This article is not about Nick Maxwell’s finger. As a result, it may struggle to gain attention in a town that, quite wonderfully in many ways, descends into a blinkered sporting delirium with the coming of Spring.

Nor is it about NRL finals, US Open tennis, the cricket tour of Sri Lanka, the rugby World Cup or the World Athletics championships, all of which have been fighting for oxygen in a party spread for couch jockeys that has resulted in lactic acid build-up in our channel changing fingers.

This article is about the Socceroos, who wandered into the white noise of this overpopulated sporting environment and astounded fans with two polar opposite performances – the first, a casual, slipshod 2-1 home win against Thailand who are ranked 98 places below us on the FIFA rankings, and the second, a brave, campaign defining 3-1 victory away in the heat of Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

The heat, the Dammam heat.

The campaign being defined is the Road to Brazil 2014. It may not be obvious from the faint murmurs of the news networks, but the World Cup has started. And by World Cup, I mean the World Cup. The one that captivates 196 nations – not just a few ex-British colonies and the thicker-necked amongst the French and Irish.

Just as they were on another hot anonymous night in Tashkent four years ago, the Socceroos were brilliant on Wednesday morning. There could have been any number of excuses for a sub-par performance. In the previous week, the predominantly European based contingent had flown 22 hours to Brisbane, played the Thailand match, returned to the airport, boarded three flights totalling more than 30 hours, arrived in Dammam, endured home town tactics such as delayed practice times and an absence of match balls, and then taken the field in near forty degree temperatures. And yet the Socceroos dominated the match. The team now sits at the top of Group D in World Cup qualifying with six points, three points clear of outsider Thailand, and five points above Saudi Arabia and Oman.

The yawn of indifference within the mainstream media suggests an expectation that the Socceroos should naturally progress through this first round of Asian qualifying. But the truth is that these are hugely challenging fixtures. We no longer have an archipelago of American Samoas to beat up upon. Saudi Arabia has been at four of the last five World Cup finals. And yet despite having more money, a famed international coach, higher paid players, and home ground advantage, the hosts were flattered by the margin in Dammam. The Socceroos owned the tempo of the match, maximising possession with clean passing – knowing that controlling the ball was the best way of controlling the expenditure of energy.

It was also a demonstration of enormous courage. Footballers are sometimes lampooned by lovers of other codes for being ‘soft’ – the extravagant writhing, the open mouthed screams, the game delaying ‘treatments’, the instant recoveries the moment they reach the sidelines. Some of this criticism is justified. Some of it comes from armchair knuckleheads who would have their opinions transformed via a session of being smacked across the shins with a piece of 2 x 4 while running flat out. On Wednesday, the Socceroos were brave on every front. Brett Holman had his ankle mauled by an opponent’s boot and was straight up. And practically the whole team sacrificed themselves to the altar of gut running – in particular Emerton, Holman, McKay, Jedinak, Valeri and new kid Michael Zullo, whose pace and control caused viewers at home to swell with a sense of renewal.

Nor was the bravery limited to the players. Holger Osieck, incensed by the team’s poor showing in Brisbane, chose not to pick Tim Cahill, the player most fans would nominate as our best performed and most talented outfielder. His reasons were relatively sound. Kennedy has been in goal scoring form in Japan and is a more accomplished lone man up front. Cahill and Kennedy did not combine well in Brisbane. Holman was our best player in behind the strikers in Brisbane, as well as at South Africa 2010, and Cahill would be one hell of a weapon to throw on at 60 minutes, as he proved so famously at Kaiserslautern in 2006. All sound reasons – a calculated gamble from the coach. He would have been torn apart if we’d lost.

Nevertheless, we won, and the distant sounds of samba just got a few decibels louder. Next, it will be Oman in Sydney on 11th October. Buy a ticket, watch on TV, get excited! This is the national team playing the international game and for nearly a decade, we’ve had every reason to be proud of it. Qualifiers matter, in so far as sport ever matters. World Cups might not be able to be won three years from home, but they can definitely be lost.