“We’ve all got two legs.”

That was the reasoning of Socceroos’ left-back Jason Davidson for Australia being a chance of defeating the Netherlands in their next World Cup match, due to be played in early hours of Thursday morning (2am, AET).



To be fair, even the most optimistic of Socceroos fans couldn’t come up with a better theory. This is the same Dutch outfit that carved up the world champions, Spain, in a 5-1 demolition job last Friday that nobody could have foretold.



Now Australia have to face not only a rampaging Oranje with glory in their sights but a hurting Spanish side that will probably have to defeat the Socceroos to keep their hopes of a title defence alive.



Yet such is the resolute nature of the Australian psyche, Socceroos supporters just can’t shake the belief they have a real chance.



“We’ve actually seen as many bets placed on the Aussies as we have for the Netherlands,” said Sportsbet.com.au’s Christian Jantzen. “But all of the big bets are with the Dutch, and it’s not hard to see why.”



Perhaps the reason for the interest is that the same betting agency has listed Australia as a $15 chance – even though the $7.25 on offer for the draw might be a safer place for patriotic pennies.



The Netherlands, if you’re so inclined, are paying a hardly-better-than-bank-interest $1.20. Or as they say these days, “Black Caviar odds”.



But stranger things have happened. An early red card for the Dutch, or a cataclysmic injury to one of their stars, could well tilt the balance in Australia’s favour.



After all, it is football, above and beyond other sports, that has the capacity to surprise.



At least that’s what Davidson’s teammate Mathew Leckie reckons after seeing Costa Rica’s shock result against Uruguay, which happened less than 24 hours after the Socceroos defeat to Chile.



“It's a weird game, it’s nothing like AFL where you know the top team's going to smash the bottom team. Anything can happen,” he said. “It’s three games in a group stage. I’m sure [they] were going into that game thinking it was going to be an easy win, but Costa Rica got the win and Uruguay are on the back foot.”



It’s results like that 3-1 triumph for Los Ticos that is giving Australia hope as they head to Porto Alegre.



“Everyone expects us to lose. We have expectations for ourselves but there's no pressure on us against Holland,” Leckie said. “We're going to go out in the game and do what we do best and hopefully with a better start, I’m quite confident we can dominate parts of that game as well.”

Each Australian jersey has this motto stitched into the collar: "We Socceroos can do the impossible”. Credit:AFP

Should Australia defeat the Dutch, it would go down as one of the all-time great upsets in football’s global showpiece – and there has been a few.



The USA’s win over England in 1950. North Korea’s 1-0 defeat of Italy in 1966. Francois Omam Biyick’s header for Cameroon against Maradona’s Argentina in 1990. The then-unknown Senegal upsetting Zinedine Zidane’s France in 2002.



Even the famed Dutch side of 1978 – which went on to make the final – coughed up a shocker in the group stages, losing to Scotland 3-2.



But perhaps inspiration lies closer to home. The Australians could do a lot worse than read the inside of their shirts, where a saying from the nation’s first World Cup captain, Peter Wilson, is stitched into the collar: “We Socceroos can do the impossible”.



He was right: unlike the 2014 team, that wildly unfancied 1974 Socceroos edition actually managed to draw with Chile.



Which just goes to show that so long as there’s life, or two legs, there’s hope.