Discussion paper relic - SMFC Museum Tour Notes, circa 2015

As will be evident upon reading the following paragraphs, this is a discussion paper I wrote up in late 2015, after having gone on a sort of reconnaissance mission to various AFL club museums with a couple of South people. Of course, the then necessary commercial considerations saw the club head in a different, more pared back direction to what I'd recommended in this paper. The aesthetic decisions which were taken after this paper was written and which ended up in the culmination of the social club space as it became manifest in early 2017, I had nothing to do with; I don't even know if anyone even read the discussion paper. That's not something I resent; it's just the way things turned out.

SMFC Museum Tour Notes

On Tuesday 20^th October 2015, John Kyrou, George Kouroumalis and myself (Paul Mavroudis) travelled to several AFL club museums as part of preliminary research into the establishment and possible layout of the proposed/planned South Melbourne FC museum. 

This document contains descriptions of four AFL club museum/historical spaces; notes on the relative strengths and weakness of each approach; and possible lessons that we at South Melbourne can learn from each museum when it comes to finally (re-)creating our own museum space.

None of the suggestions and recommendations contained within this document are intended to be viewed as final – rather, they are intended to provoke discussion about the kind of museum and story that we would like to tell both to ourselves and to people from outside the club.

Hawthorn

Hawthorn’s museum was located upstairs from its club offices, in its own dedicated space. Partly because of this, the Hawks were able to charge admittance ($2/$1) for entry into the museum, though in addition to that they also have a ‘Friends of the Museum’ group which, on payment of a $10 annual fee, allows members to visit the museum as frequently as they wish – while also accumulating funds for upkeep of the museum. 

The museum space consisted of a large central room containing most of the displays, as well as an adjacent room containing honour boards and full sized portraits, and another room for storage and the curator’s office. The displays in the main room were impressive. The many display cabinets were filled with trophies, jerseys, photographs, news articles, match programs and assorted merchandise. The walls were filled with painted murals and profiles of important individuals from the club’s history.

It is quite obvious that along with the considerable expense and care provided to the museum, Hawthorn has also established a very strong sense of trust with its membership and supporter base (and its past players) to the effect that it has been able to receive many different donations of valuable and rare items. This sense of trust is the least immediately obvious but perhaps most important feature of their museum.

Collingwood

Collingwood’s museum was located in the main foyer of its main office space, with easy access to both its reception desk and the club merchandise store. In comparison to the Hawthorn museum, Collingwood’s space was far less cluttered and much more minimalist. It had a dedicated wall for each of its premiership trophies, and a small three sided display area for artefacts, which was largely centred on the 1990 premiership. 

In that sense the Collingwood museum was somewhat underwhelming, especially when one considers the amount of material available at its disposal. However, Collingwood’s use of black and white Perspex honour boards was a very effective means of paying tribute to the contribution of players, volunteers and other persons associated with the club. Collingwood’s black and white colours, used badly, could have seen a real mess of an aesthetic style, but this was avoided by the large open spaces and the thoroughly modern nature of its displays.

And while Collingwood’s museum may have been small, the club also has an official digital component to its historical wing (http://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/), providing information on a wide range of topics.

Carlton

Carlton’s museum was more or less split into two parts, both as offshoots of its main foyer/reception area. Their premiership cups were stacked in glass cabinets, spaced out so that it reached all the way up to the top of the very tall ceilings. While creating an imposing presence, the absurd height of the display meant that many if not most of the trophies were inaccessible to the general public.

Along the corridor which lead to the gymnasium, a complex mosaic made up of custom made tiles showcased many of the most important players and moments in the club’s history. While aesthetically this was not to my taste, it was nevertheless a very clever concept and a novel way of getting around one of Carlton’s main problems when it comes to a museum display – their sonorous and overwhelming navy blue, which is a difficult colour to make look lively in comparison to those available to many other clubs.

Western Bulldogs

In contrast with the other clubs, the Bulldogs lacked any sort of museum. This is understandable, as the club has had far less success than the other cIubs which we visited. Instead, along the passageway to the player rooms, in an offshoot from the café/foyer, there was a decade by decade summary of the club’s history along the wall. The opposite side of the wall contained their 1924 ‘champions of Victoria’ flag. Within the limits of its own history and resources, this wall was an effective means of displaying the club’s history, using the club’s colour scheme in a very clever manner. In that sense, the Bulldogs were the most effective at telling a linear story about their club, whereas for the other three clubs the emphasis was on providing a visceral/emotional sense of the relevant club’s culture and success.

Other notes

Aside from the museum aspects of each club, attention was also paid to the other areas of the front office space of the clubs. In all examples, natural light was an important feature of the interior design. Clever and consistent use of club colours was also an integral feature of each office. This was not merely limited to signage and club personnel/employees in official merchandise, but also in Carlton’s case as part of the aesthetic design of its café (including furniture).

Club and corporate branding was also prominent at each club, both inside and outside the main entrances. These included full scale reproductions of famous moments in club history, murals, statues, and prominent display of Hall of Fame members of honour boards.

In all cases, the club merchandise shops were open and prominent in the floor plan, though Hawthorn’s was perhaps smaller due to limited office/floor space. While this may not be an option for South Melbourne in the immediate future, due to an at present limited fan base, smaller merchandise range and lower foot traffic, it is worth considering the best way to include a merchandise stall within the social club space.

With regards to the office spaces of most of the clubs visited, with their very large backroom operations it means that very few supporters will see most of the office space. Even with much smaller staffing at South Melbourne, the office space should still be rationalised in such a way that club reception/membership services is given priority at the entrance to the building

Summary and possible directions for a South Melbourne museum

While each museum/historical space offered something different, Hawthorn’s museum was the clear standout. Its dedicated space, as well as large and diverse collection of artefacts set it apart from the others. In addition, its emphasis on working with its supporter base to collect more items, as well having a museum supporters group has undoubtedly set it up well for the future. 

One weakness which needed to be overcome, and was perhaps only completely successfully done so in the case of Hawthorn, is that the AFL has a limited range of trophies on offer. Nevertheless Hawthorn overcame this problem by including a range of minor trophies, but principally through its large collection of artefacts.  

A South Melbourne Hellas museum, in the event that it is granted approximately 25 metres of wall space (as indicated in discussions), will be able to incorporate the best of each of the AFL museums that were visited, while also tailoring it both to the club’s culture and the artefacts and materials available at its disposal. It is likely that the most effective way of using that space would be to use glass cabinets for various displays and artefacts at a lower (waist high) level, while perhaps including information displays on the walls behind them at eye level.

It was agreed that most prominence should be given to the national league titles and Oceanian championship. While not ignoring the other achievements of the club, it is these achievements which should be highlighted. While a more thorough inventory is needed than the one undertaken when the old social club was packed away, and though many items have gone missing over several decades, the club nevertheless has a wealth of physical materials that could be displayed, from the important to the ephemeral.

One aspect which a properly designed social club and museum space will see the club benefit is in showing that the club takes its history seriously, and thus providing a sense to supporters and former players who may have valuable or notable South Melbourne items in their possession that the club is able to take care of them. This would have been a problem in the past, as record keeping of such materials was relatively poor, and the former museum space was poorly laid out and set up.

None of the club museums we visited had any interactive or digital elements in their spaces. The reasons for this are unknown. With the multimedia expertise available at South Melbourne, this is an area which we believe that South Melbourne could provide something novel in terms of a museum experience. While at this moment in time it is a goal possibly out of reach in terms of the resources at our disposal (as well as more immediate priorities), I believe that a dedicated online portal for South Melbourne’s history, related to but separate from the main site, would enhance both the overall historical record keeping at the club, but also create a space for people to access our history outside of a match day or visit to the club. While in some cases the lack of a digital history portal at AFL clubs has been made up for by individuals or supporter groups (such as Carlton’s Blueseum or Melbourne’s Demonwiki), realistically, we do not have the size and kind of supporters that would be able to create such a portal.

