That's what you get for caring - Northcote City 3 South Melbourne 2

Apologies for taking so long to get this post up; it's not like there's anything revelatory in the match report segment to make it worth the wait, and not much for laughs either.

The good times seem so long ago now that it's hard to believe that they were still going relatively strong late last year. Fast forward to now, and while it's still early in the season,  we've already reached one of the least appealing markers on the road to being crap, namely, being beaten by the "little" Greek clubs whose supporters (whether full-time or just there for the day) then decide to try and rub it in our faces. Several winning seasons may not have made us any more likable in the eyes of those people, it may not have even made them respect us, but winning at least gave us that psychological boost to the ego of "who cares what those people think?" Still, that's what you get for caring.

Another less noticeable sign of our increasing decrepitude came later, when the SMFC TV video came out. I clicked ahead to the end, and sure enough, there were no post-match interviews with a coach or player. Maybe they were all too distraught with the last minute loss to speak to camera. Maybe no one could be bothered to interview them. Now I'm not expecting to glean clues to explain our poor start to the season, but it's nice to see someone front up even if it's just to spout clichés. I mean, the players do the best they can on any given day, and sometimes their best is nowhere near their actual best.

Nevertheless, someone is responsible for what's going on out there at the moment, and while the players and coaches have to take their share of responsibility, as yet the supporters haven't turned on them. No doubt this is because their anger is being turned squarely at those who have decided, for reasons which may yet be valid but which only they know, to set us on this course. They must have figured that whatever it was that Chris Taylor had done, it was serious enough to turf him out just weeks before the season started, after having scrambled to sign enough players to fill out a first eleven, and letting other reasonable calibre recruits go to rival teams so late in the pre-season that one has to wonder at the planning process which lead to such a situation.

Pity that this first eleven, which would've been covered by a degree of depth last year, is withering away on and off the field. To our on field struggles, lack of a Plan B, or even ability to run out a game, we've now got players sitting on the bench who are injured and unlikely to take part; why else would Leigh Minopoulos, who the previous week set up a goal and scored one himself, not come on even for the sake of fresh legs? Thus you get the strange situation of going down to ten men for the last twenty odd minutes and making just the one sub because that's all you can really do.

One of the more naturally pessimistic supporters said that season 2018 feels like season 2008, and to be honest, at this point it's not that far off the mark. Each week a little bit of hope is chipped away. Can't defend. Can't run out games. Can't hold a lead. Treading water until the mid-season transfer window opens up in several weeks.

But we've got to keep supporting the team through thick and thin, it's just what we do, and goodness knows the boys need all the support they can get at the moment. Maybe an unlikely cup win can spark something? Look at me clutching at straws. See everyone on Friday, unless they've got you working the night shift.

Next game
Hume City away in the FFA Cup, on the Good Friday public holiday. The match will be streamed by FFV.

Unimportant observations
Northcote has changed its point of entry to the gate back of the venue on Clarendon Street. Northcote is also the latest club to move towards night (or at least this stage, twilight games), although they haven't yet bitten the bullet (or received the necessary approval) to go to Friday nights like everyone else. The candy bar in the social club is also gone, so if you're in the mood for Skittlebrau at John Cain Memorial Park, you're going to have to bring your own Skittles from now on.

There's also action going on in the western part of the ground with the hill behind that goal dug up, and where the small secondary pitch was there is now a massive hole in the ground which some people were speculating was for car parking for apartments, but is in all likelihood a "proposed underground water storage facility", which will likely include the reinstatement of the "full size senior football pitch to west of existing NCFC stadium pitch."

Within the John Cain Memorial Park Master Plan released in 2017 (which is an intermittently fascinating read) there is this tidbit:

The priority for FFV is to relocated the administrative base back to John Cain Memorial Reserve.

Which will of course have people flailing their arms in bewilderment. So it goes.

The following brain fart is based upon paying attention to about 35 minutes of under 20s NPL Victoria football for the first time this year, in between eating a souv, checking Twitter, and inadvertently eavesdropping in on other people's conversations
And as if there weren't enough disclaimers in the segment title, here are some more. Each year's quality of youth players is going to vary, even if that's not the point of the NPL. It could've been an off day for every player from both teams. It's Australia and we still have to be if not forgiving, then at least tolerant and expectant that the skill level won't be world class. Like everyone else, the kids are trying to do the best they can. Making sense of a game from up in the stand is much easier than making sense of it at ground level. And as always, my soccer opinions should always be taken with a large grain of salt.

But this is what got me unexpectedly flustered, because I usually invest very little emotionally into youth soccer, knowing that the results only really matter if you're at the top of the table at the end of season, and that most of the players will end up being nowhere near the standard of the state's top tier when they finish youth football. It was the on field decision making that dare I say it, actually upset me. The skill level wasn't great in last Saturday's 20s game, but there were so many bizarre decisions made that I feel like it's worth highlighting two of them to show what I mean.

The first moment actually involved a well executed piece of skill, which lead to an absolutely dead end situation. It was a cross-field diagonal ball, perfectly placed from the left wing to a player running towards the right hand corner post. And the brilliance of that pass masked the fact that the receiving player had nowhere to go, and no one to pass to. The best that could realistically be achieved in that situation is a corner, because it's unlikely that the player is going to be beat one, let alone two defenders in order to get into the box.

The second example had much less going for it in either aesthetics or thoughtfulness. A high loose ball was heading toward a defending player somewhere between the centre circle and his own 18 yard box. There was ample time to control the ball, but instead he took a massive swing at the ball, missing it completely. As much as he looked a fool after his air-swing, what would have happened if he had connected with the ball? It would have gone flying up the other end of the field, turned over back to the opposition goalkeeper.

My reaction to these and other confounding examples of poor decision making was, how did it come to this?

And I know that writing it all out like this probably makes me come across as petty, and naive, and ignorant, and I'll wear that because it's not like I have any education or interest in youth football methodologies. I can't tell you who or what is to blame when things turn out awry; the best and only advice I can give any young soccer player is to go out and watch more state league games, preferably ones with some elevated viewing spots. But I say this in part because that's the κουτσό στραβό  method I mostly rely on to learn about soccer.

But I am intrigued now about how decision making is taught to young soccer players, and I am even prepared to be enlightened on the matter by those who know about such things.

An old battered trophy, on a cheap plastic base.
The inscription reads "Winner, Port Melbourne,
 Summer Cup"; there is no date on the trophy.
Photo: Paul Mavroudis.

Musings on a trip out to the Greek archives at La Trobe University
The other week I ventured out to Bundoora to visit La Trobe University's Greek archives, ostensibly to offer an extra hand to Tony Wilson and Rob Heath who are making that Ferenc Puskas documentary that I've mentioned here once or twice. Of course, as well as hopefully being of use to Tony and Rob as they looked for relevant materials, one of the other benefits of visiting the archives was to see what South Melbourne Hellas stuff they had more broadly. The results of that secondary goal were a mixed bag.

But first to the archives themselves. Located on the southern fringe of La Trobe's Bundoora campus, the archives are located in a former high school site, almost invisible to the general public. To be fair, almost any kind of archive held at a university is invisible to the general public, who more often than not don't know that these kinds of archives exist, and that they can be accessed by the public.

Though who knows whether such contact information is even current. Hate the FFV website? Try navigating a university website looking for current and correct information after they go through countless updates and tweaks to their interface.

The Kambouropolos-McKay Memorial Cup, awarded to
 the winner of the 1998 "all-stars" (I assume veterans)
  match between Heidelberg United Alexander and
 South Melbourne Hellas. Photo: Paul Mavroudis

Anyway, from my place in Sunshine, it takes a good hour and forty-five minutes to get to the archives by public transport. Luckily on that day I got a lift to Sunshine station, and a late route 350 bus meant that I didn't have to wait an extra 15 minutes for a later bus. The bus winds its way through the inner north, goes up the freeway, than meanders through Ivanhoe and suburbs like that. It stops at the corner of the old high school, which is convenient enough.

The first thing you notice when arriving is the Melbourne City (Heart, not the Argentines) branding on the buildings. It is of course where their Melbourne headquarters/colonial outpost is situated. I got there a bit early, so ended up loitering outside in the rain as Heart players and personnel I didn't recognise filed inside, until I was eventually visited by an office staffer asking me what I was doing.

I could've provided any number of sarcastic answers, but settled for the truth, that I was waiting for people so we could visit the archives. Then she directed me to a completely wrong area. These things happen.

Tony and Rob having arrived we get ushered in by Michael, our guide for the day, through a side gate. What follows is a few hours of searching through boxes and plastic sleeves, interspersed with a potted history of Greek life in Melbourne, Victoria, and occasionally places further afield. Michael shows us the film room, filled with posters and film reels of the golden age of Greek cinema, the history of such being one of his specialties.

Another copy of a photo I first saw in Jim Pyrgolios' personal collection. Of
course, a blown up version of this photo is now part of the displays in the
 South Melbourne social club's museum space.

As is often the case, there are grievances aired about university funding and resource priorities. With similar issues coning up across the university sector, I feel like I could contribute a lot to this conversation, but decide to let it unfold as a monologue. Tenured scholars, archivists, librarians, post-graduate students; we all know the issues intimately, especially as they relate to the humanities, and the temptation is always to join in and vent. But sometimes you've just got to sit back and listen.

The archives are in if not quite what one would call a chaotic state, they are nevertheless not in their optimal catalogued state. Many boxes exist, the items contained in those boxes usually correspond to the box's chief designation, but items within the box are more often than tagged with a reference number and not much else. There is hope that one day a thorough and proper cataloging of items will takes place, but that will take several years, and the persistence of those who care about the archives. Looking at the troubled history of these archives, there's no guarantee that the quality of their itemisation and preservation will improve. But we can always hope!

