Late-November mutterings to oneself

AGM news
No sign of a South Melbourne AGM on the horizon, although there's enough time yet to sneak one in before Christmas. Someone said on social media that news of this would come soon. It might.

2020 fixture released
Not too long ago the clubs sat down at Football Victoria HQ to work on the fixture for next season, and it's already out. Remember when we used to have to wait until a much later date than this to see the fixture? How times changed the last few seasons.

There are three surprises for the senior men's fixture. The first very pleasing surprise is that we've managed to score two home games to start the season. Can you believe it? It's been several years now of, at best, being able to squeeze just one home game in at Lakeside, before the grand prix sees us wandering across Melbourne for a few weeks. So, I think most of us will be happy to get a couple of games of summer soccer at Lakeside under our belts before the point in the season where everyone stops caring.

(though I have seen one complaint about the round 1 game being scheduled in Valentine's Day).

The other surprise is a far bigger change. As the seasons have rolled on in the top couple of Victorian divisions, we'd become a rare breed of club - one that would play almost all of its home games on Sunday afternoons. Out of what might be called the old guard of important enough ethnic teams, only a handful had held onto that tradition with any sort of consistency (us, St Albans, Preston), and in recent years even Heidelberg and the Knights had moved to other days.

Without even taking into account the fact that more and more clubs right through the divisions have been moving games to Friday or Saturday nights when they have the lights for it, last year we were the only team of the NPL1's 14 teams to play on Sundays. In 2020 this changes, as the club will play just one home game on a Sunday, the round 2 match against Eastern Lions.

The rest of our home games will be split between Friday nights and an assortment of Saturday time slots. The Friday night games will be kicking off at the early-ish time of 7:30, which must mean that Football Victoria has relaxed its rules about how early games can start on Fridays. I was under the assumption that previously 8:00 was the earliest allowable kickoff time for Fridays, with special dispensation given to Knights to begin at 7:45.

It's also worth mentioning Knights in this discussion because they've been the pioneers of instituting Friday night kickoffs at the "normal" kickoff of sometime before 8:15/8:30, by dispensing with the under 20s curtain raiser, and moving said reserves game to a different day. It looks like a couple of other clubs are also looking to earlier Friday night kickoffs, including Port Melbourne and Green Gully - the latter seemingly going back to Friday nights in 2020 from Saturday afternoons in 2019 from Friday nights in 2020.

The hidden 'surprise' in all this is what will happen to the under 20s games. Well apart from being played on a separate day from the seniors, it appears that not only will the under 20s games not be played at Lakeside, they won't even be played in the Albert Park area. Rather, they will play the majority of their games out of the Darebin International Sports Complex. The exception to those games scheduled at Darebin are a couple of home 20s fixtures scheduled after the seniors game, taking a leaf out of Hume's book.

I suspect that this move is in part a cost-cutting exercise - the cost of fielding two senior teams (men's and women's) and their respective reserve teams across multiple days at Lakeside just not being financially worthwhile, despite the hope that such a move would have seen us extend our footprint at Lakeside across more of the calendar. As for why Darebin and not our grounds in Albert Park, I guess it's got to do with a preference with natural grass over a synthetic pitch?

It's not a great look in terms of the ongoing stability of our presence at Lakeside. A 40 year lease is fine and all, but if having to traipse across Melbourne to host regular season fixtures seems a bit... off. On the one hand it's a strength to have multiple options in terms of grounds, including Lakeside, Albert Park, and Caulfield, but we also ended up having games at Darebin last year (women's and probably some men's 20s), Knox (women's), and that senior men's game at Northcote against Gully.

I hope that at least we are able to cut down on the number of games that the women have to play at Knox, and that the women's senior team gets to play all of its home matches at Lakeside. The NPLW fixture isn't out yet, but it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that given the men's under 20s are being farmed out to Darebin, that we could see a few more men's/women's double headers on our Saturday fixtures.

(I also wonder if we could see more youth gala days at Lakeside now that Sundays at the ground have been vacated by the seniors...)

