First, a small but important heresy: It doesn't really matter if Australia gets knocked out of the World Cup in the first round. It won't matter because Australia is already addicted. The horse has bolted: it flew out of the gates in Germany 2006 and has been on the loose ever since.
The hype surrounding Australia's prospects in South Africa has camouflaged the wider importance of the event. For whatever reason, football has become the world's most popular game and the month-long fiesta that begins this week is the largest collective experience on earth.
That irks fans of other codes, especially Australian Rules, which inspires a devotion that almost eclipses the roundball game. In April I attended a sport and media conference at La Trobe University. Everyone who got up to speak at the last session declared, as a matter of course, which AFL club they supported. This identification would astonish even the most rusted-on Manchester United fan.
Yet for all that, Aussie Rules is local, proudly parochial. The global character and appeal of football endows the World Cup with three levels of significance that cannot be denied.
First, it brings out our collective inner child. Sport is ultimately about the spirit of play, one of our enduring links to childhood. Playing makes us feel young. Whether it's play-acting or playing cards or playing sport, it is a form of escape from reality and responsibility.
The World Cup demonstrates that given the right excuse or pretext, people from all walks of life will fork out lots of money to go out and forget about life, and pretend they are young again. In 2006, it felt like the whole world had descended on Germany to have fun, forget about the things that divide us and celebrate a way of feeling united with others. In an era when house prices are the currency of political debate, and community has been superseded by the individual, this is not to be under-rated.
Second, football presents us with an alternative world order. In the conventional scheme of things, the United States is the centre of the world, with Russia, the EU, China and Japan trying to keep it in check.
If someone dared suggest a scenario where the political and economic superpowers were minor players, not even second-rank nations, they would be laughed out of the room. Yet that is exactly the landscape of