We were great last night.

By ‘we’, I possibly mean ‘they’, for my contribution to the Socceroos improved performance was hurrying the kids through bath and bed and reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing at twice the speed, to make sure I was right for kick off.

But I’ll stick with ‘we’, because this is, after all, about our road to Brazil. If they go, I go. If they don’t go, I’ll still go, but only if somebody else pays. Which means I’m trying to make this paragraph really first class. See, look what I can do, Togo Football Federation. I’ll do a bang up job on your press releases. I can even spell ‘Adebayor’.

We were great last night.

It started at selection. Apparently Brosque had a groin and Jedinak an ankle, but both were disappointing against Oman and Tommy Oar and Mark Milligan were great last night. Oar, not just for a floating fluke that woke my entire house –  ‘Awwwwww’ was the proclamation I would have chosen, whatever his name – but also for the Kewell like speed he injected down the left. Milligan passed with the poise and precision that he has for Melbourne Victory all season. I love him. He deserves a decent league and some decent money.

We were great last night.

Lucas Neill and Sasa Ognenovski proved me and half the country wrong. Yes they were sometimes exposed for pace, but they played a deep, desperate line, and showed courage, commitment, judgment and poise to save the Socceroos’ bacon on countless occasions during that ferocious half hour of Samurai Blue dominance. They were better than the Thwaite-Cornthwaite debacle of last time, and one hopes they are taking their glucosamine or shark’s cartilage or whatever it is old men have to eat to continue to thrive into their fifties.

We could, and perhaps should have conceded early. The Schwarzer raised mit in the first half was another to add to his twenty year treasure trove of campaign-saving gems, and there was that dipping Endo drive that none of us dared watch. But it was never hopeless. Despite the illusion that the entire Japanese team was comprised solely of sub ten second 100m runners (thank you, Ed Wyatt), our forwards chased back hard, and our slow old men were so competent, that the dike held firm.

It was an enormous performance.

We were just great last night.

It annoyed me to turn on a results oriented media today and hear fair to middling reports of the Socceroos effort and performance, as though the late conceding of a penalty, justly awarded and brilliantly taken by Keisuke Honda unstitched everything. Of course we would have preferred three points. I love an unrichly deserved result as much as the next guy. Bresh’s 93^rd minute godsend against Bahrain in 2009 kept me buoyant for nearly a month. But if I’m honest with myself, one-all against that opposition last night was still triumph. Two great teams. Plenty of chances. And the workrate, desire, and will-to-win of the lesser team nearly pushed it over the line.

I’m also sick of the media saying we can now only qualify with two home wins. That’s not true, but nobody likes it when news reports sacrifice brevity for permutational meanderings into other fixtures and goal difference.

We were great last night.

If we’re that great next week, we’ll qualify.

If we’re that great the week after next, we’ll qualify.

If we’re that great in Brazil, we’ll lose two out of three group games, draw the other, and finish bottom of table.

But we’ll have made it. And when you’re talking about the Greatest Show on Earth, making it is the hardest part