Socceroos 'brotherhood' somehow contrives to beat Japan. How doesn't really matter

For so long on Thursday night in Perth, it seemed that a certain type of story was being told.
One where Japan showed its class, as a team that had just 62 caps between them ran rings around a Socceroos side suffering stage fright when it mattered most.
A story where Japan's Samurai Blue laid siege to the Socceroos penalty area with deft feints and incisive passes and a dogged determination to hold the ball and keep the ball and whenever they didn't have the ball chase it down and make it theirs again.
That's what it felt like because that's what the 57,226 increasingly subdued fans in Perth Stadium were seeing pan out in front of their own eyes.
It was an exhibition in just how much of a level above Japan's second-string team was against the Aussies as generations of careful planning and structural development came to bear.
It seems that way so often Australia plays Japan — it had been 16 years since the Socceroos had beaten them, after all.
At half-time Japan had 71 per cent of possession and had completed almost two-and-a-half times as many passes as a turgid Socceroos team that could barely hang onto the ball in the brief moments they had it.
Australia was inaccurate with more than a quarter of the paltry number of passes they had in the first place.
And yet, for all that pressure, for all those passes and all that pressing, what did Japan have to show for it?
As much as Tony Popovic was starting to show his frustration that his team was not "taking it" to Japan as he said they would, the score remained 0-0.
Instead of the story being about Japan's unimpeachable magnificence, it started to become more about Australia's grit.
This is not a new tale under Popovic. In Saitama in October last year the Socceroos took the lead against the unbeaten Japan despite not having managed a single shot on target.
Why be good when you can be lucky, right?
Perhaps because in Perth the Socceroos may have ridden their luck, but then they got good exactly when they needed to.
"The boss said at half-time, 'No matter how tough it gets, we will get our opportunity if we keep at it,'" Australia's most unlikely match-winner Aziz Behich said amid the yellowy haze of post-match exuberance that followed the Socceroos most unlikely victory.
A haze that will likely lead to hyperbole with enough density to fill in those significant technical cracks Japan failed to exploit.
But a haze that cannot disguise the truth that the goal, when it came, was arguably perfect.
The perfect time for a smash-and-grab that, up until moments before, when Takefusa Kubo curled a delightful-looking shot just wide of Mat Ryan's goal, had looked vanishingly likely to take place.
Daniel Arzani, on as a replacement just 10 minutes before, did what no Aussie player had managed to do in the previous hour and a half, win the ball and hold it in Japanese territory and find fellow sub Jason Geria behind him.
Geria's link up with Riley McGree, another Socceroos substitute, was that perfect mix of class and composure at the most crucial time, the turn as exquisite as it needed to be and the touch to take the ball away from Ayumu Seko and to the byline superbly weighted.
"I honestly thought the cutback was too far back and no-one was going to get on it," McGree said, admitting to goosebumps that still prickled his neck when watching the replay.
"But he ended up getting on it and I look and it hits the net. Unbelievable."
Tempting then, perhaps, to frame this as a victory for Aussie grit over Japanese style?
But Popovic's reaction to being asked whether this rope-a-dope tactic was all part of the plan suggests otherwise.
"I wish it was that easy," he said, a rare laugh the symptom of a man who perhaps had been expecting a trip to the dentist for a root canal, only to be told he now only needs to go for a simple clean instead.
"But, look, we stayed in the game.
"It just shows the belief that the group has, and I believe there's more to come from them."
Behich added "we wanted to take the game to them".
"Obviously we've had better games, but that's football," he said.
It was certainly memorable and, although there will be more than a few detractors who will rightly say that there was no way the Socceroos deserved to win that game, the simple fact is, they did.
And Popovic is still unbeaten as coach of this team.
The Socceroos only need avoid a heavy defeat against Saudi Arabia in Jeddah on Wednesday morning — a team that before Friday morning's match against Bahrain had scored just one goal in its past six World Cup qualifiers and that against the 10 men of China in March — and they will be at the World Cup.
Sure, the Socceroos were not great in Perth.
But the belief that comes from a last-minute winner against the kings of Asia could be invaluable.
"I don't know if there is any other better way to win a game of football," Cam Burgess said, and that might yet be the main point.
"The belief in the group. We always knew we could do it.
"When you have a bad start to a campaign, you will always have a few doubters, but it is about the dressing room and the coach being staff.
"It is a brotherhood. We have lent on that a lot and leaning on it tonight helped us through."
In North America, the Socceroos will, should they get there, come up against better teams than Japan, who could enjoy more possession and will likely test Mat Ryan's goal more thoroughly than the Samurai Blue were able to in Perth.
But given Popovic's defensive credentials and the belief that comes from holding on to a win despite being battered every which way by your biggest continental rivals?
That could be priceless.