Assorted graffiti, including "HELLAS RULES YOU'S FOOLS",
"LONG LIVE MAKEDONIA", a swastika, and some flags
 Unknown location, date, provenance.

Anyway, as part of their research for the film, Tony and Rob were looking for photos of Ferenc Puskas in Australia; moving out to images of South Melbourne Hellas from that era; moving out further again to images from South Melbourne Hellas history; and most broadly of all, images from Greek life from the 1950s to early 1990s. On that last front, there are a lot of photos to sort through, of social and regional brotherhood club clubs, of soccer clubs, picnics, church and festival days. Some photos are marked on the back, noting the event, the date, the location, but most are blank, its subjects anonymous. Over time, the people involved will become only more obscure.

Sorting through the boxes was a ramshackle affair, and yet also soothing in the way familiar to researchers both lay and professional. You get into a zone where the eclecticism of a collection becomes its own reward, and you get distracted by the breadth of materials on offer. So while I was there primarily for the task of finding materials relevant to the documentary, I could not help but go down detours, and to that end I found all sorts of photos and objects worth noting, including things you want to check out later on; in my case, the collection of Athletic Echo, Athletic News, and Athletic Flame Greek-Australian sports newspapers are likely to have all sorts of interesting information (and doesn't this stuff just need the most urgent digitisation!).

Two Northcote City Hercules players. The photo is dated
 "1969". Who the players are, where they are, who took the
 photo: all of that remains a mystery.

But there are of course problems with accessing archive collections such as these, and chief among those is the ever present spectre of copyright. In cases where stuff is old enough (say, prior to about 1954) things are pretty clear cut, but later on it all gets tricky. Who owns it? Under what circumstances can I or someone else (re)-distribute images of materials included in the archives? And is it possible that if I put up photos of photos into the public domain, that another researcher will have tighter restrictions placed upon them?

That's why I've been careful here not to reproduce too much. The South Melbourne Hellas "Red Vee" photo? I've put it up here because versions of the image are already out in the public domain. The trophies? They aren't photos, and ownership of their copyright quite clearly belongs to no one. The graffiti photo? So obscure that it's unlikely anyone will ever come calling to claim ownership of it. The Northcote photo (see right) of two unknown players, of unknown provenance, seems like the kind of thing that could safely be reproduced by again, the laws around these things are often murky.

It's one of the problems that Rob and Tony are going to have to deal with in making their documentary. The photos they found in the archive and which they may want to use were created by someone, and unless those people have relinquished copyright, they'll still have intellectual and moral ownership of the items. Similar issues come up in using different archives, including soccer collections like the Laurie Schwab and Les Shorrock collection at Deakin University. There are loopholes, considerations around fair use and honest attempts at finding out who owns the rights ti particular materials, but this is one of the reasons why Tony, Rob and I want the South Melbourne Hellas community to dig into its own attics, basements, cupboards and drawers to see what material it has, so Tony and Rob can get access to material which not only has a sense of cultural authenticity, because it was produced by non-journalists, but also because the ownership rights of such material will be much easier to trace.

Now I didn't want to do this
And that's why I'm a bit dumbfounded that the club hasn't put up anything yet promoting Tony and Rob's search for these kind of materials. The club's Facebook page has nearly 60,000 followers, and the club has 13,000 followers on Twitter. As far as social media goes, I have a reach of 60 people on Facebook (I barely use it), fewer than 1,000 followers on Twitter, and this blog which is read by the same old 300-400 people unless there's someone jumping a fence to attack someone else. Even if a good deal of the club's official social media followers are fakes, its reach would still be way bigger than anything I could muster.

And in case anyone is wondering, yes I have forwarded on stuff about the call for homemade South Melbourne Hellas materials to the club to use and adapt as they see fit (and if they don't like that, they can even write their own stuff), and I've received no response. The lack of any promotion of the documentary and its call for footage and photos is especially weird because the club is aware of what Tony and Rob are doing, and Tony and Rob actually got an invite to the club's jersey night the other week, where I assume things went well. The club would even benefit from whatever film and photography gets unearthed by the call out because first, it will make a better documentary about South Melbourne Hellas, and second, because the club will probably get access to a whole bunch of material it didn't have before.

But there's also this
Folk from a range of former NSL clubs who have tried to get match footage from the any of the networks, and SBS especially, have come up against the problem that it costs a hell of a lot of money to get access to that footage. As much as it annoys me, I understand why this is the case, even if I can see little scope for any of these networks ever making money from NSL footage. Apart from oddballs with acute historical connections to the relevant clubs, the only use for that footage is television networks looking for easy access for soccer riots - and even then, they've got most that stuff on speed dial.

But televised soccer history isn't just the games, it's also the news segments, the off-field pieces, the humorous segments. While NSL matches may have (as far as we know, and only after certain dates) largely survived the "we need space" culls of network television archives, it came to my attention that other elements of our soccer culture have been taped over to create space. That this has been done by SBS is disturbing on several levels. First, SBS is a public broadcaster, whose remit goes beyond whatever short termism may exist at the commercial networks. Second, SBS is (or at least was) the self-proclaimed home of Australian soccer. Third, SBS was the network most closely associated with migrant - that is non Anglo-Celtic Australia.

All these things make SBS' erasure of our history something to be despondent about, but what's done is done and there's not much that any of can do about it. Except, of course, those who have (probably) broken the law in the past to record television programming onto VHS tapes despite the ubiquitous copyright warning notices, and who have then gone one step further to definitely breaching copyright by uploading those materials to online platforms without getting any permission to do so. As far as Australian soccer goes, these people have inadvertently saved otherwise impossible to find moments of our soccer history.

But here's the catch. If you want to use those videos in a commercial production - videos containing footage which no longer exists in any other format because of its destruction by the original broadcaster - they can still charge you for using that footage! When I heard this, I was dumbstruck. I mean, by erasing their footage, haven't the broadcasters forfeited the right to charge  if not legally, then certainly morally?

It's a mad world, to be sure. The good thing is that the interviews for the Puskas doco have been going well, and that most of the people you'd expect to be called upon to give their version of events have done so. No spoilers though!

Match programs update
Thanks to the visit to the archives, I managed to get copies of several home match programs from 1988 to add to the collection.

Around the grounds
Guinea Pigs
As is increasingly the case in Melbourne nowadays, there are more Friday night soccer options than you can poke a stick at, as clubs strive to get some of those sweet TGIF metrics, though the jury's still out on whether Friday night games make any difference in the long run. It's not like we have anything more than anecdotal evidence to go on, since almost no club posts attendance figures anyway. Given the choice of five NPL 1 matches, most of them within reasonable reach even for me, I decided to head to the round 1 State League 1 South-East  contest between Richmond and Beaumaris instead.

It was a mini late South Melbourne NSL reunion of sorts, with Richmond being coached by Sam Poutakidis, and Beaumaris by Marcus Stergiopoulos. The reunion didn't extend to Kristian Sarkies, who was unavailable for Beaumaris because he was in Hawaii. It was also an informal reunion for several people associated with Richmond's brief golden era, the circa 2010 period where the club finished minor premiers and grand final runners up, with the then coach (Mike Chatzitifronas, his first soccer game in several years), team manager (Mark Boric), president (Helmut Kalitzki) and a few others reminiscing and asking where some of the old players had ended up.

To be honest, my main interest in this match lay in its prurient qualities. Richmond is in the unenviable position of being the first club to have been relegated from Victoria's NPL system (Bendigo City were also relegated, but they disbanded their senior team soon afterwards, as was expected). So what happens to a club in that position and how do they rebuild? And what does rebuild mean? To answer that last question, Richmond's goal is to get back into the NPL, and to do so as quickly as possible. That much was clear from the visa player heavy squad which took the field.

Funnily enough, Richmond's trophies and pennants were absent both because
 of a fire several years ago and because what remained was being restored. 

Elsewhere, one had to look for clues in the way match day was being run, while being careful not to jump to doomsday conclusions. Entry was free, but that could have been a sign of goodwill for the first game of a 65th anniversary season. There was no memorabilia on display, but that was because it had been packed away for restoration and a hope for improved display in the social club. The crowd was small, but it was still bigger than most comparable affairs last year. according to those in the know. Even the canteen, which somehow ran out of bread rolls and was cooking nearly everything to order - even the bain marie staples - was apparently running along the same lines as last year.

More concerning is how does an NPL club's culture regenerate or persist when it is no longer an NPL club? Eavesdropping in on conversations over the course of the night, it appears as if most of the juniors which had played NPL with Richmond had moved onto other NPL teams. The introduction of the NPL itself, with its rigid junior squad frameworks, means that there are a lot of people at NPL clubs (youth players and parents alike) who are there only because of the fact that they club in question is an NPL club. Now to be fair, this was a trend that was in evidence before the establishment of the NPL, but the NPL has solidified it - nearly everyone's presence at an NPL club is strictly conditional upon the club remaining an NPL club. Just as concerning, is that in order to become or re-become an NPL club, the juniors you've accumulated along the way will have to largely be discarded.

(There's also the matter of the free-for-all signing sprees going on in the state leagues for teams hoping to become NPL clubs, especially with regards to visa players, compared to the at least nominal restrictions placed upon the senior squads of NPL clubs.)

As long as there's enough of the strange few who remain attached to senior men's football in a spectator or supporter capacity, there's a cultural bulwark in place to make sure those kinds of clubs can remain as such. But what happens when that cultural foundation is discarded, or wears away? What will the NPL clubs whose senior football reason for being becomes obsolete or discarded? Bendigo was always going to fall away, because there was no shared history for anyone to really care about. But if you think that some of the once upon a time stalwart clubs are going to be able to fare much better in the next ten years or so as interest in senior second tier men's wanes, then you are a much bigger optimist than I could ever hope to be.

