I think this will prove to be a controversial comment but does anyone else wonder about ex footballers skills at debating reffing decisions  ?

The referee for this game was a bit average but I thought he got the call on the supposed Milligan handball/penalty completely correct.

Every single Aussie commentator during and after the game (including Simon Hill ...who usually gets things right) called it a penalty and said how lucky we were the ref got it wrong !!!!
All said it was just a penalty but did not explain why...they never do...they simply state "it was a penalty for mine"

A referee is going to consider two main things  ..was it hand to ball ? and do I think it was intentional ? (with intention overriding all else)
Firstly the ball was crossed and hit his foot and flew straight up at speed and hit him under the arm.
Hand to ball ?....definitely not ...his hand was up high away from the ball which flew up towards his arm .
Secondly .....was it intentional ? ...quite clearly no ...it happened so quickly he had no way of knowing the ball was going to flick up into his arm .Anyone saying he meant to do that has never played football.
I get so sick of players/commentators saying plays are penalties without any consideration what the Laws of the game actually states.
Ogenovski justified a penalty by the old "I have seen them given" ....... if Refs start making decisions based on " I have seen them given" we are in trouble.

Opinions vary but I cant let the highlighted bit go.  Thats factually incorrect.  When the GG were the GG they had four captains of big 4 League clubs and everyone was a regular starter with the exception of our second pick GK Kalac (AC Milan).  Thats not even giving credit to the fact we had two real stars in Kewell and Viduka.  This was before Cahill became a star in his own right.  

After the 2006 WC even my English friends would have had Kewell, Viduka, Cahill and Schwarzer as first choice players.  I travelled a lot at that stage and without any prompting people all over the world would tell me what a great team we had.  That's not going to happen now, because we dont.  We may have some technically better players now, maybe, you are the coach after all.  But the world has moved on a lot, at the time we had many top players and thats a fact.

I just take into account their background. An ex-striker commentating v an ex-defender commentating would have slightly different interpretations. 

Personally I wouldn't have called it handball, lots of handballs are given for similar circumstances though. As previously stated I see this not given as handball on a regular basis in the EPL (think there was one in the previous matchday round). You have to deem that Milligan deliberately handled the ball ... I personally can't see any deliberate action by him to handle the ball.

At my Sunday league level this would be given everyday of the week as handball though.

Not many positives.

We were beaten by Jordan, a team that has a FIFA Ranking of 109. We could barely beat Syria, a team ranked 74.

The positives are, Australia managed to get through. Also, Giannou looks like the good striker, He was a good target man and added some spark upfront. The young Ikon and Rogic also pretty good.

Opinions vary but I cant let the highlighted bit go.  Thats factually incorrect.  When the GG were the GG they had four captains of big 4 League clubs and everyone was a regular starter with the exception of our second pick GK Kalac (AC Milan).  Thats not even giving credit to the fact we had two real stars in Kewell and Viduka.  This was before Cahill became a star in his own right.  

After the 2006 WC even my English friends would have had Kewell, Viduka, Cahill and Schwarzer as first choice players.  I travelled a lot at that stage and without any prompting people all over the world would tell me what a great team we had.  That's not going to happen now, because we dont.  We may have some technically better players now, maybe, you are the coach after all.  But the world has moved on a lot, at the time we had many top players and thats a fact.

Having said that I still want to win now and hopefully we have the genesis of a good team starting to come through now in the young ones. The past is gone brig on the next gen

"Only Sterjovski" who lost out on the Swiss title on goal difference and played UCL football (Seasons before and that season) and reached the Quarter Final of the Europa League that season 

Aging Lazaridis who played 20 games in England that season rather that off the bench than some of our bench options. Fk i'd love to have an option of a seasoned EPL player to utilize off the bench. 

@Miron, you may remember the penalty given against Reardon in the debacle against Glory. He lunged at the ball with his front arm raised, obviously trying to get the ball with his feet. The Glory player kicked the ball upwards, striking the arm. Would you have given that a penalty?

