Australia's World Cup Bid A Soccer Fantasy

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30886, 20 October 1965, Page 19

Australia's World Cup Bid A Soccer Fantasy

VVEN the reader who most demands that his fiction should be based on fact turns a blind eye to the author who writes for a boys’ paper. He will accept the “Phantom Express” who comes back on to the field a minute from the end, suffering from a broken leg, picks up the ball on his own line, evades the desperate tackles of 15 opponents and scores the winning try just as the referee is about to blow for full-time. Nor will be cavil at “Slogger Dan” who comes straight from his school’s first eleven into the New Zealand side after the captain had mysteriously disappeared, scores a brilliant double-century in his first test, takes eight for 14, makes a back-breaking catch to dismiss Don TrumPer, and hits the towering six off the last ball of the last over on the last day to score the winning runs. But even this long-suffer-fng reader might finally object if he was expected to absorb the true tale of how Australia is now one game away from playing in the World Cup soccer finals. Sport has many weird and wonderful stories to tell, but Australia’s World Cup experiences are in the realms of high-blown fantasy. When Australia made its first entry into the competition last year—along with more than 80 other countries—its hopes of being one of the last 16 to compete in the finals in England in 1966 were less than the fiicker of an eyelid. In cricket, tennis, golf, swimming, Rugby and Rugby League Australia would hold its own and better against the world: but in soccer its name would only be known in the coun-

tils of the sport because Australia was banned by F I.F.A. a few years ago and later reinstated. Australia went into an Asian group, along with North and South Korea, South Africa and 14 of the newly-emerged African countries. At the most conservative estimate its chances ti

of winning the group—and only the group winners go through to the final stages —were 17-1 against because there were 17 other countries in the group.

Even when South Africa was suspended by F.I.F.A. because of its apartheid policies in sport, and the group was reduced by one, there was little interest aroused, but when, overnight, the odds against Australia slumped from 16-1 to 2-1, the Plot began to thicken. This came about when the 14 African countries, objecting that among such a large number F.I.F.A. would allow only one to qualify for the finals, withdrew en bloc from the competition, and left the group comprising North and South Korea and Australia.

But this fairy-tale of “then there were three teams” suddenly became “then there were two,” when South Korea, objecting to playing North Korea above the cease-fire line of another kind of battle, also withdrew.

So a group of 18 nations had now diminished to two, and that is where it stands at present. F.I.F.A. has ordered the match to be played on a neutral ground

in Cambodia, and Australia has asked for November 2124 as the dates for the game. Now, to complete the tale in the best traditions, Australia must go to Cambodia and beat North Korea, as it has every chance of doing, although little is known of North Korean soccer strength, and join the elite of the soccer nations in England next year. But there may yet be a final twist to this story, the final straw to break the back of the most indulgent reader of fantasy. When the secretary of the Australian Soccer Federation (Mr I. A. McAndrew) was in Christchurch this week he reported that his officials were still awaiting a reply from North Korea, and were getting restive. They had even demanded from F.I.F.A. that unless the North Koreans answered Australia’s cable immediately, that F.I.F.A. suspend North Korea.

And if this were to happen—and it is in the nature of things that it should after all that has gone before— Australia will go to the finals without having played a game in a group no-one had given it a chance of winning. From New Zealand’s point

of view the unkindest cut of all is the belated contemplation that had it entered the competition, it would have been in the same group and might have been playing Australia for the right to challenge Brazil for the World Cup.

Something seems to have gone wrong somewhere along the lines. And there are countries such as Czechoslovakia, Austria, Wales, Peru and possibly Scotland which are unlikely to qualify through their groups and which might be even more puzzled—or worse—by the whole affair.