Finals fixture news and other stuff of no consequence

So there it is: our semi-final will be against Bentleigh Greens on Friday night, with kickoff at the rather civilised time of 7:30PM. Bentleigh have been paired up with us because they're the highest ranked winner from the first week of the finals. Bentleigh dispatched Green Gully 4-0, and Oakleigh knocked out Avondale 2-1 after extra time.

We'll have the nominal advantage of being as fresh as possible for this game, what with our week and a half's break compared to the Greens' three, as they play Western Sydney Wanderers on Tuesday in the FFA Cup. That doesn't guarantee anything of course, but you'd rather have them coming off the short run up.

Let's just hope that for the sake of visual clarity, the visitors wear their away kit.

Around the Grounds
I did not go to any grounds. I went to the supermarket instead.

Japan vs Socceroos in the social club.
The social club will be showing the Japan vs Socceroos World Cup qualifier on Thursday night, so come throw your money down the bottomless pit that is the South Melbourne Hellas Soccer Club: it's like a wishing well, but for idiots.

Sore Loser department
Humanity is divided into many pointless categories, all of which obscure the most important division among us: those who think trivia nights are just a bit of a laugh, and those who think they are an opportunity to vanquish and humiliate opponents via the use of obscure and irrelevant knowledge. Of course I fall into the latter category.

Too bad then that the recent South Melbourne Trivia Night was hosted by a company which swings hard toward the other, 'stupid' end of the ledger. Just five rounds of trivia, two of which were dedicated to film and television. It's bad enough that I don't watch films or television that aren't repeats I've seen a million times before, let alone having not listened to top 40 radio for about 18 years.

Nevertheless the team I was on did quite well considering there were only four of us - some tables had closer to eight adults (there were an inordinate amount of children there as well). Based on regulation scoring, we would've tied for first, which wasn't too bad considering our small team and the severe lack of proper general knowledge questions (like history, politics, geography, literature, games of the Sega Master System).

As a measure of how amateur the whole thing was, at one point the host asked each team to mark their own answer sheets. Surely there is no more intractable rule in trivia night protocol as not allowing teams to do this? Our host also provided an incorrect answer to the lyrics to Eurythmics 'Sweet Dreams'. We weren't even given the opportunity to come up with team names, being reduced to being 'Table 16' and so forth. And this after I had "Roberto Carlos' Bounced Alimony Cheque" ready to go.

Now some will say that I'm taking all this way too seriously, and that it was all meant to be a bit of harmless fun and a chance to raise some money for the club. Well you'd be right. But unfortunately there were bonus points given away for such nonsense as singing and dancing, and the winning team racked up most of those 'bonus' points giving them an utterly, utterly unjust win. Points for being an egregious extrovert instead of knowing pointless crap? It goes against everything trivia nights should stand for. And I reiterate Cindy Nitsos' point from Twitter - enforced public singing is one of the worst things you can ask people to do.

If you thought I was a miserable piece of work about Australian soccer, do take the chance one day to be on my table when we lose (inevitably unjustly) at a trivia night. If I can hold a grudge from a long forgotten trivia night from 2003, you bet I can remain pissed off about this one for many years to come. Credit to Foti for giving the stupid karaoke segment a go on behalf the team and doing a good job. Food was OK, except for the weird sort of mushy sweet toasted bread. Not sure what was going on there to be honest.