Although I'm not overly superstitious, I was watching the SBS documentary with John Safran (from the early 2000's), where he traveled to Mozambique to lift the curse that had been placed on the Australian team by a witch doctor back in 1969, in retaliation for not being paid for his services.

When I think back at Australia's recent successful World Cup qualification attempts eg. the 2006 WC and more recently 2018, I'm starting to think the curse has been well and truly lifted eg. the second leg of the Australia V Uruguay playoff in Sydney back in 2005, where Recoba misses a simple one on one with Mark Schwarzer, and Ricardo Morales misses an open header. More recently, the second leg of the Australia V Syria playoff, where Australia leading 2-1, conceded a free kick outside the box (in the 120th minute), with the resulting free kick hitting the bar, had it gone in, Syria, not Australia would have been playing Hondouras.

And when you look at the Socceroos recent qualification campaign, where they played some shit football, but still didn't lose (except for the Japan game, and the Jordan game earlier on), you start to think, did John Safran successfully lift the curse that had plagued Australia for 32 years?

We also qualified in 1974, after the curse was put on the Socceroos. Still, a good story.

More likely he just ended up shifting it onto Johnny Warren (RIP)

That's true, but Australia seemed to be plagued by the curse for the period 1978-2002, where Australia failed to qualify.

If there's any sort of curse in place it has to be on the Australian strikers missing blatant chances in  front of goal !!!

Escobar, I reckon thats about right - we still can't score enough when right in front striker or not lol......

Good point re. qualifying for the 1974 WC.

Like I said in another thread, what I found unusual last Wednesday night was the calm, confident mood in the air after we qualified. It felt like "business as usual", yet in my own lifetime I remember so vividly this idea that the World Cup was that one thing Australia couldn't reach on the world stage. The manic passion and euphoria experienced on November 16, 2005 felt like a vivid, ancient dream compared to the feeling in the stadium after the F/T whistle on Wednesday night. Instead of "FUCK YEAH ALOISI WE DID IT WE'RE IN THE WORLD CUP LET'S GET PISSED #ITOLDYOUSO" it was instead a sense of "We might have been playing poorly but of course we were going to make it- it's what we do." The fear wasn't that Honduras would be too good for us, but that we'd get complacent and throw it away...

Strange feeling, and not necessarily a bad one.

I know its mega frustrating !!!!!!

I think the difference this time, to every over play off is we were the favorites to go through.The only ever time was Iran and we blow it.

Don't think of a curse, more a blessing from a "People" that are known for turning anything into gold....

Indeed, and it's arguably the most frustrating aspect of watching the Soccerroos.

When you look at the history of the Soccerroos, right through to to present, we have, for the most part, have had good goalies, decent defenders and some solid midfielders who can create some good scoring opportunities, but when it comes to finishing, it's the Soccerroos biggest weakness.