Predictable: Particularly when the best form of defence is attack! We need to replace older overrated players with a brand new team of youngsters.

Who hasn't tasted quite as much defeat as these overrated, overpaid antiquated players? If the selection process included our best A, B and (C) (reserves/understudies) teams, and a three-game contest between them. Our best team would likely self-select?

With that done our two best self-selected teams could train in a three-match competition to ensure match fitness an no injuries hidden an carried into the real contest And real, results count, competition!

. I make the remarks as someone aged eleven who played with seniors and later as a stand-in tempory coach of a bottom of the ladder (intellectually impaired?) team who finished the season as regional champions.

You can't teach natural talent or guts, but you can hone what's already there.

Our difficulty has always been the paucity of talent scouts and our ( wouldn't know talent from dirt) selectors!

Talent needs to be selected from results on the paddock and fostered from primary school on and challenged by senior competition to bring out the finest.

Not by bogus friendlies (training gallops) that encourage counterfeit talent to replace/block the real thing!

Rather than good world class players. If the powers that be always look overseas? They'll never ever select our best most able youngsters.

Sorry guys but there's only one player I'd keep and that is the best on the field striker who played as full forward during the French game.

Who'd be captain and the nucleus to build a can-do team around?

The first thing to remove is the negative imperative that is so much a feature of our game, the Arrogant, we know best, selection criteria and traditional coaching!
Alan B.

How anyone can find any interest in a game where major championships are often decided by a penalty shootout I really can't imagine.

Hopefully we can now go back to a lot less of this rubbish on sports reports for another 4 years. Hell with any luck they won't qualify for the next one, & apart from SBS no one will notice it is on.

don't know a lot about soccer but three games with one goal and that from a penalty! Watching paint dry would be a lot cheaper. How much did it cost for all this?

Boiled down to essentials runner the game of soccer is first getting and retaining possession.

If other team don't have the ball! How can they score?

The next element is to gid rid of the ball as soon it is passed and to an onside unmarked player who's forward of your position.

With that simplicity of tactic, move the ball into the penalty area.

Where at least three onside strikers create fear and doubt in an opposition that moves key players out of position to mark yours with tandem players.

This is where the well-coached team, unselfishly pass the ball back to an unmarked player, who shoots at the open side of the net.
And takes hours of practice to ensure they have the right mental attitude, skills, evasion and twinkle toes abilities.

And players who take a ball home to continue to hone skills. None more important than to be in control, while running backward. So as to circle and run rings around opposing players.

Headers are a problem for younger players who should play with a lighter softer ball so as to avoid stupifying head trauma and trying to play with your brains addled.

My team finished their season with a three-nil win over their nearest competition, and by eliminating the negative and accentuating the positive.

The focus needs to be on what you want to happen as opposed to what you fear might happen and for the whole 9 yards.

I believe in putting your best team on the park from the get-go and wear the results if the other team outplay and outlast yours. This is where physical fitness hardened by 160-minute training games ensures nobody on the paddock is soft or can't keep up the pace.

If you can't stand the heat? Stay out of the kitchen!

Pace counts most in the last 20 minutes when you've run the other side of their feet and when they get sloppy or resort to illegal tackles.

I've seen better players playing under ten than the side we selected for the world cup!
Alan B.

Thanks for that Al.
I've always wondered what the logic was behind the game of soccer.
My favourite oval to watch soccer is Blue Tongue. (If you truely know about soccer, you'll know where that is).

My favourite pass time while there, is watching the sailing regatta on the lake, and soaking up the sun, while leaning back eating ice creams I've conned the kids into fetching, (giving me another twenty minutes of peace).

At the end of that routine, the games over, and I'm none the wiser. It's a very difficult game to be interested in Al. It's definitely not for everybody!

ALL team ball games were cleverly manipulated into a tool more effective almost than religion to amuse the sparsely thinking !