Jump! Jump! Jump! artefact Wednesday

Ah, 2007. It was a season which held so much promise. We were fresh off a championship, two years after almost going broke. We had what looked like a good squad, and a good first up crowd against the Bergers at home in an exciting game, followed by a thrilling win against Richmond, which I missed because I was at an Elbow concert. Another win against the Essendon Royals, and things looked promising. And then they didn't. Dean Anastasiadis went down with a season ending knee injury in round 4, and we soon found out that for the most part we were adept downhill skiers, but not much more than that, and the season ended with us missing the finals by three points, amid suspicion from some fans that'd we kinda tanked some games - specifically the 3-0 loss at Western Suburbs - because we had cash-flow problems.

But one could easily point to the uneven draw as a causal factor - though the league had 16 teams, there were only 26 rounds - and the fact that we only played that season's wooden spooner Springvale White Eagles just once. We could point to the mess of the goalkeeping situation once Deano went down. And you could of course point to many calamitous poor results, including the 2-0 home loss to Sunshine George Cross the week before that humiliation at Ralph Reserve. But all that is irrelevant compared to the forfeit forced upon us by Football Federation Victoria, for a home match against Melbourne Knights. But first some background.

2007 was a crazy year on the terraces, hills, concourses, and the streets of Melbourne. There were was the Cros vs the Serbs (and Greek onlookers) at the Australian Open tennis. There was a stolen Melbourne Victory banner which found its way to Clarendon Corner in round 1, and which made a reappearance at our game at Richmond. There were also more ethnic related incidents at the Water Polo World Championships. A combination of these things saw FFV and/or Victoria Police - it's not quite clear to me even now who was exerting the greater pressure - to demand unrealistically expensive security measures. South refused to pay the asking price, and FFV preemptively - that is, days out from the game - awarded a 3-0 forfeit to Knights.

The next week we were scheduled to play against Fawkner at CB Smith Reserve. This is the old CB Smith, with the tin shed along the western wing, and most importantly, an open view from outside the southern end, where there was only a high chain-link fence to visually obstruct spectators. It was a perfect venue to conduct what we called at the time a protest against FFV, which naturally proved futile, and only really served to hurt Fawkner on one of their bigger paydays for the year. The Agitator brought a slab of Heineken, and the game was an awful 0-0 draw - though we could've sneaked a winner late. The most interesting thing, unplanned amid the scarcely planned nature of the whole enterprise, was at the end of the game when the Clarendon Corner stalwart known as "Box" climbed up the very high and probably very rusty fence to chants of "Box! Box! Box!", and then when at the top, "Jump! Jump' Jump!". Thankfully he had a little more sense than that, and climbed back down.

I can't remember where I found this photo, so if it belongs to you let me know. But this was 13 years ago, and my haven't we come a long way since then.