The other thing to think about, especially with the Friday night games, is whether the social club will be able to cope with dinner service. Our crowds on Sundays this year were noticeably poorer than usual. A combination of having only occasionally good results, the colder than usual weather, the arrival of the live streams, and an increase in all-round battle fatigue all seemed to contribute to an obvious erosion in our attendances. Yet even with that, food service for those who didn't turn up a couple of hours before the game was often notoriously slow. Now that the club is moving half its games to Friday nights, you assume people will be turning up to games hungry - and you just hope that the social club's food service operation works a bit better than it has for the last three seasons since we reopened the social club.

I suppose we should at least acknowledge that the club is trying to do something on the fixturing front. If Sundays no longer work for us for all sorts of reasons, than why not at least try and not succeed on a different day? The last time we had any noticeable change to our normal home game days was in one of the later Chris Taylor seasons, where we played a handful of games on Friday nights for the ostensible sake of player recovery during the congested mid-season period where the midweek FFA Cup games came into play. This change seems to come from an altogether differet place.

Is this it? Probably.
Only a couple of squad changes have occurred since the last time we spoke, and one was not even really a change. Kristian Konstantinidis was already out the door, but now he also has a new destination - which is really an old destination - in Northcote City. The other change is the departure of Will Orford to Western Pride in his home state of Queensland. I guess with the way Orford's 2018 season ended that some of us would've expected to have seen a little more of him in the senior team in 2019. That didn't happen, and yet I'm still sad to see him go.

The other thing is - and I feel this is an observation worth making - is that assuming that we have 20 odd players signed up already, that we're not likely to be seeing a lot of trialist types during the upcoming pre-season period.

2020 SMFC senior squad roster as of 16/11/2019
Signed

• Daniel Clark
• Lirim Elmazi
• Stephen Folan
• Chris Irwin
• Amadu Koroma
• Perry Lambropoulos
• Matthew Loutrakis
• Jake Marshall
• Josh Meaker
• Brad Norton
• Luke Pavlou
• Harrison Sawyer
• Marcus Schroen
• Gerrie Sylaidos
• Giorgi Zarbos

Played for us in 2019, but now on the payroll in another guise

• Luke Adams

Previously signed until the end of 2020 - or even beyond - but you know how these things can go

• Melvin Becket
• Josh Dorron
• Nick Krousoratis 
• Peter Skapetis

Reputedly posting on Instagram about getting ready for 2020, but who knows for what club

• Nikola Roganovic

Played with us at the end of 2019 but who knows about next year

• Keenan Gibson
• Manny Aguek
• Ben Djiba
• Amir Jashari
• Zac Bates

'They' say that he's not coming back for whatever reason

• Kostas Stratimitros

On the proverbial knife's edge 

• Pep Marafioti

Has he even been in Australia since early in the 2019 season?

• Andrew Mesourouni

Last time anything was heard from him, he was exploring options in India

• Billy Konstantinidis

Out

• Tom Aulton (Brisbane Olympic)
• George Gerondaras (Kingston)
• Kristian Konstantinidis (Northcote)
• Leigh Minopoulos (retired)
• Will Orford (Western Pride)

Book Review, The Little Professor of Soccer - Leo Baumgartner

Among Australian soccer history aficionados, Leopold Baumgartner's The Little Professor of Soccer holds a special place as being the first notable published biography of an Australian soccer player, even if Baumgartner was an Austrian first, and only later an Australian.

Well, they either know it for that reason, or because of its distinct green and black cover.

Either way, even those familiar with the book likely haven't read it. Published in the late 1960s, the book is long out of print, and available only in a scant few libraries in Australia; in other words, you really will have to have gone out of your way in order to have read the book.

When finally accessing a copy, you'll find that the book is rather short (just over 100 pages), making it the kind of thing you'll zip through - although I am curious about the book's provenance. Who decided that an autobiography of a foreign, but not-world famous soccer player - one who spent about half his career in Australia - was a worthwhile venture? And who helped Baumgartner write the book, considering Baumgartner's self-admitted not exactly exemplary knowledge of the English language?

