There have been worse times - South Melbourne 4 Sorrento 1

Jesse Daley returns to Lakeside after working for Kenny Lowe as a swineherd. 

What could be worse than the loss against Kingston last Sunday, a loss which singlehandedly destroyed the future of the club? How about staring at the result of four years' worth of work and being frozen with anxiety, seeing only an incoherent mess of academic jargon where academic clarity should be. Even food tasted like crap, the manoushe I bought was like cardboard, the hot jam doughnuts undercooked mush. Thank goodness the weather turned nasty at about 4:30 and that there was a South game to go to break me out of my funk.

One rather good burger and several beers later (which we had to a little while for because someone told the kitchen to open later than they should have), my mood immeasurably improved. A good turnout - or so I thought - but the bandwagon of the previous round was tempered a bit a feeling that we should win the game in front of us.

There were many surprises in store on the night. Jesse Daley was back! It appears that he didn't get the contract at Perth Glory, and possibly flying over on the same plane as the Sorrento players, he started this match on the bench. There was also the state of the Lakeside pitch, which was waterlogged in some parts, which surprised me because there have been other matches in which it has rained and the ground has held up much better than it did on Wednesday night. And there was also Tim Mala in the starting line up, but still no Michael Eagar. Luke Pavlou was out and Matthew Foschini was back in the middle. But there was also no time to make sense out of any of that, because we were in front after a minute or so, a goal I almost missed because of someone wanting to have a chat with me and picking a very bad moment to do it. But I did get to see Leigh Minopoulos putting up his goal when it was easy enough to make a meal out of that chance.

Leigh Minopoulos in action on Wednesday night. Photo. Mike Owen.

Look, does this game need much analysis? They had some freaky tall players, tried hitting us on the counter, managed to scramble their way forward close enough a few times, but that says more I think about what we're doing as a team at the moment than any potency Sorrento may have had. The wet surface helped us more than it did them, and we knocked the ball around pretty well, though Chris Taylor doesn't seem that impressed with some of the decision making. Which is fine with me, the players can be happy with themselves all they like, but it's a coach's prerogative to be inversely unhappy especially if he doesn't think that instructions have adequately followed.

The 2-0 halftime lead, which included one of our better moves for the season, finished off first time by the People's Champ was quite deserved. Of course people will point to the 'key incident' of the sending off of Sean Canham, but we had things under control before that, and while things theoretically could have changed in the second half I have my doubts that they would have.

To limit description of the red card only to Canham's receiving a second yellow does the whole farce a disservice. Apparently he'd mouthed off on our Facebook page, which is convenient for me because who gives a stuff about Facebook? Anyway, during the first half Nikola Roganovic did one of his silly leaving the ball too long and waiting for the striker to 'make' Nikola pick the ball up, and in shades of Palm Beach two years ago there was a collision between Roganovic and the opposition forward. This time we got away with it, as Canham was adjudged to have violently fouled our man and was given a yellow card for his troubles.

Kristian Konstantinidis slides in to challenge an opponent.
Photo: Matthew Jackson.

Fast forward to later on, when we were 2-0 up late in the first half and Canham was running toward goal when both he and his South opponent seemed to collide. I didn't think it was a foul myself, but it didn't seem like a dive either; it was a classic 'play on' call as far as I was concerned. But the ref, who was in a much better position than us to be fair, called it a dive and dished out a second yellow card to Canham, and he was off. Which was all well and good except that Canham couldn't get off the field because he'd actually snapped his Achilles tendon. Of course none us in the stand knew this at the time, and thus the 'keyboard warrior' taunt came out, as did the last post (or flailing parts thereof), and all sorts of other hostility. Which is perfectly understandable from our end, but the reaction of some our players at the time seemed a bit over the top. All of it was made farcical as Canham was taken off the ground in completely the wrong direction for some reason.

It was all a bit of a mess to be honest, though I can understand how the referee came to his decision on it being a dive - someone snapping their Achilles would go down as if they'd been shot, rather like someone going for a dive. Now the ref is probably not a medical professional, and I don't know if he can rescind or change his mind on these decisions, but it seems as if the circumstances conspired against him, and of course Canham and Sorrento, and we got the rub of the green on that one.