The incorporation of a Bulldogs style wall history may well be part of the main museum space, but it could also be used in others of the club rooms – in corridors leading to and from the social club, or in the players’ race for example. Its main strength is that it can provide a relatively cheap, concise and efficient means of telling South Melbourne’s story.

Another recommendation of our group is that while without wishing to go overboard with the club’s ethnic past in the manner that the Melbourne Knights do, it would not be wise to sideline the club’s Greek past, nor the name ‘South Melbourne Hellas’. Instead, that past should be used in a way to show strong roots leading forward to the present, showcasing a club that is comfortable in its own skin, neither hopelessly tied to the past, but not ashamed of it either.

To that end, some space will be need to be dedicated in one way or another to noting the histories of the three predecessor clubs, as well as potentially creating a space for the South Melbourne Women in the event that they become reunited with the main body of the club. 

In conclusion, the chief aims of any South Melbourne Hellas museum should be as follows:

• To provide a cogent and linear narrative version of the club’s history. 
• To provide a sense of pride for those at the club, whether long-time supporters or new fans. 
• To provide a visceral (or felt/emotional) sense of the club’s culture. 
• To provide a demonstration to the wider South Melbourne family that the club is serious about its history, and that it can therefore be trusted as a home for (elements of) people’s personal collections.

2025 match programs uploaded

For a variety of reasons, club produced match programs have never really been one of Australian soccer's strong points. To be fair, this is not just a soccer thing - Australian sporting culture as a whole tends to not produce club specific programs, instead preffering official league propaganda in the form of things like the AFL's Footy Record. 

I reckon that a club-produced match program has to perform at least one of two functions. One is to engender a sense of community around a club, especially its senior team(s). This will probably mean that the content is probably more informal, and materially cheaper. This works (or worked) better at lower level clubs, where a dedicated volunteer was responsible for doing most of the work, which they would see as a hobby; such program production mostly lives and dies on how long that volunteer can keep doing that job. 

The other option is to project a sense of professionalism, as an extension of the broader match day experience. Thus you get a glossy program, one that, apart from being much obviously an official news organ of a particular club rather than an individual, is also tasked with promoting sponsors and the club's image as a professionally run organisation.

Australian soccer club produced match programs were at their peak during the NSL years, albeit not at all times (1990s were strongest), and certainly not at all clubs (the 1984-1986 split division era was not great). Since the dissolution of the NSL, things have gone downhill. That's understandable on a number of fronts. In the A-League, the uniformity (and conformity) of purpose meant that match programs took on the guise of league endorsed programs. Below the A-League, clubs decided that finite money and volunteer efforts were better spent on other things. This coincided with arrival of the full-blown internet. No longer did you need to wait a week (or a fortnight) for news and write-ups on your team. It was all there on a website, and eventually even that became subservient to social media, at least at those clubs that bothered to update them.

Having said that, 2025 was still a poor year on the Victorian top tier front so far as match program production was concerned. Already an endangered species, with only two clubs regularly producing programs from 2019 onward, this year we got down to just one; that being Green Gully and its cheap (free) and cheerful production, as Melbourne Knights all but ceased producing its long running glossy ($5 in 2025) product. Knights produced a program for their well-attended home match against Preston, but otherwise it seems like that was the last hurrah, for whatever reason - cost, lack of volunteers, lack of interest, or even just being a victim of the internal strife that club went through in 2025.

Football Victoria also managed to produce match programs for the Dockerty and Nike FC Cup finals this year, albeit not available in print form; which is nevertheless an expansion on their efforts in 2024 (NPL and NPLW grand finals), and the years before that (nothing that I'm aware of). That's all a slightly long-winded way of saying that I have uploaded the three match programs related to South Melbourne that I'm aware of this year - Gully away, and the Dockerty and Nike FC Cup final programs.

Australian Championship fixtures updated on here

Yes, not dead. Busy, but not dead. Tinkering with a few things during this pseudo off-season when I can.

Anyway, I've updated the fixtures page to include the upcoming Australian Championship. 

It's unlikely that I'll be traveling to any of the away games, but you never know.

I suppose the main thing to note is the kickoff time for the match in Brisbane, because by that stage daylight saving will have kicked in, and thus Queensland will be in a different time zone. Because my work's HQ and my manager are up in Queensland, I have to take this stuff into account from October to April every year, which I hate. But you're smart and well-travelled people, and you can figure stuff like that out. 

I will not be updating the public transport guide for the away venues, but I will offer the following general advice based on very cursory googling. 

• Jubilee Oval in Sydney - Take a Waterfall via Wolli Creek train from Central. Get off at Carlton, and the walk is about 600 metres to the ground. I don't know, Sydney uses some daft letters and numbers thing for its train services which is too galaxy brained for this Melburnian.
• Magic Park in Newcastle is a short walk from Broadmeadow Station. I assume most people attending would fly in to Newcastle, so the following advice is moot, but catching the 9:33 Moree train from Sydney's Central Station will get you there by 12:00.
• Perry Park in Brisbane - you gotta take some bus from some place, then walk. Let's be serious, though, you're not doing that.

 

Around the grounds, on the couch, at the breakfast table...

It's a good thing Manny's been keeping the Blue and White Views site ticking over, because you wouldn't want to be relying on this site anymore. Though I do miss the paper fanzine, at the very least for having the player roster at easy reference.

Let's call it a day, month, year, forever - South Melbourne 0 Port Melbourne 2
Let's ignore the Dockerty Cup games for a moment. After the write-off of the preceding ten league games - two draws, eight losses, one senior coach gone, no strikers, and a goals per game ratio of about 0.3 - this is where it had to start to get good again. Maybe not "good", but at least "better". We need at least nine points from the next four league games, all against fellow relegation candidates. To be honest, "better" probably wasn't going to be good enough either, since we'd had a taste of "better" against Avondale and Oakleigh, but those are the games where you need to be "good", not just "better" than whatever slop you've been producing for three months. "Better" did show up in this game, eventually, but not before we were 2-0 down after 15 minutes against the bottom side, courtesy of them having an actual striker, as well as a gross misstep in team selection and arrangement by Uncle Buck which allowed said striker to stroll through at will. After that, I mentally started preparing for relegation or the end of the club, whichever came first. 

Modern football is rubbish
In between one globally irrelevant match and another, there was this thing that everyone was talking about - the title match for the secondary European club competition. Since it involved Old Mate - you know who I'm talking about - there was indeed heightened local interest, as well as the chance for our club to make hay while the sun still remotely shines. I turned the TV on at about the 55 minute mark I think, saw that the score was favourable to the nominal good guys, and then while wishing Old Mate all the success in the world, proceeded to hate almost every second of this spectacle. Manchester United? Rubbish. Tottenham Hotspur? More rubbish! After all my angst about Angeball vs Esteball, especially during the theatrical run of Ange and the Boss, it turns out while we had ditched Esteball (albeit for negligible benefit at this point in time), Old Mate had adopted it in his hour of need. It was filth. But these things happen, and sometimes all you can do is hope for an arsey goal, a keeper having a blinder, an acrobatic goal line clearance, and an opponent who couldn't score against you if they had another month to do so up their sleeves.

More depressing, from the point of view of someone who pretty much never watches top level football played in proper stadiums, in front of lots of people, and broadcast with all the bells and whistles, was how anodyne the experience was. Is there any personality left at that level of football? Everything has been made so slick, so clean, so neat, that you wonder if any of it leaves any sort of lasting memory? I'm not asking for a return to abject squalor, but where is the grime, where is the hint of individuality, of difference? It's a lot of old man yelling at clouds, and I'm probably a touch too young to be doing that. Well, at least Old Mate managed to do the thing that he said he would. I'm sure it'll play out well for him.

Let's not listen
Somewhere in between the previous South game and the next one, Greg Blake wrote something quite good about the woes of our club (and to a lesser extent, the Knights) that had a solid diagnosis, but also included a completely wrong solution, at least so far as South is concerned. But even if Blakey had been right, it doesn't matter, because no writing on the game matters anymore. No one listens, everyone moves on quickly. 

