World Cup football

Now that Rebecca's soccer season is about to start again, I took her (and Laura) along to see Australia's World Cup qualifying match at the ANZ Stadium last night. The 'Socceroos' have been doing well so far and are in the final qualification stages, with their game against Uzbekistan requiring a win to almost guarantee their place in South Africa in 2010 (dependent on the other match that's being played overnight in the Middle East).

Since the game was on at the Olympic Park the special bus services were active and we caught the bus with plenty of time to get to the stadium. However, we hit heavy traffic with several miles to go and had a slow crawl along with many cars who were heading to the area, plus there were intermittent heavy rain showers which had been happening over the last few days and slowed everything up.

We finally got to the ground and found our seats high up in the stadium with about 10 mins of the match gone. We had a great view although being so high up it felt a bit detached from what was going on down on the pitch, but the atmosphere was pretty good. The first half was quite uneventful but the second livened up with a headed goal and a penalty for Australia, so the match finished 2-0 and the crowd left satisfied, despite more heavy rain as the game finished.

This is a report of the match.

The girls enjoyed the game - and the Mexican wave - and it was good to be part of the partisan 57,000 crowd. It will be quite a change this Sunday when Rebecca starts her league games for the season!