THIS week's friendly against Australia finally gave us a chance to straighten something out.

For too long, we've had to put up with them filling their smug, tanned faces with weak fizzy-pop lager as one of our teams rolls over and dies for their amusement. This was finally a chance to actually pull one back and we blew it.

I know there are other teams who we'd much rather beat like Germany or France but sometimes you need to put another country in their place.

They might beat us at the Ashes, the Olympics, the tennis and the rugby but this one should have been all ours. Well, I know England won recently at the rugby too but that doesn't really count. To me, rugby union's like ice skating, it isn't even a real sport.

It's an excuse for a group of blokes to tear each other's ears off and then get drunk. If I want to watch that, I can always have a night out in town.

Did you see the Aussies who'd actually come over?

Four hundred of them came all the way just for the game. Was it to watch their team? Partly yes, but as one admitted, he was here to see them finally beat their 'arch enemies' at the one thing they hadn't managed yet.

Given the chance, I'd have taken some scissors to his stupid, cork-rimmed hat.

What about Mark Viduka? Lovely fella you couldn't take a dislike too...much.

And Danny Tiatto? I was gutted that he wasn't playing. Not because I missed his rampaging runs down the left. Just because I missed the thought of Beckham taking his legs away the first time he tried it.

In the end, it was almost as embarrassing as the Ashes tour. Rio had looked so big in Japan. Now he just looked so out of sorts on his old ground and Kewell left him on his knees.

It was left to the youngsters to salvage some pride in the second half and with a little more luck, they may just have done it. Sadly, it wasn't to be and now we'll never hear the last of it.

Maybe we can get our place back at the pinnacle of world sport. Maybe we should only play the West Indies at rugby, New Zealand at football and Scotland at, erh, football.

Follow that with a cricket World Cup against Brazil, France and Germany and the feel good factor wo uld be rising by the hour.

One thing did go through my mind before the game though. Before the '66 World Cup Final, one of the press pointed out: "We mustn't be upset if Germany beat us in our national pastime tomorrow. After all, we've beaten them twice at theirs." Now we have to beat Australia twice at sheep shearing.