Simon Hill

Pre-game, all our talk, we were stunned by Tony Popovich's start in 11ers.

I'm sure everybody else was in Australia.

You know, Patrick Beach, massive call to replace your captain for a World Cup opener.

Your vice-captain, Jackson Irvine, left on the bench.

World Cup debuts for Patrick Beach and for Paul Ocon Engsler.

And, you know, that could have gone horribly wrong for Tony Popovich.

It was a really gutsy call, but...

Hey, he got it absolutely bang on.

And for that, he deserves an awful lot of credit.

Yeah, and, you know, as it turned out, Patrick Beach was probably the man of the match.

He made a couple of outstanding saves, particularly the one that he tipped onto the post, I think just two minutes after Nestorio and Koundra had scored the opening goal.

You know, that one goes in and that match could have played out in a completely different way.

So he justified his selection, kept a clean sheet on his World Cup debut.

Big tick for him.

Paul Ocon Engsler was involved in the opening goal, put a lovely ball over the top for Irunkunda to run onto.

He did a good job as well.

And overall, Australia did not have a poor player on the night.

They all did their jobs.

Tony Popovich made the substitutions when he needed to.

I thought bringing on Jason Guerrero late on was a masterstroke as well, just to keep Kenan Yildiz quiet because he's a great player.