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Posted: 2022-12-01 10:24:15

Where were you when it happened? When it felt like everything changed?

Were you curled up somewhere in your living room, a blanket over your knees?

Were you in a public square at 4am, squeezed up against the shoulders of strangers? Or, maybe, you were there, in the wide open hand of the stadium; one face in a small flourish of green and gold that, in a blink, filled up the horizon of the whole world?

Do you remember what it felt like, the shape and heft of that roar? Do you remember the arc of the ball as it left Mat Leckie's foot and rolled, as if shepherded by some invisible hand, into the bottom corner of Kasper Schmeichel's net? Can you hear the sound of the page turning?

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Play Video. Duration: 1 minute 10 seconds
Scenes of jubilation in Qatar after Socceroos beat Denmark

Socceroos head coach Graham Arnold is staring up into the dark sky above Al Janoub Stadium in southern Doha.

The trumpets and bells of the national anthem swell around him as he gazes into the inky blackness, seeing nothing but the white lip of the rooftop that crests like a wave over the 40,000 people and the history piling in below.

He sings the words of the anthem as if they are a prayer, a hymn sent out into this grand cathedral of steel and turf and glass.

Arnold is not a religious man, but coming into this final group-stage match against Denmark — an encounter that is about so much more than just that — he needs all the help and hope he can get.

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