Well, yet again a saga of missed opportunity - getting to the semi- finals would have been a huge boost for football in this country, but now I wonder how many people will just not turn up for the Honduras match on Tuesday.
Apart from the first 20 mins, when the Olyroos appeared to be shocked by the pace of the Nigerians, we were the better team. The way the boys came back from 2 down was just inspirational stuff, and the crowd went completely over the top when Wehrman equalised .
So, how did we lose? Certainly, the team appeared disorganised by Emerton's dismissal, and we missed his crosses.
But, ultimately, it comes down to us just not being good enough. In international football points are not earned for dominating opponents. Points are earned for scoring more goals than your opponents, and that's where we have a problem. Three of the four goals we have conceded in this tournament have come from defensive blunders, and we cannot afford to have that sort of error rate in this level of competition.
And our problems at the other end of the park seem just as great. Viduka missed two golden opportunities in front of goal last night (bringing his total to three), Curcija missed some excellent chances, as did Zane. Our opponents have not been so generous.
Well, this has been a bit disjointed, but that pretty much mirrors my mood.
In regard to David Marshall's earlier comments about people being happy at the end of the game - I had the same experience being at the game. I was in the group standing at the back of Bay 23, and several of the fans were in tears at the end of the game - but the general mood of people leaving was happy. Of all the people that passed me on the way back to the train, most of the Aussies seemed pretty upbeat, generally enjoying the Olympic experience, as David suggested. But people from "football countries" (in this case some Scots and some Nigerians) commiserated with me as they passed - they obviously understood how I was feeling.