The dream World Cup run has come to an end, unsurprisingly I must say, but with honour intact and heads held high, and given the build up to the tournament it was probably more than we could ask for.
Graham Arnold and his team fought valiantly, organised and resilient, a clear second for talent in most games, but able to progress through determination and conversion of minimal chances.
You have to be grateful for the results, the outpouring of national pride that may or may not generate support of the A-League to the level hoped for, nor the flow-on effect to the lower divisions.
But I'd caution that, as Graham Arnold and later Craig Goodwin said and many of we "jealous outsiders" have been doing for years, is that we need to improve development and pathways for talented young players.
The media has jumped on the results bandwagon.
We were the worst Socceroos team in history to go to the tournament.
And four games, a lot of hard work and our fair share of luck in the goalscoring department, we are close to our best team ever?
Perhaps somewhere in between might be more realistic.
Let's face facts.
I think the team and Arnold did a fantastic job with the quality available.
But neutral observation of our goals would give three out of four of them a less than 10 per cent chance of being scored at any time in international football, never mind in three consecutive matches.
Many will say hard work brings its rewards, and I grant you that, but two very favourable deflections and a three-pass 80-metre runaway at this level are generally hard to come by in a sequence of games.
Mathew Leckie for mine was most deserving of his goal against Denmark. He was close to our best player in the tournament.
But the Danish coaching staff must be cringing at the errors made in its creation. We celebrate, they are in disbelief at their defensive naivete.
Let me ask you, do you think we would have got out of the group with Spain, Germany and Japan, Argentina, Mexico, Poland and Saudi Arabia, or Portugal, Uruguay, Ghana and South Korea?
Would you, with due respect, swap a Mitch Duke for a Mark Viduka, Craig Goodwin for Harry Kewell, the current midfield for Grella, Bresciano, and Culina?
All of whom kept a 24-year-old Tim Cahill in his physical prime on the bench? Souttar, who was excellent after the France match, and Rowles, or Moore and Neill?
Were we more dangerous than Ange's team that played so fluently against Chile and The Netherlands eight years ago?
Better than the teams that lost to Iran in acrimonious circumstances in final qualifiers, and the 1993 home-and-away tie that we lost 1-0 away to an Argentina team including Maradona, Batistuta, Balbo, and Redondo after a 1-1 draw at the SFS?
Don't forget Peru hit a post in the last two minutes of this year's final qualifying match before the Grey Wiggle fairytale. Small margins anyone?
Don't for a moment suspect that I didn't view the performance in this tournament with pride, and the utmost respect.
The results were more than we could have hoped for.
Hope for the future maybe, but remember Arnold started with the same line-up in almost every match, suggesting the depth available was probably underwhelming, and that is a concern.
Brazil and France had the luxury of using almost all of their squad.
All of which leaves us with five intriguing fixtures on this weekend.
Argentina against Holland and Brazil and Croatia will have played their quarter-finals by the time you read this.
Then on Sunday, England verse France and Portugal play Morocco.
Finally the piece de resistance. The Jets travel down the road for the F3 derby on Sunday afternoon.
The A -League is back and I know you can't wait. Enjoy it all.
