ONE phrase at yesterday's press conference rammed it home that, yes, Terry Venables is the new national coach of Australia. "We've had some fair dinkum discussions," said his new boss, David Hill, head of the Australian FA.
Admittedly, this was before the former England coach posed for photographers holding a boomerang - presumably to underline that he really had come back.
But his decision to swap cultures from Euro '96 to the Oceania World Cup qualifying group is still hard to grasp, for he must now work with a team in the international second division.
The salary was a lure, £200,000 a year which, over his 19 month contract, could total more than £400,000 with bonuses if he guides the Socceroos, as they are known, to the 1998 finals in France.
But there was another bonus for Venables. "What interested me was international football again," he said. "I really enjoyed my 2 1/2 years with England. I don't regret the decision to leave, but I would have liked to finish the job properly and gone to the World Cup finals. Now I have a possibility of that."
As with England, Venables will be the sole national coach, working in Australia about four months a year and for the rest of the year monitoring the form of the top Australian players, nearly all of whom play abroad, mainly in Europe.
He also announced yesterday that not only will he be staying at Portsmouth, where he was director of football, but he will move up to chairman. "It will be in an advisory capacity, but it makes a statement that I am still helping Portsmouth as much as I can."
Hill appears unworried by this, or Venables' upcoming court cases. "We're fairly familiar with the details of those," said Hill, who added: "Terry Venables is the very best result we could have hoped for. Those players I've spoken to are wildly excited by the prospect."
To avoid players being taken away from their foreign clubs too often, six of Australia's world cup qualifiers will be squeezed together. In June, Venables's new side play home and away against Tahiti and one of the Solomon Islands, Tonga or Papua new Guinea in Oceania Group, Pool A. Win that pool and Australia meet the winners of Pool B, likely to be New Zealand or Fiji.
In November the winners of that game play, for a place in the last 32, tile fourth-place Asian qualifier - candidates include Iran, Iraq, Kazikstan, Terry Yorath's Lebanon and China who, ironically, are about to employ Venables's former England scout Ted Buxton as a consultant.
Australia's international record is not great. At youth level, though, they rank in the top eight in the world while in the Barcelona Olympics they finished fourth with a young squad that forms the bulk of the present senior group.
