England 1, Australia 3: Australia's Victory (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Sports	Main Menu Audio & Animation
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	109:21 (Case: 108)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	None Given
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$24.95	Music	None Given

    With the general state of English sport vis a vis the traditional enemy from the land Down Under, you would have been hard-pressed to find any sport where Australia had not obliterated England in recent times. Indeed, of the major sports (and many a minor one too) about the only one where the Poms held sway was in the game they invented - association football, the beautiful game, the world game. Soccer for the uneducated ones. However, on a cold 12th February 2003 evening, even the pride of English football was demolished at Upton Park in London. The Socceroos came to town for their first game together in fourteen months - in other words fresh on the heels of their latest failure to secure a World Cup berth via the usual round-the-world route that the Oceania qualifier has to make to reach the final 32. Since Australia is very used to such failures, that could hardly have been a significant motivating factor for what happened at Upton Park.

    Basically, the Poms finally succumbed to the rampant Socceroos in the only game they were supposed to be better than us in. To add insult to injury, it was not a second-rate line up that the Socceroos wiped all over Upton Park in the first half. David Beckham, Michael Owen, Kieron Dyer, Sol Campbell, Paul Scholes, Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand and Gary Neville are all regular members of the England team. We beat them 2-0. To add further insult to injury, this was no result after many years of trying on England soil - this was the first time the Socceroos had played England on English soil, the previous five games all being in Australia. And to finalise the injury, the entire English team was substituted at half time by an up-and-coming eleven including Wonder Kid Wayne Rooney, the youngest player to ever play for England as a full international, and they managed a 1-1 draw with the Socceroos.

    So there is the plot - the Socceroos against England on English soil and wiping them all over the park to record a famous 3-1 victory. It does not come any better than this for Australian football fans and it was a night to savour. Now if only we could have beaten Ireland the other day, or could qualify for the World Cup...

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and the transfer is not 16x9 enhanced. I am presuming that this is full frame although this is by no means certain given the preponderance of widescreen digital TV nowadays. The programme is basically a complete replay of the television broadcast, right down to the slow-motion replays.

    As it is the television broadcast, I suppose that what we have here is no better but no worse than we would expect. Sharpness is adequate enough, detail is pretty good, there is only some light grain around and the transfer is a bit variable between flat looking and modestly vibrant. There is no obvious low level noise in the transfer.

    The colours are adequately dealt with, although a little variable. At times it has a flat look that is slightly under saturated but otherwise is generally pretty good and about what I would expect for a television sports broadcast. There are the odd instances where colour bleed is an issue, which is probably source related. There is no indication of over saturation.

    There did not appear to be any MPEG artefacts in the transfer. Film-to-video artefacts abound in the transfer, mainly in the form of aliasing. Just about every time the pitch markings, the goal post and the advertising hoardings appear on screen - which is obviously a lot of the time - aliasing is seen. It is seen at 7:40, 8:40, 11:09 and so on and so on. There is also some pixelisation in the image at times, mainly in the pitch such as at 18:13. One unusual aspect of the transfer is the occasional patches where for all the world there looks like posterisation in the pitch. There are no film artefacts that are obvious in the transfer.

    This is a single layered, single sided DVD, so we have no layer change to contend with.

    There are no subtitle options on the DVD, which is somewhat disappointing.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is just the one soundtrack available on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

    The commentary comes up okay in the transfer, but I really wish that more of the ambience could have been captured. Obviously the nature of the programme precludes any sort of comment upon audio sync.

    The soundtrack does its job okay, but you do on occasions wish for some surround activity to capture the crowd feel a bit more. Unlikely to happen in this sort of programme though.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    Modest audio and animation enhancement, but almost without any point given the nature of the programme.

    This has not been released in any other region as far as I can determine - nor is it ever likely to be released in any other region I would have thought.

    It ranks up there amongst the greatest games of the Socceroos and rabid football fans will likely devour this with relish. I don't see it having much impact in the general DVD market but certainly that specialist market will be quite pleased with what we have been given. When we qualify for the 2006 World Cup, we can look back at this game as being one of the foundations of that qualification. Now I challenge Roadshow to release the Australia - Ireland game on DVD!

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall