The night the 2003 ‘Shockeroos’ beat England to spark a golden era

Australia’s men’s and women’s teams will face England in a pair of blockbuster friendlies this year. The announcement came days after the 20-year anniversary of the Socceroos’ only win over England, and one of the most famous results in their history: a shock 3-1 victory at Upton Park.

It was the first signature achievement of Australia’s “golden generation” of players, who went on to prevail in that unforgettable penalty shootout against Uruguay to end the country’s 32-year World Cup drought, and then made it to the round of 16 at Germany 2006. But the foundations were laid on February 13, 2003 in London, at the old Boleyn Ground in West Ham, where a glimmer of hope emerged amid a dark period for the game as the Socceroos claimed arguably the biggest scalp in their 100-year history.

Harry Kewell scored a brilliant goal on the night everything changed for the Socceroos.Credit: Reuters

We spoke to seven people who saw it unfold from different perspectives – players, coaches, officials, fans and media – and trawled through the archives to paint a full picture of a night (or morning, back home) where everything changed.

‘There was a whole lot of crap going on’

This was the Socceroos’ first match since losing the 2002 Oceania Nations Cup final to New Zealand 1-0 more than six months previously. The defeat meant they didn’t qualify for the 2003 Confederations Cup – intensifying the pressure on coach Frank Farina. He also oversaw their failure to reach the 2002 World Cup after a 3-1 aggregate loss to Uruguay in late 2001, which was the last time Europe-based players were involved with the national team.

Soccer Australia – as the governing body was then known – was also in the midst of a government inquiry into alleged mismanagement and corruption, led by David Crawford.

Soccer Australia chairman Remo Nogarotto with Socceroos coach Frank Farina in 2003.Credit: Getty Images

Remo Nogarotto, Soccer Australia chairman: It was an interesting period, because we were knee-deep in the middle of the Crawford review of the game, so there was a cacophony of noise around the game, that it needed root and branch reform. In the middle of that cacophony, we had to play against the might of England, a side littered with household names, on English soil. The odds were really stacked against us. Some question marks were being raised about Frank, as well. No one expected us to win.

Frank Farina: We hadn’t played any games and there was a whole lot of crap going on at the time. If I remember correctly, Ian Knop [Nogarotto’s predecessor] was the one who said to me, “I’ve got some good news and bad news.” I said, “What’s the good news?” He said, “We’ve got a game.” And the bad news? “It’s against England.”

Farina named a star-studded 18-man squad filled with players from Europe’s top competitions – including a fresh-faced Harry Kewell, who was under an injury cloud but defied the advice of his club Leeds United and his coach, former Socceroos boss Terry Venables, to take part.

But all the talk in the build-up was about the plans of England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, who signalled he would field his strongest team for only the first 45 minutes after reaching a compromise deal with English clubs, who were reluctant to release their overworked players for a friendly. He said it was “much more important” to have them fresh for their upcoming European qualifier against Turkey. Most within the Socceroos camp took it as a sign of disrespect. The Aussies who played in England were being belittled daily by their teammates.

Harry Kewell: The way that they were talking, I thought they weren’t up for it from day one. I knew from my Australian team, we were all playing at a high level. Most of us were playing in the Premier League, if not La Liga or Serie A or the Bundesliga. We’d have a little bit of banter with the [English] players, [who were saying], “We’re going to destroy you.” We were like, “Yeah, OK, good one.” [socceroos.com.au interview, 2020]

Graham Arnold, Socceroos assistant coach: For us, it was like, “This is England, we’re going to beat them, we’re going to show them.” And for England, it was, “It’s only Australia.”

Brett Emerton: I was still playing my football in Holland, and had ambitions to play in England, so for me it was a good opportunity to put in a decent performance and put my name out there for opportunities to make that move. And you just had to look at the squad that England put together for that match – some of the best footballers, at that time, in the world. I was a massive fan of English football. When you see the likes of David Beckham and that across the hallways, I guess it’s just a feeling of excitement.

Sven-Goran Eriksson changed England’s entire team at half-time.Credit: Getty Images

Farina: We hadn’t had that squad together – that was the first real time. We had a lot of them in before, but some were in, some were out, mixes and matches. That was most probably the strongest squad that we assembled in my time.

