If you think this is a joke, rewind the tape of the post-game presentation on SBS and watch analyst Craig Foster quickly thanking Safran for helping lift the curse on Australian football. And former Socceroo Foster isn't alone. Safran has had many emails crediting him with the win. The story begins in 1969, when a team of amateur Australian footballers was trying to qualify for the 1970 World Cup. The team had lost a play-off and was to face Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in Mozambique. Things were looking dire.

Safran said: "Johnny [Warren] told me that after the first game of that series, some of the players heard about a witchdoctor in Mozambique who said he could sort things out by putting a curse on the Rhodesians. "They all said, 'Yeah, cool, let's do it' and so the witchdoctor planted some bones near one of the goalposts and cursed the opposition." The team won the next game 3-1 and the witchdoctor told the players he wanted £1000 for his services.

"'You owe me', the witchdoctor told them, but the players didn't have enough money," Safran said. "He warned them he'd reverse the curse and put it on Australian soccer and he chased them around to get his money. "The players left the country without paying up and Johnny sincerely believed that, ever since, Australian soccer has been cursed.

"The next game the team played, three players fell ill and from then on it's been one extraordinary circumstance after another." The national team qualified for the 1974 World Cup but suffered a run of gut-wrenching defeats, topped off by the 1997 Iranian disaster and the tear-jerker in Uruguay four years ago. In his book Sheilas, Wogs And Poofters, Warren wrote: "The bad luck always seems to come in big matches. [Every] time some disaster befalls our national teams I think back to Mozambique. I can't help wondering if there's something extraordinary to blame.

"I think Soccer Australia should send someone to Mozambique with a thousand pounds to track down the witchdoctor and get him to lift the curse. It could be worth a try, anyway." When Warren told him the story last year, Safran decided to go to Africa to do a story about the curse for his show John Safran vs God.

The witchdoctor had died, but Safran found another who could channel him by going to the stadium at which the Rhodesia game had been played 35 years earlier. "That involved us sitting in the middle of the pitch and he killed a chicken and splattered the blood all over me," Safran said. "I then had to go to Telstra Stadium with Johnny and we had to wash ourselves in some clay the witchdoctor had given us." Safran watched the game at a friend's place. He said he had forgotten about the story until he began receiving emails from people thanking him for having lifted the curse.

Foster said footballers were a notoriously superstitious bunch. "Johnny did believe passionately in this curse," he said. "I'm certainly not discounting it and, if I meet John Safran, I'll definitely be thanking him for his effort."