Over And Out

The Socceroos' defeat to Italy struck a chord with a lot of people, not least of which is the online community. The spotlight thankfully isn't on Lucas Neill (unless it's for a well-deserved transfer to Barcelona, eh Trav?), but rather the refereeing and the staging by the Italians.

Unfortunately, both are simply part of the game. To be honest, the refereeing in the Italy match was better than most other games. Only the red card and the final penalty were obviously wrong (from memory). Brodie mentioned the refereeing in his blog and I was thinking about this in the Melbourne vs Essendon match a few weeks ago. I think umpiring has always been this bad, it's just that we care a bit more about it now, we focus on it. I think we like having someone to blame - and it is a necessary part of the game to make sure we don't turn on our Socceroos, Lucas Neill or even Guus Hiddink after such a loss.

Ultimately, we achieved the big goal of getting through to the next round plus we defeated Japan in the most incredible fashion. I've got plenty of great memories and the bar has been set high for future Socceroo teams to match our 06 squad in terms of quality and results.

Considering I've got my brand new Nokia 6280 (I don't intend to "name drop", but it's the next question everyone asks) it's likely I'll be taking lots of "happy snaps" and incorporating them somehow into web content. "Tales Of..." is good, but with personal pictures it could be "The Adventures Of..." or even "Professor Patrick's Fabulösen Wunderspiel".

You, the readers, deserve the chance to have some kind of feedback. It's been a while since I've made a direct appeal. Do you like a side dish of pictures with your blog? Relevant pictures? Random pictures? Would you like me to arrange some visual gags? Or are you simply willing to read whatever's here?