiek's first loss too.

What an intriguing match. Australia up against World Cup quarter-finalists Paraguay. Both teams had most of their first choice players. The Socceroos first and last match in Australia under Osieck before the Asian Cup finals. In the end, the Socceroos came away with a 1-0 win, but even more importantly they put on a good show.

A win's a win. And it's always nice to win away from home. We were a bit scrappy and were outplayed towards the end, but we hung on for our first win since the World Cup finals.

A frantic opening 30 minutes should have seen four goals. Australia scored first through Holman, before Poland equalised just four minutes later. Wilkshire converted a penalty shortly afterwards, before Federic saved one. 2-1 up at this point and there it stayed all match.

A reasonably strong Australian side could only manage a 0-0 draw against an under-strength Swiss team.

The Swiss have a Euro qualifier coming up and didn't field their first choice side. Australia had most of its top players available. (Can we forget about Kewell now? He was injured again.)

The Socceroos had a pretty good first half and wasted some good chances. The Swiss probably had the better of the second half though and put a penalty over the bar. Schwarzer also made some key saves.

In our first game since the World Cup, we were missing a few regular starters, we had a new (temporary) coach and were very rusty. We had a couple of good chances and could have stolen a draw or even a win, but Slovenia deserved their 2-0 victory.

Slovenia was ranked one place (and just a few points) above us (19th vs 20th) on the FIFA table. We both scored four points in our groups at the World Cup and failed to progress beyond the group stage. From that point of view, things looked pretty even.

At any other time, this would have been a marvellous result. Unfortunately today it was not enough. Cahill and Holman gave us a glimmer of hope mid-way through the second half, but in the end we fell short and our tournament is over.

The big question was: would the real Australia turn up and display the grit, determination and talent we know they have. The answer, despite us not getting the result we needed, was a resounding yes.

Serbia defeating Germany has thrown our group wide open. A win for us will see all four teams level on three points. From there, it's anyone's guess as to the final position.

Our tournament got off to the worst possible start. We were thrashed 0-4 by the Germans and Tim Cahill was given an undeserved red card and will miss our next match.