I spoke to Darren Bazeley earlier.
Here are his thoughts on…
Ryan Thomas
He was so good. We knew he was such a good player, so intelligent and just technically, so good. I think he showed what a shame it's been that we've missed so much of him playing football for the All Whites over the years. But it's great to have him back in and he came into camp – he hadn't been in camp for six years – and just gelled straight away. He knows the players anyway, and the players are all very close and tight, so he just fitted in straight away. Whilst the plan was to sort of gently integrate him back in, obviously, with Marko departing us early, I asked Ryan and he said, No, I'm good to go. Let's go. I thought he played very well. Tightened up a little bit in the second half, and sort of felt a little bit in his hamstring, so we got him off really quickly, and he's fine this morning.
Tim Payne (ankle)/Francis de Vries (knee)
They've both come down this morning and spent time with the medical department, and they're currently doing their recoveries with massages and the hot and ice cold bath stuff. They've both been pretty positive. I've just caught up with the medical department, and they're very positive with all of the players. Obviously a few tired bones and a few tired legs, but the guys that looked like they had little niggles, have actually come back this morning pretty well, so touch wood, hopefully we're all positive. Obviously it's still very early, so we'll see how we go in the next 24 hours before we get back to Auckland and look to see who's training tomorrow as to who's available Tuesday. At the moment it's very positive.
Chris Wood’s minutes
I'm never going to tactically substitute Chris. We have long conversations with Chris, through his sort of club around what he needs. We obviously need to get the most out of him while we can. But he's obviously going back into (a big) environment. I think him committing to both games is great, but it does mean we do have to be careful and manage him.
On his subs/moving to a back three/whether that helped the Socceroos finish strong
Australia always had that plan. They've got some very good players. They've got this group, (players like) Irankunda and Toure, that are playing at a very high level. They held them, and they brought them on for the last 20 minutes to inject that bit of pace.
It was difficult for us because we only had one substitute left, because we'd had to go with Chris and Tim and Ryan, and then Francis got injured. We knew we had Sarpreet and Eli that were sort of tight at half time – they were both sort of tight with a groin and a calf muscle – so we were sort of forced into a lot of our subs, and it left us in a position where we couldn't really put those attacking players on like Australia did.
Finn (Surman’s) obviously a very good player. He was very unlucky not to start. We saw these guys coming on and thought that's a good move for us, to go to get Finn on to help deal with Irankunda and Toure. It was disappointing to concede a goal. Had we not conceded, we probably go we managed (it OK), with the players we'd taken off – Chris Wood, Ryan Thomas, Sarpreet Singh, Eli Just. It's very difficult to replace those guys. We've got good depth, but you can say it's hard to replace those guys like for like. Potentially, you could say Australia took players off and brought stronger players on, different players, but they've got that little bit more depth. Irankunda's scoring in the Championship every week and we haven't really got that. Our sort of three would be Jesse Randall, Luke Brooke-Smith, Logan Rogerson, as regards to attacking options. They're good players, and (Brooke-Smith and Randall) are young, but Australia have got some firepower that they brought on there. We confabbed on the sideline, and thought, no, it's a good way to combat that, as a reaction to their subs.
On how much the loss hurt/getting up for Tuesday
There was enough in the game for the players and everybody to take really strong belief and confidence of the level that we can play at. It's pretty apparent, when we were strong, we were very good, very strong and it was disruptive with the changes, but I suppose that is the games at the moment. It's not a World Cup. It's not those games where Woodsy would play 90 minutes, so it does get a bit disruptive. We see it as opportunities for other people, so it's not the worst thing in the world. But when we were strong, we were really good in and out of possession. The job now is to back it up, back up the performance, but go and get a result. We created enough chances to win the game.
Last night we would have been disappointed if we'd have come off drawing, that would have still hurt, so to lose is even worse. It hurts bad, and the players are really hurting from last night because they know we had them and we let them off the hook, and they're a good team, but I thought it was a really strong performance. We sort of come back to – you have to take the chances when they come along. We created chances, which is a bonus, which is a positive side to maybe some of our previous performances.
When you look at the Cote d'Ivoire game, we beat Cote d’Ivoire 1-0. We played better last night, but lost. It's a difficult one. We were really happy with Cote d'Ivoire, but we took a chance and they didn't on that day. Last night, we didn't take our chances while Aussie took one chance, and we ended up losing the game. We don't get too carried away with the win over Cote d'Ivoire and we also don't get too carried away with losing, in regards to how bad that feels. I think we know there was a lot of good things and still things to work on.