The most underappreciated hero in world history - Melbourne Knights 0 South Melbourne 2
Needing at least nine points from this run of four absolutely crucial league games, we'd already missed out on three, and now here we were, the 1991 NSL grand final re-match, now in the form of 14th (them) and 13th (us), on our knees in the most heinous combined position these two clubs had faced in their 65 years of competing against each other. The attendance was somehow better than I expected, though I'm aware that it did include some neutrals passing through for the sake of... morbid curiosity? Paying respects to the (soon to be) deceased? For further evidence of the host's decline, there was no match program produced by the home side for this game, which means that we're down to only Gully producing match programs on a regular basis. To be a little fair, there was a match program in the Knights' merch stall for their game against Preston, which seems to suggest that we're not worth the bother of a grand occasion anymore. Fair enough. Greg Blake's right, we're not special anymore, haven't been for a long time, but damn it, I still don't want to be like everyone else.

As for the match, we came out with the kind of intensity which might have been useful at the start of the game the week before, with the desperation move of central defender/defensive mid Lucas Inglese up front not looking completely bonkers in the first half hour or so. With supporter marshal vest on, and not wanting to be anywhere near anyone else except a select few, I ventured out to the outer side, the dismantled terrace steps meaning all that was left was red mud that turned out to be very hard to get off my shoes, and a brilliant vantage point from which to view Jack Pope (pictured above) etch his name into our exponentially marginal folklore. Cracking opener, opportunist second, and were we really going to do this? Like, maybe if not survive, than at least take these jerks down with us? The answer to that would have to wait another nervy hour. Eventually local security came by and politely told us that we had to relocate from the out of bounds area - though us two with the marshals vests could have stayed if we liked - and then we plonked ourselves near the bench, in time to see Pope get sent off for retaliation, Nahuel Bonada prevented from getting sent off by a quick thinking physio, and our "local oaf" of a back-up keeper prevented from getting sent off by the fact that there were ten people ahead of him who he would have to barrel through first; though, my word, he did try.

After that, it became all about survival for us. They botched a few chances, especially just before halftime, and eventually ran out of time completely. Whatever sympathy or empathy I might have had for their club's plight was negated by the fact that their supporters are still directing violent, racist, and violently racist chants towards anyone they consider subhuman. Then after the game their whole board resigned, which it'd be nice to take some credit for, but I reckon that was something that was brewing for awhile, at least going by the press release the departing board put out.

Kup Komedy Kapers Kontinued - South Melbourne 2 Pascoe Vale 1
Following our Pyrrhic cup victory against Bentleigh a few weeks before, and coming off a solid enough league win against the Knights on a Friday, our most favourable cup draw since 2019 continued on the following Tuesday, against the team sitting either rock-bottom or near enough to it in the division two below our own. Remember when we needed an extra time goal to beat these guys in a semi final in 2015, and they brought enough fans to be loud and rip flares? That's the beauty and terror of promotion and relegation though - yesterday's glories belong to yesterday, and (contextually) torpid irrelevance is always just around the corner. But the Cup is the great even-upperer. So we had not the strongest team we could put out there, but they had their under 23s. So, you think we should have been OK. Wrong. The visitors' reserves team ran rings around us, and took a 1-0 lead into the break. Maybe if they kept the foot on the pedal in the second half, I wouldn't be so offhand about the whole experience. I suppose having gone through something not too dissimilar against Preston in 2013, which caused a lot more angst for me, this wasn't quite as bad? I mean it was bad, but I guess our expectations were so low by this point that... look, maybe I'm trying to rationalise too much post-script about something that was a lot worse in the moment. But anyway, Paco sat back, and we worked our way into the game, chucked on a few older heads, and pulled off the comeback with the last kick of the game. Like the win over Bentleigh, considering our relegation predicament, I'm still not sure winning this game was a good idea. 

Meet the Parents - South Melbourne 4 Melbourne Victory (NPL) 2
Because of that unpleasantness from just under a decade ago, and assorted less public and meaningful incidents since then (not only with us) - and I suppose 20 years of social media and off-field hostility - here was the completely overboard security arrangement of having all the Victory supporters on the other side of the ground, and sales to Victory fans cut off an hour before kickoff. Maybe twenty to thirty people were in the northern stand, a long way from the bigger crowd that was there for the infamous 2016 match. And yet it didn't stop the nonsense between our fans and theirs! And yet it wasn't the usual suspects getting involved, that is Clarendon Corner and Victory hools. Except, also, it kinda was the usual suspects! Let's me explain. Outside of the notorious troublemakers who attach themselves to Victory's cause, the only people watching Victory's NPL team are the parents of the players. And what could be worse than having to deal with opposition fans in the stands when they are almost entirely made up of parents? They are so often insufferable at the best of times, taking any criticism of their progeny as a personal attack, when the truth is if you or I or someone supporting South is having a go at an opposition player, we do it because we know very well who they are - in which case, you can tell from the commentary - or because we have no idea who they are; ditto.

Tons of boys and young men go through Victory's academy/NPL programs. Most of them, once they are discarded by the program, will either drop down to lower leagues permanently, or give up the game and do something else with their lives. They are nobodies, just like I am a nobody. We are, both of us, there, but mostly inconsequential. Not yesterday's heroes, not tomorrow's legends. But try telling that to the parents. So while Victory's kids are tearing us apart in the first half, some of our people from the middle of the stand - so, not CC! - are getting a bit chippy, and some of the Victory parents start getting lippy, and it's threatening to boil over. For some reason the parents of the visiting team cannot comprehend that our people don't much care for Melbourne Victory as an entity, including any of its representatives, even transitory ones like those playing for Victory's NPL team. The situation gets settled down soon enough - apparently ex-South player Melvin Becket is in the thick of it, which just adds something to absurdity of the situation - and the Victory parents get shuffled off to the northern stand, which bolsters the numbers by about 200%, and makes the farcical security arrangements a tad more worthwhile.

A few people claim that being at least nominal Victory fans, those parents shouldn't have been allowed in our stand in the first place. Maybe those people are right. But I think it's less them being Victory, and more being parents and family that was the main issue. Really, that kind of thing could have happened at against any club with fans of a similar demographic. As for the game itself, at halftime we were down 2-1 and getting played off the park by a bunch of kids. Relegation was right there, and it looked even more real than after the close of play against Port. But more adjustments, some senior players pulling their fingers out, and we romped home. I don't think anyone was getting carried away with the result, or the performance, but out of the minimum nine points we needed to aim for in this four week stretch, we'd got six. It could have been much worse. 

This is going to cost us - St Albans 2 South Melbourne 2
It was cold, wet, and er... cold. My driver Johnny and I got into Churchill Reserve for free from one of the entrances nearer the training grounds, not thinking much of it - not that we were geniuses or that we were trying to stooge the hosts out of $40 - until it became clear that everyone got in for free, because there was some dinner-dance thing organised by Dinamo going at the same time as the game. It would have been nice as a South fan to have about this earlier, because then I guess we could have promoted it to our own people, and encouraged one or two more of them to show up. So it goes. The game? Nervy first ten minutes, pretty good up until 50 minutes being 2-0 up, and then, well... a deserved for St Albans, and the goal of getting nine points from twelve from this stretch gave me that sinking feeling again - and worse a week later when Victory crunched Oakleigh 5-2, and Dinamo drew with Avondale.

OK, this is just getting stupid now - Dandenong City 1 South Melbourne 1 (South win 3-1 on penalties)
My provisional driver being all the way in Perth, there was no way to get to this game, but also kinda like, no real regret that I was not making the journey all the way to Endeavour Hills. Especially as we were going to lose. I mean, they have a better team, a much better coach (or so some of us like to tell ourselves), a big forward, and familiarity with the cow paddock that they play on. First twenty minutes, so, so. Then bad. Deserved to be down 1-0. Some bold changes in the second half, and things turned around dramatically. Got the equaliser and then, like in so many games this year, ran out of gas. But we somehow got to penalties, including surviving a goal line scramble that's impossible to tell if it crossed the line from all the way here in Sunshine, peering into the dark Australian bush gothic corners of Frank Holohan Soccer Complex via live stream. The home side seemed convinced, but unlike the linesman who gave Andy Brennan his phantom goal against Eastern Lions, the officials decided here that the benefit of the doubt should go to us. Or maybe it hadn't crossed the line here, and they just made a good call.