Future Socceroos captain Lucas Neill, who was 24 and playing for Blackburn Rovers at the time, was named for his international debut.

Neill: I think we’ve got to go out and justify ourselves as a nation. I don’t think we’ve got enough respect. I think that we’re laughed at a little bit. It’d just be nice to go in there and tell the English to be quiet.

‘With Australia and England, there are no friendlies’

With the old Wembley Stadium demolished and the new one in the process of being rebuilt, England had to take their home fixtures to other parts of the country. This was their first game in London in almost two years, and tickets sold out in less than half an hour – or, as the Football Association’s website put it, “less than the time it takes to watch an episode of Neighbours.” Kick-off was pushed back by 15 minutes due to traffic jams near the ground. There was a healthy Aussie contingent of about 3000 in the stands, and a strong audience watching on SBS at 6.15am back home.

Farina: I remember having a meeting – prior to games, you’d have a technical meeting. Eriksson was there, and he said, “I’m most probably going to substitute the whole team at half-time. There’s no rules against it. Do you have a problem with it, Frank?” I said, “No, you can do what you like.” Sven said, “There’s so much hype around this game, it’s really only a friendly.” He didn’t actually quite get that with Australia and England, there are no friendlies.

There was a healthy contingent of Aussies at Upton Park that night.Credit: Getty Images

Nogarotto: I had to give a speech and present a didgeridoo to the chairman of the English FA, Geoff Thompson, at a pre-match dinner. I don’t think he quite knew what to do with it when I handed it to him.

Les Murray and Craig Foster were there for SBS.

Craig Foster, SBS presenter: I was over there with Les Murray, we were up in the rafters. I particularly recall how freezing it was – the wind at Upton Park was just rushing up through the stands, and we were standing up on this wooden gantry, which didn’t look as though it was too solid. And it was absolutely freezing the entire night.

Michael Edgley, fan and founder of the Green & Gold Army: We’d only just started the Green & Gold Army and loosely organised about 50 or 60 people [for the game]. Some of the people I was working with at the time were very good friends with a guy by the name of John Peacock, who was a significant coach in the English FA junior system. We were at an event before the game among a whole heap of English FA people, and they were just hanging an enormous amount of crap on me about why they shouldn’t even be playing the game, that we weren’t in the same league as them, that it was an embarrassment, that it was a marketing exercise – they didn’t respect the talent we had in our team, they had no comprehension of what it meant for Australia to have an opportunity to play them.

James Ward, fan: I was living in London working for a PR company, and one of our clients was XXXX, who were sponsoring the Socceroos. For the game, my job was to get some famous Australians to come on behalf of XXXX. We started with Kylie Minogue and kind of worked our way down, ended up with Jono Coleman, because he was on Heart Radio at the time. We couldn’t get anyone else so I thought, I’ll just try the London Broncos. I rang them and Tony Rea was the coach, he answered the phone. I said, “Do any of the Aussie boys want to come?” He goes, “I reckon Jimmy Dymock would want to go. Hang on a minute.” And he just yells out, “Jimmy! Do you want to go to the soccer?” They came along, they were there from 5pm, in among all the FA bigwigs. And you can imagine what we were like.

Farina: The crux of my pre-game message was, “This is a massive opportunity for us to really do something in these bad times for Australian football”. They were bad times. The infighting was just ridiculous, the politics that was going on. I told them, “You’re all playing in the biggest leagues in the world, so there’s nothing else for you to prove there – it’s an opportunity for us to do something for Australian football.”

‘F--- this, we’re not going off. We’re not going off’

Led out by captain Paul Okon, the Socceroos looked up for it from the first minute. They took the lead in the 17th minute, when Tony Popovic nodded home a lovely free kick from Stan Lazaridis.

Martin Tyler, commentator: Big welcome also to viewers in Australia. It is a round ball, it is the national game in England, and it is a traditional rivalry in many sports, if not in this one, between these two countries.

Tony Popovic’s opening goal for Australia.Credit: YouTube

Arnold: The first half we completely outplayed them.

Alan Smith, co-commentator: It was a beautiful ball in from Stan Lazaridis. This is one of those situations where, should the keeper come? Does he stay? Gary Neville perhaps won’t be the happiest defender in that back line, allowing Popovic just to get ahead of him, he lost his man for a split second. In the end, the header beyond [goalkeeper] David James – a real blow for England.

