Highway to Hell - South Melbourne 0 Green Gully 3

Someone at last Sunday's game compared the season so far to a car crash, which I thought was an incredibly morbid idea.

It's also an incredibly wrong one. After all, the car hasn't crashed yet. All that's happened is that someone's kicked the driver out of the car, taken his keys, and started careening down the freeway weaving in and out of traffic. Now it's starting to get wet, which means the tyres on the car haven't had time to adjust to the newfound slickness of the road. Oh, and as we're getting closer to winter, daylight is getting in shorter supply, and because we play home games which finish up close to dusk, visibility is becoming an issue. But we haven't decided yet to drive on the wrong side of the road and climbing over the median strip, and we're still some way (and a willing partner) short of initiating a drag race which will see us plunge off Dead Man's Curve into the ravine below culminating in our fiery deaths.

So, to say that this is a car crash of a season is wrong. It's a car crash waiting to happen, and we're doing our best to make it happen, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy the ride - wherever it ends up.

The reasonable question that has been asked is with Milos Lujic suspended and soon to go on holidays, and Leigh Minopoulos and Giordano Marafioti injured, where are the goals going to come from until such time as we can get a striker in during the transfer window? The same people ask - perhaps genuinely, perhaps mischievously - why doesn't the club just use the next available 20s striker? It's almost comically ironic that the player in question just happens to be the progeny of the director of which so much potentially libellous innuendo has been spread. Even funnier that on Sunday in the 20s game, that the player scored a couple of goals.

But as it was, we continued to rely on the three pronged attack of Oliver Minatel, Andy Brennan, and Matthew Millar. OK, we know Minatel isn't a forward, and we know that cruel as it may sound, everyone at the ground has given up on Millar scoring goals - though we'll be overjoyed for him and for the club if he does. But Brennan is a different prospect. For whatever reason, he hasn't been able to put it together this season. There's fitness issues to be sure. But clearly there's also mental stuff. How else to explain the four or so clear-cut, harder-to-miss-than-score chances that he wasted in the first half?

Rather than going in to half time a solid and very fair three goals up, we went into halftime at 0-0, and the signs and premonitions were ominous. We'd likely have a couple of good chances early in the second half, probably fail to take them, than concede some stupid goal which consign us to defeat. And that's exactly what happened. Those first half misses by Millar and Brennan kept Gully in the game, a game we weren't playing particularly well in, but which we were nevertheless doing better than our higher ranked opposition.

Having failed to take our chances, the eventual mistake came in the form of a careless penalty. Jake Marshall fouled his opponent in a part of the 18 yard box and in such a situation where it didn't seem like there would be much danger or need to tackle his opponent. But he did, Gully scored the penalty, and though we persisted in trying to get back into the game, the game was done. The second and third goals conceded were icing on the cake, one of them infuriating and demoralising in equal measure because the low cross to the unmarked player at the back post was so simple, and yet something that we ourselves have botched time and time again.

Of course it got worse than the final 3-0 scoreline. Brad Norton got a yellow card for being injured in a tackle by an opponent; well, I don't see what else it could've been for. Oh, and coach Sasa Kolman got himself sent into the stands for the second time this season. At least in that he's been able to match one of the feats of his predecessor, who was sent to the stands twice in 2016. Prior to his dismissal Kolman could be seen desperately trying to motivate our players, probably trying to remind them to pick up their energy levels and to "pass and move" as per what I saw at their Wednesday training session before the senior women's cup game.

The greatest proof of our hopelessness was a corner we received in the second half. First of all, it clearly wasn't a corner; the ball probably didn't even reach the byline. Then we took it short, which never works for us, but here it almost did, except that despite executing it as best as we have for a long time, it still didn't work. And thus we're in the early 2013 phase, where we're going to comfort ourselves with the Gus Tsolakis mantra of that era "that one of these weeks we're going to absolutely batter a team".

It was little comfort then, and less comfort now, but there's still a transfer window coming up, and time to turn things around. But that's just my view, that of the perennial optimist.

New things
Another week, and more novel things to distract us from whats happening on the field. First up, it looks like there's new people in the kitchen. I'm giving them time to get themselves in order, but I reckon avoid the spanakopita, which lacks any semblance of salt or saltiness, which is absolutely essential to a good spanakopita. Anyone doubting my credentials on these matters, I'm happy to relay them in excruciating detail at a game near you.

Strangely, one beer in the social not available on tap was Carlton Draught, but I'm sure that'll get rectified. There was also no ice cream truck, but there was a loukoumades truck, which sadly because it took so damn long to set up I was not able to make use of.

In the stand there were new people, which rather than something we as South fans will celebrate we will find a way to be suspicious of. Not without good reason, mind you. These were young guys, dressed in casual gear, Melbourne City supporters invited over by the remnants of the Enosi group. Described like that, is it any wonder people were having flashbacks to when the Victory affiliated kids hung around and then caused all sorts of shit?

