According to Dr Luke Wilkshire, alcohol and lack of sleep are the best treatment for those niggling World Cup injuries.

Looking remarkably happy, Luke shared his prescription on SBS's Cup Fever on Wednesday night perhaps to reassure Socceroos fans that he has survived the emotional as well as the physical strain of the Cup campaign. And while most of us are trying to focus on the positive way Australia fought back, the progress of Ghana is a constant and painful reminder of what might have been.

Now that this is the only group with two teams still standing, can anyone dare argue this was not "D For Death" ?

Watching Ghana beat the USA was like pulling teeth in my house, and not just because I didn't see it coming.  It could have been and should have been Australia.  And who's to say we could not have beaten our arch nemesis Uruguay, surely the opposition that would have inspired the Socceroos to greatness.

There is little hope of seeing Ghana beat Uruguay but I'll be watching with my eyes shut just in case. Germany, if they can score early and not lose it at the back as they did at times against England, may be the team to burst Maradona's bubble. Youth vs God : it promises to be a truly thrilling contest. 

Germany's crushing of England was unsurprising (and dare I say, rather enjoyable) but the events that followed this week have surely bordered on offensive for Socceroos supporters.  Let's just forget the England controversy for a moment because the real controversy took place in Group D.

Look at the facts : Australia get a couple of poor refereeing decisions that undoubtedly affect their ability to progress to the next round. Aussie players, fans and media dare to point this out and are told "shut-up and stop whinging, that's just bad luck."

England and Mexico get a couple of poor refereeing decisions that almost certainly wouldn't have made any difference to their match's outcomes. The EPL "Superstars"  make a huge fuss. Are they told to "shut-up and stop whinging ?" Ah, no. They receive a personal apology from Sepp Blatter , the offending referees are sent home (including Roberto "you killed my cup" Rossetti) plus a public promise to investigate the use of (horror!) technology.

Let's face it, if the World Cup were a schoolyard, Australia would be the little kid who gets targeted by the school bully and then told to "stop crying and grow up" while England would be the dumb rich kid who does everything wrong but ends up being teacher's pet.

Calls for the use of video refs in football inevitably bring out the old timers who seem to think we can somehow go back to "the good old days".  Fozzie suggested an extra linesman while Paul Wade suggested we try and retain football's "innocence".  It's a nice idea, but surely the vast sums of money and widespread technology already involved in every area of the modern game mean its innocence was lost a long time ago.

It was all very well to trust match officials back in 1966, when all the punters could see was some grainy black and white TV footage on a wonky lounge room telly.  Now that we have giant plasmas in every home, pub and fan site with repeated slo-mo replays it's simply ludicrous to suggest the public ignores what's right in front of their eyes.

Suggestions that we need more referees or better training simply misses the point: human beings are fallible in a way technology isn't.  It's not that refereeing standards are getting worse or even that the referees are biased (although...) but simply that we can now see their shortcomings more clearly than ever before.

Science is used in every other area of football to improve the game, why should refereeing be the exception ?

Last year I wrote a blog about some interesting and comprehensive research that had been done in The Netherlands. The research clearly established that referees made errors in judging offside at a rate of around 20 percent simply because of the limits of human perception. This is an unacceptable margin of error. If a referee's vision is inevitably inaccurate to this degree, how can there possibly be any argument that technology isn't necessary ? 

Goal-line technology will surely be around in 2014 but using technology to check offside calls is undoubtedly problematic.  Nobody wants to see football stopped every 5 minutes like rugby league but asking today's fans, media and players to "shut-up" and let grandpa make the rules is keeping football in the dark ages.