This Dockerty Cup run, already being hilarious - stray gift horse in the mouth passes, phantom goals, less than convincing or deserved come from behind wins against at times very mediocre opposition -  , reached new heights of comedy in the shoot out. Ex-South men Yagoub Mustafa and Nathaniel Hancock hitting crap penalties, and Javi Lopez not really having to pull out any fancy tricks to save them, or the shot from another bloke that went flying over the bar. Sam Francou with balls of steel to take the second penalty. Three away games out of four to get to the Dockerty Cup semis, and the national stage of the Australia Cup, muddling our way through this otherwise very poor season. It's all been very strange.

Next game
Preston at home today. You probably won't be reading this until after the game anyway.

Final thought
Here's to old mate Savvas Jonis doing what I'm far too polite and/or cowardly to do, and reminding latent and lapsed fans of ours on social media that if you want to talk about current day Hellas, you have to earn that right by being here with us now.

But to get back to the main point. Yes, it's sad that we have latent fans who for whatever reason can no longer bring themselves to attend South matches. That's their choice, and if they want to define themselves by reminiscence alone, there's not much we can do. Those of us who are still attending games appreciate what we have, not just what we had. So by all means if you're a latent fan, enjoy your fill of nostalgia - but don't go complaining about contemporary happenings at the club on or off-field, or the media's treatment of the club - because if you're not going to games yourself, you should probably reconsider the merits of your indignation.

I mean, I suppose those types can comment all they want, but there is absolutely no obligation for us current supporters to pay them any mind, because realistically they are not coming back, no matter how much the club tries to accommodate them. Change the logo? Change the name? Get more Greeks on the field? As if that would make a difference. 

It occurs to me that I may have become a touch more cynical about things over the past eight years.

Precipice - South Melbourne 1 Oakleigh Cannons 2

Not much time for anything more expansive or timely this week. We're in a mess. On field, off field. Running out of players. Unable to bring in players. And every day the ordinary supporter feeling more and more helpless, hopeless, and irrelevant. Helpless to help the club, hopeless for a better future, irrelevant to everyone in Australian soccer, including the people running our club

South of the Border, now in its 18th year of once great but now spotty coverage of this club, has seldom been a haven of positivity. Chalk that down to the main contributor. But every week just seems to get worse. What's there to cling on to right now? NSD and the Oceania fantasy. Here's my conspiracy: the club is being run half-arsed on the field this year (no summer training camp, high school reunion recruitment, Danish nepo-baby, etc) so that we save money and/or get relegated so that we can have our youth team in VPL1 next year while the real seniors play in a fully fledged NSD. It's the only thing that makes sense to me, otherwise we are being run so poorly, you wonder what it is we're doing.

Younger, more rosy-cheeked bloggers like Manny - who is doing a bang up job with Blue and White Views - still has the kind of enthusiasm for the battle that I used to have a long, long time ago, searching for ways to improve, offering suggestions. There is his post, for instance, on better and/or more diverse canteen options. Sounds good, eminently sensible, and some of (like loukoumades) that we used to have before. But last week, when a lot of friends and family turned up early to watch the under 23s curtain raiser, there wasn't even any food. I can understand that somewhat right at kickoff. But a lot of people wandered in to the social club at half time, and found nothing. So before we even branch out to other offerings, could we at least have the current offerings available when people are looking for them?

In another post, Manny wonders where the club communications with its members are? We were once at the forefront of social media stuff which, while not a like for like replacement for news direct from the board, at least felt something more than the barebones stuff we put out. A few Facebook posts with results, fixtures, and players birthdays - the bulk of what we get now - is not enough. Manny is right - we need direct, and more frequent communication from the board about the ongoing plans for the club. When Nick Maikousis took over as president, we were promised more frequent member forums, and for a little while we at least had something like that. But now we can't even schedule an AGM, which apart from a moral imperative for a member-based club, is also a legal obligation. You would like to think that people involved in their personal lives in elevated positions in the corporate and legal worlds would have a finer appreciation for that legal obligation, but for some reason the ordinary South Melbourne member is treated less important.

You've got the club's general manager David Clarkson making a brief sojourn into Clarendon Corner last week asking how we can bring people back to the club, but not sticking around long enough to get a thorough answer. Yes, I would love David Clarkson to have the authority to gather that information from the remaining fans and relay that info to the club hierarchy, since we don't really have any other way of communicating it, unless - god forbid - we break open the EGM petition glass. I'm happy to offer an impromptu (and probably unhelpful, doom merchant style) thesis on the subject, but it's not just about me - it's about all of us. Speaking of all us, if you aren't a corporate member, then you basically do not exist to the club outside of match day (unless it's to apparently get banned off the club's socials). I get it, the sponsors are important, and they need their own events. But no room for even one fan table at the jersey night? Also, did you know there was a jersey night? It's a good thing that the Olympic friendly earlier this year doubled up as a family day event, because we haven't had a family day for years otherwise. We didn't even have an informal Christmas gathering last year.

So, again, who and what is this club for? And if the fully-formed NSD doesn't get up, then what? Even if we survive relegation, what are we doing? Sure, go to a game, watch a dreadful refereeing decision put a team already on the back foot even more on the back foot, but focusing on that misses the forest for the trees. How did we get to the stage where one obviously poor refereeing decision could send us down a division? How can Oakleigh have Pierce Waring on the bench, a player who probably would be starting everywhere else, while South fans in the stands are wondering who (with no disrespect intended) each new kid is on the bench? What is the plan? Are we just killing time? Should we wind the club up? It would free up a lot of time on the weekend for me, but I would miss some of the people.

Next game
In a few hours against Port. Oh boy.

Final thought
Anyway, if you want more timely, positive, and good natured South material go to Blue and White Views, also available as a Facebook page.

Pyrrhic victory - Bentleigh Greens 1 South Melbourne 2

What an amazing night. I finished work just after midday (the Queenslanders who run the company call it an "early mark"), so I was able to get home, get changed, and not have to lug my bag of fruit and the rest of my stuff to Kingston Heath later that day. Thanks to Melbourne's magnificent public transport system, I got to Cheltenham station much earlier than I expected, so I had dinner at the Indian joint with pretty much only five star and one star online reviews (I'd give it 3.5) across the street from the station, before eventually heading to the ground.

Now while I was at the bus stop across from the station, I got notifications from at least two different people that rather than the game not being televised, it was actually being televised! Live-streamed to the dozens of people watching for reasons of so-called entertainment, and also a few thousand watching for reasons of loving the odds, not the game. Quite how Football Victoria came up with the idea to stream this match a couple of hours before kickoff, I do not know. Would it have changed my plans, but which I mean, would I have stayed home instead of making the long journey to and from Cheltenham from Sunshine? Maybe. Maybe not. But it would have been nice to have the choice, I suppose.

I did offer to that night's designated match commentator to help out on special comments, which some people may remember I did for a couple of games back in 2019 (to rave reviews, albeit mostly by people who knew me), but it turned out it was much more important to don a supporters' marshal vest, and be part of what looked like a knockoff Croatian I&D crew. Fair enough.

In the context of this particular season - where we are running the very real risk of relegation - this was perhaps the worst possible result. We won the game, which means that we have to play at least one more match that will make preparation for the relegation avoidance battle more difficult. We also won this game in extra time, which means we had to play an extra half hour in a midweek fixture, when we have a very tough game on the Sunday. We also lost two more experienced players to injury, which will make the task associated with league survival that much more difficult.

The loss of Jake Marshall (calf), our most solid defensive player, is going to be brutal at both ends of the field. Apart from his service at the defensive end, he's one of the few remaining aerial threats we have up front from corners. Worse, losing Andy Brennan (hamstring) - regardless of whether you think he's too old, or hasn't had a good season - means the loss of one of the few line breaking players at our disposal. So no Marshall, no Brennan, no Bonada, no Archibald, no Moller (for the sake of thoroughness) - it's not looking good, by which I mean, it's looking worse than before. 