Kewell: Popovic was playing for Crystal Palace at the time, big solid defender. The cross comes in, and you give him a free header. What’s he going to do? He’s going to stick it in the back of the net. We just put them on the back foot straight away, and they just couldn’t budge in that first half.

Nogarotto: I sat in the VIP box with Sir Bobby Robson, Terry Venables, various dignitaries from the English FA – and I think they all expected that protocol would apply, which I quickly broke as soon as Popa scored the first goal. I leapt to my feet and said, “You bloody beauty!” They were thinking it was a stroke of luck, but as the game wore on, the tension there was palpable among the English.

Kewell made it 2-0 four minutes from half-time, latching onto a ball down the line from Neill, brushing past Rio Ferdinand before rounding James to leave England fans shell-shocked.

Arnold: I think that was Harry Kewell’s greatest game.

Kewell: It was a sprinting race with me and Rio. And, for whatever Rio says, he was never quicker than me. He was always going to lose out. He tripped over himself and gave me an opportunity, I ran in there, and the one thing you don’t want to do to a player running at you like James did ... he showed me that much space down the right-hand side, I went to play it down there, he kind of fell for it, and I just cut it back, took it around him, and by that time I had an empty net to slot it in.

Harry Kewell makes it 2-0 for the Socceroos.Credit: YouTube

Tyler: Sven-Goran Eriksson has got some hard thinking to do. What does he do with his team now at half-time? It’s approaching fast, and England are 2-0 down.

Arnold: I’ll never forget. We walked off, up the tunnel of Upton Park at half-time, and Beckham and that were going off their brains, saying “F--- this, we’re not going off. We’re not going off.” We thought maybe from the reaction of the English players, they might not have done it.

‘You were right ... Australians can play football’

True to his word, Eriksson changed his entire team at the break, bringing on 11 substitutes – one of them, Wayne Rooney, for his first England cap at the age of 17 years, 111 days, making him the country’s youngest-ever international. Danny Mills, one of Kewell’s teammates at Leeds United, also came on. England’s second team offered more of a challenge for the Socceroos, and reduced the deficit to 2-1 in the 69th minute when future Newcastle Jets import Francis Jeffers headed in a cross from Jermaine Jenas.

Craig Moore gets a tackle in on England debutant Wayne Rooney.Credit: Getty Images

Kewell: The damage was done in the first half anyway. One of the craziest things that happened in that game was we were controlling the game, and Danny Mills ... I had my own right-back [at Leeds] try to break my leg. I remember, the ball was up, and he just came straight through me. I got up, I said, “Danny, what the f--- are you doing?” He was all in my face. I said, “The hell are you doing? Are you an idiot? I’ll remember this.”

Kewell came off in the 56th minute for John Aloisi, who provided the assist for Australia’s third goal by slipping a pass in behind for Brett Emerton to complete a rapid counter-attack with seven minutes left.

Tyler: Brett Emerton, who wants to come and play in England, scores in England, and Sven-Goran Eriksson’s side – or sides, if you want to call it that – are collectively 3-1 down at Upton Park.

The icing on the cake from Brett Emerton.Credit: YouTube

Emerton: I’ve seen it a few times, I may have got a little bit lucky with the finish. John Aloisi played me in behind, and it was a relatively simple finish, really.

Paul Okon: At full-time, when I shook hands with my ex-Lazio coach Sven-Goran [Eriksson], he said to me, “You were right ... Australians can play football.”

‘Mate, you’ve got the wrong kangaroo’

Edgley: It was an incredible walk from the stadium back to the train station, this euphoric atmosphere, and there was a lot of discussion: What is the potential of that team? How much can we achieve? This could be the team that breaks out the sport in the mainstream back in Australia.

Foster: Les was just on a high. He loved those occasions. Like Johnny Warren, he was all about Australia taking on the world, proving itself. After what Australia had given him – a new life, a career, fame, an iconic status – he just so wanted football not just to succeed in Australia, but he wanted Australian football to have those moments on the international stage. We went back to the hotel where the team was staying, spent some time with the team after the game, which was always nice for Les, and just revelled in the feeling – the future seemed very bright, and it would prove to be.

