It wasn’t just one game for Arnold. The Asian Championship after the World Cup was poor. The weak opponents in the second phase of WC qualifying masked the deficiencies.

That’s right, China was not a good opponent to assess a player.

I thought both O’Neill and Teague were poor this window. I think I said during the last window that I thought the hype about Teague was premature, he needs to show that March window form consistently before he can be lauded.

He was out for 7 months with an ACL injury

We don’t fucking care!

Didn’t think he was on loan, but had signed a short term contract that is up.

I can only assume Popovic was looking after Circati by not playing him. Maybe 2 games plus travel in 5 days might have been overloading him and his knee.

Another pass from Burgess is slow and short. That’s about 4 or 5 tonight.

Burgess is horrible tonight.

Mitch Duke! I take everything back every criticism I’ve made of him.

Burgess has looked sluggish and indecisive at times.

That’s not gonna happen. Arzani isn’t on the bench.

I said test cricket is becoming a joke because outside Aus, Ind and Eng many players prioritise T20 cricket. More and more test series are played without first choice players (excluding Aus, Ind and Eng) because of T20 cricket, so it means some test series do not necessarily have the best...

Look, I agree that test cricket is the ultimate and best form of the game. Unfortunately test cricket is really on only maintaining interest levels in Australia, India and England. Maybe New Zealand also, but to a lesser extent. And I'm sure you are right that many players see it as the real...

The principle of having a champion test nation is fine. Unfortunately the process to arrive at two finalists is probably the most unbalanced qualification process, by far, in world sport. Combine this with the fact that test cricket continues to lose relevance in the cricket world, and I don't...

Let's face it, the so-called "World Test Championship" format is an absolute joke. As is more and more of international test cricket, unfortunately.

Don't think you can really blame Popa for this one. The kid's only just turned 16, so ideally Football Australia youth team coaches are keeping in contact with him. But after 3 years in Italy, if his mind has been turned to wanting to play for Italy it will be hard to change it if he continues...

It’s not the clearest wording, not easy to follow. Does non-official competition mean a friendly, or something else? I’m not sure what it could mean apart from friendly. If it does, then yes, it looks like friendlies count, which is contrary to everything else I can remember reading.

I agree, it was pioneering and a huge accomplishment. I was just comparing then and now. I wonder which Asian countries (and New Zealand) back then weren’t semi-pros though. Some may well have even been amateur.

I'm not downplaying the achievement at all, but in 1974 only 99 countries entered the World Cup, and 206 countries entered in 2022. So the ratio of qualifiers to entrants is roughly the same. In Asia and Oceania, 1 team qualified out of 18 entries in 1974, while in 2022 Asia had 4.5 qualifiers...