Everyone loves Hellas - South Melbourne 2 Heidelberg United 1

While very, very happy to get the win, it was to me a pretty ordinary game from both sides. That we won at all, despite being the worse of the two sides - I won't say outplayed, because I think the Bergers weren't much chop either on Wednesday - for most of the night, I think it was our sheer force of will that managed to get us through. It has been a common theme of the Chris Taylor era that more or less, even if the team is not playing particularly well, it still persists right until the final whistle. South Melbourne fight to the end, as the chant goes.

The game was far from the quality and entertainment of the most recent league meeting between the two sides. The Bergers looked better, if only because what they were trying to do seemed more straightforward. Meanwhile we had Milos Lujic and David Stirton collecting balls on the wing on the halfway line. I couldn't really see us working our way back into the game, but we did it, thanks in part to everyone's favourite indentured labourer.

Double for Epifano who send South to #DockertyCup final . #smfc fans must be loving him ! Oh ,wait … #HUvSM

— Adrian Moraru (@Mielu8) July 15, 2015

If only this was medieval times, we could have cut out his tongue by now, maybe chopped off his typing fingers as well. The first goal, a back-post-right-place-right-time effort, got us back on level terms. Our eagerness to then finish off the game before extra time was in some ways commendable, but also led to other problems - namely our players running into each other instead of talking to each other like experienced senior players should. Of course you'd rather two players be where the action is rather than none, but it looked sloppy, and almost cost us a goal when Nikola Roganovic had the ball dislodged from his grasp by colliding with a team mate.

Now George Katsakis thought the penalty we got was pretty soft, but I thought it was fine. I suppose that's another thing George and I will have to disagree on. Considering that Lujic and Stirton now have incurable stage fright when it comes to penalty taking, it made sense to have Epifano take it considering he was the last one to score from the spot. And another thing - if it seems like we've been getting more than our fair share of penalties of late, there's probably a good reason for that - we're actually getting the ball and players into the opposing team's 18 yard box on a regular basis, unlike the Peter Tsolakis era where the Trifiros conspired to keep the ball as far as away from there as possible.

Anyway, the win means we're into the final of the Dockerty Cup for the first time since 1995. Of course, prior to the recent recall of cup football in this state, the Dockerty Cup was in recess for almost that entire time, apart from 2004 (on a side note, I recently learned out that despite our problems in 2004, we actually entered the Dockerty Cup, albeit forfeiting to Bulleen Zebras). We'll be playing Oakleigh Cannons, who defeated Hume last night.

The final will be at Lakeside, which has pissed off people of diverse stripes. First up the Oakleigh people, who are probably aghast at the fact that they're being asked to travel more than five minutes away from home, let alone to 'our' ground. Then you have the strange complaint by people who won't even be participating in the game, that being some Knights fans and of course George Katsakis. Is it our fault that we have the best soccer ground outside of AAMI Park? Doesn't the very real possibility that we'll get done on our own turf thrill these people even a little?

Thinking out loud (too loud, maybe)
While George Katsakis is exactly the kind of pantomime villain you want coaching your biggest rival, his dismissal (along with assistant Jeff Olver) by the officials late in the game, while amusing from a distance, is alleged to have been fueled in part by alleged abusive comments from a member of the South personnel on the bench. Someone on the forum reckons racism was involved. Now I have no idea whether any of Katsakis' complaints are based on fact, but let's for a moment assume that they are.

If someone from South (and in this case, not a fan, but an 'official' part of the match day team) made a racist comment, how would the club handle it? Following the repeated failure to adequately punish Nick Epifano for his indiscretions, let alone prevent him from repeatedly racially abusing our supporters, how would the club go about sanctioning someone else? Therefore let's hope there's nothing to it, and that we can focus our attention on getting security to demand a kid stops playing a whistle. You know, the big issues.

Meanwhile Cliff Hussey is still waiting for justice to be served, but that's his own fault I suppose for not being a goal scoring winger beloved by the people that count most.

More Katsakis
Apparently our old mate George (who was apparently still complaining about the penalty decision in the Bergers social club during the Hume vs Oakleigh semi final) was complaining to Leo that Heidelberg weren't fed after the last league fixture we hosted against them. Well here's a message from me to you, George - get in line. South supporters have been waiting for a meal at South for five and a half years.