Looking towards the bottom of both NPL2 divisions at the moment, and there's at least one candidate that I can see struggling to recover should it fall out of the NPL system. Richmond themselves were not so far away from that fate last year, with a large tax debt and relegation seeing the then custodians of the club prefer to pull the plug than fight it out, letting a long if not altogether storied history go by the wayside. They got lucky: they got a benefactor of sorts to pull them back from the ledge, restoring a sense of equilibrium. But as we should all know by now, regardless of the success they may bring, benefactors are a poor substitute for a strong supporter culture in terms of holding clubs together.

As for the game itself, it was pretty forgettable. Richmond opened the scoring with a nice enough move from the left, and Beaumaris drew level before halftime with a penalty, after an earlier penalty shout was changed to a free kick. At best, the two sides each produced a five minute burst of tolerable football during the opening 45 minutes. The second half was marginally livelier. Richmond retook the lead, had a man sent off for a second yellow card after some confusion, and polished off the game with a penalty of their own. Beaumaris, despite having the extra man and a game to chase, only looked like a team with those twin motivating factors

Final thought

🎵Believe it or not
Ange isn’t at home🎵 pic.twitter.com/FJBbPXJdST

— Nice Orange 🌈 (@AardigOranje) March 23, 2018

Learnings - Pascoe Vale 2 South Melbourne 2

Because I squandered 7,000 words on that other post, and since nobody likes a waffler, let's keep this post reasonably short and sweet.

What have we learned so far in 2018 about what this team is?

• We have no Plan B. It's the same subs trying to fix the same problem, which is mostly players running out of gas. We have no meaningful depth, which makes implementing a tactical adjustment very difficult.
• We look great at the start, fresh and lively and dangerous. We actually look really good, and one can't actually say otherwise. Then it gets a bit iffy. We maybe concede a goal and drop our heads, lose our way quickly. Then as the game wears on, all of that disappears. Before we run out of gas, if we lose the ball anywhere, we're quick to win it back. When we lose the ball after the hour mark, the ball zips up to the other end in a flash. Our defensive transition becomes woeful.
• Our crossing is garbage. That's been the case for a long time anyway, but this season it has been much worse than usual. We also don't have a set piece taker. Again, this has been a problem for a number of years, but this year even our usual tolerable option (Marcus Schroen) isn't available. Now in terms of corners, that's near enough to a lottery anyway. But whether you hate or merely tolerate him, the Peoples' Champ is not a free kick taker.
• Last year it was the right hand side which was a mess, this year it's the left. And when Brennan runs out of steam and gets subbed off, both wings go missing, as Oliver Minatel hasn't yet done anything of note.
• The striker insurance plan is in as much trouble as last year, and every year since we've relied on Leigh Minopoulos to be the one and only back up to Milos Lujic. If it's true that Giordano Marafioti has suffered a season ending knee injury, we're in even worse shape.
• Some people got a little bit too excited about Christos Intzidis a little bit too quickly. Despite only having played against two of the smaller and weaker forward lines in the league, people - and not just our own fans - saw his good side and were talking him up big time. But the Intzidis and Konstantinidis partnership was always going to come up against sterner tests. Why couldn't people just be a little more patient?

There is that one possible saving grace that last year we had fewer points and also put up some garbage performances. Just awful really. Remember the 4-0 loss to Port? How about that abomination that was the loss to Avondale? We had five points from the first five rounds, two very ordinary performances wins against lower league FFA Cup opposition. We've already got five points on the board, and the team has looked more capable of winning games than at this point last year.

On the other hand, last year other teams were also tripping themselves up, and we're already streets behind teams that are winning all their games and winning them well. So, for those hoping for an unlikely first place finish, I'd let go of that wish for now. It's the way we've been dropping points so far that's the concern, coupled with the lack of depth, the sense of doom after Taylor's sacking which was temporarily alleviated by the win against the Chinese and the decent looking performances of the first couple of games.

But at least last year you had the idea that the team was playing so badly that at some point they could only play better. Does this team have that capacity?

Next match
Away to Northcote on Saturday. Please note that the kickoff time for this game has been changed from its original 3:00PM timeslot to a 6:30PM start. Also, a good deal of John Cain Memorial Park is under redevelopment, so the western end of the ground seems to be inaccessible to spectators.

FFA Cup news
The fourth round draw was held last Tuesday. This is the stage of the tournament where ourselves and the other Victorian NPL teams enter the competition. We have been drawn away against Hume City. It looks like the fixture has been set for Friday March 30th (the Good Friday public holiday), with kickoff at 5:00PM.

A-League expansion "news"
Um, so apparently this is back 'on' now. Looking at adding two teams in 2019/20, about ten bidding groups and maybe more coming out of the woodwork once the bidding process is made official or whatever. This is the bit I'm most excited about:

"Specific criteria for application will be released"

Though sadly this will only be released to the parties bidding for licences. But, come on, specific criteria at last! A carefully worded framework which has to ensure that the current A-League licence holders pass the mark, while also being set up in such a way to ensure that South doesn't qualify.

Assuming of course that we are even any chance of meeting A-League criteria of any sort.

And to any member of a bidding team out there who wants to sneakily pass on the FFA's expansion bid checklist this blogger's way, that'd be terrific. Utmost discretion will be practiced.

Meanwhile
Our former journalist friend Matt Windley (late of the Herald Sun) has joined the South-East Melbourne A-League bid team. Need to find another journo to suck up to.

Around the grounds
Thank goodness the state leagues begin this week.

Final thought
If I hear the word "hektik" one more time this season...

Summary of March 2018 AAFC roadshow Melbourne edition

Introductory remarks
Derisory as I am of the idea of promotion and relegation in Australia, attending the Association of Australian Football Clubs roadshow event in Melbourne last Thursday seemed like a no-brainer. This meeting was meant to be held in Sports House in Albert Park, but a text message received while I was on the train up there said that a burst water pipe had necessitated the relocation of the event to the South Melbourne FC social club.

Of course. What else could they have done at such short notice?

Nursing my gin and tonic I had not intended to tweet much about the event, but rather take some brief notes on my phone (I'd not bothered to bring pen and paper as I do for say, South Melbourne AGMs), but after getting a polite request and checking that I had enough battery left on my phone, I decided to give it a go. I did note that Shouty Mike was also in the room, and though long since blocked by him on Twitter, I guessed he would tweet at least some of what was happening on the night, so there's always that if anyone wants an alternative view of proceedings.

There were also summary notes taken by freelancer/interested onlooker Matthew Galea, if one cares to go back far enough in his time-line, and there has been a positive overview of the night by journalist Jonathan Howcroft on Football Nation Radio. Also on Football Nation Radio is an interview with Tom Kalas.

Through my limited internet trawling, there appears to have been very little comment made about any of the roadshow meetings outside the Melbourne event. I'm not sure why that is the case - was the roadshow not publicised well enough, or is there just inherently more interest in these matters in Melbourne? One thing which came across during the Melbourne meeting is that there were at least slightly different messages given to different AAFC constituencies. This makes sense because, as I'll reiterate later, each state's experience of the National Premier Leagues, let alone Australian soccer, is quite different from each other.

The crowd built up to about 40-50 people, mostly in casual (non-club) gear, with a few exceptions. I recognised (and learned over the course of the night) that there were representatives present from South Melbourne (Andrew Mesourouni and Leo Athanasakis), Northcote, Heidelberg, Goulburn Valley Suns, Bendigo City(!), and North Geelong, but not much more beyond that. There were some non-club representatives - that is ordinary fans, and one bloke from local Greek media who I see around a lot but don't know the name of nor who he works for - but otherwise the audience seemed to be mostly committee members of various NPL teams.

It is interesting that more ordinary fans didn't show up. That being said, AAFC only has a couple hundred more followers on Twitter than I do (I have no idea about their reach on Facebook), so maybe this was actually about as good a turnout as one could expect. Indeed, we were told on at least a couple of occasions that the Melbourne meeting had the biggest attendance of any of the AAFC roadshow sessions up until that point, with only Newcastle yet to come. Why was that the case? I suppose it helps that Victoria has one of the larger NPL setups in terms of numbers of clubs, at over 30, and more NPL teams means more people likely to turn up.

(As an aside, when AAFC representatives were asked who were the Victorian NPL teams not under the AAFC umbrella, it was noted that Whittlesea Ranges and Sunshine George Cross were among them. Ranges I could understand, I guess, from their Victory/sponsor connections - though Moreland Zebras/Victory man Joe Mirabella was in attendance on the night - but the Georgies one has me a bit stumped to be honest.)

There's also a continuity in recent times in terms of Victorian clubs getting together to fight the establishment, namely, the (mostly) united front by leading and aspirational clubs against Football Federation Victoria's original NPL framework. Indeed, two of the key figures in that campaign - Tom Kalas and Nick Galatas - are now key members of AAFC. There's probably other factors for the larger turnout too, like the more obvious seething antipathy in Victoria for Football Federation Australia compared to other states, which would extend to the general distrust of New South Wales' dominance of Australian soccer. Neither do Victorian clubs, even the powerful ones, have anything like the facilities (on field or off) of the wealthier New South Wales clubs. Add in existing under the Aussie rules hegemony, and I guess everyone feels a bit more vulnerable than they'd like to admit.

(As another aside, FFV president - and according to one source, also currently acting FFV CEO - Kimon Taliadoros was absent, due to a competing engagement. FFV had some representation at the meeting in the form of Gary Cole, recently hired by FFV as "Manager, Football Strategy and Special Projects". While an FFA representative attended AAFC's Queensland roadshow meeting, it was speculated out loud that FFA were not likely to attend a Victorian meeting due to the hostility they were likely to receive from members of the audience.)