And Max Mikkola's even abandoned the long throws, I'm not sure whether due to instruction, spite, or injury. Our one now only semi-dependant, near-obsolete weapon, and that's been tossed aside for... reasons. Maybe good ones, I don't know. But it was wild to see that on a narrow field - quite strange to see such a thing, considering every team has been widening their pitch where possible to nullify the long throw - Bentleigh's gone the other way. Well, I'm sure George Katsakis has his reasons.

And the loss was right there for the taking, too. We weren't bad, all things considered - we've been much worse this season - but everything in the final third was absolute rubbish. When they were ascendant in this see-sawing match, Bentleigh looked much more likely to score than we did in our ascendant phases. Eventually a cheap midfield turnover saw the Greens take the lead late, and blessed defeat was in sight. Then we had to go ruin it by scoring an equaliser. After all that, you might as well go win the game, right? Andriko Mesourouni's tap in from the one time we actually put in a proper low ball across the box, so there's that lesson to be taken out of this game. Play a striker, win the match? Madness, in its own way. 

Next game
Tomorrow (Sunday) at home against Oakleigh to round out the first half of the season. In a strange turn of events, the under 23s will actually be the curtain raiser.

Dockerty Cup draw
The draw for rounds six and seven was held on Wednesday night, where it was revealed that in the next round we will be hosting Pascoe Vale. It's the first time since 2019 - so, before the pandemic - where  we've been drawn against a side lower than the Victorian second tier. Back then it was Doveton, of course, after which we ended up signing their goalkeeper Josh Dorron. Maybe we'll get a striker out of this match? Who knows.

There were so many worse match-ups that could have happened. Knights again, of course. One of the many NPL sides still remaining. Another Greek club, for another chance at local community humiliation. North Sunshine, where I assume the People's Champ is still playing. But no, we got lucky, because we've got Pascoe Vale, currently bottom of the VPL2. Of course considering our own form and personnel issues, there's no guarantee that this will turn out well anyway, but we could have got a lot worse.

If we do get past Paco, we'll be away to the winner of Dandenong City or Brunswick City. so we're cooked anyway. And what if we did get into the national round of 32 of the Australia Cup? What would we do? Where we would we find useful non-cup tied players to bring into the squad? OK, calm down, one week at a time, we've got more immediate problems to deal with.

Someone should do something about all the problems
Normally I'm partial to the work of Neos Kosmos contributor Dean Kalimniou, who writes interesting articles about all things Hellenic, from the ancient to the now. One area, however, where I refuse to even bother reading him is when he starts talking about soccer, especially Australian soccer - not least because, as one reader of this blog commented, what does it mean for Dean to call himself a South Melbourne supporter, if Dean is never seen at any of our games?

Now I bring that up only to set up the scenario here - Kalimniou wrote an article about Preston Lions trying to trademark the name "Preston Makedonia", and the obvious consternation that would cause members of the Greek community. I'm not going to comment on that, but rather the reaction by some readers on Facebook to the article, as seen to the right. 

Sitting here as a South Melbourne Hellas fan, watching what appears to be an earnest discussion about forming and/or supporting a singular large Greek-backed club in Melbourne, for the sake of Hellenism... and I don't quite know what year I'm in. Is it 1959 all over again? Are we going to see Neos Kosmos articles arguing for the end to the squabbling and petty fiefdoms of Yarra Park and Hellenic, and pleading for unity for the sake of the glory of Hellenism? 

I can't see it happening myself, but I am a pessimist by nature.

Final thought
So our man at Football Australia is gone, and they just announced an $8 million loss. I'm sure this won't impact the National Second Division at all.

Expected - Avondale 4 South Melbourne 0

After disregarding the ample time available to me on Sunday to post something about this game - for whatever reason it seemed more worth my time to harvest the olives from next door's tree that hangs over our fence - I'm just popping in quickly to note that in terms of the scoreline this is probably exactly what we expected; in terms of how it happened, probably about 50/50.

I don't know how many players Avondale had out which made us look slightly better than what we are, and I don't really care. Nor do I care that they kinda put the cue in the rack after 4-0. I do care that we copped three in five minutes, but I also care that the team at least played the game out to the end, and looked closer to scoring a league goal than it has for a couple of months. Don't get me wrong, though - the experience still sucked.

Next game
Tonight, Dockerty Cup away to Bentleigh. This game will not be televised. This game will be televised. Bloody late notice.

New caretaker coach
Having gone through our entire rolodex and being hung up on by everyone they've called - including Mrs Neville from across the street - we finally have a coach to take us through to the end of the NPL season. Welcome back, I suppose, Sinisa Cohadzic, former South youth team coach and technical director.

Final thought
I know that the Dockerty Cup isn't a priority anymore, but... I don't know... I still care about it.

Perspective - Green Gully 1 South Melbourne 0

I could rabbit on about the coaching situation, being winless in the league for several months, having no strikers, no AGM, and many other things, but maybe for one week we can focus on a bigger loss.

I was devastated, and I'm still in shock at the news of the sudden death this week of Con Shomos, longtime Hellas fan and friend to many of us at South Melbourne, especially those in proximity to what's left of Clarendon Corner and the various South forums. Con was as staunch a Hellatzi as you could find, but more importantly, Con was a terrific bloke, and you'd struggle to find anyone at the club with a bad word to say about him. 

When I first met him just under 20 years ago when I came back to the club after my lost weekend away from the game, Con was an older, moderate voice among the then much larger and much broader church that was Clarendon Corner, and he retained that unofficial role up to his sudden passing this week. Along with his late father, he had his sons with him, the youngest of whom would jump on you in the old social club. Being 15 to 20 years older than the majority of Clarendon Corner's early 20s cohort, Con had a broader perspective and a more mellow approach than most of us to the way the club was run. Even now, nearly 20 years on from when most of us met him, most of us were still playing catch up.

Con had a dry, subtle sense of humour, but it seldom if ever ventured into cruelty. More than once he managed to burst the bubble of my outsized sense of moral superiority, but I never felt bad when he did it. He was adept at being able to disagree without being disagreeable, something that I still wish that I was better at. He was generous in spirit and in action. His generosity was ordinary and expected, but no less valuable for its simplicity. Need a lift to the nearest station? Easy. Need some help to pack something away, or to set something up? If Con could help, he would. Need a sensible voice on the forums and social media to represent South fans? Con did his bit, without any grandstanding.

Need someone to volunteer to man the barbecue back in the days when Clarendon Corner would have its annual match against Original Melbourne 21? Con was your man. He was my captain when I played for CC White against CC Blue in the curtain raiser to the main game. He got members of Clarendon Corner employment at the company he used to work at, which maintained the copying, printing, and ID card services at local universities. Again, not an extraordinary gesture, but a gesture nevertheless done out of love for South Melbourne Hellas and its people.

For those of us at South who knew him well, he was variously an indoor soccer teammate, or a fellow gig goer and guitar enthusiast. He had a predilection for bands from the Aussie pub scene that many have forgotten, but he still kept an eye on what was going on in the now. He was a footy fan in the way many in Melbourne are, not quite as dedicated as the most fanatical, but still aware of who was doing well and who wasn't. Though Hellas was his sporting alpha and omega, Con had more than a soft spot for the Pies, and I'll never forget the 2010 Queen's Birthday match a few of us South people went to, and not just because it was also Gains' first footy match, which ended in a bloody draw. 

Myself, Con, and another Con, at South's 50th
anniversary gala ball at Crown Casino in 2009.

Con was an enthusiastic traveler to South's interstate and overseas sojourns, even as they became rarer following the end of the NSL. Those who shared the trips to Singapore and the Gold Coast certainly have their stories, but I'll never forget the 2008 Canberra trip where Con, who had driven up with his boys, hooked up a speaker to his car to play a recording of Lefteri's trumpet for the patrons at AIS Field 14. He was pleasant to sit and enjoy a meal with in the social club, as well as to sit with towards the back of our grandstand, where he was a fixture at our home games. He had his favourite players and the ones he didn't like so much, just like the rest of us, because he was one of us. He will be missed.

