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| Everyone seemed fascinated by this pink-purple sky, with some of ours fans forgetting their troubles momentarily to take photos of the unreal sky. Photo: Luke Radziminski. |
Well actually it was because everything had been taken out because the social club had been used to film some television show about WAGs. Still, nothing had been put back in by game day Sunday, so there's three or four us squinting at photos of what the cabinet layouts used to look like, arranging display boxes, putting the trophies back in, and worst of all, hopelessly trying to put the various pennants in.
Instead of having convenient hooks from which to hang the pennants, the pennants almost invariably required to be screwed into tiny-and-very-difficult-to-access-without-Olympic-gymnast-contortions holes in the ceilings of the cabinets. And you'd thought the social club's kitchen layout was messed up! I would love to meet whoever was responsible for choosing tiny screw holes instead of well-placed hooks.But at least we got most of the stuff back in there (on way or another) before most of the visiting Cros turned up to shame us for our empty trophy cabinets. Still, at least we have our NSL championship trophies, unlike another club - just don't ask me where our NSL Cup trophies are
Credit to our girls - and they mostly are girls, age-wise - they put in a good fight, and even tried to cheat their way to an own goal via a handball (which was easily spotted by the referee), but they were outclassed and out-muscled. Worse, it looks like we may have lost our starting keeper Erin Hudson, who came off midway through the second half with what looked like a serious arm injury - she was replace by an outfielder in goal, which didn't really result in a shellacking any worse than I would've thought we'd have copped before the game.
It does help keep the scoreline somewhat respectable when your backpass(?) floats over the makeshift keeper's head, bounces onto the sodden yet still springy turf and somehow up into the crossbar, staying out. But that and the late goal we pinched were just about the only things that went right for our senior women on the day - it's been that kind of season, and yet they're still in with a shot at the finals.
The rain came down throughout the senior men's game, but managed to avoid hitting Row H, which is all I really cared about. Now some people said this was a terrible game, the worst ever derby between two sides, but I felt that was a bit harsh. The game was played in difficult conditions, by two fairly ordinary teams, but it was attacking and entertaining. I don't think anyone was bored by what was on display on Sunday. Unimpressed? Sure, why not, that's their right - people are overly cynical these days and just as prone to nostalgia as they've always been - but I don't expect miracles of skill from NPL players and teams (or maybe I've subconsciously lowered my standards since the end of the Chris Taylor glory days).
The players are there (for at least some of us) to entertain us as well as try and get points, and on Sunday they did that. Gerrie Sylaidos put us ahead after 16 seconds with a nice low drive from distance, and that was nice. Of course all one could think of after that was how long would it take for Knights to equalise, and the answer was ten minutes, with pretty much their first meaningful foray forward. The game ebbed and flowed after that - we had the better of the first half, Knights the better of the second, but neither side dominated an entire half, nor were they able to prevent their opponents from creating chances against the run of play.
Each team had a candidate for miss of the season in this match. For us, it was Billy Konstantinidis inexplicably refusing to stick a toe out to tap in a Brad Norton cut-back that was rolling right in front of him in the six yard box. For Knights, it was Gian Albano blasting a loose ball over the bar from from eight yards out directly in front, with the whole goal at his mercy. There were too many close calls to count apart from that, but thankfully we managed to walk away with a point, because we could've ended up with less.
Apart from surviving a nervous finish, the other highlight was getting to pig out on leftover Krispy Kreme doughnuts that the women's team hadn't finished, and getting called a fat bastard (or words to that effect) for my troubles. I regret nothing.
Next game
Hume away on Saturday night
Being typically bold in my prognoses and estimations of the future, I'm prepared to call it... almost. Look, it's no longer a question of misplaced optimism or even that chewed out phrase "mathematical possibility". We're pretty much safe. It would take a monumental disaster for us to fall into the bottom three even from this far out, and trhe chasing pack would have to climb over a couple of other sides to get there first in any regard.
Kingston's win over the Bergers on Monday night is irrelevant to us. They're still on the bottom of the table, twelve points behind us, with just 15 points up for grabs. More relevant to us, Pascoe Vale and Dandy Thunder both lost, and are eleven points behind us. While it's not beyond the realms of possibility that we could fail to take any points from our remaining games, it would still require either Paco or Thunder to go on the kind of run that their form thus far this season has suggested they will not.
Those two teams also play each other on the run home, so one or both will probably be knocked out by the result of that game by that stage, with their best hope likely being getting into the playoff spot and facing what could be a very weak NPL 2 team.
Of course from our point of view, such things are nothing to be proud of, especially for a second season in a row - but it could be worse.
Blessed technicalities
On the terraces I was having a chat with everyone's second or third favourite viking (depending on whether you're a Hagar the Horrible fan or not), about whether a team had ever been relegated from this competition despite reaching the 28 point tally that we have already accrued this season. And the answer is, "short answer ‘yes’ with an ‘if,’ long answer ‘no’ with a ‘but.’”. In 2014, Werribee City finished in 12th place, in what would later become but was not in that season the playoff spot. It is also worth noting that while officially Werribee and Port finished on 28 points apiece, the video tape of the game they played against each other in the final round of that season went missing almost immediately, and thus one is tempted to not consider the resultant points tallies anything resembling a legitimate outcome.
Retro/commemorative jerseys
The club is close to releasing some retro style jerseys - see the details below if you're into that kind of thing.
Match programsOut 60th year anniversary tops by @Kappa_Australia are nearly ready to go. Register your interest with @smfc or me to secure your limited edition top. 1-20 will be available in a beautiful frame only, 21-100 will be top only. Full pricing details to be released over the next week pic.twitter.com/qyItSpKhXI— Tony Margaritis (@sthmel) July 17, 2019
I have added a couple of programs from 1979, and several away programs from season 1999-2000. More stuff will be added as the weeks go by, I hope.
On the couch
Dead but alive, alive but dead
Tuned into the Kingston vs Bergers game on Monday night. Kingston scored a rank dodgy early goal through Chris Irwin, and managed to keep the Bergers to few meaningful chances for the rest of the game. That's about all I could really say of this game, which was neither a great nor poor spectacle, and had little influence on whatever it is that South is trying to accomplish this season.
Final thought
We didn't want him!
85' GGOOOOOOOOOOOOAL CAVS!!— Cavalry FC (@CPLCavalryFC) July 13, 2019
Oliver Minatel the trailer as Sergio Camargo comes up the left side and swings the ball through!#HFX 0-1 #CavsFC#TakeTheHill #CanPL #CanPLxOneSoccer pic.twitter.com/AGmbIyEKGQ
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