Representing AAFC on the night on the front table/panel of sorts were Dean Hennessey, current Pascoe Vale technical director, ex-coach and TD of a few places; Tom Kalas, ex-South Melbourne board member, interim AAFC chairman during parts of 2017 and frequent spokesman for the group; Nick Galatas, South Melbourne chairman until very recently; and AAFC chairman Rabieh Krayem, one time Northern Fury chairman. Oddly, of those four only Krayem offered any significant contribution to the night's proceedings, with Krayem at times sharing the stage or delegating proceedings to AAFC treasurer Christo Patsan of Northern New South Wales.

From then to now
The evening began with an address by Rabieh Krayem, giving an overview of AAFC's progress and success up until now. He outlined the reasons for the establishment of AAFC, a summary of AAFC's rise to (relative) prominence, and noted the ongoing unity of AAFC member clubs. This theme of unity was returned to throughout the night, out of a certain degree of truth no doubt, but also in its own way acting as a polite reminder to AAFC member clubs that anything which would undermine that unity would be detrimental to their collective aims.

But as with so much of what AAFC is about, it's about adding a positive spin to everything that they do; thus extolling AAFC's ability to unite so many disparate soccer clubs, and celebrating an unprecedented collective effort in "putting football ahead of self-interest". This was reiterated by comments such as the unity of the AAFC clubs apparently confusing FFA. Added to the repetition of the need for continued unity were the virtues of focus and patience; not everything would happen at once, and the keenness for reform from NPL clubs needed to be properly directed.

Krayem went on to list the three broadest issues which the NPL clubs suffer under and which AAFC hopes to fix:

1. Unsustainable NPL model. 
2. The high costs of junior soccer. 
3. The limitations on growth for NPL clubs under the current system.

Some of these issues were covered in relative brevity, either by the night's two main hosts, or during the workshop period of the meeting. As best as I can recall, no specific details were offered in terms of fixing points 1 and 2, but point 3 was addressed in detailing what AAFC hoped to achieve as part of its aim to help create a truly national second tier.

The Championship/Second Tier discussion
After announcing its initial framework for a second tier model (among other demands) last year (see my take here; or the guest point-counterpoint here), AAFC announced at the roadshow meeting that it is in the process of creating a working model group for the second development stage (out of three) for its second tier/Championship model. The intention is to finish this stage by June, and seeing as how AAFC met its own October 2017 deadline for releasing its original/stage one proposal, we can be optimistic that we'll see the results of stage two sometime in mid-year.

Sceptical as I am about many facets of this plan, one development (or the absence of) I was interested in seeing was whether other relevant Australian soccer parties - federations, players, etc - would become involved in trying to develop a second tier model. And this is where one of the more interesting - and as it turns out, also contentious - parts of the meeting took place. AAFC claimed that it would be working with FFV, Football New South Wales, and Professional Footballers Australia to develop the model; indeed, that those three groups would also provide funding for the necessary research. Apart from the (however vague) political vote of confidence that such a collaboration implies, the news that there would be pooled funding for the working model group caught the attention of a few onlookers both at the venue and among those observing online.

Later on though there emerged conflicting reports about whether FFV had actually agreed to provide funding for the working model group, as opposed to merely providing moral and/or logistical support. In communications I had with different people, from the AAFC side there was insistence that FFV (and even FFA) had committed to funding the working model group, while two sources from the FFV side insisted to me that no financial commitment had been made by FFV. Confusing things further, from the AAFC side I later received "clarification" that AAFC was still in discussions with the different groups about the possibility of funding the working model group.

When combined with the suggestion, made at the Adelaide meeting, that AAFC member clubs would be asked to contribute financially to the working model group, there seem to be mixed messages floating around about how the working model group will be funded.

Not doubting Paul but FYI - at the Adelaide stop of the roadshow it was suggested member clubs of AAFC would be asked to contribute to cover this instead. I think it was $500 pa per club up from the token $100 it cost to first register w AAFC. All attending seemed to agree to it.

— Mathew Doolan (@mdoolsy) March 8, 2018

So far, AAFC has apparently spent $90,000 on research - originating I assume from a mix of club donations, but principally from the generosity of some of its wealthier patrons. It's an expensive business getting together not just the conceptual framework for your new competition, but also putting together the mechanics of how you claim it will all work.

It's also necessary, not just from a "prove the doubters wrong" aspect, but also from a "putting in a competing framework to the only one that currently exists" aspect. When the NSL Taskforce Report was released many years ago (perhaps the most overlooked document in Australian soccer history, because everyone keeps focusing on the Crawford Report, the latter of which was related to governance, not the league), it had the added heft of being based on the research of the PFA, at the time "the most stable and cohesive institution within the game" according to Joe Gorman. The PFA model is what the A-League was born from, albeit not in its pure form; nothing is ever taken straight the shelf, much like the FFA governance model wasn't a direct lift from the Crawford Report.

The main point however is that long ago the one prominent organisation in Australian soccer that had not been sullied by Australian soccer's reputation of mismanagement and corruption was the only one that came up with a plan, funded by itself. In a moment when confidence in Australian soccer's leading institutions is once again at a low ebb, AAFC has the opportunity to do something similar to what the PFA did in the past, by transitioning from being a fledgling advocacy group to something which has its own intellectual property in the form of a firm plan - not just ideas - about how to improve the game in Australia. In an environment where the best ideas anyone else can come up with to rejuvenate the A-League and by extension Australian soccer are "maybe we should add a couple of teams, maybe..." and "all we really need to do is have an independent A-League" - as if either of those alone would be anything other than short term solutions - a bold, costed, detailed and logical plan would stand out.

If some observers of my Twitter feed were upset by the suggestion that FFV and/or FNSW would use "junior fees" to pursue the dreams of a collection of rebellious/ambitious/arrogant clubs, it wasn't just those people that had their jimmies rustled by information provided during this segment. When a slide was put up showing a comparison of current NPL club costs compared to possible Championship model costs, some in the audience were a bit stunned by the figures of current NPL costs, thinking them too high, especially in terms of wages.

The broad range offered by the AAFC's slide claimed that current player wage bills were up to $800,000 a season; the exclamation from some in the crowd was that most clubs would be paying, at best, half that amount. Along with questions about how AAFC got those figures, reasonable comment was made from the floor that this section of the presentation should have included "bands" of spending to more accurately reflect current spending trends. And I agree that there should have been more detailed information about how many clubs were in different wage spending bands, (as well as other costs) and that this data should have also included a breakdown of these details by state, so AAFC members and interested onlookers could see a more complete economic picture of Australian soccer at the second tier level.

Of course, this means more clubs opening themselves up to the kind of scrutiny that few clubs at this level would be comfortable with, but what price the greater good?

With costs, including wages, obviously rising across the board for a national second tier model, it felt to me for a moment that for some clubs the penny may have finally dropped about how realistic participation in a national second tier would actually be for them. But then the discussion moved on to whether second tier teams would be obliged to spend that much, or whether they'd be allowed to get away with spending a lot less. And therein lies one of the problems to be worked out among those arguing for a national second tier. There is a very broad spectrum of people discussing things like a second tier and associated reforms, ranging from a complete laissez-faire approach to something much more regulated, but which side of that ideological ledger will AAFC's second tier model prioritise?

Among those who criticise the A-League, much of that criticism centres around things like the salary cap, the salary floor, minimum player wages, and the assortment of other measures which see the A-League operate as a cartel like the top competitions of the other major Australian football codes. (This includes what might be called the Rolls Royce model around fan experience, stadiums, etc). Apart from disagreeing with that cartel approach from the position of "it's not how a real soccer economy or system works" or "it doesn't replicate the global standard", the argument also claims that the cartel approach entrenches mediocrity. Teams that struggle on the park have less incentive to immediately do better in order to secure their position in the league; successful teams have artificial barriers preventing them from actually putting out the best product that they can, because they must be kept in relative check with all the struggling teams

Cost is one thing, revenue quite another. Of course a lot of the doubters are wondering where the money will come from, especially as costs increase. While some potential national second tier clubs are reasonably well placed to cope with the wage increases (and some will have the benefit of less travel than potential competitors), there will still be significantly increased costs which will need to be covered. In the discussion which reiterated the preferred administrative model for the hypothetical national second tier, there was also some discussion about pooled revenue and profit sharing. Uneducated as I am about these matters, it nevertheless seems to imply a certain degree of cartel discipline, and thus a step removed from a no-holds-barred spending model. It also says something about the fact that AAFC believes that there will be profit to be shared.

But where someone like me sees problems, AAFC sees opportunities. AAFC is frequently on record with talking about how much money is generated by its member clubs for the Australian soccer ecosystem (some would counter that by claiming that it's mostly generated by the junior fees paid to NPL teams), but also about the limitations placed upon teams outside the A-League because of Australian topflight soccer's closed shop. Almost inevitably, AAFC expects that increased sponsorship opportunities will emerge for teams participating in a national second tier. But aside from that, AAFC believes there is an opportunity to take advantage of a changing media landscape, which for me is code for non-traditional (and non-terrestrial) broadcast media.

Previously, if not from AAFC itself than from people advocating for similar outcomes, the idea (or hope) was that SBS would be a partner of a national second tier, an idea which I never had much confidence would be realised. For starters, SBS's Australian soccer content - indeed its soccer content outside of its lone EPL game a week at midnight Saturday -  has now regressed to an almost negligible existence. What could possibly prompt them to spend the necessary funds to show a second tier competition with limited opportunities for recouping any investment? This suggestion, which goes back years before the existence of any tangible second tier movement - and which was originally formulated around showing live state premier league games - has always left me stumped.