Mike Cockerill, SMH football writer: The Socceroos have laid bare the last vestiges of England’s football colonialism, the comprehensive victory at Upton Park silencing a century of patronising arrogance towards the Australian game. Generations of Australians have suffered in silence as English coalminers first organised the game here and then infiltrated every corner of it. From the grassroots to the international stage, in the eyes of the English, one constant has never changed: Australia’s status as a second-class football nation. Never mind that England have hardly produced a decent national team since 1966, or unearthed more than a handful of world-class players in that time. Australia might have wrested supremacy in every other sporting sphere, but in the one that matters, the master-servant relationship remained. Until now.

Peter Lamb, Balmain [Letter to SMH editor]: Nurse, nurse, a Bex and a good lie down for Mr Cockerill, please. And while you are at it, increase the sedation levels for the rest of the sports editorial team. Whether or not the efforts of the brave, skilful and understated Socceroo team against England deserved a four-page wraparound supplement is debatable (particularly as I recall many times in the comparatively recent past searching through the small print of the sports pages trying to find a match report of other Socceroos friendly games), but the triumphalist tone and nature of the reporting takes the packet of biscuits.

The English tabloids were typically merciless, with headlines such as “Shockeroo” and “Kanga Poo”. The day after the match, one stunt involving a kangaroo costume and a case of mistaken identity got fan James Ward in a spot of bother.

Ward: We made these scarves, I got Payto [SMH journalist Iain Payten] and another mate to dress up as a kangaroo to hand out scarves to the Aussie fans outside Upton Park. The next day, I got the suit back off Payto and I went round to the FA head office, I dressed up in the suit and had a slab of XXXX and a sign that said, ‘Dear Sven, How the XXXX did that happen?’ We were just trying to take a photo, and someone from the FA’s comms team came out and saw us, and he came out really aggressive, coming towards me and I’m in a full kangaroo suit holding a slab of beer and a sign. And he pushes me and goes, ‘How dare you, you’re disrespectful’ – he just went nuts. Because I had big kangaroo feet, I tripped and fell on my arse. I said, “What’s your problem mate?” [Turns out] The Sun newspaper had sent another kangaroo out to Sven’s house, so he thought that was us. I said, “Mate, you’ve got the wrong kangaroo.”

The tabloids did as tabloids do.

‘It’s wrong. It was a farce.’

The biggest legacy of the match? From a global perspective, it was FIFA’s decision to restrict the number of substitutes allowed in friendly matches to five, in direct response to the controversy surrounding Eriksson’s approach.

Sepp Blatter, FIFA president: It’s wrong. It’s better if you don’t play. It was a farce. It’s not correct for the opponent, but definitely not correct for the public. You invite the public. They pay for a match between England, the best team, and Australia. In the second half, you have another team. It’s not correct. If he [Eriksson] is not able to impose that he will play with the best players during the 90 minutes, or let’s say he makes some substitutes but not as many as he did, then he should not play the match.

In Australia, though, this was the moment when the Socceroos confirmed what they had long felt, deep down – that they were good enough to compete on the world stage.

Farina: I didn’t realise the full reaction in Australia until we actually got back. It gave the game a boost. The opportunities we were getting for games, countries approaching us, interest for sponsorships or getting involved with football – it had a bit of a domino effect, in terms of good things happening.

Foster: I was pleased for Frank Farina. He had the national team for a long time, he’s a legend of the game, he never had the opportunity to coach in a World Cup – but he did have carriage of a team that made a huge statement on the world stage. Frank was also always keen to take on the top nations in the world. He always wanted the team to be tested, and the nucleus of that team went on and qualified under Guus Hiddink. Part of the legacy of Frank Farina is that he helped prepare the team that qualified.

Arnold: People will criticise about the 2002 World Cup [qualifiers] against Uruguay. We beat them 1-0 in Melbourne, we went over there and yes, we lost 3-0, but we hit the crossbar, we hit the post, we had chances, and we conceded the third goal in the last couple of minutes when we pushed our centre-back forward to go for it. That could have easily been 2-1, and we would have qualified under Frank. A lot of those boys were early 20s, pretty similar to what I’ve just had – these guys were starting to get to their prime, and they honestly believed that they could do anything. That [win against England] was one that really sparked them. It really gave the belief to the boys that we belong at the top, and they could do it. And that helped us in 2005 to qualify.

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