shawThings.net : a collection of shaw things ...

When Valeri went down and the referee awarded a penalty, there was that feeling again. We're off to the World Cup Finals! A great result for Australia. The other result overnight means technically we can't be certain, but it's all over bar the shouting. We will get the solitary point required from our next three matches. And then it's South Africa here we come.

Circumstances conspired to prevent me from seeing the game. Reports suggest I didn't miss much. We played a defensive game and managed to contain a very well prepared Japan and escape with a 0-0 draw. In the scheme of things, ie. qualifying, a good result.

The ultimate snatch-and-grab victory. Bahrain played out of their skins and were on top for most of the match. We were kept in it by some good work by Schwarzer (again). And Bresciano steals victory with an injury-time goal.

Man I really hate the fact that the Socceroos are only on Foxtel. By all accounts we played really well and blew Qatar off the park. The 4-0 result combined with Japan's 1-1 draw with Uzbekistan means we've gone top of the group and we've had our bye.

We had the bye for Match Day 1 and enjoyed a 2-1 win over Holland in a friendly. Uzbekistan meanwhile had gone down 0-3 to Qatar. So we were in form, but they were desperate and at home. And we came away with a priceless 0-1 win away. I didn't see much of the match, but by all accounts we did pretty well.

Groan. What an appalling game. Verbeek experimented with many new players and it showed. We played poorly. China scored a cracker of a goal after 10 minutes and didn't do much more apart from waste time. A 0-1 loss.

Australia has progressed to the next stage of World Cup qualification with an emphatic 3-1 away win over Qatar! A Brett Emerton double did the damage. Kewell wrapped it up with a third before a late consolation to Qatar.

Another match I didn't get to see. Apparently we didn't play too badly, but we lost 0-1. The goal may have been a bit of a fluke, but we rode our luck in Brisbane last week so we can't complain too much.

Our first loss under Verbeek and our first conceded goal for the qualifiers. It had to happen sometime I suppose. In the other game, Qatar defeated China 1-0 away, to draw level with us on points. This all makes next week's game against Qatar very important.

Australia secured a very significant win over Iraq in Brisbane to move one step closer to qualifying for the next round. All up, we were pretty lucky to get away with the win, but the three points will be very valuable.

Work commitments prevented me from watching the match. Dang. But the news was good. By all accounts, it proved to be a fairly close, tense encounter. Mark Schwarzer saved the day with yet another penalty save with a few minutes to go. And we could have snatched it in the final minute. All in all, given our preparation, the difficult venue, the absences due to injury, we'll take an away draw.