Anyway, the book covers Baumgartner's life from his early days in Austria, until near the end of his playing career in the late 1960s. The first half or so of the book focuses on Baumgartner's youth and pathway to professional soccer in Austria - which was still a semi-professional pursuit. So even before you get to the commentary on 1960s Australian soccer, you get some good information on what it was like to become a professional player in Austria in the 1950s. Baumgartner covers training, internal politics, transfers, and the hard yards - including securing a job outside your semi-pro football gig - that had to be put in while rising through the ranks of youth and regional football, until Baumgartner makes it to FK Austria.

What's interesting about this part of the book is its relative naivete. Just about everyone in 1950s Austrian football seems good-natured and easy-going, and Baumgartner's narrative has almost a childlike wonder about it - the post-war poverty, the joy of watching the crack teams of Austrian football on a weekend as a kid, and the sheer fun of being involved with football. The combination of all these are factors make the book come *this* close to being cloying, were it not for Baumgartner's sincerity.

Perhaps the best example is when Baumgartner represents Austria in a youth tournament in The Netherlands. The team travels by train, stays in a nice hotel, and has a lovely time mixing with the players from the other nations, even if they can't understand each other. It doesn't even matter too much that the Austrians get knocked out of the tournament early by England - the experience was worthwhile for its novelty, and for the opportunity of pitting yourself against Europe's best, and finding out that you still have a long way to go to improve. Baumgartner is clearly appreciative of the opportunity to experience what he has.

(as an aside, I'm reminded here of Danny Kelly from Christos Tsiolkas' novel Barracuda, who when competing at an international swimming meet in Japan, feels a palpable sense of awe and wonder at the experience of international travel that his wealthier, yet more insular teammates, do not)

Later when he's secured a senior team position at FK Austria, there are also tours of South America, where cross-national bonhomie and the exoticism of touring compete with the very obvious signs of grinding poverty he encounters in Latin America.

But there's also the Australian tours, and it's these which eventually lead to Baumgartner and players of his ilk migrating to Australia permanently, in order to play for clubs like Sydney's Prague and Hakoah clubs. This leads to the mess of Australia being kicked out of FIFA for not paying transfers to the European clubs, an issue which Baumgartner largely ignores in this book. But the imports at least bring advanced tactics, better preparation (to a degree) and skill to Australia, as well as boosting crowds.

Baumgartner plays for a variety of clubs and undertakes a variety of roles, though he never settles at one club for too long even if they've had success. When playing for Prague, Baumgartner notes the lack of overall professionalism from his mostly European teammates. At Canterbury, he manages to elevate and guide a young, Australian-born/raised cohort (including players such as Johnny Warren) to unexpected success, but he doesn't stay for long here either, moving to South Coast for what turns out to be a short stint due to pressing personal money problems. (it's annoying that he doesn't talk much about his and his family's life - and their adjustment to Australia - away from football)

Moving back to Sydney to play for APIA - with whose fans he's had a combative relationship - the fun times don't last long here either. Baumgartner once more unwillingly gets drawn into board squabbles. Indeed, Baumgartner doesn't think very much of the supposed soccer knowledge of club administrators, especially from the ethnic clubs; but he doesn't spare the shambling incompetence of federation officials either, especially when it comes to organising the basics such as competent youth training.

In amid the banquets, the barbecues, and the assorted social gatherings, it may well be that Baumgartner himself is not quite the easy going character he likes to portray himself as. He clearly has a low patience threshold for the various characters involved in Australian soccer, perhaps with good reason, but it's also clear that at some point people cease to listen to him. Like a smattering of voices of the time, Baumgartner believes that the late 1950s/early 1960s standard in Sydney was much better than that of the late 1960s, suggesting already that there was a downturn in Australian soccer - but also that no one seemed particularly keen to take the necessary action to arrest that decline.

Thus a book that begins so full of naivety and hope, ends with the sobering warning that Australian soccer in the late 1960s is already on the brink of difficult times. It's a bit of a let-down then that the book doesn't go beyond the 1960s, as Baumgartner remained engaged in soccer in various guises for the rest of his life, especially coaching junior soccer, and it would've been interesting to see him explain.

