As he stalked the corridors of power at FIFA's headquarters in Zurich this week, Football Federation of Australia chief Ben Buckley exhorted football's governing body to "complete the picture" by sending the FIFA World Cup finals to the only continent on which it had never been held.

At the same time he was giving his last-minute pitch, he would have loved to be able to draw the shades on the image of the game developing at home. In the same week Australia was trying to win the hearts, minds and votes of FIFA delegates ahead of the proposed 2 December vote on hosting rights for the 2022 Finals, the domestic game has scored a couple of ugly own goals.

The A-League has dug a bigger pothole for itself than anything local hero Chad Reed and his Motocross buddies ripped up at Energy Australia stadium in Newcastle back on October 16th. How the FFA allowed the North Queensland Fury to make the long and arduous commute to Newcastle only to be told when they arrive (and just a day before the scheduled match) that the pitch looked like a quarry, beggars belief.

Fury CEO Rabieh Krayem was apoplectic, describing the situation as an "absolute disgrace". Whilst he pointed the finger of blame at the NRL's Newcastle Knights for hiring out the stadium to the boys on bikes just 11 days before the Jets fixture, the FFA were asleep at the wheel for not monitoring the state of the pitch. Surely an assertive management approach would have ensured the work was done to make sure the fixture went ahead, or it was postponed and re-scheduled before The North Queensland team wasted a couple of days racking up frequent flier miles.

And the farcical fallout from the Newcastle debacle doesn't end there.

Melbourne Heart is scheduled to play the Jets at Energy Australia Stadium on Sunday. Seeing that the pitch is still only fit for BMX Bandits and not football, FFA Have hastily arranged for the fixture to be re-located to Port Macquarie's Regional Stadium.

For Melbourne Heart, suddenly a rudimentary road trip to Newcastle has become a logistical nightmare. With such late notice they've been unable to secure accommodation close to the venue and so will fly to Newcastle and then take a three-hour bus trip to the stadium before making the return journey on the coach to spend the night in the steel city.

Melbourne Heart has a journey to Townsville to follow and the passports are being dusted off for the trip to Wellington in a fortnight's time.

The Newcastle game has become a ridiculous inconvenience that could, and should, have been avoided.

It's all very well to trot out Nicole Kidman and other A-List faces as eye candy to sell the World Cup dream. You can play as much football you like on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and have John Travolta fly his Qantas Jumbo full of Socceroos all over the planet.

The question is, while Ben Buckley's World Cup campaign was being rolled out in Switzerland, who back at the FFA shopfront was responsible for making sure we could, as the FFA would have it, come play?

Because if we can't run our own competition properly, how the hell do we expect to run the big show?