It seems to be assumed that where a player's arm is away from his body, it is a penalty, irrespective of intent. I started playing over 50 years ago, so I'm ancient, however when I played the rule was if it hit the arm it was a penalty/free kick irrespective of intent. We learnt very quickly to get the hand/arm out of the road. Players today are very lazy, hoping for the benefit of the doubt. Its time to go back to the old rule.

This for me, it is near on impossible to compare teams of the past with teams now. Why bother with who was / is better?? All that matters is who we have now, and how we play now. As long as we can see that the team is moving forward I think we should remain positive.

Agree, and see my post for 2010 which was not even the GG. How is this shit even comparable. 

Agree on the final sentence. 

On the game, we looked good in periods (Like all tournament). Were clutch when we needed to be. A bit too close for my liking but like I said I will only judge our performance once the knockout rounds start. 

I feel dirty for saying this, but....I think Grant played really well.

I would start him over Risdon at this point purely for the fact I think his crossing is (or at least has been) better. If we are going to play with overlapping fullbacks and inside forwards I would choose him at this stage. 

To be fair, he hasn't been HUGELY tested (Risdon stood up to greater tests in the WC but I don't think he has been in great form since) and I still fear he is a red card waiting to happen but I haven't actually seen that side of him at all yet.

I can't let it go either.

Viduka, Kewell, Schwarzer were genuine stars and mainstays in their respective teams in Europe.

We were getting many rave reports from the Europeans about our players. We don't get that anymore today.

I couldn't disagree more. In the Reardon circumstance he is trying to block a cross, therefore his hand positions are important as he is deliberately trying to block a ball coming across him. In regards to Milligan his hands are out in place prior to the ball reaching him, he is not trying to block a cross, he is controlling the ball under no pressure. He makes no movement to adjust his arms after the poor touch.

The problem with ruling anytime the ball touches your hand / arm is that players can deliberately kick the ball at them. Or like the UAE penalty awarded in the first game of the Asian Cup ... player is behind two defenders jumping, ball falls over them and hits the player's arm (maybe). He has no idea that the ball will reach him, doesn't move his arms away from his body etc. etc.

....yes I agree with you ...some refs do give them in lower leagues and that annoys the hell out of me. I also play Sunday league level these days and it seem that even supposedly qualified refs just interprete the laws in some very different ways .....but this is is international football ....and thankfully this ref got it right in this instance.
Pity the commentators don't google Laws of the Game ...its right there on there on their iphones if they want it .
I would contend that probably fewer than 20% of all players playing football would have ever looked at the laws of the game  (including me ....I spent 24 years playing senior football without ever opening the book ...I only started looking at it when I started coaching juniors many years ago )

Even though it doesnt really appear anywhere in the rules, it seems to be the 'unnatural position' that is the overriding factor when milligan-type pens are awarded. Its clearly not 'deliberate' in the sense that he obviously didnt mean to fuck up his first touch and have the ball bounce up into his arm, but it seems that many refs (not this one fortunately) interpret it to be 'deliberate' if the arm is not where it should be, in so far as there is no reason for the arm to be there. I dont have a problem with that interpretation IF its possible for the arm to be next to the body, and I agree with the earlier post that said if the arm is away from the body it should be given a pen as that would at least provide consistency and defenders could adapt to this.

Where it gets tricky is when the arm is away from the body as a function of movement ie jumping or sliding. I would argue in these cases that the arm is in a 'natural' position even though its away from the body. 

But I think the Milligan one was a pen. I also think the ref realised that after not awarding it which is why he squared up on the later penalty call which was clearly bullshit.

Yeah he did agree, Grant and Mabil impressed me

Mabil was pretty good.

'Natural position' to me is even more subjective than 'deliberate', and why deliberate and not natural position appears in the Laws IMO. I would argue that his arms are in a natural position for someone balancing, an unnatural position would be for his hands to be by his side or behind him. Yes they may have been a little high, but again if he was off balance then they would be a natural position to regain balance ... something most footballers are taught to do (balance that is) when trying to control the ball.

His arms weren't in an unnatural position trying to effect the play (movement of the ball), so for me that is where you'd have to rule on "unnatural" position IMO.

Considerations before awarding a handball. 