Should this subtle rhetorical shift in emphasis - from securing a traditional and established broadcast media partner to a non-traditional equivalent - concern prospective members of a national second tier? It's something that certainly bothers me, but I'm already long gone on the prospects of this thing even working. For those more open-minded on these matters however, it should still be something that they keep an eye on - every cent that The Championship model doesn't get from a broadcast deal is that much more revenue that will need to be collected from other sources to make up for it.

In terms of player recruitment for The Championship, Krayem was adamant that it was "not designed as a retirement home", and that rules would be set up in order to promote younger Australian talent. This was clearly a riposte to the geriatric progression of the A-League, but also perhaps a critique of the NPL as it currently functions with regards to player recruitment. For example, does the luring of players from Queensland to Victoria help Queensland soccer? It may help those individual players by having them play in a higher standard competition, but it also weakens the standard of Queensland soccer. And what does the Victorian appetite for recruiting players from outside Victoria - previously British backpackers, currently Queenslanders and players from smaller states - say about the lack of opportunity given to Victorian players? And in the case of bringing in players from Tasmania, might this actually be much more justifiable? It's a lot to chew on.

Regarding questions from the floor about the transfer model to be used in The Championship, and Australian player transfer reform in general (as part of the now longstanding grievances state league clubs have about their players being poached by A-League teams, including the latter's designated NPL sides), the short and only answer given was that this was something that would be worked on.

The Championship would be a summer competition, with men's and women's components. I was not able to ascertain on the night whether successful applicants for The Championship would need to field both men's and women's teams as part of their participation. (update: see the comments section for clarification) This is an interesting point for how women's soccer exists in Australia. More often than not, the wealthiest soccer clubs in Australia (below the A-League level) are those which have a long tradition of successful male teams, with their female teams, where they exist, being an afterthought. Meanwhile those state league clubs which have historically been most successful at running female teams - often by women themselves and existing in the void left by the absence of a strong senior mens' program - would struggle to find the means to support a grandiose venture such as ongoing participation in a national second tier competition.

There was no elaboration on the matter of promotion and relegation to and from the A-League, or from and to the extant NPL competitions. While perhaps this meeting was neither the time nor the place for an explanation of how the different league layers would be formally linked together, it did leave a gaping hole in the area most casual onlookers (admittedly not in the room, but among those observing online) wanted to know. Krayem said that the NPL would persist; insofar as my understanding goes, this positions The Championship as the mechanism by which Australian soccer begins to achieve a necessary realignment of the its competition hierarchy.

Christo Patsan said that the founding principles and intent of the NPL and National Competitions Review were sound and largely still relevant and worth pursuing. I'm not sure that feeling is shared by everyone. If I was to summarise what I think AAFC want, it is a nationally consistent NPL approach (and eventually second tier) where clubs have the ability to control their identity and destinies. Are the ideals of a consistent framework and the freedom for clubs to do their own thing compatible concepts though?

That the NPL competitions would continue means that there needs to be a lot of work done to sort out how this is all going to come together. I mean, that much is obvious to everyone. Even among the advocates for a promotion-relegation regime however, there are a range of views of how this would work, ranging from a "quasi-cartel, necessary criteria to be met" model, to something much more cut-throat and free-market. At the moment. it also appears that apart from Victoria and New South Wales, most states are only paying lip service to AAFC's aim of a second division. Cue the NSL conspiracy again. Should the Championship become operational, AAFC says its administration would be based in Melbourne, a deliberate challenge to Sydney's dominance of Australian soccer administration.

(And while really not important from the fact of its obvious implausibility, it is worth noting that there was also the odd call from the floor - with slightly more than muted approval from the guests in attendance - that if FFA and everyone else didn't want to get a second tier up and running, that the clubs should just breakaway and form their own competition. This idea had cold water poured on it from AAFC panel members, but it does highlight that there are very diverse views and attitudes to Australian soccer matters within AAFC's constituency.)

The most left-field proposal on the night...
Was AAFC's desire to hold an annual junior tournament for AAFC member clubs. The age range would be 13-16, for both boys and girls teams, with the event held in a single location. The annual extravaganza would also include conferences and seminars. Aiming to start in April 2020 - one assumes over the Easter break - this is a logistically bold, perhaps even insane proposal. It would require accommodating thousands of travellers (kids, parents, coaches, support staff), would cost a lot of money to organise, would require a lot of grounds, and all sorts of other things which someone like me who has never organised or been involved in such an undertaking could possibly think of.

Credit for the scope of the idea, but its scale is such that I'd love to see how this would all come together. Reading online, this idea was a hit with the Canberra people in particular.

FFA Congress progress
Another one of the key issues was the status of reform to FFA's Congress. FIFA and the AFC representatives had recently been in the country and left again, and looking in from the outside it appears that not much has changed. Naturally those involved closer to the action have a better idea than us mere plebs. In terms of AAFC's hope of getting a seat on FFA's reformed Congress, it all seemed to depend on who was speaking for AAFC. Krayem said that Victoria was the only state federation which was for AAFC having a vote on FFA's Congress, while Queensland was happy for AAFC to have observer status.

(A non-AAFC source later told me that most state federations were happy to let AAFC have observer status, until such time as AAFC could "prove themselves", whatever that means. I assume it means in part holding itself together through what will be the much more difficult phase of actually getting some of its grand schemes up and running.)

Krayem was hopeful but cautious about whether AAFC would get its seat in the FFA Congress, but Nick Galatas, making one of his rare contributions during the evening, piped up to say with uncharacteristic confidence that AAFC will get there. This belief is based on the support that AAFC believes it is receiving from FIFA and the AFC; they certainly aren't being made to feel welcome by FFA and the A-League teams, and probably quite a few of the states. This international support gives AAFC a kind of leverage that forces their inclusion into discussions.

The issue of representation
Every state and region is going to be different when it comes to its soccer experience; in fact, this is a problem that cuts across almost every aspect of Australian sport, that rather than anything resembling a uniform and universal sporting culture, we are instead a nation of micro-sporting cultures. One thing I didn't note earlier on about the make up of the audience was how overwhelmingly male it was. I don't think there were any women present at all. Intentional or not, it is not a good look for an organisation that will need to argue that its attempts to reform Australian soccer also include the best interests of women and girls, and not just high level senior male players. Indeed female football was very much an afterthought to the entire evening's proceedings, with AAFC talking heads mentioning little about the topic, and the questions from the floor referencing nothing about women's soccer at all.

This is a serious issue, and I don't doubt for a second that those representing AAFC don't take it seriously. However, apart from the issue of optics - never mind female participation and professional pathways being the zeitgeist of Australian sport - the lack of any almost any reference to the female side of the game plays right into the hands of those who would oppose AAFC solely on the accusation that the group was merely a front for a collective of culturally regressive ethnic clubs who had been unable to keep up with the times. And to be fair, some of those accusations would not be too far off the mark. The room was made up of at least some clubs who represent conservative or traditional ideas of what soccer is about in Australia on this and other issues. Related to those clubs would be those who, like South Melbourne perhaps, espouse a cautious modernism in its approach to women's soccer.

(Albeit a modernism as yet untested by what happens when the female program's principle advocate, in South's case Gabrielle Giuliano, moves on. The matter of cultural and club continuity has always been at the forefront of women's soccer.)

At the same time, apart from your different flavours of ethnically derived conservatism and cautious modernism, you have clubs which exist outside those frameworks, and those which go across several demographics. So while there are clearly clubs in the AAFC movement with a chip on their shoulder about FFA's treatment of ethnicity, there are also those clubs for which ethnicity is not even close to being at the top of their list of complaints. Then there are the clubs from regional areas. The ambitious clubs who have no NSL history. The clubs from states and regions which have never had national representation of any sort, and no obvious development pathway for their talented kids. All of these groups are being presented by AAFC as a unified collective with a common purpose, and not as the motley collection of clubs that this group actually is.

And it's not all smooth sailing. There was some discomfort from the floor about some of the decision making and negotiating processes of AAFC, namely that it does not consult as much as it could or should with its member clubs about key issues.

(I'd also add in the strange and sometimes unprofessional social media antics of AAFC. I think they'd be better off sticking to a conservative online approach - discussing only their affairs, and avoiding clogging up their timeline with stuff outside their immediate remit of being a representative organisation for second tier clubs. At present their social media efforts lack focus - probably operating on the whim of whoever's in control of the relevant social media accounts - while also coming across at times as petty. They need to at the very least get an off-the-shelf social media policy.)

But for the time being, in those narrow schemes where people actually pay attention to any of this stuff, AAFC is winning. It's winning the ideological battle because it is presenting a positive outlook for Australian soccer (even while often talking down present day Australian soccer); it's winning because its opponents have been successfully portrayed as out of touch and stagnant. And whatever the flaws with its social media/PR game, AAFC has also succeeded in having its public face, its front office if you will, obscure whatever disquiet and misgivings clubs under the AAFC umbrella have.

We are all in this together, but for how long?

Unity and patience are the virtues preached, but old habits and attitudes die hard. The nature of soccer in Australia has been, at least since after the migrant lead boom, one of self-interest and self-preservation. (The A-League has been the notable exception to that.) The pursuit of excellence (in all its forms) applies first to your club, and good luck to the others trying to catch or keep up.

But at one point during the meeting Krayem made the salient point - the kind of comment that can deflate a room full of fighting optimists - that "what may be good for football may not be good for your club". Amid the positivity and reinforcement of what it is that AAFC is trying to achieve, it's a message that cuts through, and it's certainly a message that we will look back on if and when a second tier gets up and it's not to everyone's liking.

