The desperately sad Brad Jones story also has implications in purely football terms.

Apart from the grief of a serious family illness - and everyone's heart goes out to them - Jones's hasty exit from South Africa underscores how threadbare the Socceroos' reserve goalkeeper stocks are.

Heaven forbid that any sort of calamity should visit number one keeper Mark Schwarzer at the 2010 World Cup.

Because without Schwarzer, the Socceroos would have to resort to a stand-in with no experience whatsoever at this level.

That's no reflection on the quality of his understudies, rather their lack of international exposure.

Jones himself only has a couple of caps.

Adam Federici, now automatically number two if he wasn't before, made his debut just a couple of weeks ago in one half of the friendly against New Zealand in Melbourne.

Eugene Galekovic has only a handful of caps in World Cup qualifiers against modest Asian opposition.

That's a far cry from a showdown against a powerhouse like Germany with the whole world watching.

Which is what he or Federici might have to face if Schwarzer stubs his toe on a bedpost at the Socceroos' luxurious Kloofzicht game lodge outside Johannesburg.

Pim Verbeek showed uncanny prescience by retaining Galekovic in South Africa as one of four players outside his official 23-man squad.

But the lack of top-level experience in his back-up goalies is one box the normally thorough coach has not ticked.

Hindsight is 20-20, admittedly, but the time to think about that was two and a half years ago, when he first started, not now.

Anyway, discussions about team line-ups, pitches, injuries and opponents suddenly seem utterly trivial alongside the tragedy that has struck the Jones family.

It puts the World Cup in perspective.

This is only football.

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