PRIDE, SORROW AND BITTER EDGE IN OZ'S WORLD CUP

Sydney, June 30 NZPA - Life is getting back to normal, but there remains an underlying bitterness in Australia about the way they were eliminated from the soccer World Cup.

It is not the only emotion as there is genuine pride in the performance of the Socceroos in reaching the top 16 -- and rightly so.

There was an irresistible euphoria along the way as the underdogs motivated by super coach Guus Hiddink advanced beyond most expectations.

It seems too there was a genuine neighbourly feeling from New Zealanders too that enjoyed Australia doing well, with perhaps a reserved edge to it given the Aussies tendency to remind their Kiwi cousins about their successes.

But to be dudded out of the tournament was hard to take. Italian player Fabio Grosso's dive over a Lucas Neill tackle resulting in a penalty goal hit a raw nerve.

Certainly actor Anthony LaPaglia, Hollywood star and Aussie soccer fanatic, has not got over it, even though he has an Italian heritage and has naturally barracked for them in previous World Cups.

"At first, I was incredibly outraged, then I descended into gutted," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"I'm still gutted. I haven't recovered -- to be honest, I don't think I ever will. I've looked at it about 40 times now. It just never was a penalty.

"Even if it was marginal, any decent referee at that point of the game would have played the benefit of the doubt."

LaPaglia, best known for playing FBI agent Jack Malone in Without A Trace, said he hoped "karma" would come back to haunt the Italians in their quarterfinal against Ukraine.

"Of course, you have revenge fantasies. I just hope the same things happens against the Ukraine, with they are scoreless at 90 minutes and they get a penalty awarded against them. That would be nice..."

There's been an almost universal feeling that the Australians were desperately unlucky over the penalty decision.

Even the mighty Pele said he was sorry to see the Socceroos fall the way they did.

"The least you could say was that Australia deserved the chance of playing extra time," he said in his column in The Australian.

"I even thought the Australians deserved to win, but the Italians had more experience and played that old defensive game."

His comments tempered some of the excesses about how the penalty decision was because of bias by officials against Australia because it is not a soccer world power.

Even some letter writers to the newspapers pointed out the same referee, Spaniard Luis Medina Cantalejo, erred in sending off Italy's Marco Materazzi earlier, giving the Socceroos a marked edge for 40 minutes of the match, of which they failed to take advantage.

And Kevan Silver wrote to the Daily Telegraph reminding readers of an obvious foul committed in Australia's game against Japan which might have had an impact on the result had the referee acted.

"With all the complaints about the refereeing at the World Cup, how soon people forget the blatant penalty that should have been awarded against Tim Cahill in the Japan match. Had that been given, we would not have even been playing Italy.

"As to the penalty itself, can anyone, hand on heart, say that had the roles been reversed, we would not have been screaming for an Australian penalty? And had it not been given, we wouldn't have been complaining about the referee?"

Amid a hullabaloo about the refereeing generally at the World Cup and the plethora of dives and players milking penalties through faked injuries, some thought soccer, or football as its aficionados insist on referring to it, was being unfairly tarred.

"I would just like to point out an obvious analogy," wrote Andrew Hick to The Australian. "I have watched Shane Warne and his teammates appeal hundreds of times for wickets they know are not out, with the intention of cheating the opposition. Surely this is the same thing as Fabio Grosso's successful attempt to fool the referee.

"To imagine that football has primacy in gamesmanship and cheating shows a lack of understanding in sport. Sometimes things don't go your way and if you're a sportsman or woman you accept it and get on with it."

How true. And that is why polite Kiwis are not mentioning cricket's underarm incident at the moment.

Speaking of the dive, Aussies have seen the irony in the group, Il Divo, performing at the World Cup opening ceremony.

And as the Australian flags starts to disappear from the side windows of cars honking through suburban streets, a nursery in Sydney's Campbelltown still has the sign up: "Our Italian lavenders keep falling over".