My sincerest condolences to all of Con's friends and family, especially his three boys, Nathan, Nicholas, and James.

Next game
Avondale away today.

Final thought
What else to say? There have certainly been better times to be a South fan. Hopefully some more of those better times are not too far away.

Another sunny day - Eastern Lions 0 South Melbourne 3

Turning up to Gardiners Creek Reserve for the first time since I went to watch Eastern Lions vs Mornington eleven years ago (also a Football Chaos match!), I was expecting not quite the worst, but rather, who knows what. It'd been a hell of a week. It'd been a hell of an eight weeks. Reports from both sides of the ledger last Saturday was that Eastern Lions had three or four of their better players out. Goodness knows why. When we were drawn against each other, they were winless. After a coaching change, they'd picked up a couple of wins. For us, there was no Nahuel Bonada nor Max Mikkola, apparently due to injuries, though I did spot the latter among the onlookers.

You don't often see the club's official Facebook
 account reply directly to our supporters.

Also among the onlookers was Oakleigh Cannons general manager and occasional unlicenced doctor, Aki Ionnas. There was also one George Katsakis, which given the rumours going around about him being a possible candidate for our vacant senior men's coaching job, got tongues wagging. Nevertheless, Occam's Razor suggests that his primary reason for being there was in his capacity as Bentleigh Greens coach, as the Greens were due to play the winner of Saturday's match after having beaten George Cross 3-2 earlier in the week. The secondary reason would have been that Katsakis gets to a lot of games anyway, albeit probably not so many outside the Greek community club scene.

Still, people like to talk, and there's much to talk about. For what it's worth, all that I was able to glean from the more vaguely reputable people I spoke to was that no decision had been made at the time; and, as it turns out, no decision has been made publicly by the time I posted this blog up. I'd also heard from someone else that Goran Lozanovski had been asked to indicate his interest, but he had declined. Harder to verify that in any way, but it's probably legit. 

As for the match itself, there really isn't much that can be said. We did not look utterly transformed, in the sense that we had rediscovered some old mojo. We were, nevertheless, the better team throughout the game, and at least looked up for the battle from the start. George Mells, Esteban Quintas' chief whipping boy this season, got a start and made his mark. An early goal settled whatever nerves there might have been, for me for no other reason than it looked like a normal goal - a turnover, a couple of nice passes, and a finish from the six yard box. Hardly revelatory stuff, unless you've been South Melbourne in 2025, where even by our set piece dependant standards of the past few seasons, we'd barely scored any goals from alternative outlets this year. 

Then the second goal, a square ball across the backline to no one, not centre back nor goalkeeper, and Rob Harding bagged his second after the goalkeeper's initial save of an earlier shot. Lions had put some balls into our box, but there was nothing particularly threatening about most of them. The second half was messier. harder to watch all round. An Andy Brennan shot hit the crossbar, came down, was cleared away and was then called a goal by the linesman. I'm not sure said linesman was in the best position to make that call, and neither the Eastern Lions bench, who were in even worse position, let alone the South fans behind that goal, seemed convinced that it had crossed the line. So it goes. Subs were made, and I assume we came through largely unscathed injury wise. Pleasant day out, but nothing to get too excited about, even if the ball was on the ground a lot more than we've become accustomed to.

Next game
Away to Green Gully on Friday night. It's going to be wet, Leigh and Tyson are still going to be coaching, and there's going to be fifteen million other games on at the same time. I just hope that Gully still do match programs.

How the other half live / If you know your history
While we're on the subject. I don't normally take much of an interest in matters A-League, but I do occasionally take a perverse interest in some of the off-field stuff that goes on there when it intrudes on my social media feeds. Recently there's been some stuff about Football Australia and Melbourne Victory banning certain individuals from the Melbourne Victory's North Terrace supporter group, which of course elicited another infamous supporter group press release missive. So far, no normal.

But while rubbernecking through the responses to a recent missive on the subject on the NT's Facebook page, I did come across this curious response

After initial situation of getting my hackles all ruffled had fizzled out, the comments struck me as missing the point. Northern Terrace, the biggest organised supporter group in Australian soccer history, being compared to the remnants (with the recent exception of Preston) of suburban soccer supporter groups on life support, is just wild. And Thunder and its fans not being punished? Thunder was mauled by Football Federation Victoria following the 2012 grand final which included the infamous rocket flare.

But more to the point - when was the last time a flare was actually lit at a South game by South fans? Not that I've been keeping a tally of such things on a spreadsheet anywhere (I only recently made a spreadsheet to keep tabs on my work from days and expenses for tax purposes), but the last flare lit by someone who was nominally a South fan that I can remember would have been ten years ago, when we played Heidelberg at Lakeside. That night also included an attempt by persons affiliated with the flare lighters (or possibly even just the same person) attempting to steal a Heidelberg banner. The result of those shenanigans? That person, and perhaps a few others, were banned by South Melbourne, A year later, the main person banned from that 2015 game turned up at Lakeside supporting Victory's NPL team against us, and being subsequently banned by Football Victoria for his part in the violence perpetrated by that group of Victory fans that attacked South supporters. On December 17th, 2022, said fan became Bucket Man. 

I suppose the main point of the condensed history above here is that, well, actually, South Melbourne has banned people for pyro and related shenanigans. Does banning people from attending your games stop them from doing stupid shit? There's never any guarantees on that. But can a club, by enforcement of said bans, at least make it so that when those people are moved on, they are at least no longer your problem? Definitely, at least to some degree. Naturally it's much easier to do this at a club which has not many fans to begin with than it is for one with over ten thousand most weeks. But if you're going to turn this into an old soccer/new football comparison (yawn), we should at least get the details right.

But again, to be clear - people like this have been a problem in Australian soccer for decades. They've been at turns banned and appeased, castigated and then used in promotional campaigns. They can spring up  anywhere, any time (good chance someone will pop up at South vs Preston that we don't and will never see again after that), and it's usually a matter of one of two outcomes - either they quickly get bored quickly of whatever club or scene they've attached themselves to, or they hang around long enough to eventually force someone's hand because one of them has cross some critical line of the law or good taste. Then it's up to not just governing bodies, or the clubs to deal with the issue, but also the fans nearest to them. It really has to be all three, and from the latter, that means a wholesale form of social ostracism. Unfortunately, history suggests that last aspect is the hardest to achieve, because there's usually enough of a rump within the relevant supporter base which tolerates or sympathises enough with the transgressive supporters, that the combined efforts of everyone else to get rid of these people just can't take hold.

Final thought
Being driven home from the game last week, and I've got my glasses off and just doomscrolling on my phone, when my driver, who has stopped at the lights at some intersection just outside the southern part of the CBD says "what the fuck", and I look up and there's some chick in hot pants on the pedestrian crossing juggling three balls. It takes all kinds, I guess.

Now what? - South Melbourne 0 Heidelberg United 3

Well, that was one of the more dispiriting things that I've seen as a South fan. Apart from a 15 minute period in the first half where we at least got the ball up field and won a few set pieces, last Sunday was disastrous. For the vast majority of the match, we could not get the ball; in the second half, we could barely get over the half way line. Heidelberg were able to zip from one end of the field to the other with ease. Quite how it was 0-0 at halftime is anyone's guess. We were clapping the team just for winning a corner; meanwhile the Berger fans were disappointed that they weren't putting away clear one-on-one chances. That's where it's at now - looking like a team one or two divisions below where we actually are.

Once the first goal went in - via a deflection, but that piece of luck for the Bergers only made up for the lack of it earlier on - the team capitulated. Most worryingly, it capitulated psychologically. Those players on the field lost all hope and desire, becoming training cones, mere cannon fodder. Those who were benched were furious - at themselves, at the coach, at the entire situation. The star recruit was brought on, but he must be living hell on earth. The only real striker we have left was brought on, but he's hurt, and what's he supposed to do in a one against five situation anyway?

