Back when Adam was a boy

If we had the profile the Socceroos have now back in the 80's and 90's we would have been front page news every second day.

Punch-ups at training, player walkouts, player boycotts, you name it we had it.

It was a journalist's dream but a Socceroos' nightmare.

In Melbourne on the weekend a practice match between Melbourne Victory and the available Socceroos coughed up a less than impressive result for our national team.

Melbourne which hasn't played for two weeks were missing the core of their defence in Kevin Muscat and Rody Vargas, had two regulars injured and Carlos Hernandez was on national team duty with Costa Rica.

Admittedly, it was a makeshift Socceroos outfit but they drew with a team that finished outside the top four in the A-League.

We are now three days away from playing a game that could eventually see us qualify for the World Cup and we can't beat an A-League side!

Just last week Pim Verbeek said training in Germany is better than playing A-League games. We're pretty good at training in the A-League though.

All that aside, let's not despair.

Scenarios like this have been going around since Adam was a boy.

In the mid 80's Frank Arok's national team was nicknamed 'Mad dogs'. Training sessions were as intense as the title suggests.

Names like Terry Greedy, Charlie Yankos, Alan Davidson, David Ratcliffe, Robbie Dunn, Frank Farina, Ken Murphy, John Kosmina, David Mitchell and more made WW2 look like a game of 'paintball'.

If the then Australian Soccer Federation had been able to afford it they would have had an Ambulance on standby.

It starts off with the reserves giving that little bit extra in the hope of an 11th hour call-up. The content starting 11 were in the 'let's not get hurt before the game' mode. When the two mindsets met all hell broke loose.

On many occasions these situations started in the warm-up for goodness sake! The end result was blood sweat but no tears, 'never let them know you're hurt' was an unwritten law, and just out of interest, the final result was 4-2 to the reserves.

A similar story developed in 1993.

It was a camp in Sydney and having lost to Canada in a World Cup qualifier we were under pressure to score goals. The incident happened at St. George stadium.

A small sided game was very much a part of a session and this was no different except for the ensuing punch-up.

The score line read; Robbie Slater's team 5, Farina's team 0.

Now it was at this stage that both of them came together in a crunching tackle and I swear you would have sworn there'd be a broken leg.

It was the start of the best Socceroo training fight ever. Twelve of the best punches landed without a backward step by either of them. Graham Arnold tried to break it up by dragging Farina away. He inadvertently pinned the swinging arms of Farina by his side.

Slater took advantage of the moment and quickly planted three punches on the end of Farina's nose. It's just they way it was in those days. We played hard we trained hard and we drank hard.

We went out there and played Canada off the park winning in a penalty shootout. I dare say the same desire applies especially today but without the blood and booze.

Those not in the picture (Melbourne Victory players) have kept those that are, well and truly focused for Wednesday.

That 1-1 result is the perfect tonic for an inspiring performance against Qatar.

I just hope the boys from Europe know what they're walking into when they start that first training session.

Maybe we should get an ambulance.