In the second half it's fair to say that we didn't extend ourselves too much, and pretty soon Sorrento ran out of gas and we were able to take off some players and give blokess like Stefan Zinni and Jesse Daley a bit of a run. It would've been nice to bury them by a few more goals, and we had the chances to do so. It would've also been nice not to concede, but we did, from exactly the kind of situation we expected to concede against this mob: from a corner. But Nick Epifano's second took the edge off that bit of very mild disappointment.

Post-match in the social club was a jovial affair, as we watched extra time of the Sydney Croatia vs Alexandros match. I wasn't emotionally invested in either team winning to be honest, but there was a definitely a more pronounced anti-Heidelberg feeling in the room. That's bound to happen not just because they are our eternal rival, but also because of some Bergers people who happened to be in attendance, as well as every time George Katsakis' face comes on TV it seems to aggravate our people, which is understandable.

With that match over and my raspberry lemonade finished, it was time to go, which meant missing my connecting train to Sunshine and sitting alone at Flagstaff, tired but content, and with a Nestle Crunch for company for at least a few minutes.

The draw for the next round is on Tuesday night after the completion of the fixtures for this round, and won't we all be excited for that.

Next game
An NPL Victoria semi final some time next week against one of Avondale, Green Gully or Bentleigh, probably at home.

And you want to be my latex salesman
Now you know I don't like any of this business, never have, never will, but I feel that we must make at least a little note about the crowd number.

The official attendance was announced as being 939, the lowest tally of the four matches on the night, and a figure well down on the 2,600 odd that apparently turned up to our match against Edgeworth.

That announcement seemed to surprise a few of our own, who felt that the real number was either a  bit higher or a lot higher than that.

And so they poured forth onto social media to defend the club against the storm of social media nobodies who were using the posted figure as a way of making fun of our A-League ambitions.

More power to everyone on that front, because neither love nor hate are strong enough on their own to make the social media world go round. You really do need both.

Our lovable larrikin prez was also on the case, posting up an explanation on Twitter for the apparent discrepancy in the figures, along with a demand to change the official record to reflect that 'fact'.

You didn't count the 890 that got scanned in from the social club side.
Crowd was just under 2000.
Please amend your records.

— Leo Athanasakis (@LAthanasakis) August 23, 2017

Speaking only for myself, I have no idea about these things. I counted the seats once in order to correct one myth about Lakeside's capacity that anyone could've (but hadn't) easily corrected years before. Everything else is operational matters, which are out my control.

Situations like this aren't helped when you're the club who a) have been running your mouth off for the last few months about how many members you have, and b) have a hard-earned reputation over many years (whether deserved or not) for fudging crowd numbers up, down and sideways.

More pertinent here is the fact that our patron entry procedures are a dog's breakfast, and that being the case it means that any attempt to count a crowd accurately are doomed from the outset.

It's times like this where I wish it was like Scottish football where there is no shame attached to this nonsense, and we could therefore just announce the crowd accurately every week, and nobody would care if it the number was high or low.

Let's Save Roberto Carlos' House!
There were reports in the media yesterday that our future A-League coach Roberto Carlos was going to be sentenced to a two year prison stint for failing to pay child support to his former partner, who is the mother of two his children.

Naturally, because I saw this news on Twitter, this was retweeted mercilessly with references to him not being able to coach us as was our agreement.Thankfully the actual sentence Carlos received was only three months, which should be a relief to everyone at South Melbourne For A-League HQ.

If we do get a fundraiser going we should get Troy McClure to host it.
You may remember him from such SMFC fundraisers as 'Save Our South'
and 'Let's get Fox Sports for the social club!'.
'

Me, I'm more concerned that someone who had played at some of the biggest clubs in the world for many years has found himself in this dire financial situation - with apparently six other children and another on the way!

What makes this situation even worse is that the solution he's looking for to solve his money problems is a job that won't turn up for at least another couple of years if it even exists at all.

But instead of making light of this situation, we should find a way to help out a guy in need. I'm thinking we should hold a fundraising night, which we could maybe host at the casino, tickets $300...

Final thought
I like Anthony Colangelo as a journo, Twitterer, and as an occasional acquaintance, but his non-corroborated spitting allegation... I don't know, man. He kinda went full Donald Sutherland, and you never go full Donald Sutherland.