And at the end of it all, there was the coach making the call that his time was up. All that we could infer watching on from the stand, as Esteban Quintas gathered the players around him for a brief chat, and then acknowledging the crowd on his way out, was that he had made the call himself to step down. Somehow, for those of us who have wanted to see the back of him for some time, it was the final indignity - that Quintas had more sense that his time was up and was willing to fall on his own sword, than those at the club who had decided to keep Quintas on seemingly indefinitely.

It was such a soul-sucking experience that you wonder what the plan was for this year? Go cheap as hell for the NPL, and bank it all on the Australian Championship being a success? I've never been a fan of Esteban Quintas, but how did we end up making our off-season recruiting the equivalent of a high school reunion, and some random nepo-baby Dane who was probably here on holiday anyway? That's something those in charge of the football department might want to cover at the next AGM, assuming that we ever have a next AGM. Maybe that will happen after the new coach is announced, whoever that is. Lots of names being thrown around, but none seemingly of much recent reputation. That's assuming anyone of note actually wants to coach us.

Remarkably, considering the nature of the loss, a lot of people stayed back in the social club after the game. Usually people are desperate to get out of there, regardless of the timeslot and the result, and this was a particularly disastrous result and performance. Yet, people hung back. 

So ends this extended period of strangeness
The hiring of Esteban Quintas as coach of South Melbourne Hellas was the culmination of a series of decisions. First, there was the decision to give Chris Taylor a five year contract, with the addition of job titles and responsibilities that he never really wanted. Then, for whatever reason, he was sacked on the eve of season 2018, after all the players had been signed up for the year. Whatever the merits of that decision to sack Taylor, the way the players were deceived into signing up for 2018 created a black hole of trust in management, which essentially required most of those players to be let go at some point, because they sure as hell wouldn't want to stay. The Sasa Kolman era started with a bang, and then quickly collapsed. Con Tangalakis was brought in, but that didn't work either. And then we hired a coach with almost zero senior football coaching experience, who was connected to the Genova International School of Soccer academy, not my idea of a reputable soccer entity. He was also an outlier in that he was not Greek, nor was he an ex-player of ours. 

Quintas got us to survive 2019, just. 2020 didn't look promising, but COVID soon sorted that out. Apart from a sputtering FFA Cup/Dockerty Cup run, 2021 wasn't great either, but COVID sorted that out, too. 2022, 2023, and 2024 all ended up with grand final appearances, but through a mixture of outrageous misfortune (key strikers missing for 2022 and 2023, as well as injured players), and poor tactics and management (not taking off your one consistent line breaker in Andy Brennan before he got sent off in the 2024 semi), we ended up with no league titles in that three year span, and a for and against tally of 0-10. There were celebratory moments though - finally in 2024, we picked up a trophy under Esteban through a grinding, fortunate penalty shootout win in the Dockerty Cup. We also had a great run in the Australia Cup, albeit once more the final game of our season was marred by not having our main striker up front. Maybe things could have gone differently against Macarthur if Harrison Sawyer was there. Wouldn't that have been something? And Esteban was voted by his peers as coach of the year in 2024.

But overall, despite the high ladder positions of the 2022-2024 span, the experience was an incredibly demoralising one, at least for me. We were defensive on default. We often had no central midfield, at least not an attacking one. As most teams grew out of the physical, second-ball style of play that was a feature of Victorian soccer for so long, we became bogged down in it. Going to matches became tedious, an experience in religious self-flagellation. Instead of going to experience joy, we went to experience the pain of devotion, with little tangible earthly reward. Somehow, for myself and others around me, winning under Quintas often felt like losing. And losing, of course, felt even worse. 

Though I was never a fan, I will give Quintas his dues. He often had to do more with less compared to many of his predecessors. He gave more youth team players meaningful opportunities than pretty much every South coach in the last twenty years, with the exception perhaps of the by necessity early John Anastasiadis years. Some of those young players worked out better than others, but at least they got a chance.

Quintas was a hard worker. He studied opponents in depth, thought deeply about the game, and created complex plans for the players. A recently departed player, who played under both Taylor and Quintas, has related the difference between the two. Taylor would give minimal instruction during the week, and got by on generally putting the right players in the right position and let them go for it. On the other hand, Quintas would fill his whiteboards with ink, and would provide endless instruction. 

Yet somehow on game day, the game plan always looked the same. For the last half decade, everyone in Victorian soccer knew what to expect when playing against South Melbourne. For all the preparation and planning, somehow it always came back to long balls, and goals from set pieces, including the now infamous long throws. Despite playing on one of the best fields in Melbourne, South's style more resembled the territorial rugby union play of a mid-2000s George Cross team playing on the ankle rolling minefield that was Chaplin Reserve.

Quintas put a priority on defence. If the team didn't concede, then at the very least, the team couldn't lose. But the defensive strength of the side looked much better on the raw data of the "for and against" column of the competition table, than it did when you actually looked at the deeper numbers, let alone when watching the games themselves. For those of us who have watched our club since Quintas became head coach in 2019, we have seen the following. 

First, an overreliance on overwhelming numbers in defence to crowd out the opposition, so that even while being on top of the table, players like Jake Marshall were leading the league in blocked shots. This year, with a more forward stance than usual, the players have become exposed all over the backline. Second, there was the outrageously good fortune of having certainly one of the greatest goalkeepers to ever grace Victorian state league soccer, in the form of Javi Diaz Lopez, who was pulling out incredible save after incredible save for years on end. South has had some good goalkeepers during the 20 years post-NSL, but to get to the stage where your goalkeeper is the face of the club, winning league awards because of how many saves he makes when he should be making far fewer saves than most of his league contemporaries, is emblematic of what we have been about for the past five years.

Quintas loved South Melbourne Hellas. He was genuinely passionate about the club. Yet he never understood some of the core principles underpinning the club. That the club's supporters have, in the main, always wanted attacking football. Not necessarily pretty, possession football, but certainly attacking, front-foot football. It's an entertainment thing - we work during the week, we pay our money, we want to be entertained. Match day should be an occasion. We want to enjoy ourselves. Yet so much of what his teams provided was tedious, watching us bludgeon and grind our way to wins. Opposition supporters, and those missing fans of ours who only paid attention to the results and ladders, also didn't understand. "You're on top of the ladder, and you're still complaining?". It makes you sound ungrateful for being successful, but so many of us who actually watched the side were always wondering how we kept getting away with it, and how long it would be until it fell apart.

It's also an ego thing - no matter how much the fantasy deviates from reality, we still like to believe that we're a big club, one which expects to win every game that it plays, and one where a good number of teams whether coming to Lakeside or hosting us in their own ground, will gladly take a draw playing against us. Quintas repeatedly referred to South being a big club, yet his tactics and approach to the game often made us look and feel small. The greatest irony of all this came towards the end. While Ange Postecoglou was winning hearts and minds overseas for his rhetoric and monomania on playing a style of football centred on bringing joy to the fans watching, and then the Ferenc Puskas in Australia documentary Ange and the Boss making the argument that what made that South Melbourne Hellas team special was the devotion to joy, and letting players express themselves, and that there was an expectation among South fans that you would see the team attack; that attacking was its natural state.

How hard must it have been for people at the club to try and market the current team under those conditions? Already hamstrung by our irrelevance, our being in a backwater competition, of having no way out, and then when your most famous name, and all the video evidence of the past shows a desire to take the game on, to be forward on approach whenever possible, to be assertive; and all you could possibly cobble together in a highlights package showcasing the now, was goals from corners and long throws. The match day experience of the past five years, insofar as what was presented on the field, only reinforced in the mind of the people no longer going to our games that the current South Melbourne bears little resemblance to the former one. Whatever misfortune we've had under Quintas, and it has been there, and whatever winning record we had, and we did have a good one overall, the loss of the assertive, front-footed South Melbourne was a heavy price to pay.

