The Asian Challenge.

With less than two weeks until the World Cup begins, I have been pondering the the potential outcome for the Asian challengers. Australia, Japan, South and North Korea comprise the quartet who will hopefully do better then before. New Zealand is a kind of de-facto Asian contestant, having beaten Bahrain to qualify.

The facts show that teams from the AFC have not done well in the past. Australia got into the Group of 16 as an Oceania winner last time. South Korea and Japan did quite well in 2002 when the tournament was on home turf. That's about it.

My own feeling is that the best chance for an Asian team advancing lies in South Korea, who (I think) are the best team in Asia, never mind the Fifa rankings. Australia and Japan have been under-performing and North Korea is unlikely to set their group (the alleged, 'Group of Death') on fire. Oddly enough, lowly-placed New Zealand are having a strong burst of form, though I doubt that they have the pedigree to get through. But they are principally an A-League team and it's magnificent that they are in the competition.

Asia really does need to get the runs on the board in the World Cup if the region is to be taken seriously. South Africa presents an opportunity for all four countries to do something that breaks expectations. My guess is that at least two of the teams have to get to the Round of 16 for it to be seen as a success.

And that is a big ask.

if only it weren't so

I think I have mentioned a few times that I suffer from varying degrees of anxiety. Generally, matters are under control but now and then,I have glimpses of the kind of anxiety that dominated the middle years of my twenties. Anyone who has endured panic syndromes will understand what I am talking about and those events, feelings and thoughts of 25 years ago have left an abiding shadow. The shadow is glimpsed, the sensations and compulsive automatic thoughts rekindled, however briefly. Its never been so intense as it was in those days and I do have processes that I can follow - self-administered therapeutic interventions, if you like.

Falling back into anxiety is quite easy and getting out usually means weeks or months of re-learning everything that I have learnt before. Imagine having to relearn the alphabet every time you were reluctantly pushed into competing in a spelling bee. The material is familiar but the connections don't make any sense. And almost always, you are the next on stage.

It never gets any easier. Never.

The Cup Approaches

The Socceroos left for their base in South Africa yesterday, the pared back squad of 28 excluding Scott McDonald and Nicky Carle. The less said about those glaring omissions, the better, I think.

The team is four years older, a little slower but perhaps somewhat wiser from the last experience in Germany in 2006. I hope that they can throw off the many indifferent performances of the last two years and really hit their straps in the group stages. To get to the Round of 16, like last time, will require enormous discipline, tight organisation, strong defence and a little luck here and there. It's possible but, from what I have seen of the national team in recent times, will require a massive improvement in a number of areas. The baleful effort against a plucky New Zealand last Monday should have been a big wake-up call.

As for Pim Verbeek the next few weeks will determine whether he is a real head coach and manager, or a football technician, better suited to the assistant's role. I hope that he too rises to the occasion.

The squad of 28 (to be reduced to 23) is:

Goalkeepers: Mark Schwarzer, Adam Federici, Brad Jones, Eugene Galekovic.

Defenders: Scott Chipperfield, David Carney, Lucas Neill, Michael Beauchamp, Shane Lowry, Craig Moore, Mark Milligan, Rhys Williams, Luke Wilkshire.

Midfielders: Vince Grella, Carl Valeri, Jason Culina, Mile Jedinak, Tim Cahill, Brett Holman, Dario Vidosic, Mark Bresciano, Brett Emerton, Richard Garcia, James Holland, Tommy Oar.

Strikers: Nikita Rukavytsya, Josh Kennedy, Harry Kewell.

Australia 2 NZ 1

A scoreline that flatters the Socceroos. The Kiwis were the better organised, more enthusiastic, more committed team, particularly in the first half. The opening 45 minutes were frankly, awful, with Australia displaying no cohesion, little teamwork and what seemed like a training-game mentality. And there were two dreadful tackles.
In the the second half, a reconfigured team with 5 subs on played much better and knocked in the winner on time. A draw would have been fairer.