Of course what the common good is insofar as Australian football goes depends on who you ask, and I'm in no good position to answer that. To me it's at best a nebulous concept, one that's been tainted because more often than not it's been used as a weapon rather than as the vague ideal that it is. For whatever it's worth, I don't think Krayem used the "good of the game" argument here in any sort of malicious way, more as reiteration that even within this group of (for now) united clubs, there would be winners and (at least relative) losers from AAFC's plans.

A word on the "NSL conspiracy"
There are some few pushing the line that AAFC and all of its associated antics are merely a front for getting ethnic NSL clubs back into the national soccer system. At the most extreme end of that argument is the accusation that AAFC is a front specifically set up to get South Melbourne Hellas back into the Australian topflight.

Such thinking (whether directed at ethnic NSL clubs or South Melbourne more specifically) requires two pre-existing notions in order to get off the ground. First, it requires the ethnic NSL teams having the necessary political, financial and grassroots clout to re-emerge from their otherwise terminal decline and irrelevance to Australian soccer (a terminal decline and irrelevance diagnosed by their detractors no less). Second, that these clubs would have the capability and competence (again, both of which their detractors claim these clubs lack) to establish and sustain such a complicated and unwieldy campaign in order to get back into the national league system. Needless to say, I find such conspiracy thinking beyond laughable. Truly, it is at the level of the conspiracies cobbled together by the so-called "bitters" of Australian soccer over the past decade and more.

Whatever else AAFC's faults, or the disagreements one may have with the aims of AAFC, it has been established and managed to succeed beyond the limits placed upon it by its detractors and opponents for a number of reasons. We have already mentioned the support AAFC is receiving from FIFA and the AFC, however much that support may be overstated by AAFC representatives. It has also managed to keep its broad constituency together for longer and greater ends than many people expected. Just as importantly, in an Australian soccer situation which reeks of stagnation - especially with regards to FFA and the A-League - AAFC is putting forward the boldest and most optimistic view of what Australian soccer could become. Whether their approach has gained any traction with people outside those few interested in the narrow field of Australian soccer politicking is almost beside the point; within the demographic that does care about such things, they come off looking more often than not like the good guys.

Something rather obvious that gets missed however is that AAFC exists to represent clubs which exist in a rather strange and hitherto unprecedented "between space" in Australia's football chain of command. The NPL clubs play under the auspices and control of their respective state federations, while at the same time participating in a system largely designed by the national federation. While in cases like Victoria, NPL clubs are able to perhaps organise well enough to exert a measure of influence over the running of their state federation - and thus alter elements of their own NPL environment more to their liking - they have no ability to act as a collective to put pressure on the body which set up the NPL framework in the first place, that being FFA.

Because of this bizarre operating system, no state operates NPL in the same way. When one person from the floor of the Melbourne roadshow complained (fairly enough) about A-League teams having more visa players at their disposal when they play FFA Cup matches against Victorian NPL teams, Krayem noted that when Victorian teams played against Queensland teams in the same competition, that Victorian teams had a PPS cap of 200 compared to Queensland's 170. Meanwhile other states have no restrictions on visa players. Not all of this is FFA's fault, and the clubs themselves - certainly in the case of the Victorian NPL - are also to blame for the mess that NPL has become.

But the point is, while ethnic ex-NSL clubs may be best placed to push for national second tier participation, they are not the only ones doing so. Neither are all of the former ethnic powerhouse NSL clubs best placed to take advantage of any changes. The goal here clearly is to start a competition which adds value across the country, and not just in forgotten suburban pockets of Melbourne and Sydney.

But still, what is it that South Melbourne Hellas is trying to do?
(I included this section because Leo Athanasakis asked what I thought was an unusual question, on the matter of potential A-League expansion and NPL/second tier queue jumping. While this was directed at other A-League consortium bids, I felt the queue jumping element could have - and indeed already has - been directed at South itself. Also South of the Border is a South Melbourne blog, so you know...)

When the campaign against FFV's original NPL model was begun by Green Gully and Melbourne Knights, South Melbourne - represented on this issue by one Tom Kalas - notably took a different tack, preferring to remain what it called "in the tent", believing that it could effect change more effectively from within the system rather than fighting against it from the outside. Then, like magic, South gradually changed its position to the point where it (and to be fair, a whole bunch of other Greek clubs) somehow became the leader of the movement against FFV and its NPL model.

Among those clubs who care to remember that this happened at all, there is understandably distrust and resentment about how that all played out; that the more obnoxiously regressive clubs on all sorts of issues who stuck their necks out on principle (however misguided that principle may have been) only for a bunch of Greeks to come in and take all the credit for getting not just a solution to the NPL impasse, but credit as being the leaders of a re-found boldness for clubs to stand up to the post-Crawford federations for their rights.

Me, I liked the fanciful idea that I invented that it was all coordinated; that certain clubs that had a more uncompromising ethos when it came to rejecting forced modernity would do the initial head kicking and grunt work, allowing more palatable alternatives - ie, us - to come in and finish off the job.

But the truth is that ever since it was compelled to vacate its position in the Australian topflight by the forces which took over Australian soccer, as well because of its own decrepit state, South Melbourne has had one distant goal in its sights above all others: to get back into the big-time, as soon as possible, and by any means necessary. So we bid for the second Melbourne A-League licence under the Southern Cross gimmick, losing out to Melbourne Heart. We tried to buy out the then failing Central Coast Mariners, under a scheme which may have included keeping some games in Gosford for however long it took for people to realise it was a stupid idea and just have all our games in Melbourne. Then we tried buying out Melbourne Heart, and failed there too. Currently, we've thrown our hat in the ring for the zombie A-League expansion process which may not even have ever existed.

They say that you miss all the shots you don't take, and when it comes to failed attempts to get into the A-League, no one's taken more shots than South. And yet, for whatever reason, South has never been at the public forefront of AAFC, other than by proxy association. To its own members, South has played AAFC and promotion-relegation issues as low-key affairs, preferring to put up a wait and see approach. The emphasis has always been on first and foremost getting into the A-League under its own steam (even if details of those attempts provided to members are sparing), and not through wholesale reform of Australian soccer's league structures.

And yet in most recent times, those paying attention to the social media contributions of especially our president Leo Athanasakis indicate a shift in our prior reticence to openly support a promotion-relegation model. Such a shift leads easily to the allegation from within the AAFC tent and from promotion-relegation fellow travellers alike that South Melbourne is not really ideologically committed to the principle of promotion-relegation; rather, South Melbourne is only committed to whatever South Melbourne believes will get it back into the topflight soonest. And if that happens, the rest be damned.

While not serious enough to threaten the unity of the AAFC revolutionary project by itself, it's the kind of fissure that people will need to keep an eye on; when persistent calls are made about unity and its virtues, any deviation from that ideal invites the possibility of infighting and sniping.

The question of heart and soul

I tried to write and re-write this section a number of times, never to my own satisfaction. So I'm going to try to keep it short and sweet.

Community, authentic, grassroots, corporate, franchise, elite. Words like these and many others can be useful in describing the cultural schisms that afflict Australian soccer. Used carelessly however, instead of clarifying the ways in which Australian soccer is divided, these words serve mostly as an act of self-justification.

By any measure, FFA and the management of several A-League teams have treated NPL teams poorly. There are countless examples of this, some of which were given on the night. But it's possible also that NPL teams are seen in a similar light by teams far lower down the food chain.

Claiming the moral and ethical high ground is a dangerous business. Anyone making claims for their own purity of support of the game is on dangerous ground. Resorting to the kinds of rhetoric which filled up forums a decade ago, and which paints simplistic pictures of an "us and them" which does not actually exist, is a tactic fraught with issues.

The focus should be on the actual examples of disrespect given by the top tier towards everything below it. Emotive language which loses sight of that should be avoided.

Final thought
During the aftermath over the next few days, it was funny to see the same info I'd received from different parties via Twitter DMs and text messages - sometimes intended for clarification, sometimes intended for further dissemination - make its way out to the public domain via other trusted vessels. It was like a proxy social media battle in the broader war for hearts and minds, except that I don't think anyone but the already interested even noticed.

It's not the end of world, yet - Oakleigh Cannons 4 South Melbourne 1

Necessary note
Anyone looking for the post on the Melbourne edition of the AAFC's roadshow, it's not included in this post. Probably tomorrow.

Was Andy Brennan subbed off at halftime, or did he merely
 transpose himself to another dimension? Photo: Mike Owen.

Omens, I don't believe in them, but...
It didn't start off well. First, the galette place off Flinders Lane I was going to have dinner at was closed for renovations. Then upon arrival at the ground, an apprentice loan shark handing out home loan pamphlets n behalf of a bank inside the gate couldn't take 'no' for answer after I told him that as a student I didn't have the secure financial standing of taking out a home loan. And then in the middle of a conversation about trains and public transport that I was having with (ex-South player) Gavin De Niese's dad, some bloke starts talking to me about the Macedonia issue, when if he'd waited five minutes he could have had that conversation with the kid wearing the blue Star of Vergina t-shirt.

But enough about omens of no meaning. Nothing gets the juices on the South forums going like a loss, so I guess there's that to be said for Friday's loss. Three games in, and everyone's an expert on season 2018, which is good for me, because I don't need to write any more South match reports for 2018. The gist of it is this. We play a different, cuter brand of football, one with a higher potential upside, but equally frightening possibility of getting mauled. It was apparently visible in those parts of the pre-season which I missed, and it has only be reinforced by our first three games.

It was the same lineup for a third game in a row, and though you wouldn't change a winning team unless you had to, you know that for the time being at least it's going to be the same lineup unless forced to be otherwise, and what's more, it's also going to be the same substitutions unless compelled otherwise. So, Brennan off for Minatel, and Pavlou on for Jawadi, and names pulled out of a hat or not at all for the third sub. Short of suspensions or injuries this is going to be it for at least until the mid-season transfer window, or until Marcus Schroen is ready to come back into the lineup.

