We drew, we bloody drew.
It seems like half the country stayed up late on Monday, and what a reward for those that stayed awake. Winston Reid’s pinpoint header from Shane Smeltz’s thoughtfully angled cross in the 93rd minute has turned the All Whites from a ‘glad just to be here’ team to ‘we’re capable of reaching the second round. Seriously’ one. And we have a point, a wonderful, wonderful point.
It seems a large part of credit for Winston Reid even playing for us and not Denmark goes to TV3’s excellent football reporter Andrew Gourdie, who reached out to Reid on Facebook. That is social media in action, team, and thank Hadlee he did. Read Naly_D’s Andrew Gourdie interview from a couple of years back.
I’ve watched Ricki Herbert’s reaction to the goal over and over, the little leap, the little run and the big punch into the air. I’m actually in love with his attempts to remain cool, calm and collected in interviews, while obviously bursting with pride, and just a little disbelief at his team’s latest feats.
I felt (a little bit) sorry for Slovakia, their coach dejectedly throwing his water bottle away was the perfect inverse to Ricki’s little run. As we all know, it’s a 93 minute game, and they paid the price for not chasing the second goal. Very European. Low scores are the trend, though, up until the Germany v Australia match the tournament has produced half the shots and half the goals of… Italia 90, officially the most boring world cup ever.
So bring on Italy – as @sportzfreak has pointed out, Italy are the masters of sitting on one goal leads, so you never know. Let’s see more of Fallon mixing it up with these pampered superstars of Serie A like a deranged lobster on P – they won’t like that one bit.
Elsewhere:
Friend of sportreview Colin Peacock appeared on the Guardian’s World Cup Daily podcast to talk up the All Whites, revealing he flipped over to watch Christopher Walken blow his brains out in Deer Hunter during the second half, before rejoining the match for the winning goal. That’s class.
Is it just me, or does Martin Devlin seem like a post-lobotomoy Murphy from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest? Where’s the spitfire prickly opinions and verbal slapdowns? OK, its TV One, whose target audience is pretty Horlicks-friendly, but COME ON. Its the World Cup team, get frickin excited.
Maicon has scored the goal of the tournment for me so far. OF COURSE it was a shot.
A German boffin reckons he’s sussed out the vuvuzelas with a noise cancelling MP3. Lifehacker has more.
