Gerard Whateley

We played like the team that they had ridiculed us as, which that was the bit that annoyed me the most.

Yeah, it's almost great soccer teams, and without being a great soccer aficionado, but when they flow, it's almost like touch typing.

They don't think about it.

And you could tell it was almost if every play they were thinking about it, like a touch type is saying, now where's the letter K again?

And it just wasn't flowing at all, was it?

But, Gerard, I really do think that maybe that was the aberration the team almost needed.

They're up against Paraguay on Friday.

you know, the world ranking said that, you know, more than a match for them, only need a draw to go through.

And to reach the next stage is, even if they lose, they could be the eighth, one of the top eight third place teams to go through as well.

So you've just got to keep reminding yourself, as we say, that Italy have missed the World Cup for the third time in a row.

If we go through to the next round, it's happy days.

And I think...

That loss to United States, they had that one marked on the calendar as soon as the draw came out as their monumental match of the tournament.

And I think you'll see a much better team this Friday.

And if they get through to the next round, you just never know because expectations now have been really levelled and that's when Australian teams often do their best work.

Yeah, I remain completely optimistic.

The US game was a loss.

All circumstances, you could have written that down.

So the first and the third game, we were going to declare Australia's fate.

It's just that because the Americans had been just so painful, that was the... Anyway, I'd set off the top crash.