We're through!

A big thankyou to the good folks at CMHR for hosting this morning's big screen viewing of Australia's triumphant 2-2 draw against Croatia. The atmosphere was electric in the CMHR conference room (or perhaps that was just the smoke caused by my "pancake incident" at half time - at high temperatures, butter apparently does combust!). What a game it was! I don't think I've been that tense since Ben beat Blair in the final of Big Brother 2001. Hopefully CMHR's own "big Kev", who organised the event (in fine style I might add), will send through some photos - so I might update this post a bit later with images from this morning's antics.

But what about the refereeing though ? It's frightening to find out that Graham Poll, the referee in this morning's game, was not some obscure umpire called in from Siberia, but rather an Englishman, from the English Premier League! How someone with such credentials could allow Josip Simunic to stay on the field, despite receiving two yellow cards is beyond me. What the f%&@ is he writing in his little black book if not the player numbers? I am, of course, quite bias when I say this, but I think it's fair to say that Australia has had a bit of a raw deal with the quality of refereering in all three games played so far. From the Japanese goal that should never have been allowed, to the near farcical scenes of the last 10 minutes of this morning's match, we have clearly had to battle more than our quality opponents to get through to the round of 16.

And what happened to Schwarzer ? why the hell was Kalac goalie ? I don't care how tall he is, just make sure that man never sets foot on a football pitch again during this world cup. Perhaps a bit harsh, particularly given my complete lack of authority on the game, but I suspect Kalac may have indirectly caused a number of heart attacks across the country this morning.

But of course, who cares about any of this now - we're through!

Finally .. a special hello to all my aussie friends over in Europe, probably partying hard as I type this. It was great to receive SMS reports from our men and women on the ground! Keep doing us proud over there, or at least make sure you don't vomit on yourselves!