Australia 1 Netherlands 1

The World Cup warmup game, probably the most important since qualification, was staged overnight in Rotterdam, Holland. We (Australia) were thoroughly outplayed but for one man: Mark Schwarzer, the keeper, who kept us in the game with some sterling saves. After Van Nitslerooy scored in the 10th minute, we had one genuine chance in the first half when, close to half time, Viduka played himself into the penalty area and his header from Chipperfield cross was cleared off the line by Dutch keeper, Van Der Sar. In the second half we were fortunate to get a penalty for Viduka for shirt-tugging from his defender. Dukes has sadly not been flash from the penalty spot for Australia of late, missing his penalty in the Uruguay shootout. Here he hit the crossbar without any deflection from Van Der Sar. Fortunately, in the scramble as the ball bounced back, Tim Cahill pounced cat-like and scored our reply.

We then lost Wilkshire to a very silly tackle against Van Bronckhorst, putting pay to any chance of a win as we had to defend with 10 men. I admired Hiddink for bringing on some pace, namely Aloisi and Thompson, to at least give us a chance of scoring but the main game was hanging on. We did so admirably, and so overall I rate the effort 6 out of 10.

Overall we had a lot of errors in our game but, perhaps, we must remember we were playing a world top-10 side in the Dutch. Their silky skills and clever passing maybe just made us look shoddy. A very useful and humbling warm up, with an acceptable score-line, before our World Cup group games.

I just hope we don't muck up completely, or suffer a bad injury, in our last warm up against Leichtenstein.

There may yet be some hero-faxes sent to Australia by Italy, the Ivory Coast or Argentina - the Oranje's group opponents - for some crunching tackles that saw Cocu, Van Bronckhorst and Sneijder all come off with nasty injuries. The Dutch coach said his dressing room after the game looked like a scene from M*A*S*H! We have, at least, signalled to the world that we won't get pushed around. That, after all, is the Australian way. Hard, but fair.