All over the bloody shop - Green Gully 4 South Melbourne 4

Let us begin with some wisdom gleaned from a psalm.

Blessed is the one

    who arrives with low expectations

or who does not expect sudden turns of form

    or who can endure the company of mockers,

but whose delight is in the wondrous absurdity,

    and who meditates on this day and night.

That person is the one sane person left at this club,

    who can go home unburdened knowing

that if these blokes were really any good —

    then they would not be playing here.

Dear readers, I spent most of the previous week sick, and was therefore so looking forward to getting out of the house and watching some soccer. More fool me, because here I am two days after the fact and I'm now sicker than I was before the event. It would hardly do to blame the team - after all, it's only a hypothesis at the moment, and we still have to do some longer term studies and get them published in peer reviewed journals - but why blame my feeble constitution for failing me when I can point the finger squarely at those men dressed in blue on Saturday.

After that loss draw, I have found it incredibly difficult to muster the courage to approach this keyboard. How could I explain with my only modest eloquence the disaster of those frantic fifteen minutes? I could try and step back from it I suppose. Did the Gully comeback come out of nowhere? Well, not really. One could blame Chris Taylor for the subs he made, taking off our two best attacking threats in Jesse Daley and Nick Epifano, but Gully had been threatening throughout the game - it was just that when push came to shove, they were rather inept in the final third for 75 minutes.

At 3-0 and 4-2 up, things should be secure, but that's why matches keep going instead of being called off at those score lines and at those times, because stuff like this can happen. It happened to Gully last week, copping three goals in seven minutes when 2-0 up against Heidelberg. And while I'm not absolving Taylor for his role in making the initial team selections, placements and subsequent substitutions, at what point do the players have to bear some of the responsibility? Who of them stepped up during that time to wrest back even nominal control of the game?

We also seem to have no idea about tempo. If the game slows down and needs to be sped up, or is getting out of hand and needs to be slowed down, we don't seem capable of taking the necessary action independent of the coaches making those decisions... or maybe the instruction went out there and no one was able to implement the necessary action? The feeling of the second goal we conceded - and I can't bear to go to the video to watch and confirm - felt like something from my days watching the Altona East reserves.

Pseudo-psychologically, especially with such a deficit to make up, the intention of the team that's just pulled a goal back is to storm the barricades and pile on both actual and implied pressure. The job then of the team seeking to maintain the lead, or at least not let things get worse, is to suck the life out of the potential momentum before it even gets out of hand for at least the next three minutes. That didn't happen, so here we are, having robbed ourselves of what could have been called momentum and goodwill.

One can go on and on about the negatives, but in this rather truncated match report, I will close by noting some of the things I liked. I liked the return of the People's Champ. Two assists, a goal, and generally good attitude. I liked Jesse Daley, our best outfield player in 2017 keeping up the good work. Matthew Millar offered polish as well as effort for the first time this year. Notwithstanding the fact that scored four times, we also actually looked like scoring on a regular basis. We even scored off a counter attack.

Things are not as bad as they could be. In part this is because of...

Next game
At home, at last, against the struggling North Geelong on Sunday prevening. They copped an 8-0 beating against a ten man Bergers. Look for your own omens and portents.

Soccer, soccer, soccer is the real football! Soccer, soccer, the greatest game of them all!

Pros: Managed to get out of Green Gully's car park in record time
Cons: Someone tried to tell me that it's football, not soccer #ps4nplvic

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) April 1, 2017

Sometime during the second half I think it was, I somehow got dragged into a childish back and forth discussion with a Gully fan about what the name of the game was. I prefer soccer for all sorts of arcane, regressive, and recalcitrant reasons and some of what Ian Syson says here about the naming conjecture applies here also. Now the discussion didn't end up in a punch on or anything like that (could you even imagine such a thing?), but it did bother me that someone would choose that to become (relatively) upset that issue of all things. Having made some nonsense response by referring to an SBS soccer jingle from the 1980s, I was more upset by the fact that, some time after the incident and either on the way home or already there, I figured out the perfect comeback - that being if that our friend felt so strongly about the matter, he should take up the issue with his club first.

If you like football so much, why do you go to the soccer?

For you see, unlike many other clubs of our level which have tinkered with their names by getting rid of the word 'soccer' and replacing it with 'football', or the nonsense 'FC' (and I only partly excuse our club for doing it, because there was the comical coincidence of upsetting Sydney Swans fans, who came to understand that their club hadn't copyrighted 'SMFC' or 'South Melbourne FC'), Green Gully remain steadfast users of 'soccer' and 'soccer club'. They've even added a whole bunch of new banners along their fences proudly telling everyone that they are the 'Green Gully Soccer Club'. So you know, maybe tackle the problem at its source if it means so much to you.

The world revolves around Hellas, Part ∞
Apparently Perth Glory's coach Kenny Lowe was in attendance at our game. That obviously means he was there to look at our players. I mean, they've all been playing so well, who wouldn't want them?

This week is a big week, just quietly
Jersey night on Friday. Family Day on Saturday. Home game on Sunday. And at the centre of all those things is the newly refurbished social club. More comment on that next week.

Mesorouni found alive
Call off the search parties, rein in the dogs, cancel the Soul Asylum gig; the milk carton campaign worked.

Around the grounds
It's too late for it now, but I really wished I'd collected every failed soccer club raffle ticket I ever bought
Went to Westgate vs Western Suburbs before our game, because the food is nominally better there than at Green Gully Reserve. While not even close to being as good as the overpriced Altona Magic, Suburbs were still about .5 to 1.5 classes above Westgate, and won the game 3-1. I missed Westgate's goal, which came directly from a corner, because I was looking at my phone for some reason. I like to think that them scoring wasn't to be expected, but you've got to keep your eye on the ball. Goal of the day was Suburbs' third, the low corner not being dealt with in any way by the Westgate defense, and the Suburbs striker finished it off with an outrageous flick volley, which I did see and wish that I could see again.

Final thought
I was going to post some salacious gossip that I heard during this game, but I'm trying to build a reputation of being a man of the utmost taste and character.