As the national team stumbled abroad, soccer in Australia took another giant leap with record crowds attending the A-League opening round.
Adelaide United and Brisbane Roar banked season-opening victories on Sunday and helped the league create new attendance records.
Bolstered by massive crowds in Sydney, Melbourne and Gosford, some 100,998 people attended the opening round.
The figure surpasses the previous best for a regular-season round of 93,500, set in last season's first round.
The record was set on Sunday as Adelaide beat Perth Glory 3-1 at Coopers Stadium in Adelaide, and Brisbane Roar notched a last-gasp 2-1 away win against Wellington Phoenix.
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Adelaide and Brisbane joined Sydney FC as first-round winners.
The Sky Blues showed early signs of revival after a disappointing last season, notching an impressive 2-0 triumph against Newcastle Jets before a 20,103-strong Sydney crowd on Friday night.
Melbourne's derby between the Victory and Heart was a scoreless draw watched by 45,202 spectators at Etihad Stadium on Saturday night.
The crowd was the second largest for a non-finals A-League match, the all-time record remains the 50,333 who watched Melbourne Victory play Sydney FC at the same venue in 2006/07.
In other results in the initial weekend of the new season, reigning champions Central Coast Mariners drew 1-1 with defending premiers Western Sydney Wanderers before 17,143 fans at Gosford on Saturday.
The first free-to-air coverage of an A-League match on Friday night also helped generate a new record for a TV audience for a game in the competition, with an average of 358,000 viewers watching Sydney FC's clash with Newcastle on SBS and Fox Sports.
Head of the A-League Damien de Bohun said the first round lived up to the pre-season hype.
"Record crowds, record TV figures, a sell-out crowd, magnificent atmosphere and some fantastic football - the A-League is back with a bang," de Bohun said in a statement.
"It was a fantastic start to the season and full credit to the players, coaches and fans, who all played their part in creating the first round of theatre. We had some big crowds, tight matches and tense derbies."
