Oh yes, Hindmarsh Stadium is much older. But I’m not (well, not that much older).

The first match I know I attended there took place in June 1981. I would have been taken to games before then but that’s as far as my memory goes.

Maybe that’s because this particular match I recall was something different from a run-of-the-mill club match – it was an international. And, though I probably didn’t realise it at the time, it was a World Cup qualifier.

It was only the second time the Socceroos had played one in Adelaide. Thursday night’s qualifier against Tajikistan at Adelaide Oval will be the ninth.

Five of the other World Cup qualifiers Australia has played here were completed in a nine-day period in 2004 when our city hosted an entire six-team round robin for the Oceania Confederation. The Socceroos have only returned once since then and that was for a friendly match.

The roll call of opponents in qualifiers in Adelaide hasn’t been glamorous – Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei (twice), New Zealand, Tahiti, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tajikistan – but clearly these matches have been rare here. They’re important too because you can’t afford many slip-ups if you want to make it to the World Cup finals.

And, as it happens, if Australia fails to win on Thursday night, the pressure will be on the team to beat Jordan next week. Failure in these games could see the Socceroos miss the next round of Asian qualifiers and we’d be out of the race for Russia 2018 more than two years before it takes place.

But there’s something else Thursday night offers and (if you’ll forgive me sounding too lofty) it’s the chance to consume what the most global of games provides.

That qualifier in 1981, against Chinese Taipei, helped me learn something.

I knew nothing of our opponent before the game; later, I would choose that country for a school project.

This turned out to be a little tricky for a primary school kid given the status of a place that could be called Chinese Taipei, Republic of China, Taiwan or Formosa. No doubt I was at least able to write that they weren’t particularly good at soccer.

Later in 1981 Australia hosted the FIFA World Youth Championship and West Germany was one of the teams that played in Adelaide. That was educational too.

My illustrated dictionary’s explanation of the two Germanys included a political map that cleverly showed Berlin as a two-coloured circle with the left half being the same colour as West Germany. That’s how I understood that West Berlin was an exclave, even if I didn’t really know why.

When the 1982 World Cup finals rolled around there was a fresh batch of countries to find out about. Where on earth was Honduras? What about Cameroon? Kuwait? I loved maps but that didn’t mean I’d learned every single country in my atlas.

The other thing my first World Cup qualifier did was spark a lifelong passion. For 24 years it was an extremely frustrating one as Australia continued to miss out on the big show. But over the last decade I’ve been able to follow the Socceroos to different parts of the world and that’s given me many great experiences.

Of course not everyone’s able to do that. But perhaps for those who can’t, getting this taste of the World Cup – for qualifying games are still World Cup games – is even more valuable.

The aforementioned Oceania matches played in Adelaide in 2004 were poorly promoted, poorly covered and poorly attended. Even the match between Australia and New Zealand didn’t fill Hindmarsh Stadium.

Yet anyone that did turn up for those games would have seen Brett Emerton, John Aloisi, Vince Grella, Mile Sterjovksi, Mark Bresciano, Scott Chipperfield and Tim Cahill in the green and gold two years before they became heroes at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Tim Cahill became a national hero with two goals against Japan in Kaiserslautern during the 2006 World Cup. Photo: Kevork Djansezian, AP.

There were upsets too. Vanuatu recorded a stunning win over New Zealand which (combined with other results) meant that the All Whites would be out of the World Cup if Australia didn’t defeat Solomon Islands on the last night of action in Adelaide.

That match finished 2-2, an embarrassment for the Socceroos but they’d already secured their spot in the next round. It was, however, the greatest result in the Solomons’ history and it would be they, not New Zealand, joining Australia in the final phase of Oceania qualifying. I’ll never forget their celebration.

Solomon Islands players celebrate their famous 2-2 draw against Australia in 2004. Photo: Paul Marcuccitti

In 2004 it would have been easy for fans in South Australia to think they wouldn’t see stars of the future and that a lowly-ranked country wouldn’t surprise. Both things happened.

One or both of those things might happen on Thursday night as well and that, along with the rarity of a World Cup qualifier in Adelaide, should be enough to entice people through the gates.

And then maybe a few kids will be doing school projects on Tajikistan later this year.

Paul Marcuccitti’s soccer column is published in InDaily on Mondays. He is a co-presenter of 5RTI’s Soccer on 531 program which can be heard from 10am on Saturdays.