That's not an out and out complaint. The first eleven is good enough to play well and do well, and the board has made what seems like a deliberate attempt to at least pay more than their usual lip service to youth development by having some youth players on the bench. But it also means that there's not nearly enough depth at the moment to implement Plan B when Plan A goes astray, only the chance to rest some players should Plan A be going along well enough during a game that such luxuries as putting on players promoted from the youth team would do no harm.

The first half, barring the fact that we didn't manage to score - thanks to the ball somehow not crossing the line in our best attack, and some crappier than you'd like crossing - was good enough. We had the better of the play, we looked decent going forward, and we won the ball back well when we had to. We were getting more pressure on us on the ball than we had the previous two weeks, but we still looked good, especially in moving the ball around midfield. Then the second half started with conceding a lobbed goal - people disagree on how much the keeper should be blamed, I'm on the side of not much after watching the video - and you didn't know which way this was going to go now. Getting the goal back only to concede again within seconds was sealer, in fairness.

Just on Oliver Minatel's equaliser. Yeah, there's an argument for wanting the dodgiest goals possible against your opponent, especially in a big game like this, but I was very close to the incident and I didn't feel much like celebrating. A large part of that was because for a while I was sure that one of the officials would eventually overrule the goal - after all, it was as blatant a handball as you could get. But there was another, secretly moralistic part of me that was kind of sickened by its shamelessness, because it didn't even look like Minatel needed to punch the ball into the goal, because he could've easily headed it in.

The officiating was pretty ordinary all around to be honest. How neither of those two karate leg chop attempts by Oakleigh within seconds of each other didn't get a yellow card says volumes about what is acceptable in Victorian soccer. To be fair though, Oakleigh looked a different team in the second half to what they've been putting up so far this season, and they played well. Lot of people caning our defence for this loss, and there's something to that - what was Konstantinidis doing dribbling along the edge of the box like that - but for mine more blame should go to the midfield, which disappeared from the field for long stretches of the second half.

Part of the problem was Brennan going off - either because of form or because of an injury - because even if he wasn't having a blinder going forward, he was doing well with Foschini in winning the ball back, and forcing Oakleigh to cough up the ball in midfield. When we fell behind for the second time, all sense of structure and attacking synchronisation went out the window, and we went back to long balls and not really believing that we could get back in the game.

Still, in my estimation it's not quite wrist-slashing time yet. Anyone moving the dial forward on the South Melbourne Hellas doomsday clock just because we lost another game against Oakleigh at Jack Edwards probably doesn't deserve to be in charge of said doomsday clock on the first place.

The one day of the year, which seems to be at almost every time we play away from home
Decent crowd at Oakleigh on Friday night, a few more than I expected upon kickoff because it looked like there was no one there when the game was starting. Fair enough, everyone loves to come see South lose, or win, or most likely whatever, because most of these people will only go to this and maybe one other NPL game for the season and not give it a second thought afterwards. It is what it is, and it's going to continue being what it is unless someone unlocks the secret of actually getting people to NPL games outside of a gimmick game.

There's no point getting too upset about it. It's funny though when you see Kingston and Oakleigh people having a go at a poor Bentleigh home crowd on the same night, when as if the roles were reversed that most of the people attending Friday night soccer wouldn't be Kingston Heath instead to watch a Green-South game, with the Oaks crowd lucky to get get intro triple figures.

As I noted on said forum:

Let's be honest, most teams in this league and the one below it have stuff all home support, less than stuff all away support, and rely on the visits of the two or three teams with slightly above stuff all support to bump up their attendance figures a couple of times a year.

And giving Pascoe Vale stick for not bringing away support when none of the minor Greek teams bring pretty much anyone ever to away games further than a five minute drive away is really something.

Next game
Pascoe Vale away at CB Smith Reserve in Fawkner on Friday night. Keep in mind that this game has a kickoff time of 8:15PM.

Meanwhile
The word going around the terraces on Friday was that the club attempted to get special dispensation from FFV to sign Nikola Roganovic as an injury replacement player for Alastair Bray, but the FFV said no. I'm hearing also that we'll be appealing that decision, Normally I'd be all for telling teams - any team, not just South - to suck it up, but in the case of an injured keeper over an outfielder, I'm more sympathetic. But if we were to get knocked back on appeal, one hopes that this is a standard that gets applied to all clubs from now on.

But I ask you, what is a contract?
For whatever it's worth, and who knows if it's actually worth anything, Matthew Foschini has been signed up until the end of 2020. So that's the right back slot sorted for the next few years. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile 2: Is he or isn't he?
While we're on the subject of contracts with mysterious and possibly disputable clauses, they say that Chris Taylor is set to become Green Gully's coach soon, with Arthur Papas set to depart for more lucrative lands. What a time to be alive.

Or not.

Contrary to earlier reports, Chris Taylor will NOT be replacing Arthur Papas at Green Gully.

— damirkulas (@DamirKulas) March 10, 2018

The good thing about the internet is that it gives you the full range of options when it comes to believing something about a particular person, circumstance, fact, and yet to be even tested fact.

Speaking of which
It's kinda cute when someone without access to certain long closed off founts of all Victorian soccer knowledge and innuendo sends you something as if you didn't see it three days before.

I'm not judging, but it is funny. And to be honest, there's much lamer behaviour on the internet.

Perpetual Motion Outrage Machine Dumpster Fire Car Crash
As far as the timeline of @smfc Twitter mentions go, there are good weeks and bad weeks, and there are quiet weeks and busy weeks. This week was bad and busy. I'm prevented from seeing a fair chunk of it, due to being a blocked by a regular poster to that timeline, but geez louise even I could figure out that there was a massive pile on Shouty Mike. Before that, people got sucked in to fighting with a Glory-supporting alt-right wannabe, arguing with him for what seemed like days, but was probably only a solid 36 hours.

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time online, there are some lessons to be learned from this week. On the former point, never, ever tweet. On the second issue, don't engage with people whose only purpose is trolling. I mean, people are free to do as they wish on social media, it's their free time, but is hammering away at someone who isn't going to change their mind worth that much of your time and effort?

Around the grounds, not this week
With both Knights and George Cross on the road this week I was looking forward to a weekend away from Knights Stadium. Then I looked up the FFA Cup fixtures, and saw Strathmore Split playing Bell Park at Somers Street, and I was all ready to go - until I saw it was set for the outside pitch. Any other day I would've been there with bells on, but with the mercury well over 35, it was a no from me. Shame, as there were a few goals in that game.

Final thought

I wish there was a prize, or some sort of t-shirt, or a customer loyalty card I could stamp, but there's nothing I can give you to reward you for that effort.

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) March 11, 2018

Maybe a South of the Border t-shirt would be a good idea, but I'm no graphic designer.

Debbie Downer Special - Dandenong Thunder 0 South Melbourne 9

I had every intention of finishing this up last night, but I somehow ended up drinking bourbon and coke while watching season one episodes of Law & Order SVU on TV, back when they used a blackboard instead of fanciful electronics, and John Munch's presence on the show was still meaningful. So it goes.

The post-mortem on a game as lopsided as this one can go one of two ways. The first approach emphasises how good the winning team was, while the other looks at how poor the loser was. In this case the emphasis, even for a South blog, can't help but be about how bad Thunder were. They were abysmal, about as bad a side I've seen play against us since we re-entered the state leagues 13 years ago.

First up, Thunder were slow. Parking an overweight Theo Markellis in midfield was a bad sign, but across the ground we were able to outrun them with and without the ball. And their setup, described by more observant punters than me as having three at the back, was a disaster waiting to happen. Against a three pronged attack of Milos Lujic, Leigh Minopoulos and Andy Brennan, it failed miserably. I guess their plan was to clog the midfield and play the ball wide. From our point of view - or at least what I thought was happening from my sideline vantage point in the first half - we wanted them to head inboard, where they would hopefully cough up the ball.

And cough it up they did, repeatedly. We know that Iqi Jawadi and Matthew Millar are able to perform that task well enough, it's their bread and butter after all, but Nick Epifano's attitude in the first couple of weeks means that our pressing approach has that extra dose of effectiveness. Playing in a version of the central role that Chris Taylor had tried to use him in every so often, but which had never quite worked, the People's Champ is perhaps on the way to his best season. It's been more of a free floating midfield role - one observer likened it to the kind of role Fernando De Moraes used to perform - and it seems promising at this early stage.

But nearly everything has seemed promising about this early stage of the season, apart from of course Milos' finishing in the first game and Alastair Bray's injury. But there are tougher tests coming up, and we'll start learning more about the team in the next two weeks. Bulleen we knew were going to be one of the strugglers, but I don't think we expected Dandenong Thunder to be that bad. The idea in my head was that coming into the game I expected a tough affair. This was a Thunder side even if they weren't considered a finals candidate, they could at least be counted on to give a better account of themselves than did St Albans and North Geelong last year.

But they were done almost from the outset. It helps that unlike against Bulleen, this time we got our goals early and took away whatever initiative and fight Thunder may have had. Thunder had a handful of shots late in the first half, and one or two chances in the second, but there was never a risk of a comeback. Perhaps Thunder got promoted in the wrong year? Had they been promoted the year before as they should've been, maybe things would've been different. Taking advantage of Dandenong City's choke has perhaps seen them come up not as well prepared, though there were also people saying their last year's team was stronger. Who knows?

The crowd, which mostly seemed to be South fans, was excited in the early parts of the game, muted in the middle, and then celebratory and cautiously cocky by the end - including a bit of dry-humping of one of the goal stanchions by one frisky supporter. There was some discussion about the improved early season NPL crowds, especially as parts of the A-League are seemingly faltering, but this crowd was disappointing in its size. The first home game back in the top flight for Thunder after several seasons, I would've expected double the 500 odd that turned up, but it was not to be.

