football

An absolute classic match that will only add to the intensity of the Japan-Australia rivalry. The two best teams at the competition played a match worthy of a final. Unfortunately the result did not go Australia'a way, with Japan claiming a record fourth title in the 1-0 extra-time win.

The first half belonged to Australia. We continued as we had in the semi-final, with purposeful attack and resolute defence. Japan barely got a look in and had just a couple of passages of play where they were able to hold possession and build an attack.

The Socceroos celebrated Australia Day with one of their most, if not their most comprehensive performance ever. The 6-0 annihilation of Uzbekistan was emphatic, they dominated all aspects of the game and earnt themselves a spot in the final.

I'm not a big fan of Kewell these days, but credit where credit's due, his late goal was very well taken and put us into the semi-finals. A huge result after our disappointing exit in 2007.

Australia and Iraq have some history now, with both sides recording some key wins. Significantly, Australia's performance improved over their last match. It needed to, but in the end, they probably deserved the win. Iraq had its moments and played very well, but Australia created more chances and edged Iraq in performance.

A scrappy match on a wet pitch, but we did enough to win and finish top of the group - objective achieved. However, neither our coach nor our captain sugar-coated it, we'll need to do better in our next match against Iraq.

Bahrain needed the win and were more adventurous as a result. The first half was roughly even, with both sides creating good chances. Jedinak scored his second goal in two games in the first half to give us a very valuable lead.

The key match up of our group finished 1-1. Overall, not a bad result for us, but we might have been able to win had we not been so wasteful. The key concern out of the match is three injuries.

Obviously a much tougher opponent than India and a very close battle. We wasted several chances early on and then went 0-1 down to a well-taken goal (on the back of some poor marking). We battled well in the second half to earn the equaliser. Not the prettiest of goals, but you take them. We had some chances to win too, as did South Korea, but we might have had the best of it.

Our opening match at the finals. It's important to get off to a good start (cf: WC 2006 and 2010) and we do, comfortably accounting for football minnows, India, 4-0.

This was a positive match: we won, scored 4, conceded 0, no injuries and no yellow cards. Almost perfect on paper. Our standard of play is important too though and we were a little scratchy. Our first half was quite good. Our performance tapered off a little in the second half though. Understandable given the scoreline at the time and the quality of the opposition. We'll need to lift for our next match.

The first friendly for 2011, doubling as a practice match for the Asian Cup Finals. We fielded a mix of first-choice players and second-stringers. All up, an okay performance for a team that needs to gel. However, we'll definitely need to lift if we want to do well at the finals.