In a bold strategic move for the 2018 World Cup, Bert van Marwijk has opted against playing Tim Cahill, a traditional "head and foot" goal-scorer. He has instead pinned our hopes on a rather unorthodox approach. Now our fate rests literally in Peruvian hands.
Bert van Marwijk was appointed as the coach of the Australian soccer team on a short-term contract that expires at the end of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. That did not give him a lot of time.
He essentially found himself at a crossroads. He could urgently try to teach the team the more traditional "head and foot" goal scoring method commonly used by most of the tournament heavyweights. However, he didn't feel he had enough time to practice that tactic to the point where it would be effective on the game's biggest stage.
So he embarked on a rather unorthodox approach. He decided to exploit the rule of the game known as the "handball" rule. In short, and ignoring technicalities, that rule provides that if a defensive team touches the ball with their hand inside the box, that's a penalty.
So he instructed the team to forget about the goals, and try to kick as many balls at hand-height as possible. For this reason, he has sat Tim Cahill out of the World Cup to date. The coach's view is that Cahill is so proficient at scoring goals in the traditional way, he may find it too difficult to fully embrace the new tactic. And so far it has paid some dividends.
In their first match, we extracted our first handball penalty, that was expertly slotted by Mile Jedinak. However, unfortunately, France managed to score two goals of their own.
Last night, the tactic worked again. Christian Eriksen kicked a very visually appealing goal in the 7th minute of the game. However, they don't draw pictures on the scoreboard. Our handball extraction tactic worked again for us in the 38th minute, with Mile Jedinak's penalty for handball counting just as much on the scoreboard as Eriksen's goal.
Unfortunately, and much to van Marwijk's dismay, the Socceroos fell back into old habits. For the entirety of the second half, they reverted to trying to kick or head the ball into the Danish goal. This was unsurprisingly fruitless.
We understand that the Socceroos coach is frantically calculating how many Peruvian handballs they will need in Wednesday's must-win final pool match.