I don't want to tar these guys with the same brush, and on Sunday they livened the atmosphere a bit - even their rendition of the "schizophrenia" mosh was too rigorous for security - without causing any problems. But their mates who've invited them should make sure to remind them of a few things. First, no flares. Second, to ditch the casual "clobber". Third, that Clarendon Corner is casual in only one sense, in that it is incredibly slack about chanting, banners, organisation, and sometimes even paying attention to the game.

So to the boys who joined us last week and may or may not choose to continue coming to South games, remember that the goal is to take the game seriously, but not take ourselves seriously. Or something. One of the Clarendon Corner's elder statesmen relayed to me his wife's thoughts on what CC is: basically the soccer equivalent of the Lost Dogs Home. In other words, a bunch of scruffy, sad, yappy individuals who aren't looking for any trouble.

Next game
Kingston away on Monday night.

Rescheduling of abandoned Heidelberg fixture
The round 9 match - which was abandoned due to Heidelberg player Harry Noon's corner flag induced injury - will be replayed in full on Sunday August 19th.

Taylor to Oakleigh, at last
After apparently helping out at Green Gully for a bit, Chris Taylor has ended up at Oakleigh as their new coach. Gus Tsolakis must be sick of losing his job to CT by now. Taylor's been joined by his assistant Chris Marshall, and the third part of that former South coaching contingent, goalkeeping coach Bojo Jevdevic.

These things happen. *shrugs shoulders*

But just like the last time Taylor got a job at Tsolakis' expense, there's rumours of movement at the station, this time at our fine establishment, with three or four of players apparently looking to move across to Oakleigh. Some people are also claiming that there could be some players heading the other way if this happens, which makes the upcoming transfer window even more important than it already was.

Still, if this happens, I'm looking forward to how all this is handled given that we have players under contract, and indeed went to great lengths to get all our players (or at the least those considered worthwhile) under contract before we ditched Taylor.

Anyway, back to Oakleigh for a minute. Given that our results this season have been much closer to ratshit than glorious, it's probably not worth taking the time to take the piss out of Oakleigh's current predicament. Besides which, they're two from two under Taylor, so compared to us they're flying. Still, when they post stuff like this:

The club has utmost faith that the new coaching staff will succeed in attaining results commensurate with the clubs history and expectations

— Oakleigh Cannons FC (@oakcannonsfc) April 27, 2018

Even a non-betting man like myself is thinking about putting a cheeky tenner on Oakleigh finishing as runner up, bridesmaid finishes being that club's speciality.

Scent of blood
The other week came the revelation that South Melbourne was one of a number A-League aspirants which had approached Wellington Phoenix to buy out the Phoenix's A-League licence. From our end, it seems that about a year ago the club had negotiated with Phoenix for purchasing a 25% stake, providing women's and youth teams, and playing some games in Melbourne. The two parties however failed to proceed further than those early discussions, and the matter came to an end.

Following that news however, there has been a renewal of interest in the current state of the Phoenix licence, and to a lesser degree South Melbourne's designs to acquire it. That renewal of general interest in Wellington's ultimate fate as an A-League location is tied to longer term issues: should there be an New Zealand team in Australian soccer? What will the A-League look like when its make up is finally "complete"? What will even be the structure of Australian soccer as a whole once the necessary FIFA reforms are applied?

For Wellington's part, none of this is being helped by delayed and then unconvincing denials by their owners that their licence is for sale. And even if one were to believe them, remember this: in August 2013, Melbourne Heart's then Director of Football, John Didulica, claimed on radio that Heart were not for sale; just a few months later, Melbourne Heart were bought out by the City group.

Another article in The Age on the Wellington matter this week noted that South was again seeking to talk to Phoenix about a deal. This was followed up by a piece on The World Game (ostensibly about Brisbane Strikers' interest in buying Phoenix), which included some information on the nature of the negotiations between ourselves and Phoenix. This includes the fact that Wellington originally approached South to try and offload 25% of its licence for $1.5 million, with board member and head of the South Melbourne for A-League bid team Bill Papastergiadis noting that:

"The enticement for us was to play the youth league and women’s league in Melbourne full-time with our colours, but still having some form of the Wellington brand."

More broadly however, there remains an infuriating vagueness about even elementary details of what a South Melbourne team in the A-League would look like. For example, while Papastergiadis said this in the The Age article:

"South Melbourne and our blue strip is our name, our history and our brand, and that's what we are going to be wherever we play."

It's not much different to what was said a couple of years ago when we kicked off this latest attempt at getting into the A-League. Still, when Papastergiadis says:

"we have not only past examples of record crowds but also recent evidence from our FFA semi-final against Sydney which rated 56,000 on Fox Football"

it's reassuring that Michael Lynch pushes back even just a bit on these kinds of claims by noting:

Whether fans tuned in to watch South or the A-League champions that night is a matter for debate

Of course in the grand scheme of things, it's still a far cry from the rigorous examination that every Australian soccer journalist should be applying to every A-League bid. But it's a start.

