That's Entertainment! Oakleigh Cannons 0 South Melbourne 0

Once more, forgive the lateness and brevity and crapness of this report, only some of which can be put down to the grinding boredom of this game.

Consider this: in the lead up to this game, our supporter base was beset by consistent predictions of us going home with a minimum three goal loss. So it stands to reason that after we escaped Jack Edwards Reserve with one more point than most away teams are likely to get there this season, near everyone has maintained their resolutely grim outlook on life.

To be a little fair, when you're up a man for 80 minutes you should at least be getting a draw. You should also be getting at least a couple of shots on target at some point. But as someone who is not particularly confident about this season amounting to anything more (or less) than mid-table mediocrity, I'm happy to take a point from this game and move on, knowing that there's always the possibility of greater and more genuine humiliation just around the corner.

Of course there is the ongoing concern about just how we're going to score this year if Plan A doesn't work. For those who haven't been paying attention so far this season, Plan A is basically to use speed and overlapping play on the wings and wide areas to send in dangerous crosses to our target man, or if things really go our way, somehow dribble the ball into the box from those aforementioned said wide areas.

Plan A depends on a few things to make it work. Speedy wingers and full-backs with decent crossing. Wide grounds to give said players more space to exploit their advantage in speed. Preferably a target of size and talent. And perhaps most importantly in a competition like this, Plan A opposition sides which are ignorant in the way in which we choose to play, or which are so poor that any knowledge they have about our game style is rendered moot.

So far in 2020, the wingers have been speedy, but the crossing - except from the first half corners in the game against Eastern Lions - has been poor. Against Oakleigh, the narrowness and smallness of the ground, and the home side's defensive discipline once they went down to ten men, made the execution of Plan A much more difficult. The target man was starved of service and quality, and his two half chances ended up a) wide, and b) stubbed.

It's also fair to say that in this game, Plan A wasn't really adjusted despite Oakleigh going a man down. A defensive and cautious set up persisted throughout the game, with no obvious change except for what some people consider puzzling personnel swaps in the second half. Plan A on Friday night was to move the ball from one side of the ground to the other and back again, working our way up the ground until such point as there was an overload or overlap on one of the wings.

Who knows if it was meant to be done as slowly as it was, but on a narrow ground against an experienced and disciplined Chris Taylor coached team, this relative slowness of ball movement made things harder than it should have been. Some better crossing would've helped, but for the vast majority of the crosses produced on the night were of poor quality. One can eviscerate Harry Sawyer for what you perceive to be his deficiencies, but just about any forward is going to struggle under the circumstances that Sawyer found himself in on Friday night.

Never mind that there is almost no meaningful play down the middle of the ground by the team. It's ironic that the one time the team did manage to get through the centre channel, Gerrie Sylaidos' through ball to Sawyer resulted in the Oakleigh player getting his marching orders. But like most of his teammates, Sylaidos struggled to create much after that. His super-fans might say his talents are being wasted with him being played out of position - the argument being he's a better winger than number 10, but if you have no other option, Gerrie has to do the job, especially when the squad has so many wingers.

It can also be true that there's an instruction to the team to avoid taking players on, especially in the middle of the field. Taking players on, playing more risky passes - all these things are being weighed up against the idea of "what if something goes wrong?". And while the those on the hill screaming obscenities and abuse towards their own team and especially its coach probably have little impact on the game, it does highlight one thing - if we're going to be mediocre, could we at least be mediocre in a way which gives us a chance of achieving something, or of at least being entertained?

For instance, having taking Sylaidos off (a move guaranteed to raise the ire of a good chunk of our fans), why not insert Melvin Becket in his place? Sure, Becket's hardly one of my favourite current players, but things tend to happen when he's on the field. Things tended to look better when Ben Djiba got on the field for Amadu Koroma, which makes some people wonder why Djiba hasn't been in the starting ahead of Koroma.

Defensively, the team was generally solid, and Lirim Elmazi looks like the best pick up we've in the off-season. Still, there were a couple of times when Oakleigh were able to break down the wings because the channels that Taylor-coached teams like to use were not closed down. Of more concern is some of the defensive set ups from set pieces. We've already conceded a goal from a free kick this year, and on Friday night playing against ten men, we found ourselves gifting Oakleigh a great chance by letting them have a free man in the box from a corner.

Ultimately though, it's the coach's prerogative about how a team plays, and if rolling the dice isn't part of the plan, so be it. And for most of the game, the team was disciplined to a fault in a way that South teams over the past couple of years have not been. And as long as there's a steady accumulation of points or at least a trickle, any frustration with this overly cautious approach will be tolerated, until such point that the utter boredom at its heart crushes all our spirits.

Next game
Tomorrow night away against Port Melbourne. Please note the senior kickoff time of 7:45 - there is no curtain raiser, as the reserves game is being played on Saturday.

Final thought
Thanks to Emile for giving me and Gains a lift back to the city.