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Soccer rules down under

Afp, Melbourne
Any lingering reservations Australians hold about football vanished Thursday as thousands of cheering fans in Sydney saluted the Socceroos' reaching the World Cup finals for the first time in 32 years.
Wearing Australian green and gold, draped in the national flag and bearing banners with slogans such as "Uruguay will roo the day", the patriotic fans attended a hastily-organised presentation to honour the side.
Australia's dramatic qualification late Wednesday has unleashed an unprecedented outpouring of passion for "the world game" in a sports-mad nation that traditionally favours cricket and rival football codes.
More than 83,000 fans cheered the Socceroos home to a 4-2 penalty shootout victory over Uruguay with another 15,000 ticketless fans watching on a giant screen outside. Over three million more watched on television at home or in bars.
"In my sporting career I have never seen anything like it," Football Federation Australia (FFA) chief executive John O'Neill said.
"It's a defining moment in this
sport," added the former head of the Australian Rugby Union, who predicted soccer could eventually rank alongside the Olympics in the Australian sporting psyche.
Despite football often struggling for coverage in the Australian media, the victory commanded saturation coverage in the nation's newspapers.
"We did it" trumpeted the front page of Daily Telegraph, while the Australian declared "Here we go".
Congratulations poured in from such varied sources as Prime Minster John Howard at the APEC summit in South Korea and Hollywood actor John Travolta, who attended the game and visited the post-match dressing room.
"I guess we're all soccer fans now," ABC radio host Trevor Chappell said as his show was inundated with callers wanted to discuss the match.
At Thursday's ceremony, fans reserved their loudest applause for goalkeeper Mark Schwartzer, who saved two penalties in the shootout.
The lunch-hour crowd in central Sydney also screamed their approval when coach Guus Hiddink declared "let's go all the way" in Germany.
For the supporters, qualification for the team lying at No.54 on the FIFA rankings was made sweeter by the bitter memories of narrowly missing out on attending the past three World Cups.
"This is unbelievable," Michael Jarvis told AFP.
"I've waited so long for Australia to get through and now no one can say we don't deserve to be there."
Football has long been regarded as a poor relation in Australia to cricket, rugby league, rugby union and Aussie rules football. Like Americans, Australians have often regarded it as too low scoring and intricate.
But Australian striker John Aloisi said the Socceroos' qualification for next year's finals in Germany meant sports fans reeling at the national cricket side's Ashes loss and the Wallabies' seven-match losing streak in rugby union could now turn to soccer.
"83,000 at the game, 20 million Australians following it, finally football is going to kick off in this nation," he said.
"This year rugby and cricket haven't been the best and finally we've come out on top and we're putting Australian soccer ahead of other sports."
Howard hailed a "tremendous resurgence of soccer in Australia".
However, he warned the benefits of the victory would be wasted if football returned to the ethnic rivalries and bureaucratic vendettas that left it languishing in Australia's sporting ghetto for decades.