In case any of you are able to follow it, Australia are currently being held 1-1 by ten-man Syria in their World Cup play-off and it's 15 minutes from going to penalties with a place in Russia at stake. Could be one of those cheesy World Cup stories in the making...

I must have jinxed Syria - as I was typing, Australia scored the winner, deep in extra time. Oh well.

It's nice to see some of the bigger nations failing to reach the World Cup, I prefer smaller nations making their way into it because it reminds you how special football can be. This one has the potential to be one of the better ones, provided Russia doesn't **** it up.

i would prefer to see australia myself since i have family who live there.

Syria would have been a new name and a great story. On the other hand we have Panama and Iceland at their first World Cup.

I would have preferred Wales over Ireland as the Irish tend to go ultra defensive and bore us all to death. At least Wales play football. On the one hand Scotland's failure to qualify is hilarious, on the other it's sad. I'd love to play them at an actual tournament, the atmosphere would be something special.

The Netherlands and the United States failed to qualify - in the case of the US, finishing second bottom of the CONCACAF group below Panama and Honduras is embarrassing even by their modest standards. In a way it's a shame, they were fun but impossibly naive in Brazil.

We all admired Costa Rica a few years ago when they took the competition by storm, I actually felt they deserved to progress - I think it was the dutch that cheated them.