From: FIFA Analysis of Match Situations 2015

Handling the ball
41 Is the hand moving towards the ball or is the ball moving towards the hand?
42 Are the player's hand's or arms in a ¨NATURAL POSITION" or an ¨UNNATURAL POSITION"?
43 Does the player attempt to avoid the ball striking his hand?
44 Does the ball strike his hand from a short or from a long distance?
45 Does the player use his hand or arm to deliberately touch or block the ball?
46 Does the player prevent an opponent gaining possession of the ball by handling it?
47 Does the player attempt to score a goal by deliberately handling the ball?
48 Does the player prevent a goal by deliberately handling the ball?
49 Does the player prevent an obvious goalscoring opportunity by deliberately handling the ball?
50 Does the player try to deceive the referee by handling the ball?
256 Is the ball moving in the direction of the goal?

41 Ball to hand
42 Debatable, we'll say YES for argument sake
43 NO
44 Short
45 NO
46 NO
47 NO
48 NO
49 NO
50 NO
256?? NO

Oops. my bad. Read from after my first sentence :)

It's quite funny that the usual FFA fanboys are talking up the success of the curriculum and"modern coach edumacaton" in the current Socceroo squad and yet they argue that our youth teams are shite because the junior players havent been though the full curriculum. Which one is it.........

Strangely enough I don't disagree with the Reardon penalty . Whilst I do doubt he did it intentionally...... his intention is not clear .
He ran out to a player who was going to shoot to block the shot or put the striker off...fair enough .....but he did have his hands raised which many defenders do intentionally to make themselves "bigger" to put off the striker . So his  "intent" is unclear to the ref so I would have been happy with it being given... or not... in that instance.
The Milligan one was different , he was simply trying to trap a ball with no one nearby ....and it bounced up into his arm awkwardly and quickly ...no intent was possible at that speed .....and I very much doubt he had his arms out so that just in case it bounced up he could knock it down with his arm .

I don't agree with your idea of making the Law simply "ball touches arm = handball".
It has never been that anyway ( even 50 years ago)
The Law has always stated that it must be "intentional" handball...its just that 50 years ago refs simply played it that way ( I also remember those days clearly and you are right ...refs just gave a free kick every time a ball had contact with the hand ). It didn't matter so much then , but in modern times where huge money and prestige are on offer players would cheat and deliberately target players arms to gain free kicks .
So the laws were added to by IFAB to add other conditions onto the old law regarding handball...ie  must hand to ball ....not ball to hand etc ..but the overrider to refs should still be "is it intentional in your view".....thus we still get varying decisions like the Reardon one above ..and we always will .

number 41 to 44 are to establish intent ...if not established ...play on ......if established..... go to 45 to 256(?) to decide punishment ie card and or penalty/free kick (note 45 to 256 all need intent as the word "deliberate" is used in each case ...except 50 where it is implied)

a 3000 minute season was actually rare for most of our golden gen players

33.3 full games is also pretty rare for the HAL

unfortunately

even 2500 minute seasons were uncommon (actually sub 2000 minute seasons were more common than over 2000 minute seasons for many GG players)

a first choice player usually gets 3000 minute seasons (or in the ecl 4000 minutes!) Jedi when he was dominating the epl got 3000+ minutes. When he was struggling for his place he dropped well below that

People rewriting history now lol. 
lol Emerton would have had 6 seasons with over 3000 minutes (For Feyenoord and Blackburn), Neil had 5 or 6 with an EPL clocking over 3000 minutes or at least  5 seasons over 2500 minutes (Which you said was uncommon), Kewell easily had 5 seasons clocking over 2500 (At least 3 seasons above 3000 at an actual club challenging for titles), Viduka about 5, Grella had a few in the Serie A as did bresciano (I recall there run to the semi finals in the 2005 Europa League think Bresciano played 50 games that season in all competitions)  Can mention more players lol. 

We played like a busted arse at times, but we still got the job done.  I am happy that I can say that, rather than how gallant we were in a 2-3 loss.  Our young players (Mabil and Ikon in particular) are getting invaluable tournament experience and gaining confidence.  Next round will bring some more entertainment I'm sure.