Where in the world is Craig O'Donoghue?

**Mark Duffield** (0:00)
Welcome back to the SENWA studio out here at Optus Stadium on this Tuesday morning. I'm not sure what time it is over in America, but we're about to find out, because we're about to cross to the West Australians, Craig O'Donoghue, who is over there covering the World Cup for the West Australian. He's assisting Ben Smith, of course, Ben Smith, that great young soccer rider from the West. And Craig joins us now. Craig, welcome.

**Craig O'Donoghue** (0:26)
7.20pm on a Monday night here, Duff, and the sun won't go down for another couple of hours.
It's a different sort of lifestyle. 31 degrees today, very different to what it is in Perth, from what I hear. So this has been a holiday to remember with my son. This has been awesome.

**Mark Duffield** (0:40)
So you're about to be sleepless in Seattle, then?

**Craig O'Donoghue** (0:44)
Absolutely. Yeah, it's been hard to get to bed. And he woke up at 7 o'clock this morning.
So it's fair to say it's a different lifestyle. But no, this has been a trip that I couldn't have imagined what this trip would be when we started talking about it a couple of years ago. He's a massive soccer fan, it's his number one sport. And when he said, can we try and go, I said, we'll put some things in place and see. But I couldn't believe what it was like the other day. We got to the area where all the Aussies congregated, which was a street outside a pub, at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. And from then until 9 p.m., everyone sang, danced, jumped around, marched to the stadium together, took over the streets. Thousands of Aussies just going nuts. It was the best sporting experience I've ever been part of.

**Mark Duffield** (1:30)
Best sporting experience you've ever been part of. I did say to you off air, and I think this is a very bad team selection decision to send a non-drinker like yourself to an event like this. I think that we're only getting half the outcomes here. But you were saying off air, there is nothing that you've experienced that you can compare this to. You've been to a lot of AFL Grand Finals. You've covered AFL Grand Final Parades, which is as big as our sport gets here, but incomparable to this.

**Craig O'Donoghue** (2:02)
Yeah, so the difference between the Grand Final Parade and this was the Grand Final Parade is organised by the AFL and everyone goes along to watch. This event was organised by some supporters, and I reckon there were 10,000 people there who turned up and took over the streets. And then everyone was like, there were flares that had been organised from a local army supply dealership. And there was the pub that had been organised for just Australian supporters, and the streets had been set up with the police to make sure we could walk the streets safely. And there were just people everywhere, and they were singing and chanting and dancing, and everyone was behaved, and everyone looked after each other, and it was just so much fun. Like every moment of it, you wanted to just continue and continue and continue. And then you get into the stadium, and all the Aussies are sitting together again. And it's just, you know, seeing Lound Down Under, and Joker and the Thief, and Wolf Mother, and Thunderstruck comes on, and then I Am, You Are, We Are Australian is playing over loudspeakers. Everything felt like it had been set up for us, just to make sure we could enjoy. And yeah, and it was a reminder of how there's so much blaring going on of music now at the footy trying to create entertainment. It was more like the Country Road Take Me Home for Charlie Cameron and the crowd turned that into something, or Warfee Time has been turned into something by the fans. This was all generated by the fans, and it was so much fun.

**Mark Duffield** (3:24)
Now, what about the outcome of the game? Were you stunned? Were you mildly surprised? What were your thoughts?

**Craig O'Donoghue** (3:29)
Well, I went to the Japan game where we defended for 85 minutes and then attacked for five minutes, and I was really concerned that that was going to be the case again, that we weren't going to see the ball down our end for most of the game. So when we scored early, it was like, oh my god, we might actually win this thing. And then when we scored again late, which was down our end, the place just went bananas. And it wasn't expected that, I think no one that we were sitting with expected we'd score too.