This performance highlights for me the underwhelming nature of the Australian team's game play over the past two years. Occasionally we see a sharp, tightly knit team who push the ball around confidently and defend well. More often we see a lot of disconnection and defensiveness at work. This is sometimes called grinding out a result.

Pim Verbeek has the runs on the board when it comes to success with the national team. We have qualified at the top of our group for the World Cup next month and made it into the Asian Cup Finals next year. But I just can't shake the feeling that the team is playing well below its potential and that this fact is substantially a management issue.

But I am very happy to be proven wrong.

South Africa Bound.

Tonight the Socceroos kick off the beginning of the end of their World Cup campaign for 2010 with a friendly against New Zealand in Melbourne. On paper, the Australian team has the goods on the more lowly rated (see Fifa rankings) New Zealanders, but this may be a poor indication of how the game will go. Games like these often have the air of local derbies in which underdogs lift themselves and NZ have beaten Australia in some critical encounters in the past.

Still, I do hope that there is a big crowd and that Australia play well and put a few in. Especially Scotty McDonald, who really needs to break his drought.

C'mon Australia!

The Reader

Nadia and I watched The Reader on DVD last night. I think it's a good movie and morally complicated, with no real resolution to its ambiguity. When the movie premiered a couple of years ago, I vaguely remembered a mild scandal concerning the relative ages of the protaganists(36 and 15), who have an affair. The historical context(post-war West Berlin) somewhat dampens this criticism, though some people will doubtless still find it uncomfortable. More troubling for me was the withholding of information by a central character during a subsequent trial that fundamentally affects the outcome. I was far more squeemish about that from an ethical point of view.
Aside from these dilemmas, The Reader is a well-made, well-acted movie that sweeps you along on a two-hour ride into a recognizable, though strangely unknowable recent past.

Amongst many great quotations by this man:

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.


Martin Luther King, Jr.

for lack of rain

unfalling rain holds
the gauze-grey sheet taut above,
pale leaves, shifting.

haiku

The haiku is a form of poetry I especially like because it is short and succinct. Strictly speaking, haiku should follow the pattern of 5/7/5 syllables over three lines, and Japanese haiku have other features(such as kireji) that are not usually found in the English-speaking variety. One fundamental is their situation and reference to an aspect of the seasons(kigo) or the natural world. The best haiku, I think, also have an observation from a human perspective that contrasts with, leaps out of or compares with what's happening in the immediate natural environment.

Consider this wonderful haiku by 18th Century poet Taniguchi Buson, evocative of time and place and feeling.

The piercing chill I feel:
my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,
under my heel . . .


From a purist's point of view, my haiku are not, well, haiku. But the form is quite generous in it's Western application and my intentions are really as Japanese as a gaijin will ever get.

Have a go yourself.

going to a party without the boy

out alone together
the late day's skirt shredded orange,
we, into the darkening.

gathering winter in

closing in sooner,
the night's eyelid weighted like
silence in dark aspic

bath, us, together.

autumn bath
our knees rise like drowned mountains
in distant gorges

ghost busters?

This morning four cars turned up next door. Six well-dressed people emerged, looking serious and a little bit awkward. Turns out that these folks are clairvoyants who specialize in detecting spirit presences. Our neighbour Elisabeth, has had an odd smell in her house since moving in, watch helplessly as they moved towards her door. Her daughter had arranged for the, um, visitation, hoping to find the cause of the smell, which had been apparent from the time of her mother's moving in. It was kind of a last resort before tearing the place apart.

Personally, I put the smell down to our living on what was once a hanging swamp, where the soil remains quite damp and tends to smell a somewhat musty. Still, a little ghost-hunting never hurt anyone.

Or did it?

Barry Schwartz on the 'paradox of choice'

Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice | Video on TED.com

A useful 20 minute nugget summarizing Schwartz's views on what I would call the consequences of the excess of choice. It's a topic that I have been on about for a long time now and I'm gratified to see an intelligent attempt to come to grips with it.