Aussies cock-a-hoop over their Socceroos

For a country riven by an industrial relations dispute and in the grip of a terrorism scare, the Australians seem very jubilant this week.

Their soccer team beat Uruguay on Wednesday to qualify for the World Cup in Germany -- and did so in dramatic fashion, winning in a penalty shootout.

There's been an unbridled joyous reaction. You could be forgiven for thinking Australia had won the World Cup, not just qualified for it.

Experienced sports writers are calling it a seminal moment in Australian sport.

Some are also getting carried away. Andy Harper, former soccer star and now a commentator, has called it Australia's most significant sporting achievement ever.

He was basing it on the global nature of soccer, but has given Don Bradman and his 1948 cricket invincibles, Australia's yachting's Americas Cup win, its Rugby World Cup successes, swimming stars Dawn Fraser and Ian Thorpe's Olympic gold medals and Cathy Freeman's 400m triumph at the 2000 Sydney Olympics the shove in one breath.

And all the Socceroos did was qualify.

Still, there can seldom have been a more passionate crowd at an Australian sporting event than for the Uruguay match at Telstra Stadium. Compared to, say, a rugby test, the 80,000 crowd was far noisier and overwhelmingly a home crowd.

The silvertail rugby fans rely on Waltzing Matilda and chardonnay for their emotional spurs, but for this match the emotion came from within. The tears flowed easily at the end.

It's been a lean year, sporting-wise for Australia. Think Ashes, the Wallabies and the continuing drought in golf's majors for starters.

But most of the elation is because the country has emerged from years in soccer's wilderness.

It is 31 years since Australia was last in the World Cup. Since that unsuccessful foray, soccer has had an unsavoury history.

Its problems compounded over the years. Just three years it was divided on ethnic lines, prone to violent outbursts on the field and off it. It was the poor cousin to the other three football codes, rugby union, rugby league and Australian Rules (AFL) and normally its headlines centred on crowd violence.

It seemed irrelevant on the Australian sporting landscape.

Billionaire businessman Frank Lowy, who runs the Westfield shopping chain in Australia, was approached by some of the code's enthusiasts who were sick of the way soccer was being destroyed by its inner political wrangling.

He agreed to take charge, but on his terms.

He took a huge gamble and appointed an administrator who admitted to having no particular love of soccer.

John O'Neill was Australian rugby's maestro. He is well known to New Zealanders as the man who moved quickly to exploit the New Zealand Rugby Union's problems in attempting to co-host the 2003 Rugby World Cup, launching an ultimately successfully bid for Australia to be sole host.

O'Neill not only delivered the best Rugby World Cup so far, he went to considerable lengths in raising rugby union's profile in Australia.

There is an irony that its profile may now suffer as a result of soccer's new foothold.

Lowy and O'Neill were determined to root out soccer's ethnic divides.

They created an A-league national competition, based on a one-team, one-city approach. It is proving successful, albeit if the New Zealand team involved is dragging the chain. Crowd violence is at an all-time low.

They have developed the national side into a credible force in world soccer.

Not without difficulty, they impressed on the Australian football stars in Europe and England their duty to play for the Socceroos in the World Cup lead-up.

They showed a ruthless touch when they had to. When the side was still struggling in July, they ditched coach Frank Farina and installed a coach with more World Cup experience, Guus Hiddink.

The move worked.

Lowy admitted the task of rebuilding Australian soccer virtually from scratch was mammoth.

"It has not been easy to achieve from a management point of view. You must remember the decisions you make sometimes are very, very hard," he told The Australian newspaper.

Now he and O'Neill are enjoying the results and next year will go a step forward, with their integration into the Asia confederation of world soccer.

That will leave New Zealand near the top of the Oceania grouping -- a potential benefit looking at the 2010 World Cup. But maybe New Zealand needs John O'Neill to deliver that benefit.

- NZPA