Day Five

It's a rainy and cold Saturday morning as the media are driven one hour to Milton Keynes and the final venue for The Chance: MK Dons' stadium. It's a brilliant arena with an almost perfect surface for the final test - an 11 v 11 game played over three 25 minute periods. The players are already out on the park warming up ahead of the 10am kick-off.

And it's the biggest media contingent these boys will have seen as we jostle at the tunnel to get a shot of the players as they're lead out by former Premiership whistle blower (and Jimmy Somerville lookalike) Dermot Gallagher.

Again our local boys catch the eye, with Rogic bossing the midfield in a free role in front of Blumgart. On the opposition side Doyle is at his favoured left-back in front of Matic who continues to brave his dodgy knee. The result isn't important - it's all about how the players perform. The game is played at a lightning pace with some tasty tackles flying in. This means a lot to these lads, no doubt about that.

We grab Gallagher in the referee's bunker later and he confides Matic may have been close to a red card. But he was impressed by the talent on show at the event. The coaches, however, are staying very tightlipped indeed, with Jennings saying only that the decision
will be difficult.

With the game over, players and media are driven to North London's Emirates Stadium to see a side called Arsenal ease past Wigan 3-0 (some guy called Van Persie bags a hat-trick). Meantime the Socceroos squeak past Iraq at the Asian Cup. Is that another good omen?

It's now Saturday night and decision time. The media are back at Sopwell House for the big announcement as all 100 players - and that includes those who didn't even make the 32 - are in attendance for a final dinner.

Dutch star Giovanni Van Bronckhorst addresses the media before speaking with the players at a separate dinner. The tension ramps up. The media are put in a separate room but we are given a live feed of Jennings announcing the winners.

Tension is unbearable - one can only imagine what is going on in the heads of the players.  The first name is read out. It's French. Then two South Africans, Belgian, South Korean and two more English names are announced as the media from those respective parts of the world punch the air with joy.

Seven names down - one to go.  Have we missed out? "The last player is a young man who's shown tremendous skill ...." pronounces Jennings. "He's from Australia and his name is Tom Rogic". FourFourTwo springs out of our seat like a striker at the back post. We did it!

A quick twitter of the news and we're herded into a room for some extremely excited post-announcement interviews. Rogic is stunned.

"I guess I'm moving to England," he says with a huge smile. As we leave we grab coach Paul Hart for a quick yarn. Harry Kewell's former youth team coach at Leeds says Blumgart came close but Rogic had been brilliant from day one and "like many Aussies, [was] low maintenance".

The coach (the four wheeled variety, that is) is leaving. As we rush out I bump into a downcast Blumgart. It's tough for him. However the bigger story here is that our corner of the world saw four players make the final 32 and one into the last eight. We beat Brazilians, Argentines and a host of Europeans.

It's a final coach ride through the frozen London streets as we begin writing and editing stories and pictures. Eight hours later and with little sleep I'm in a cab bound for Heathrow ahead of a flight back to Australia.

Our boys did themselves very proud. They did our region proud. And it was a week they will never forget.

This article appeared in the April 2011 issue of Australian FourFourTwo magazine. To buy back copies of this issue call 03-8317-8121 with a credit card to hand.