Well, not really, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't deliberately seek to undercut my own moment of irrefutably minor online glory.
Yesterday morning the club's social media accounts put out the mystery-and-intrigue laden notice of the "new striker and Australian marquee player" that was going to join us in 2020. That sent people rushing to speculate both honestly and mischievously. I guess some people thought it was going to be Avondale's Liam Boland, whose name has been thrown up during this off-season as a possible signing for us.
But me, I went with my hunch that the announcement was going to be Harrison Sawyer, a 22 year old Queenslander who has been on the books with a couple of A-League teams, but who has also played in the Philippines and Hong Kong. That hunch was proven correct at a touch after 6:00PM, and after which I went to claim my theoretical prize of internet kudos.
But it's easy to be right when the rumour of Sawyer's signing with us was posted on the South forum over a week ago. That must surely annoy the remnants of our once fabled media team, but the truth is that we're a long way of the Chris Taylor led no South Melbourne Hellas news leakage era.
As for those wondering about the language used in terms of "Australian marquee", one has to give credit to the South media team for that one, exploiting the designation given to a certain kind of player under the PPS system.
An Australian Marquee Player is an Australian Player (i.e. not a Visa Player) that was registered as a professional Player for a Hyundai A-League Club or an overseas Club immediately prior to registering with the NPL Club.
The Australian Marquee Player will only incur a maximum of 10 points on a Player Roster and will not otherwise be subject to the Switching Player category. The Player can benefit from the other categories of the PPS (i.e. Homegrown Player).Sawyer comes with big wraps from former South man Jesse Daley (I assume they were once Brisbane Roar youth/NPL teammates) and from Queensland soccer media type and football historian Garry McKenzie.
Also about a week before that centre-back Jake Marshall signed on again for another season, a bit of news which garnered a lot less interest.
2020 SMFC senior squad roster as of 21/10/2019
Signed
- Perry Lambropoulos
- Jake Marshall
- Brad Norton
- Harrison Sawyer
- Marcus Schroen
- Gerrie Sylaidos
Played for us in 2019 but now on the payroll in another guise
- Luke Adams
- Tom Aulton
- Keenan Gibson
- Peter Skapetis
- Nick Krousoratis
- Manny Aguek
- Ben Djiba
- Amir Jashari
- Giuseppe Marafioti
- Will Orford
- Nikola Roganovic
- Zac Bates
- Josh Dorron
- Melvin Becket
'They' say that he's not coming back for whatever reason
- Kostas Stratimitros
Possibly already moved on to Kingston
- George Gerondaras
Has he even been in Australia since early in the 2019 season?
- Andrew Mesourouni
- Billy Konstantinidis
- Kristian Konstantinidis (time to say goodbye)
- Leigh Minopoulos (retired)
No comments:
Post a Comment
A few notes on comments.
We've had a lot of fun over the years with my freewheeling comments policy, but all good things must come to an end. Therefore I will no longer be approving comments that contain personal abuse of any sort.
Still, if your post doesn't get approved straight away, it's probably because I haven't seen it yet.
As usual, publication of a comment does not mean endorsement of its content.