The Socceroos simply must defeat Peru to stay in contention and hope France triumphs against the Danes...and that's just the start of the potential permutations. As we head towards crunch time what are the major takeaways so far?

Group C has taught us a lot about the state of world football. With these lessons learned Australian football could come out of the Cup on a better path.

1. Australian football fandom is a bit toxic

Now a lot of nations have problems with their football fans - there have been riots, racist chants murders and even a war (although that had several complex political causes as well). Australia now joins this list. Albeit way, way down there, somewhere between booing a national anthem and the Japanese showing their displeasure by not cleaning a stadium. You see our problem is with keyboard warriors. Online attacks on Lucy Zelic for pronunciation and Robbie Kruse’s family for the player’s performances leave a sour taste after two good showings by the Socceroos.

Robbie Kruse was the victim of online attacks

It’s never OK to attack a player’s family. Never. And it’s a little off to criticise Lucy Zelic for something Les Murray did for decades.

There’s more to it than that too. It seems like there are a lot of negative Australian voices out there. So called fans who take every opportunity to cut their team down, ‘oh the A League is rubbish, that’s why Arzani looked good, he won’t do it against decent defenders’ - he did. ‘Australia doesn’t have any decent players at the moment, they all either play for bad teams or even worse, the A League.’ You can’t judge a player entirely on who they play for.  ‘We barely qualified against easy Asian teams, we’ll get pumped’ - we’ve more than held our own against two good European countries.

It seems like there are a lot of loud and ignorant Australian football fans. Fans that don’t understand the complexities Australian players overseas have faced. Things like how the lure of Middle Eastern or Chinese money hindered promising European careers. Or that Asian opponents effectively parked the bus against the Socceroos. Even calls for the inclusion of Tim Cahill show a lack of understanding of where the veteran’s game is at right now. Cahill’s form for Millwall was quite disappointing. He didn’t play many minutes and when he did play he only threatened to get himself carded.

The internet has given the ignorant and the nasty a loud voice and the world is suffering, Australian football is no exception.

2. VAR isn’t ready to be at the World Cup

Group C has really highlighted something that many in the football world have been thinking. The VAR, as it is used now, is not up to scratch. The French penalty against Australia is still being debated by many commentators around the world. As is the Australian penalty against Denmark. There have been some other dubious VAR calls and non-calls at this world cup but these two in Group C highlight these issues.

Risdon gets the wrong end of VAR for this tackle

In the first instance Josh Risdon’s tackle is fair if he touched the ball. In some camera angles, he’s touched the ball, but not in the angles VAR used. This is ridiculous.

The Denmark handball happened awfully quick without much chance for Yussuf Poulsen to get his hand out of the way. According to the laws of the game, handball occurs when the player ‘deliberately’ uses his hand or arm. Now this one is a little murkier because the next thing that has to be considered is that the law states it involves a deliberate act of a player making contact. Now that deliberate act may not necessarily be deliberately touching the ball. It might be deliberately putting ones hands where the ball is likely to go. Its sort of a ‘your right to swing your fists ends where my face begins.’ Interpretation of this law must take into account players attempting to circumvent the rules and that it’s impossible to prove or disprove a player’s intent.