Dandenong Thunder goalkeeper Sermin Sadikovski comes flying in
 kamikaze style on Oliver Minatel. Photo: South Melbourne FC.

We were 4-0 up at halftime, but kept adding goals almost at will after the break. At 8-0 up and the game winding down, the most surreal moment of the match unfolded. Dandenong goalkeeper Sermin Sadikovski - up to that point the one blameless Thunder player - embarked on a kamikaze mission the likes of which I have not seen for some time. A long floating ball was being contested by Oliver Minatel and a Thunder opponent, and all of a sudden there was Sadikovski, flying in with a lunging studs up tackle ten metres outside his own area. He of course got his marching orders, and Minatel fortunately managed to avoid serious injury. That's why they invented shin pads. Having made all their subs, veteran Thunder goal scorer Veton Korcari put on the gloves, noting to the South fans behind the goals that since he wasn't likely to score a goal he may as well try and stop some. He managed to hold onto an on target but tame Foschini shot, to the applause of those same South fans, but his clean sheet was soiled soon after when Epifano managed to slam one home from a slight angle.

Apart from Thunder being abysmal, what did we learn from Saturday? That we have goals in us, from multiple angles, that we are definitely playing a different style, but we kinda figured that out the week before as well. Everyone seems to love Christos Intzidis, with South and non-South fans alike noting the difference in the way he moves around and surveys the field compared to local players. Still, I'm concerned with two elements of our defensive efforts; the first is what happens when our fullbacks especially get stranded upfield - do we have the processes right where the wingers know they have to cover without being told?

(it's a pet hate of mine of Australian soccer players have to constantly be told to do things which they probably should be able to think of for themselves. This isn't just an issue at this level of course, but at higher levels from what I can tell from the little that I watch of Australians playing in better competitions.)

But I think we look our most vulnerable at the moment when teams push us back onto our 18 yard box, and we've let the two otherwise mediocre sides we've faced so far get a look in either with shots or with time enough to make passes through. But I'm not arrogant or stupid enough to think we're going to go through entire games without the opposition getting a sniff at all, and it's too early to make the jump from coincidence to trend.

Depth is the thing that seems to be bothering people the most. Centre-back is covered well enough with Konstantinidis and Intzidis, as well as Ajdin Fetahagic and the injured Jake Marshall. If something happens to one of our wing-backs? Yes, Konstantinidis can play either full back position, but would you want to break up his partnership with Intzidis without just cause? Can Josh Hodes play senior NPL football? It was impossible to tell from Saturday night, and you'd never want to write someone off based on 25 minutes of an increasingly decrepit match. Our wingers are talented, but do they/will they have enough gas in the tank to run out games? And still we pray and hope that Milos Lujic does not get injured or suspended, at least until Giordano Marafioti is ready to come back from injury. Depth is going to be the issue that's going to follow the side throughout the year, as the matches pile up, and as risks with tired and injured players get taken.

New scoreboard for a record score. Photo: South Melbourne FC.

I had turned up to the gate in my Shoot Farken t-shirt, which the gate attendant loved the sentiment of, though he clearly wasn't aware of the website. He probably wishes now that we didn't have the chance to shoot (farken) so often. Thunder also had what looked like a new electronic scoreboard, which got a workout no one was expecting, the scoreboard attendant not even bothering to update it to 9-0 at the end of the game. That final whistle was an overdue granting of mercy to not just Thunder's players, or its fans - those few who had stayed to the end - but also to everyone else. This game crossed the line from where a thrashing is enjoyable to where it's almost tedious, pitiable even, where doubts about your own's team efficacy emerge to compensate for how poor the opposition were. Are we really that good? At halftime I was thinking yes, possibly; at full time, I wasn't sure; by the time I got home two or so hours later, exhausted, I could only look ahead to the next few weeks and better opponents and hopefully some clarity of where we stand in 2018.

Of course the other approach is to stop over-thinking it, and just enjoy the win!

On penalties
We got three of them on Saturday, and I thought that maybe a couple of the penalties we got were a bit soft, but you know what? Maybe we've been conditioned to think that a penalty should require a more robust kind of foul than anywhere else on the field. But why? A foul in the box is no different to a foul anywhere else, right? It's the same rules, yes? And if we happen to be on a trajectory where we receive an above average amount of penalties, it's only because we actually get into the box, surely? Remember the Gus Tsolakis years, where we didn't ever get in the box? Once we're in the penalty area, it's up to the opposition defenders to behave themselves, and if we get past them, maybe not nudge bodies or tug at shirts. And I would say the same for our defenders at the other end of the ground. Maybe stricter enforcement of fouls will mean that players will have to learn to defend better.

Next game
Oakleigh away on Friday night. Oaks have lost their opening two matches, an unlucky loss against an at this stage improved Knights, and a narrow loss to Bentleigh, so they're under the pump at the moment. Some will point to our rubbish record at Jack Edwards in recent years - I think that our last win there, apart from that cup semi-final win against the Bergers, was back in 2013 - but this is a different team and a different style which may be able to get a win over Oakleigh here at last. Apart from losing both their league games, Oakleigh are also dealing with a mini-injury crisis, with both their starting centre-backs being injured in the first week, and midfield enforcer Wayne Wallace also coming off hurt against Bentleigh. Who knows how many of those injured players will line up against us? Oakleigh keeper John Honos has committed costly howlers in both games so far, so he'll have a blinder on Friday. They still have a lot of firepower in midfield and up front though.

Alastair Bray out for the season
Coming into this season having recovered from a shoulder reconstruction, goalkeeper Alastair Bray will miss the rest of the 2018 NPL Victoria season after the injury he received late against Bulleen was revealed to be an ACL rupture.

Hard to accept the fact I’ve ruptured my ACL in my first game back after a year out with a shoulder reconstruction. Thanks to everyone who has messaged me. I’ll be back https://t.co/Hd6eXUp53w pic.twitter.com/7E8sXxx2AD

— Alastair Bray (@alastairbray21) February 28, 2018

There is talk that the recently retired Nikola Roganovic may come out of retirement to help bolster our keeping stocks. One assumes that if this is true, that it will be as a backup option to Coulter, but stranger things have happened.

Puskas film update
I've been told that the Ferenc Puskas in Australia doco I spoke about last year is going well. Plenty of the notables have been interviewed, and the insights and memories collected sound terrific. But Rob Heath and Tony Wilson still need to get homemade footage from South fans. Apart from costing less than having to buy footage from the ABC and SBS, homemade footage of Puskas and that era of South Melbourne at Middle Park will add a real layer of authenticity that commercial or professional footage just can't match. So if you have footage, or photos, or just a good story to tell about that era, please do not hesitate to get in contact with me. Your archival material - maybe even you yourself! -  could end up in a great little film project, paying tribute to one of the greatest soccer players of all time, as well as the club he called home for three memorable years.

Also, if anyone knows who owns this YouTube account, please get them to contact me, Tony, or Rob.

AAFC roadshow hits Melbourne this Thursday
The Association of Australian Football Clubs, the upstart collective of NPL teams making a big racket around the issues of promotion-relegation and the FFA's congress issues, is in the middle of a national roadshow. The roadshow arrives in Melbourne on Thursday, so if you didn't manage to get a ticket to the Jordan Peterson thing or you don't have to attend soccer training, this AAFC thing might be worth a look. I'll probably be there, arriving with an open mind, and hopefully keeping up that facade for at least three seconds.

The event is being held at Sports House, 375 Albert Road, Albert Park, near MSAC, with the meeting starting 7:00PM.

Around the grounds
Same Knights time, same Knights channel

In lieu of the flyer that was attached to my windshield for
 a concern by some Cro singer coming out to Australia, I'm
 putting up this Croatian bank ad up instead.

Another decent crowd in for a 7:30 start at Somers Street, though clearly not as big as the week before; last week I was forced to park my car on the back fence, this time I parked in my usual spot of the quarry side fence. Ex-South man Shaun Timmins got himself sent off on seven minutes for slapping a Pascoe Vale opponent on the wing in front of quarry hill, and got an earful from teammate Nikola Jurkovic for his troubles - more on Jurkovic later. Pascoe Vale's front three of Van 't Schip, Bernabo-Madrid, and Osmancevic couldn't get much going because Pascoe Vale were playing the most garbage kick and chase football I'd seen since, well, the last time I saw it. Let's just say 2017  Avondale for the sake of it. Knights were holding their own despite being a man down, but then gave a penalty, fell behind, and then looked a bit rattled. On half time Pascoe Vale also went a man down, a denial of clear goal scoring opportunity card that Ben Surey (sitting near me  in the stand with a broken foot) though was only given because of the earlier red card. Now that I've thought about that response in more depth, I've come to the conclusion that that attitude is probably why Surey and his Knights friends get sent off so often. Knights looked the better team when it was 10 vs 10, and equalised thanks to a goalmouth scramble back heel from an uncleared corner. The game had actually got watchable by this stage, and then Knights decided to shoot themselves in the foot when Jurkovic (who else?) got himself sent off. The home side coughed up the ball in defence with five minutes to go, went behind, and in the 95th minute desperation sent everyone up for a last ditch corner, The ball fell to the feet of a Pascoe Vale sub who looked about 15 years old, who ran up the field being chased by the Knights keeper; the aforementioned sub rolled the ball towards goal, and Van t' Schip tapped it home. Then everyone got splashed by the sprinklers as we filed out of the grandstand.

Final thought
That is some birthday cake.

Happy Birthday Stef. What a present, another hatrick!! pic.twitter.com/XDDO7FYSpv

— John Patitsas (@johnpatitsas) March 3, 2018