Sunday 3 November 2013

The South Melbourne Hellas Hymn!

Everyone knows about Frozen Tears' legendary mid 1990s club song. However, fewer people know about the Hellas Hymn, a Greek language club song I'm guessing dates from some time in the 1980s, or perhaps really early 1990s.

I must apologise for the poor audio quality on this track - the mp3 was inherited from someone else several years ago, and I really should have insisted on them making a better copy. Then again, you may argue that the distortion on the track only adds to the cheesiness of the affair. Suffice to say, this is not my cup of tea. But if anyone has anyone details about this song and how it came about, or even if you just want to say that you remember it, drop us a line in the comments section.



The photo of the chipped case was taken during an inventory of the social club (recognise the table?) a few years ago, when I was asked to help pack away our club's valuables so the club could get started on the social club redevelopment. I think that was sometime during the Bronze Age.

I believe that Heidelberg also had their own Greek language club song (they also had a Frozen Tears song of their own - or was that for Collingwood Warriors?), and from memory, it was actually OK.

5 comments:

  1. Sometimes I jsut want to LIKE a post. Can you please add this option?

    Savvas Tzionis

    PS I think its time for South to make another move on Heart. :)

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  2. Sadly, as far as I know, the closest thing you can do to 'liking' a blog post is to click on one of the sharing options at the bottom of the post.

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  3. btw.... just did a random review of the year 2009 (seeing that I was AWOL from Australian Soccer from 1999 up to 2011, I have a lot of catching up to do).

    The first thing I noticed was the lack of comments compared to your current output.

    Plus there was a distinct sense of gloom about South and 'Old Soccer' in general in the postings.

    Was it a 'Post Heart getting into A League at Souths expense' thing?

    As you can see, I will continue to hammer the point about how pathetic this Heartless mob is. I am now reminded of something that our new National Coach said back in 1998. (btw... he made a rare appearance in Oakleigh the other day. And was left to his own devices. No-one bothered him. Greeks can be 'classy' I suppose. :))

    Anyway, back to his 1998 remark. He said that the (then) current fashion of introducing non-ethnic clubs would not work (or something along those lines). He said that people would go back to their real clubs.

    Now, that sounds quite ridiculous in light of what has happened in Australian Soccer in the last 15 years.

    But I daresay if South were given the opportunity to play in the A league you would see a return of many ex fans. SURELY!!

    Savvas Tzionis

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  4. With regards to the amount of comments from the past, there were several issues, the first of which needs some background history and a little inside info.

    When I first started this blog, I had no idea how long it would last. Most blogs don't last very long. I pottered away for a little bit, very quietly, until eventually launching it in the most low key way I could think of: by making a post on smfcboard in March 2008. The original post is below.

    "Some of you may have heard of this blog from the Pumpkin Seed Eaters show (thanks for the plug guys), others from me personally or just from googling "south melbourne hellas" and following the links for 16 pages, regardless, it is my blog mostly dedicated to South, a way of doing my bit for the cause so to speak, as well building up some sort of portfolio for my real life vocation as a professional writing student.

    If anyone has any good photos they'd like to submit that otherwise would get ignored, or has a penchant for designing decent logos, or has some stupid rumour they'd love to get maximum publicity with to my daily audience of almost ten people (on a good day), please by all means email me and I'll definitely consider it.

    Also if people would like to contribute their own written work, comics, whatever, by all means email me and we can figure something out. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programme."

    The page hits were up and down, and I was working with a different mindset then, looking to get stuff out very frequently, in the first year almost every day (following some very useful advice by what I assume is a now former reader).

    At first, I allowed a bit of a no holds barred kind of approach to comments. And even though there were very few comments, there were times when they were good, and then one moment were they got very personal with a friend of ours. Not that she couldn't handle herself, but it was wrong for her identity to be known while the anonymous posters were abusing her without the sort of checks and balances I should have been enforcing.

    So then I went the other way, and did a really tough commenting procedure, where everything had to pre-approved and from registered people. Of course, everything just dried up then. I can't recall when, but I eased off the pre-registered thing, and kept the moderation up. Gradually the rate of comments has increased, but still mostly appeared when controversial off-field stuff happened.

    This last year and a bit has seen a bit of a change for some reason. I think being on Twitter has helped, as has having a lot of more contributors - Steve from Broady and the Kiss of Death really helped bring in the punters. Maybe it's just part of the war of attrition? You keep doing it and people eventually notice?

    As for the tone of voice during 2009... I think that perhaps reflected the head space I was in at the time, as well where my writing in general was, a very cynical place. It didn't help that the club was struggling on and off the field. I think having the other contributors here has helped leaven not just the tone of the blog, but also my own writing.

    As for your other question about the Heart and what South would have done, would do... that's all a bit too hypothetical for me. Happy to let others continue niggling away on that issue.

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  5. Social club? Was this a thing?

    ReplyDelete

A few notes on comments.

We've had a lot of fun over the years with my freewheeling comments policy, but all good things must come to an end. Therefore I will no longer be approving comments that contain personal abuse of any sort.

Still, if your post doesn't get approved straight away, it's probably because I haven't seen it yet.

As usual, publication of a comment does not mean endorsement of its content.