World Cup Group F Australia 3 Japan 1Ripper idea mates! Let's all be Australians for World Cup month. Why not? We gave them Setanta and Aisake, Tadgh Kennelly and Ned Kelly. They can't object to sharing some part of the big adventure with us.

And this was pure adventure, 100 per cent proof. Listen, never mind the quality, it's days like these that the World Cup is meant for, days like this when you miss just having the green jerseys to root for. This was fun.

The aficionados of Australia and Japan on the wrong side of the world watching their teams play each other at football. Two nations in town just to enjoy themselves while Brazil wait for them down the road.

And what a game. What a plundering, passionate, rip roarer of a finish. We've known days like these at World Cups we have crashed. For us to adopt the Australians is a natural move.

Natural. The Japanese made their way to Kaiserslautern in good time, politely appreciative of German efficiency in these matters. The Aussies, bellied up on the late train, raucous and happily disorderly. Come to think of it, it's not a question of us pretending to be Australians, it's them pretending to be us.

The Australians also share with us that particular drink problem which makes them believe that they are the greatest fans in the world wherever they go. Not just that, they believe their surprised hosts to be their new best friends. The Aussies (we) rolled around this lovely town singing and g'daying everyone and spreading the cheers. We made quite a contrast to the Japanese who take their style of fandom from a Fifa handbook.

Rising sun flags painted delicately onto porcelain delicate cheeks, precise little flags waved enthusiastically, glitter hair. For everyone. No surprise then that the difference in the two sets of fans was reflected in the football.

The game had that sunlit, antic quality to it which novel pairings sometimes bring. The last Australian World Cup appearance was an unhappy trip to Germany 32 years ago and we came out eager to score our first ever finals goal yesterday.

We had the artillery to do it. Mark Viduka, Harry Kewell and Marco Bresciano all worried the Japanese while the game was settling. The in your face Aussie physical attitude was winning the bulk of possession and the passes were being strung together in a manner befitting graduates of the Guus Hiddink school. But . . . Ya know mates one day in Oz there were over 60,000 bolts of lightning recorded but none of them registered like what happened in the 26th minute in Kaiserslautern yesterday. Shunsuke Nakamura dinked a harmless cross in from the right. Mark Schwarzer came flapping off his line like an ostrich attempting to take flight. He ran into a couple of much smaller men, Naohiro Takahara and Atsushi Yanagisawa, just as he was about to become airborne.

What a comical figure he made as the ball dropped over his head and into the net. Hiddink leapt from his seat to berate the fourth Fifa official ("It was a clear foul on the goalie," Hiddink would argue later.) A posse of gentlemanly debaters of the Australian school were delegated to argue the toss with the referee. The goal stood. Calamity.

This was all very nice for Japan but unreflective of play. Schwarzer had little else to do in the first half apart from the ungainly flapping and the regrets which followed. Australia played the better football and had the brighter ideas but that goal knocked the rhythm off like a gramophone needle jolted across a sheet of black vinyl.

Listen though (and we're not talking to the FAI here) when you've ditched your hard-working home-grown manager and you want to take your next step up the world ladder, who ya gonna call? Guus Hiddink that's who. The man who brought South Korea to the World Cup semi-finals thought his way out of this corner as if it was a chess problem.

Still there was a bit of a groan when he crooked his finger at the mercurial Bresciano and called him ashore in favour of Everton's Tim Cahill. Some grumbling too when John Aloisi came on for Luke Wilkshire, giving Australia four forwards on the field. A tactic which nearly backfired with the first Japanese breakaway when Takahara fed the unmarked Yanagisawa inside him to the left and a goal seemed inevitable. The Japanese striker seemed overawed by the moment though and fluffed it.

Thus reprieved, the Australian fight back could begin in earnest. All afternoon Viduka had been throwing himself about in the Japanese penalty area like Shrek in a mosh pit but Hiddink opted now for a bit more invention. Passion is good but when distilled through the ice water of a Dutch intellect it is better.

The equaliser came from a set piece and had a little poetry about its justice. A long throw on the right from Lucas Neill. Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, the Japanese goalkeeper, came, flapped and was stranded.

There was some pinball in the area before Cahill thumped it home. Justice for all except the Japanese goalkeeper, who had by then put together a string of five world-class saves to keep his side ahead.

That was the 84th minute. Kawaguchi was about to be reminded of that old pearl of Australian wisdom. Just because you're wife dies doesn't mean you're house won't burn down.

The game lurched towards injury-time with the Japanese looking like men keen to walk away from the table having broken even. There was a manic quality to the Australian play now though, winning everything in midfield and pushing up quickly.

Aloisi latched onto a ball outside the area, rolled it right and into the path of Cahill whose thundering shot hit one post before rippling the net over on the other side of the goal. Glorious.

And there was a grace note. A capper. A topper. Aloisi deep in injury-time ran at the Japanese defence, who seemed distracted by the need to glance at the linesman. The flag stayed down. Aloisi kept coming. Finally he pulled the trigger. Seconds later the final whistle went.

We waltzed like Matilda all the way back to the media centre. Bring on those bonzer Brazilians. There's nothing to fear mates.

SUBSTITUTIONS

AUSTRALIA: Cahill for Bresciano (53 mins), Kennedy for Moore (61 mins), Aloisi for Wilkshire (75 mins). Subs not used: Beauchamp, Covic, Kalac, Lazaridis, Milligan, Popovic, Skoko, Sterjovski, Thompson. Booked: Grella, Moore, Cahill, Aloisi.

JAPAN: Moniwa for Tsuboi (56 mins), Ono for Yanagisawa (79 mins), Oguro for Moniwa (90 mins). Subs Not Used: Doi, Endo, Inamoto, Kaji, Maki, Koji Nakata, Narazaki, Ogasawara, Tamada. Booked: Miyamoto, Takahara, Moniwa.

Referee: E Abdul El Fatah (Egypt)