Nearly Done For 2012 - South Melbourne 1 Dandenong Thunder 2

Detective John Munch's legendary despondency has
 apparently infiltrated my efforts on this blog
and made them even more depressing

Steve from Broady hated the last match report blog. So, just for this week, maybe, we're taking a slightly different approach, back to the old slapdash ramshackle efforts. Steve said that the segmented approach made him feel even more depressed by my efforts than usual, being able to visualise the resigned (and implied? inferred? Detective Munch has screwed me up on the definitions of these after a recent episode I saw of Law and Order SVU) shrug of the shoulders after the end of each section.

Me, I personally blame the team for me taking that direction. But there's just three more weeks and one more dropped point or so, and we can go about forgetting another forgettable season. How appropriate that we'll likely be done and dusted at this coming week at Northcote City Hercules, the little team that could, the team whose relative success we'd try to take for ourselves, not realising that you can't just take that sense of camaraderie and spirit off a club, that for the most part you have to make it and earn it yourself.

Is there a little switch somewhere that we don't know about? We started like a house on fire, then disappeared for a 30-40 minute spell, before inexplicably turning it on again towards the end. I had no idea where that impetus came from. I'd almost rather we had not turned it on again. It just creates further confusion and angst. If I was a neutral, I perhaps would have said that was the best game all season, with an ebb and flow, attack and counter attack, and the game played in the right spirit.

But I'm not a neutral. Like most of my readership, regardless of the teams we support, and regardless of how much I love soccer as a sport, I am a partisan supporter of the game. I have my team, and when they lose, or have another frustrating season, the spectacle provided by a good game is little comfort.

Full credit to Dandenong - they were outplayed at the beginning of the match and at the end, but they dominated us in the middle section of the match like no team has at Lakeside for a long time, and found something to get themselves over the line at the end. They're a very even team across the park.

The coulda, woulda, shouldas will be out in force again. What if Gavalas' positioning for Thunder's first goal was better? What if Burton did even a little better with his pint blank range shot late in the match? What if we had tried to take the initiative at 1-1, when we were under the pump, instead of waiting and waiting and waiting.

Then again, what if Thunder had scored either or both of the chances they had cleared off their line? The game would have been done and dusted much earlier. That's the harsh reality of playing that kind of game. Still, we did make them look like an average team at times.

Lastly, the game was well officiated. Such a nice change.

P.S. I'm actually not particularly pleased with how this post turned out, but there's no taking that back now. I suppose there are worse things in life than to have penned a(nother) substandard blog piece. I just can't think of what that might be at this stage.

In other news

• The under 21s managed to eke out a 3-2 win. Baggio Yousif managed to net a hattrick, but who created all those opportunities?
• Check out Thunder's running track celebration later on SMFCTV or the youtube highlights. Bit sad that we gave them the opportunity to do that though.
• I'm one of the few that seems to have adjusted well to the new stadium layout - most others I speak to just can't seem to get a feel for it.
• I went to the Oakleigh - Melbourne Knights game on Friday night, which only made me angrier with our season. There's one consistently good team, being the Thunder; there's also Green Gully, who no one likes or watches but who can be counted on to get far; and there's the majority of the rest of the league who range from inconsistent at best to incompetent at worst, and for whom the fact that there are three extra spots up for grabs gives them an undeserved chance at playing finals and maybe even winning the title.
• Francesco Stella is apparently trialing with Rangers. The Scottish four tier it may be instead of the first, but we wish the stepover king well in his attempt to join a pretty famous club down on its luck. But then again, he's been in that position before...