So, I thank Esteban Quintas for his service to the club often under difficult circumstances, I acknowledge the good that he did, and I am well aware that he and I have very different opinions on how the game should be played, at least at this club. But I'm not sorry that he's gone. Now the club has to find someone to help us survive this season, and then someone to at least bring back the mentality of the famous Danny Blanchflower quote:

“The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It’s nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It is about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”

Next game
Away to Eastern Lions today in the Dockerty Cup. We'll be coached by Leigh Minopoulos, who'll be assisted by Tyson Holmes.

Final thought
They tell me that the 2006 championship team meets up annually for a reunion. That they don't it with  and/or at the club tells me we have a very sorry cultural problem.

But I digress - Altona Magic 0 South Melbourne 0

It's gotten so bad that now we're being overrun by teams nearer to the bottom of the table than even we are, and that's with them being down to ten men. At least we somehow kept a clean sheet for the first time in a couple of months.

Next game

Home against the Bergers tomorrow (Sunday) evening. Curtain raiser is the senior women against Brunswick Juventus. 

Yoink?!

?

So, Gustav Moller is gone, and more than fittingly going by the last twenty years, his exit is actually the most South thing that I can think of - like 99% of our now former fans, rather than stick around Lakeside being miserable, Moller realised he wasn't having any fun, and just walked away. Honestly, I'm a little jealous. Granted, Moller didn't have the same level of emotional attachment that most South fans have (or at least claim to have had) to the club, but the gesture was achingly familiar:

This sucks, why do I have to be here? Wait, I don't? OK, bye.

It was a strange situation from beginning to end. Since our game plan over the past five years was based around two pillars - outrageously over-competent goalkeeping, and a big guy banging in goals up top just by being big, the departure of Harrison Sawyer late last season threatened to bring down the entire Esteban Quintas edifice one and for all, as was the case when Sawyer got injured in 2021 and we were barely able to win a game after that - thank goodness (sort of) that COVID destroyed most of the rest of that season. Enter Gustav Moller from the sixth division of Danish football who, from the scant online evidence available, was basically nobody, had played for no one of note, and was being signed because whoever's in charge of this stuff at the club these days could apparently find not one person better anywhere else.

(There's some talk that he was recommended to us by Thomas Sorenson which, if true, would make a kind of awful sense - what with Gustav Moller being the son of Danish pundit and former international forward Peter Moller. But who wants to think that we signed someone based on someone at the club being starstruck, and that the famous person making the recommendation was just trying to do a mate a favour?) 

Still, whatever Moller's credentials or lack thereof, and whoever recommended him to us, the club did get to see something of him in the pre-season, and ultimately made the decision to sign him either as cover for Nahuel Bonada, or with the intention that Moller would at some point become the main guy. The latter, were it to actually happen, would have taken awhile. Gustav Moller was clearly not match fit. I don't know if he'd been in Carl Piergianni-style holiday mode - and we saw that once big Carl did get fit on returning to England, that he was actually decent - but whatever the case, Moller wasn't able to last more than fifteen minutes without becoming completely gassed. 

And whatever his skillset may have entailed - he was probably OK in the air, and he seemed to at least have some semblance of touch - he was utterly the wrong player, for the wrong system, for the wrong coach, at the wrongest club possible. It was a hopeless situation for all concerned; but while Moller can walk away with perhaps only his ego and dignity bruised, the club is now down to one forward for the next few months until the transfer window opens. 

Neos Kosmos digital archives, free to access
Now, I was aware that Neos Kosmos had digitised its archive going back to 1957, Initially I think they were charging for access to it, but I've been informed that the archive is actually free to access. The user interface is a bit of a pain to use, and nowhere near as good as what you would get with Trove - and I have no idea why Neos Kosmos didn't go with Trove - but it's still good that it's available. Search works a lot better when you have exact phrases at hand, and also in later years where the quality of the scans is better.

The club's official historian John Kyrou sent me an email alerting me to the fact that the archive was free to use, as well as some notes on the 1960 season after he went through the archives, a frustrating season from a historical perspective both for broader coverage as well just plain statistical stuff. At first, Neos Kosmos shows indifference to the club. Indeed, sport is not a big part of the paper in 1960, which accords with my memory of the last time I went through the 1960s papers on microfiche. What sport coverage exist is initially centred on the Greek league and local pro-wrestling, mostly Alex Iakovidis. When Hellas establishes its on-field bona fides, it gets not just more coverage, but also more detailed coverage. Eventually reporter Nikos Kyriakopoulos' column becomes a fixture of the paper, to the point where you begin getting not just full lineups for most games by the end of the season, but also ratings of each player. 

Kyriakopoulos is particularly savage in his criticisms of players he considers lazy, unsporting, or not team-oriented. The senior squad is large and hard to manage. Some players do the right thing, but others have poor attitudes to training, and the team is prone to arguing amongst itself. They're a cut above their league, but arrogant. Kyriakopoulos is effusive in his praise of Terry Budgen, one of the few non-Greeks in the squad, as well as goalkeeper George Karpouzas, but has it in for Antonis Karagiannis (lazy, arrogant), Stefanos Fortomanos (unsporting, greedy on the ball), and captain-coach Chris Georgoussis (listless, heavy).

He also really hammers home the angle of the club's role as representative of the Greek community in Melbourne. That's not just limited to the players, but also the supporters, whose behaviour he's often critical of - except perhaps when it counts most, after the ugly scenes in the Dockerty Cup semi against Hakoah, where he blames the referee for the riot by the Greek fans. Kyriakopoulos also places much emphasis on the Laidlaw Cup - a local mini-world cup tournament, where Team Greece was effectively South Melbourne Hellas rebadged. He also promotes the club's and the Greek community's wider effort to build a stand at Middle Park. Little mention is made of Yarra Park or Hellenic, none of Alexander or South Melbourne United, and nothing of Hakoah in the context of being a co-tenant at Middle Park.

The crowds fluctuate between the very large (10,000 at games at Olympic Park, far and away the best venue in Victorian soccer) and a few hundred at games at Middle Park and elsewhere, where shelter is extremely limited. Indeed, wet weather sees games postponed, and one game at Coburg was played "in an ocean".

One bonus of running through and double-checking the club historian's reading of this material, is apart from confirming several lineups and a few scorers, we can now confirm one previously elusive club record detail, that of most goals in a league game. For ages the provisional club record for most goals in a league game was four, held by ten different players. Hellas racked up some big scores in 1960, but confirmation of the scorer details proved elusive for whatever reason. Thus, Antonis Karagiannis' six goals against Moonee Ponds stands alone.

Final thought

Well, seven years too late for my thesis, and five years after the old man passed away, I finally found it. Silly bugger insisted it was from the 1980s or early 1990s, but it was from February 1995. It's probably not even the complete poem - whatever drafting page that was on is long gone - but it's more complete than the couple of stanzas I had access to for my thesis, and which sent me searching in vain for the published version on several trips to the State Library. 

Like the rest of his poetry, it's doggerel, but that's beside the point. As I wrote in an appendix to my thesis:

My father, Athanasios Mavroudis, despite his limited formal education – only up to grade six in rural 1950s Greece – fancied himself as somewhat of a poet. He wrote  several poems in his scrapbooks, and even had some published in the letter and editorial pages of Neos Kosmos, the Greek-language paper of record in Melbourne. 

His style is plain and straightforward, and if we are being fair, not far removed from doggerel. His themes were broad, and usually related to the issues of the day – the political and cultural concerns as they related to the Greek community of Melbourne, and the Greek diaspora as a whole. This was in keeping with one strand of poetry submitted to Neos Kosmos, the other, more common one being poetry on important dates, festivals, the seasons, the sanctity of mothers, and the pain of living in a foreign land. 

I have included my father’s two extant and complete soccer poems here for a couple of reasons. First, as a way to preserve them in some fashion on the public record. Second, because whatever their literary merits, they are outstanding examples of what this thesis is about – the search for the most obscure portrayals of a marginal game, written by a member of a marginal community, preserving moments and points of view otherwise destined for utter oblivion. Also, they have a naff charm which appeals to 

me.