The lasting impact of this book is a strange one - the cultural memory of the culture that this book talks about is gone. Many of the clubs are dead; even the strongest of those that remain are a mere shadow of what they were. It's not even a matter of immediate relevance - but if a modern Australian soccer fan was asked about this time in Australian soccer (and specifically in Sydney), there will be little to no knowledge of this era. Baumgartner is not just an ancient figure in Australian soccer terms, but also an increasingly obscure one.

It's incongruous to an extent because soccer in this era – especially important games – was very well attended. Thousands packed suburban grounds and chaired off winning teams; and now, it’s like it never happened. Even between this period and the start of the A-League, it’s arguable that something culturally important was already lost. But did that short-lived period of optimism and ascendancy in Australian soccer last long enough? Or was it the fact that much of the experience remains sequestered what are now redundant languages and cultures?

It's possible to argue that had two Baumgartner admirers - Johnny Warren and Les Murray - not been at the forefront of Australia's soccer media for as long as they were, that the cultural memory of Baumgartner and what he brought to Australian soccer may have faded even earlier than it did.

While I have noted that the book is long out of print, you can download a sneaky scanned copy here.

Step by step

Mid-November mutterings to oneself
No sign of a South Melbourne AGM on the horizon, although there's enough time yet to sneak one in before Christmas.

The new season, as per recent custom, is going to start around mid-February. It's been said that the first game will be against Heidelberg, but who knows? I expect, though have no immediate knowledge of, some very low key friendlies to be arranged by some time before Christmas.

Elsewhere there hasn't been much buzz around the rest of the competition so far as I can tell - it's all been very low-key. Hume have re-signed a lot of their players. Oakleigh has also re-signed the bulk of their 2020 squad, and added Tyson Holmes, to create a bit of a Dad's Army feel. It seems like Milos Lujic is probably on the way out, mostly likely to Port Melbourne, who have been re-signing at least some of their squad, as well as acquiring Ross Archibald from Altona Magic.

Reigning champions Bentleigh have both re-signed a lot of their title winning squad, as well as added a number of new players, including Alex Canigilia and Damien Iaconis. Altona Magic have been notable for the players they've lost after one of their chief backers departed their club. Heidelberg's squad looks it's in the middle of a renewal period, with a few people moving on including ancient centre-back pairing Luke Byles and Stephen Pace.

The following clubs have been quiet in terms of squad updates, at least on social media. Dandy Thunder have made a handful of signings, and begun some fitness work; no news of note from Knights, St Albans, Green Gully, Eastern Lions, Dandy City, and Avondale.

Is this it? Probably not, but who knows?
As for South. the club has come out with a little social media summary the other day noting the new players that we've signed up so far. The list includes players which have been signed up since I last updated, including former youth team player Josh Meaker, and current youth team player Giorgi Zarbos and Matthew Loutrakis.

From the ten 'new' players, we have two current youth team players, four former players, and four actually new players. None of the ten is a goalkeeper, which has some people a bit concerned, even though the start of the new season is three months away.

Not announced by the club, but announced via other media channels, are the departure of defender Tom Aulton to Brisbane Olympic, and youth team utility player George Gerondaras, who is joining his brothers at Kingston.

The only major thing I've rearranged in my squad list is noting which players had been signed to contracts in 2020 from before either the 2019 season started or during the mid-season transfer window.

2020 SMFC senior squad roster as of 16/11/2019
Signed

• Daniel Clark
• Lirim Elmazi
• Stephen Folan
• Chris Irwin
• Amadu Koroma
• Perry Lambropoulos
• Matthew Loutrakis
• Jake Marshall
• Josh Meaker
• Brad Norton
• Luke Pavlou
• Harrison Sawyer
• Marcus Schroen
• Gerrie Sylaidos
• Giorgi Zarbos

Played for us in 2019, but now on the payroll in another guise

• Luke Adams

Previously signed until the end of 2020 - or even beyond - but you know how these things can go

• Melvin Becket
• Josh Dorron
• Nick Krousoratis 
• Peter Skapetis

Reputedly posting on Instagram about getting ready for 2020, but who knows for what club

• Nikola Roganovic

Played with us at the end of 2019 but who knows about next year

• Keenan Gibson
• Manny Aguek
• Ben Djiba
• Amir Jashari
• Will Orford
• Zac Bates

'They' say that he's not coming back for whatever reason

• Kostas Stratimitros

On the proverbial knife's edge 

• Pep Marafioti

Has he even been in Australia since early in the 2019 season?