What we can say with some certainty as outside observers is that the market rate for the Phoenix licence seems to be $6 million, which is well below the over $10 million recently paid for the Adelaide United franchise by mystery overseas investors. Less certain is how any team seeking to buy out the Phoenix outright would get around the issue of the apparent geographical clauses in the Phoenix licence which ties that licence to New Zealand, though one can easily posit that that if FFA were amenable to it, that they could change the rules pretty easily.

Less certain, also, is whether Wellington's owners want to sell their team outright, or work on a finding a partnership solution. There's also no clarity on whether a team taking out the Wellington licence and transferring it to Australia would be guaranteed the Phoenix's share of the television rights; this is important, because talk is that the two expansion sides for A-League season 2019/20 will have to survive - at least in the short term - without such funding.

Further uncertainty was caused by Wellington Phoenix eventually issuing a passionate/ranting press release, more or less accusing a lot of people of lying, and of wanting to feed on the not-quite-yet existent Phoenix corpse. Which, to be fair, is their right to do so, I suppose, but I will say this: days of silence, followed by mealy-mouthed media mumblings, followed by backs-to-the-wall bravado a whole week after all this started, is hardly a clever PR game. Not that any of that matters, of course.

Winning and losing, in that order
Last Wednesday night the senior women strutted their stuff in the TeamApp Cup against Bulleen. They'd beaten Bulleen at Lakeside in the league the previous Saturday, and fielded a strong side in this one. Maybe too strong, as we'll soon see. There was also a members/dine with the players night, though I think only a handful of the saddest cases turned up for that; otherwise, the crowd was mostly made up of members of the junior girls teams, and their parents.

There were no corner flags on kickoff, but the game progressed anyway, and you kinda wondered why we bother with them. If we need to have a corner marker, might we better off switching to rugby league style short padded posts? Anyway, eventually some corner flags turned up, and no one thought about corner flags again for the rest of the evening, and hopefully ever again.

There was no Lisa De Vanna - she sat on the bench - but we didn't need her. We were the dominant team, and cruised to a 3-0 victory and into the next round against Greater Geelong Galaxy. Except that we didn't! We played an ineligble player - probably someone that was already cup tied - and had the result reversed. For a tournament that we didn't apparently care that much about, we sure when tout of oru way to do well and then completely botch it.

As disappointing as it was for all who were genuinely concerned by this shambles of bookkeeping practice, it was bizarre that some people who don't even care about women's soccer, nay, are just as likely to be actively hostile to women's soccer, saw this as an opportunity to feign indignation about the forfeit. Probably no accident that there's some crossover in that demographic of people who are caning the board for Chris Taylor's sacking when they spent the last few years wanting Taylor sacked.

More genuinely disappointing is the news that women's coach Socrates Nicolaides will be resigning from his post and heading back to the United States for family reasons. Soc was not only successful, but he also seemed to really care about the welfare of the players under his command, and seemed like one of the better people at the club. Oh well, an opportunity for someone else to carry on his good work.

Launch of Andrew Howe's Socceroos encyclopaedia 
Australian soccer statistician and historian Andrew Howe will soon be travelling around the country to launch his new Socceroos encyclopaedia. The venue for his Melbourne event? Our very own South Melbourne Hellas social club. The launch will be on Tuesday May 29th, from 5:30-7:00, and you can register here to attend.

Don't forget also that the PFA history conference is on Tuesday May 15th, also in the social club.

Around the grounds
Mucho delusions of grandeur
Last Saturday I ventured, alone, by car(!), to Scovell Reserve in Maidstone for Maidstone United vs Kensington City. Parts of the Liberal Party are debating bringing back corporal punishment for crimes; I reckon they could save themselves a lot of money and a lot of time battling civil rights lawyers in court by revising their plan and making them watch State League 5 - extra punishment is to stand behind the goals and focus on the goalkeeping. Three times from set pieces Maidstone dumped the ball into the six yard box, and the Kensington keeper just watched it get cleaned up by an opponent for a goal. Then there's the players who take the ball from their own teammates. Best of all was when the visitors had a free kick, and all of a sudden there was much frantic yelling of instructors from the bench and the few supporters present like they were audience members of a Spanish language Price is Right. Here's where it gets really stupid though: I was informed afterwards that some of the Kensington people thought I was a spy, because I was by myself and on my phone a lot. Now, in the unlikely event those boys are reading this post, I'm going to lay it out very clearly:

1. I was on my phone doing occasional Twitter updates, and keeping tabs on footy scores.
2. You're going to have to play much better than you do right now to be worth spying on.

Oh, Maidstone won the game 5-2, in a canter.

Final thought
Think of it this way: if Sasa Kolman's South Melbourne coaching stint ends badly, based on Oakleigh's recent coach hiring history, Kolman's still at worst a 50/50 chance of eventually getting the gig at Oakleigh.