November 16th 2005. Where were you?
The Socceroos lost to Uruguay 2-1 in Sydney on Saturday night, but many Australian football fans could only smile as memories of the most exciting night in Australian sport came flooding back.
I’d never been to a Socceroos game before November 16, 2005 Well, maybe one, a 9-0 over Tahiti the early 90’s. In truth there weren’t many games over the years, and even fewer that meant anything. When you’d grown up in the cut and thrust of watching Old Firm games, Socceroos games lacked a certain fire.
So I was surprised when I found myself and my six-year-old daughter heading north to Sydney for the World Cup Qualifier against Uruguay on that spring day.
There isn’t much between Canberra and Sydney. 300km, a dried out Lake, and some sheep. Lots of sheep.
Man and daughter, tootling along. Me with spectacles, and receding hairline. I was keeping to the speed limit in my white Toyota Camry, once described as the most boring car in the world.
How I would have presented to the hoons that pulled alongside? I looked in the mirror, no other cars for miles.
Four men. Leering. They slowed and pulled alongside.The lad nearest looked pissed. He wound down his window. I did the same.
He was so close he could nearly touch me.“Go the Socceroos,” he screamed.
“I hate (Alvaro) Recoba,” I screamed back. We all laughed.Socceroo banter on the Federal Highway! What was happening in Australia?
At the game, you could feel it outside the ground. The buzz, the expectation. I met former students wandering in their Australian shirts. I never even knew they cared.
“I flew in from Malaysia especially,” said Grant from University.
Kids kicked balls on the forecourt. Uruguayan and Australian fans mingled, and sang loud and proud. There were no police in sight. It felt odd.
Recoba shot wide. Popovich survived a send-off appeal. Hiddink introduced Kewell. Bresciano scored. Penalties came. It was close to midnight.
My daughter lay on her seat. We were high up in the stand, the very last row. We watched each player take the walk, the long walk to the penalty spot. And Viduka missed!
“You can go to sleep if you want.”
“I don’t want to miss it.”
I ate an apple. All through the penalty shoot-out I ate an apple. I don’t know why.
John Aloisi scored and the crowd, oh the crowd. The roar of success.England sing about thirty years of hurt since their last World Cup win, well we’d had thirty years of hell. Argentina, Iran, and Uruguay, one worse than the last. Each defeat weakening our domestic game kick by kick.
After Aloisi scored. He ran. All the Socceroos ran. The whole country ran.
Some laughed, some cried. Australia united like never before. We were stuck in the car park for hours. We didn’t care. No road rage here.
My daughter will never see a more important Australian sporting occasion as long as she lives.It was the night our history changed, forever.
And so this time it didn’t matter. When Recoba egged the crowd, we jeered but not like before.The Uruguayan national anthem was played in silence. Last time, with all the boos, who could hear it?
Mile Sterjosvki scored, but the Uruguayans hit back. Recoba, the crafty schemer found space and drilled a pass to the far post. Diego Forlan tapped home.And then Brad Jones, the Australian keeper on his debut, dropped a cross. Not a dipping bending one, more a floating lob. It fell to Recoba, of course, who nodded home.
Uruguay won 2-1. I didn’t care, not this time. We’ve moved on.
Iran, I can laugh at the word now. It took eight years to stop the churn of the stomach when that word was mentioned.
Australia has problems. Not for the Asia Cup, but beyond. Our next generation are not Kewell and Viduka. Our golden boys.
The Socceroos pulled 20,000 more than The Wallabies Rugby match on the same night. Football has come along way.
Losing to Uruguay didn’t hurt. Honest!
6 comments:
Where was I when we qualified? Sitting at my bloody desk at work here in Glasgow surreptitiously following the game via live text commentary. Note: Live text commentry is NOT the way to enjoy a penalty shootout especially after it stops updating for 5 minutes after "Viduka - Misses". Rubbish.
Anyway. Eamonn, you used to teach one of my classes - Hawker College 92. Loved your work!
Andy great story, and always interested to hear form former students so email me privately if you hae chance..see email in the title of blog
While the Japan WC game was a more incredible match that left me too adrenaline filled to sleep, in the historical context as you mention, that Uruguay match was the biggest!
I remember that night well, but looking at these pictures made me feel a little nostalgic, I thought I'd share them with you! I'm the one in the middle front with the blue and gold Ajax away shirt.
After the Schwarzer save
After the Aloisi sealer
Keep up the great reporting Eamonn!
