Derby Daze - South Melbourne 2 Heidelberg United 1

Wednesday morning, we publish the Kiss of Death's mid-season ratings. But for now let's bask in the glory of a derby win.

It was a messy, but entertaining match, full of passion, spite, and action. End to end stuff a lot of the time.

And the best thing is, we won. Snapped our four game home losing streak. Put the Bergers in deeper relegation danger. Maybe turned our season around.

Adidas Hoodies
Get around them! (preferably in blue, though).

Countdown to Oblivion
Nice to see a clock integrated into the scoreboard experience. Next step - a clock that counts up. It was quite nerve wracking seeing that clock countdown... and then injury time, nothing.

Disco Inferno
I can understand playing sponsor announcements, highlights of previous games, etc on the scoreboard. But I can't take much more of the pre-game and half time music.

Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
It says nothing to me about my life

Taste is one thing, and that dance crap does nothing for me. But it's almost impossible for people to talk to each other in the stands. To think, that even at the MCG it's not as bad as it once was. Just turn it off, the music isn't fooling anyone that we're not in the VPL.

Euro 2012 Digression/I'm Rich, Biatch
Arthur Papas has a three point lead over the Kiss of Death as we head into the final state of their tipping competition.

More important, however, is the fact that trash talking England fan Steve from Broady, whose perennial and unfathomable optimism about England, in the face of all history and logic, now owes me $5.

The clown - and really, that's the only way to put it, after being on the receiving end of about three years of nonsense tirades about how England's 'time was now', wagered that they would at least make the final. I even offered to not take his money if they at least made the semis.

Really, being proven right about England failing is like shooting the proverbial fish in the barrel. But still, there's something to be said for moral victories.

Fight to the End
Two scuffles, and the will to put our bodies on the line.

While it costs you in the long run, for once we were more likely to get yellow cards than the opposition.

It was scrappy a lot of the time, but the base line that everyone must start with is at least putting in 90 minutes of effort.

Nα Τσουξει
It means 'to smart, to sting, to hurt'.

I'm all for 30 metre rocket goals, but when it comes to the Bergers, I'd rather the dodgiest goal you can imagine. 5-0 wins are great too, but just as sweet are the arsey wins. Think the injury time sting of the 2006 round one win at Olympic Village, or last year's elimination final, where we scored from a dodgy penalty, and had Hamlet Armenian twice stuff up the equaliser from their own dodgy penalty.

And the fact that they got their hopes up so early into the game, after Peter Gavalas and a mystery central defender got nowhere near an unmarked Ben Griffiths on the edge of the six yard box makes it even better.

Of course, at that stage, the absolute only positive one could possibly find to avoid more wrist slashing was that we had another 88 minutes to redeem ourselves.

There seems to be universal agreement that our first goal had more than a whiff of offside - something like two metres - but in this case, the more offside, the better.

The fact that it was a direct ball to Trent Rixon, who laid it off for an unmarked Jason Trifiro, was icing on the cake. It was the thing we should have been doing all season, yet it came across as something so rare and novel.

The second goal, courtesy of a Brad Norton shot from the edge of the box, took a massive deflection, giving Heidelberg's goalkeeper no chance.

Late in the game, Heidelberg received a free kick in a reasonably dangerous position. Up stepped that noted free kick specialist (snigger) Kristian Sarkies. Did he take a shot? No. Did he pass it across to the free man on the right hand side? No. Did he place a basically harmless dink over the top which we fairly easily cleared? Yes.

Rivalry
There's people that will tell you this rivalry is dead. They can get stuffed.

The crowd numbers are of course a mere shadow of what they were in the now long distant glory days. The average age of the spectators would make a pension day line at the Borrack Square Commonwealth Bank look like a kindergarten class.

But man, it still means something to everyone that rocks up to these games. It means something to George Katsakis, to Gus Tsolakis, and amazingly, it seemed to mean something for the players as well.

And it was pleasing to see Heidelberg actually try to take the game on, instead of sit back and absorb pressure. I'll give them that much. They're a long way from safety now, though.

Under 21s
Drew 2-2. Saw the second half, pretty even, but messy game. Maybe Bergers a bit stiff not to come away with all the points.

Zenith
It wasn't necessarily the prettiest thing, but pretty hasn't got us very far this season.