• Andrew Mesourouni

Last time anything was heard from him, he was exploring options in India

• Billy Konstantinidis

Out

• Tom Aulton (Brisbane Olympic)
• George Gerondaras (Kingston)
• Kristian Konstantinidis (time to say goodbye)
• Leigh Minopoulos (retired)

Book Review - Trevor Thompson's Playing For Australia

ABC journalist Trevor Thompson had previously written One Fantastic Goal, one of a slew of books that were commissioned (or were reprinted) during the time the Socceroos had made the 2006 World Cup. And I must admit, I wasn't a huge fan of that book.

Apart from its general tone, which was (naturally) celebratory of what had been achieved in a very such short space of time under the Lowy regime, I also felt like the book was rushed out to the market by an opportunistic publisher looking to cash-in on the Socceroos' moment in the sun, and that the book was therefore released in a manner which did not to the author justice, feeling a bit underdone, with many parts of that book repeating themselves.

I am glad to say that I enjoyed Thompson’s Playing for Australia: The First Socceroos, Asia and World Football far more and I'm glad to recommend it to readers, albeit with a couple of necessary caveats.

Playing for Australia came out late last year via Bonita Mersiedes’ Fairplay Publishing. Its main focus is the early days of the Australian national team, long before they were the Socceroos, and long before they were entering international competition - with a couple of exceptions, we’re largely talking about the inter-war years from 1922 through to the early 1940s.

What we get from Thompson about this era (and the years immediately preceding them) is informative and lively, and just as importantly, highly accessible. At its best, Thompson is able combine the narrative with interesting anecdotes. Playing for Australia's greatest strengths lie in the little details that Thompson regales us with, such as the “Ego yah!” chant. Here, Thompson notes the attempt by Australia's soccer players to establish their own version of the All Blacks haka, during a tour of the Dutch East Indies in the 1928.

Ego yah, ego yah! The Emu, The Wallaby, The Kangaroo, The Wombat; Who are, who are, who are we? We are the boys from the Southern Sea, Bonza Cobber, Dinki Di, Best of luck to you and I, We'll not fail her, young Australia, Ego Yah... Boska!

(although Thompson is not quite correct about the chant being created by the players for this tour; variants of the "ego yah" chant existed prior to the 1928 tour).

The book covers the various touring teams which visited Australia, including by Chinese, Indian, Czechoslovakian, New Zealand, Jewish, and English sides. These tours were both a boon and a burden to Australian soccer. When the touring teams were of good calibre, they provided excellent entertainment - but if they were too good, they made Australian soccer look second-rate. Just as often, the visiting teams were not what they were advertised as, with the promoters - often private financiers - who funded the tours marketing the tourists as being national teams when they were more likely to clubs sides. Australian crowds, too, were a fickle lot, at least when it came to value for money. They wanted to see visiting teams partly on novelty grounds (such as the Chinese touring sides), but attendance for novelty's sake is something that quickly wears thin.

The Australian teams (whether local, state, or national) cobbled together to represent the country against these touring teams, or to venture across to New Zealand or South-East Asia were scarcely able to avoid controversy in their own right. National teams and their selection policies were fraught by questions of amateurism of professionalism, national team vs state club loyalties, New South Wales dominance, and the “necessity” of playing Victorian and South Australian players in the national team in their home states, even though those states were weaker. Along with splits in the national bodies which created a weak base from which to evangelise the game, and the failure to maintain meaningful interstate competition, Thompson's overview is a useful way of seeing how soccer's lack of a dominant administrative centre has a long history.

But politics aside, there is also the matter of Australia’s slavering devotion to England's Football Association, as Australian soccer throws its lot in with a body (the FA) which cares little for soccer's fortune's in the Antipodes. The longstanding and persistent lack of moral, financial and logistical support offered by England towards Australian soccer, and at times even hypocrisy of British sporting authorities should have rung alarm bells for Australian soccer years before the penny dropped. Yet the Australian soccer authorities, even as they became ever more aware of this lack of support, nevertheless remained devoted to the FA, even as Australia remained a subsidiary member of the FA on the same level as the Elementary Schools Association.

