The Socceroos last victory over Japan was 2-1 at the MCG in 2009 when Australia were on the road to the World Cup in South Africa.

Australia currently lead the table in the final phase of world cup qualification on goal difference with Saudi Arabia.

Postecoglou stressed the importance Japan would place on the game after their shock 2-1 home loss to UAE in September - the Aussie boss predicting a tight tussle on Tuesday night.

“I wouldn’t say we’ve got a dominance over them, far from it," Postecoglou said. "I think the games could be even, I expect tomorrow night’s game to be very close as well.

“We want to impose our dominance. It’ll be a close game, I don’t think it’ll be a game that’s reliant on whether somebody has got some sort of mental dominance or the wood over any other team.

“I think it’s going to be a contest between two very good teams and the one that sticks close to its game plan tomorrow night (will win) both teams will try and do that.”

Postecoglou was waiting until the final training session on Monday to decide the squad and revealed Tim Cahill would play regardless.

While the Socceroos tactician conceded a win would be ideal, he insisted there was a long road to go before playing in 2018, with reverse fixtures against all the nations, and fourth-placed Japan just one point behind the joint leaders.

“(We're) still on the road to Russia...two tough away trips, and we’ve done well in both without picking up maximum points obviously,” he said.

“Being at home regardless of the opponent, we want to make sure we impose ourselves on the game and we want to be at the end of it picking up three points. That doesn’t mean we’ll think we have one foot in the door, I don’t think that’s what it’s about.

“It’s still very early in the process and as I said, there’s some tough trips to come for all the countries. We’ve done two of them, we’ve come through okay, but even for Japan they’ve still got to go to the Middle East for the back half of the year and they’re not easy trips, we found out.”

Postecoglou praised the atmosphere after away games in Dubai and Jeddah provided plenty of noise and he hoped Australia could replicate it.

“It was actually a great atmosphere particularly in Saudi I thought, their support I think is actually a big weapon of theirs,” he said.

“It literally lifts their players, you can see that we found patches in the game where the times they came into the game was when the crowd got really behind them, so it actually has a tangible effect on their team.

“It’ll be great for us to have a similar sort of atmosphere here. When we get big crowds in Australia, they do get behind us. Here, tomorrow it’ll be great to get a parochial crowd with a great atmosphere and I’m sure it’ll give our players a similar lift.”