Jedinak, who scored Australia’s goal from the penalty spot, was picked in midfield alongside Aaron Mooy and the duo produced a stellar defensive display together with the centre-back pairing of Trent Sainsbury and Mark Milligan.
But despite limiting France’s chances and frustrating one of the favourites for the title in Russia 2018, Australia fell to an 81st minute Paul Pogba effort which deflected off Aziz Behich into the goalmouth.
Jedinak, who had come off a gruelling club season with Aston Villa who he so nearly helped win promotion to the English Premier League, reiterated the message he shared with teammates during a post-game huddle on the pitch.
After the full time whistle had blown, before Bert van Marwijk and his staff could speak to the players, Jedinak called his teammates in and was captured delivering an intense speech.
“It’s just something I thought we needed, everyone needed to hear it while it was so fresh in the mind and seeing the disappointment in everybody, knowing what effort we’d given,” Jedinak revealed.
“It was just: ‘be disappointed, that goes without saying. Let it hurt, but know we did a lot of good things and right up until we need to leave this competition, we will show some really good things.’
“We weren’t that far off and we need to keep stressing that with the group. Everybody understood that.”
Jedinak also reserved special praise for the travelling Aussie fans, who were even singled out by France star Pogba for making the Kazan Arena feel like an Australian home game.
“It was a home game,” declared the 33-year-old skipper.
“Once you heard that anthem you knew. That was probably what gave us that extra bit of energy, made us grow and you felt it straight away and we wanted to stress that to the boys.
“When you’re playing on the biggest stage so far away from home, to see so many fans there was truly remarkable.”
Source: socceroos.com.au
