“We stayed in a seven- star hotel and we had villas, not apartments or rooms, they were like palaces. Venables and I had lunch together and we just went for a walk around the hotel. The team had trained in the morning and all the players were in their rooms resting because it was bloody hot and they were going to have a lighter training session later in the afternoon.

“We went past these swimming pools and bars and there was one customer who was sitting with this big goblet of brandy and a cigar -and it was Mark Bosnich. Bosnich probably doesn’t remember it but he looked over and raised his glass and said, ‘Mr Chairman, Coach’

I didn’t quite know how to react so I just kept in step with Venables and he nodded and went on. He didn’t offend Bosnich, he didn’t make a great issue of it but he clearly didn’t approve of what he saw but not enough to get upset about it.

“I just thought it was an example of the natural gift of a management that Venables had.”

Australian football fans will never know what a squad containing Mark Bosnich, Mark Viduka, Ned Zelic, Paul Okon and Harry Kewell could have achieved if they qualified for France 98.

And Hill said he couldn’t bring himself to visualise that scenario.

“At the time I was fatalistic,” he said. “I didn’t allow myself to think that way. I would’ve been too crushed. I had the self-discipline to say – ‘that’s football’. I didn’t think if only?

“Given what happened the following weeks at the Confederation Cup you could realistically say we could have gone past the group stage – how big would that have been?

Hill believes that hiring the former Tottenham and Leeds coach inspired Australia to hire Gus Hiddink in 2005, who after 32 years of waiting finally finished the job.

“Getting Venables changed everything,” he said. “Up until then we always got an Australian coach and I quoted in the book what I said to the press at the time – ‘if we can get the best coach in the world why wouldn’t we? We don’t we have to get a local coach when we could have the best in the world? ‘

“That changed the attitude completely – the big difference was we got Venables cheap - for only 200-000 pounds.”