Crowd count
Our crowd counter reckoned there were 330 people in attendance last night, which went up to 331 when James Belias turned up. The FFV radio broadcast of the Hume vs Oakleigh game stated that it was 480 paid attendees, so not counting everyone that got in on a freebie.

The sound of silence
There was no music played on which to report.

Next game - please note that this week's game against Hume has been postponed
This week's scheduled game at home against Hume has been postponed by a month, due to Real Madrid being given the use of Lakeside Stadium on Sunday for a training session who knows what the actual reason is. Maybe Roma is using the ground, maybe it was booked weeks in advance, maybe we moved aside gracefully, maybe we asked for the postponement deliberately because Chris Taylor and South Melbourne felt like it, and what Chris Taylor and South Melbourne want, Chrisy Taylor and South Melbourne get (*except a social club). Our next game therefore will be on Saturday week away to Pascoe Vale, at CB Smith Reserve.

Iqi Jawadi off to Germany to do Afghani things
Iqi Jawadi is off to Germany this week to be part of an Afghan national team squad training camp. He'll be back in time for the Pascoe Vale game though, which is good. It's a good thing we have this week off.

No one is happy, and what's more, no one should ever be happy
Stan: I can't hold it in anymore! I missed this! 
Francine: What are you talking about? 
Stan: This! Him! The non-existent letters! There's nothing written on this! That's all off the top of his head! I missed this silly son of a bitch! 

While on the surface of it, the announcement of some sort of partnership or relationship between ourselves and Real Madrid seems lame, opportunistic and thin on detail - detail which will apparently be filled in at a later date - there really is no point in me tearing it to pieces because being in a good mood (owing to winning on Wednesday) means that I will give the club the benefit of the doubt... for now.

Far more enjoyable is to watch several competing factions duke it out, inadvertently creating meaning out of a meaningless document. Is it an excuse to celebrate? Sure, why not; if you want to prematurely ejaculate over something, when all South has shown anyone yet is a bit of cleavage (and for all you know it could just be two coconuts in that brassiere), go for it. Want to hate the club for pulling more stupid stunts when we're still waiting for a social club? Again, plenty of opportunity for self-flagellation there as well. Happen to be a Croatian on smfcboard who wants to join in the fun? You can be the peeping tom hiding in the bushes groping yourself. See, plenty of enjoyment for everyone.

Now of course the partnership or relationship or whatever does look incredibly silly when you have, among other things

• no detail released yet
• allegations of board member self-interest
• Luka Modric turning up to Knights training
• AFL heads doing their best to make it all about themselves
• Complimentary tickets being given out to South members for the one game of this nonsense international circus that Real aren't a part of

and the funny thing about these tickets is that at no stage did I receive an email, nor did many others who might expect to have been notified of this offer. The usually trigger happy South media team also seem to have buried it.

For the record, if you want tickets to the Roma-Manchester City game on Tuesday, you'll have to be a financial member, go to Leo's office n Brunswick during business hours and hope that the tickets haven't all gone. Why not at the club offices at MSAC? Who knows. Why not publicised more? Dunno. Are these 300 tickets from the Victorian government in lieu of having our social club? I doubt it, but whatever, being a burden on the taxpayer I was able to make it out to Leo's to pick up my tickets. Now I have to decide who to take with me, a classic sitcom scenario.

You shouldn't have seen that, but you did (unless you didn't)
The recent doco that George Donikian and friends have been making? Well, someone uploaded the South Melbourne portion to youtube, someone else (or maybe the same person!) put a link up on the FourFourTwo forums, and then I put up the link on Twitter, after barely watching any of it because I had to go run some errands. Then I find out it got taken down, and later that it shouldn't have been up at all! Anyway, I can't wait until it comes out properly, so I can pick apart all the mistakes and agendas. I believe it will be shown on FoxSports before the FFA Cup match against Palm Beach.

Not even trying anymore
An old man, an Islander and some bloke wearing an NWO hoodie get on to the train. They are of course ticket inspectors. Despite the pisspoor disguises, I did get a kick from the multi layered irony of someone wearing New World Order gear being a part of the increasing police state. Or something to that effect.

Final thought

9 years, 5 months and 25 days for New Horizons to reach Pluto. Incidentally, that's my new benchmark for when @smfc will get a social club.

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) July 15, 2015