Enough to drive a man to drink

OK, here it is, that’s it. I’m coming out. I confess to having a drinking problem.

You should know that I haven’t been like this for long. It only began about a 10 hours ago when ten shell-shocked Australians trudged off the field in Durban after a 4-0 hammering by Germany.

Our boys haven’t been so comprehensively spanked since June 1998, 12 years ago, when they lost 7-0 to Croatia in Zagreb.

But that was a meaningless friendly about which not many of us gave a rats. This was a World Cup opening game, watched by a nation and indeed most of the world.

I began to doubt my capacity to resist reaching for the bottle before the kick-off when I saw the line-up and the name of a rugged, sweaty, toiling midfielder who plays for Hull City and who’s known for not much beyond his work rate, Richard Garcia, as our front man playing as our new Mark Viduka.

I ordered only a glass of chardonnay to dull the shock of it. But as the minutes ticked away, and the Germans began to tally the goals and insist that we had no right to get a touch of the Jabulani, I found myself glancing at the seductive row of Johnny Walker bottles on the bar shelf.

By the night’s end I was ready to sword the barman with an upturned stool if he so much as thought about saying no to my desperate need to gulp down the entire contents of the nearest bottle.

This was not a game but a national shame, devised by a man who had lost the plot just when he faced his greatest coaching challenge.

The man legendary for his tactical obstinacy and his results-driven betrothal to lady safety for two and a half years, suddenly, the one time when safety was the highest priority, took a reckless punt by sending on a combination never tried before, not even in a friendly.

Garcia played while a ‘fully fit’ Kewell (Pim’s words), Bresciano and Kennedy watched. Culina, perennially a holding midfielder under Verbeek’s entire reign, was now a left winger, presumably to stop Philip Lahm’s marauding down Germany’s right, but his capacity to launch attacks with his crisp passing now neutralised.

It was a shambles. Sending on the destroyer, Jedinak, at 0-4 when all had already been lost was poignantly a case of damage limitation and said a lot about the Verbeek mindset. But it was too late.

Don’t blame the players, the culpability of Schwarzer and some wretched defending notwithstanding.

The accountability lies entirely with the coach, even if we were to admit that the Germans were quite magnificent.

Even Verbeek’s most ardent fans will acknowledge that the coach had been untested at this level prior to this tournament. Now we know why some of us were worried. It was a pathetic failure.

Fortunately not all is lost.

What lies ahead is Ghana followed by Serbia, who in their opening contest both looked decidedly ordinary and beatable by an Australia we’ve been used to seeing before Pim’s bizarre act of science fiction against Germany.

But now that will have to be without Cahill, an unforgiving prospect.

Time to pour another scotch.

http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/les-murray/blog/1008273/Enough-to-drive-a-man-to-drink