Politically Correct MVP night

An enjoyable evening was had last night at Honey Bar, with the usual and requisite personal quibbles. Fernando won the golden boot award of course, as well as the Theo Marmaras award for player of the year. What was perhaps a little surprising to me was how close it was - he finished up with 63 votes, just four ahead of Steven O'Dor and Peter Zois, and only overtaking those player with a nine point haul in the final round against Sunshine. I suppose it summed up the kind of year it was, where we flirted with both finals and relegation at various times during the year, playing at the extremes of appalling and brilliance often withing minutes of each other.

Fernando gave quite an emotional speech. The thing that was only semi-danced around, and not very well for most of the night, was the six point deduction. No sign of Horsey there - the rumours of his being sacked have been very strong, but nothing has been confirmed yet, no matter how strong the rumours are of Eddie Krncevic making a return to the South helm are. The notion of hiring of 91' championship hero Joe Palatsides has been been been buried - he's been having too good a time of it apparently coaching lower leagues sides in Greece, mostly recently at Karditsa in the Greek second division.

Lots of thank yous dished out. Echoing somewhat the omission of Kevin Nelson's name from the 2006 championship commemorative t-shirt, David Lugli didn't get mentioned. Maybe I don't have the stomach for such political antics, maybe he committed war crimes in the Sudan or something, but it seemed awkward. As did the somewhat cocky attitude of the players towards the Singapore Cup tie against Bangkok Glass - me, I don't know, maybe I read too many south-east Asian football blogs.

I was also offended by one George Koukoulas more or less accosting me and then berating me for not knowing about previous winners of our best and fairest, and then asking me what kind of club historian I am. Well, I'm not the official club historian, John Kyrou is - maybe Mr Koukoulas should check the South website. And considering the appalling record keeping of such matters within the club (with the exception of certain isolated individuals over the years, and the recent great work of John Kyrou), I don't see how it could possibly be my fault that I only know Steve Iosifidis won the award I think in one of our back to back seasons. It was hard enough even finding that out

But to focus any more than necessary on such small, petty individuals for too long is tiring. Back to the coaching situation. Some people seem convinced that a decision has already been made, and that they know who will be coaching us next year, maybe even this year. In better news, there's word that memberships and merchandise may very well be available even as early as this year, towards December of course. Now that's a level of progress that was mooted early this year, but seems to have much more to back it up this time around. I didn't dare ask about whether we could have a shirt with hoops though - I doubt it'd get up anyhow.