Fulham keeper Mark Schwarzer has called on the senior members of the Australia squad to provide a calming influence as they look to recover from their 4-0 defeat to Germany in their opening World Cup clash.

The Socceroos face Ghana tomorrow in a must-win Group D showdown, minus the suspended Tim Cahill, and the Cottagers stopper reckons there is little time to feel sorry for themselves.

Schwarzer said: “We have got to forget about the Germany game, as difficult as it is.

“We have got to regroup and pick ourselves up and make sure everyone, but especially the senior guys, get together and make sure we put everything into the next two games.

“Obviously, it’s a bitter start for us but everyone expected this to happen (losing to Germany in the first game) so I suppose we are not in a worse position than people expected us to be in.

“It was always going to be tough playing Germany first game – everyone said we were up against it and everyone wrote us off, and I suppose that was justifiable given the result was 4-0.

“But we still believe we are good enough to get through and we still believe we can pick ourselves up.

“There is a lot of work to be done but we have enough ability to change things around and we have got two more games to go. For us, they are like two cup finals and we know now we have to win both.”

Dickson Etuhu was another Fulham star to come up short as his Nigerian side lost 1-0 to Argentina in their first game of the tournament.

But there was better news for Ghana’s John Pantsil, who saw off Serbia, South Africa’s Kagisho Dikgacoi, whose team held Mexico, and Clint Dempsey, scorer of the USA’s equaliser against England.

Meanwhile, former AFC Wimbledon striker Shane Smeltz enjoyed a memorable World Cup debut, setting up Winston Reid for New Zealand’s last-gasp equaliser against Slovakia on Tuesday.