A trip to a Tolkienien northern wasteland - Round 12, Whittlesea Zebras vs South Melbourne

Okay, maybe a slight overreaction. But best to bring your woollies with ya. And has anyone over the age of 15 ever read Tolkien for the first time and liked it?

Last time they met

Round 11, 2007, at Epping Stadium

Whittlesea Zebras 3 South Melbourne 2

Lively enough game in their only meeting for 2007, but Whittlesea's counter attacking style won the day, despite Ramazan's South of the Border goal of the year effort. South at the time were scoring goals like they were going out of fashion, which they did a few weeks later. Whittlesea ended up making the grand final.

Preview
No Nando. Possibly no Billy Nats. Out there in the freezing cold. Alone. Wait, back up. Should be a tough game, both teams on level points and all, seven points behind sixth placed Heidelberg. A win here for either side could mean the start of something good, a loss, and well and truly back into the relegation battle. The Zebras coach, former South player and Socceroo Peter Ollerton has left, but there's still the nucleus of a good side there, including lively Floreat Athena recruit Jerry Karpeh. Still, South has finally seemed to get on a bit of a roll performance wise, even though everything isn't quite clicking 100% yet. Last week's win was a pretty big one, but now, with two of the league's strugglers to come in the Zebras and Pines before what could possibly be a massive match against Heidelberg in the context of the season, anything less than six points may well seem to fall short of the target. Still, four points would also be good, but seeing as we haven't had a draw for a long time - 15 consecutive league matches - one can only see a comfortable win or a heartbreaking loss on the cards.