The book also detours into chapters about contemporary Indian, Indonesian Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, and Kiwi football. Some of these nations obviously had interactions with Australian soccer, either via tours to Australia or by Australia, but the main point of Thompson’s summaries of those neighbours of ours is to show how differently they approached international competition – not friendlies – and in some cases the differences in their relationships with their own colonial masters (East Indies/Dutch) or as colonial masters themselves (the Japanese in Korea and Manchuria). A point that the book seeks to make is that Kiwi soccer was especially poor by the 1930s – and that as a consequence of this, an inward looking Australia lacked meaningful competition among its own Empire brethren.

While I enjoyed the book, it does still suffer from some of the issues that Thompson’s previous book did, as well as some other issues. The book jumps around very quickly at times, and it can be difficult to follow the central argument and/or narrative. That’s because the book is at times underwritten, in that some chapters feel they're one anecdote or point of interest following another in a heady rush. That may be the case here because it’s a bit under-edited, an issue which can be put down to what is still in many ways a production of a fledgling small publisher finding its way.

Of more concern is the complete lack of footnotes as well as a bibliography or reference list. I understand that on one level the book isn't meant to be an academic treatise, but clearly there’s been a fair bit of research undertaken by Thompson to write the book, and I think it would've been valuable for people to see the sources that he’s relied upon, especially where it presents information that may new to researchers. Overall however, I really enjoyed the book, and recommend it to anyone looking for a history lesson on the early days of the Australian national men’s team, and the era and conditions under which they played.

Environmentally Friendly

Our off-season recruiting does resemble is a case of pick your own cliche. Is it "everything old is new again" or "we're picking off the carcass of the deceased"?

Defying those definitions are the signing of midfielder Daniel Clark (Port Melbourne) and centre-back Stephen Folan (various Irish clubs).

But as for the rest? There's clear scavenging of newly cash-strapped clubs (somehow even more than us...), with the signing of defender Lirim Elmazi from Altona Magic.

There's also former players scavenged from the same newly cash-strapped club, in the form of defender Amadu Koroma.

There's also former players scavenged from recently relegated clubs, in the form of defender Chris Irwin.

And then there's former players returning to Lakeside under who knows what circumstances, in the form of defensive midfielder Luke Pavlou.

Apart from the wisdom of the recruiting in general (the fruits of whose labour will only be judged when there's actual meaningful contests), one will continue to wonder what the recruiting methodology in use during this off-season means in terms of keeping wage spending under control (if it ever was in control), and what all of this could possibly mean for the hoped for youth policy (which may or may not exist). I suppose the one thing we could say is that these recruits, along with the better remnants of the 2019 squad (and probably a goalkeeper), should see the club be able to field a competitive starting eleven next year.

2020 SMFC senior squad roster as of 4/11/2019
Signed

• Daniel Clark
• Lirim Elmazi
• Stephen Folan
• Chris Irwin
• Amadu Koroma
• Perry Lambropoulos
• Jake Marshall
• Brad Norton
• Luke Pavlou
• Harrison Sawyer
• Marcus Schroen
• Gerrie Sylaidos

Played for us in 2019 but now on the payroll in another guise

• Luke Adams

Played with us at the end of 2019 but who knows about next year

• Tom Aulton
• Keenan Gibson
• Peter Skapetis
• Nick Krousoratis 
• Manny Aguek
• Ben Djiba
• Amir Jashari
• Will Orford
• Zac Bates
• Josh Dorron
• Melvin Becket

'They' say that he's not coming back for whatever reason

• Kostas Stratimitros

On the proverbial knife's edge 

• Pep Marafioti

Going... going...

• Nikola Roganovic

Possibly already moved on to Kingston

• George Gerondaras

Has he even been in Australia since early in the 2019 season?

• Andrew Mesourouni

Last time anything was heard from him, he was exploring options in India

• Billy Konstantinidis

Out

• Kristian Konstantinidis (time to say goodbye)
• Leigh Minopoulos (retired)