Great photos
have you seen the video on my www.nearpost.blogspot.com/
some aussie lads celebrating the Japan goals, it gets me laughing everytime
it's in the top video's on the right
thanks for the support enjoy your football!
Eamonn
Haha, that video's brilliant!
Eamonn, you’ve heard the story about my 16 November 2005 at great length. But, it’s always nice to share it with others.
A few months before tickets went on sale for the qualifier, I asked my bosses if I could buy tickets and go. I was working on WorkChoices at the time. They said sure and that they'd try to make sure that I could get the time off to go.
Then, on the Monday before the qualifier, I got called into my boss' office to be told that there was lots of work on and it was unlikely that I'd go. I asked my boss' boss about it and she said the same thing. They both told me that they had already been really flexible with my leave and that we all had to give up things as part of working on WorkChoices and that I was no different to anyone else. At this point, I'd just like to note the generosity of my leave:
1. some time off to go to my partner’s Dad's funeral;
2. a week off when I had a medical certificate and was so sick that my doctor said I needed the time off because I had worked so hard that my immune system was so far down it couldn't kick a cold that had been around for three months;
3. the morning off on Jewish New Year; and
4. the morning off on Yom Kippur when I was fasting (I got to work from home that afternoon).
Oh did I mention that I also worker Labour Day?
Despite all that, I asked what I could do to make it more likely that I could go. I asked what work needed to be done and offered to work late to do it. They said that they couldn't predict anything and that they couldn't make guarantees but doing more work might help. They also said that it might help if I pushed my departure time back.
So, on the Monday night I worked back until about 7-8. On the Tuesday before the game I came to work at 7:30 in the morning and worked until 8:00 that night. I then went home, had dinner and worked until 10:00 at home. On Wednesday, the morning of the qualifier, I got to work at 6:30 in the morning and finished all of the work. I also organised to leave at 2:30 so that I only needed two and half hours off.
I gave my boss all the work I had done and asked how I was tracking to get to the soccer. She said that she couldn't tell me and that it was really unfair that I was putting all of this pressure on her to let me go by doing all of this work. That really shat me. I mean what did she think would be fair? That I not do the work?
Half an hour later she called me in again and said that I couldn't go. I was so pissed off that I just had no words for it. All I needed was two and a half hours and they couldn't find it. What was even worse was that I did absolutely no work between 2:30 and 5:00 that afternoon, because my boss was checking the mountain of work I'd already prepared for her.
So, I watched the game at home with my partner. It was awesome. The suspense was so great that I was standing in my lounge room from the 70th minute all the way to when Aloisi’ penalty hit the back of the net. And in that moment, all of the pain that I still held from the Iran game in 1997 faded away.
On Thursday morning, the morning after the game, the Chief Counsel invited me into his office and said that he didn't know what to say. No one had told him about the decision not to give me leave and that, had he known, he would have let me go and that this was ridiculous. He also reimbursed me for my tickets and granted me as much leave as I wanted to go to Germany for the world cup. That was nice and I appreciated it but, as he noted, it can't make up for the fact that I wasn't there and I had to find a tonne of money to go to Germany.
On Monday, I got called into my boss' office again. She wanted to clear the air so that she wouldn't feel resentment to me for my behaviour. Apparently I had bullied her and increased her stress by wanting to go to the soccer and she felt that I hadn't supported her in the week that we went before the Senate inquiry about the industrial relations bill. She also said that in my performance reviews people had noted that when I rush my work I am sometimes not as thorough or accurate as usual. She said that if I had a reputation for greater accuracy she would have let me go and that I should focus in the future on being more accurate and thorough. She also accepted that I didn't have any work to do on Wednesday afternoon, but said that they still needed me here. She was also upset that the senior management had not supported her decision to not let me and approvingly quoted from someone who said he would've let me go because sport is a boy thing.
I mean how was I supposed to feel after that?
On Tuesday morning my boss' boss tried to take me out for coffee to chat about it. I said to her that it was just too early to talk about and that I didn't want to talk about it for a couple of weeks. I also said, "Besides what is there to talk about? You think that it was the right decision and I think that it was the wrong decision." She said that she didn't necessarily think there was a clear cut right and wrong. I said that I understood complexity and didn't want to talk about it right now.
After that I asked for a salary review and made it clear that I was looking elsewhere. The Chief Counsel came to the table with a very substantial pay rise that allowed me to save enough to get to Germany, where I got to see Australia v Japan and Crotia v Australia. So it wasn’t all that bad in the end. Oh, and I don’t work on industrial relations legislation anymore either. But that’s the story.
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