You win some, you lose some, you draw lots - South Melbourne 1 Bentleigh Greens 1

There is an important issue facing South at the moment, and I don't think it is getting the coverage that it warrants. No, it is not the lack of a striker in the squad, as we struggle to score any goals from situations that are not penalty related. Neither it it the impending doom facing South as our fanbase becomes ever more blasé about their connection to the club, and even the hardest of the hardcore begin drifting away from the club.

(And here's a newsflash from early 2006 - rather than come up with reasons why they no longer want to support the club and then leave, most people leave and then come up with reasons for why they no longer come. Good luck trying to reason with people who take that approach.)

No, the most important question facing South Melbourne right now is whether we should get the Trust to fix one of the defective PA speakers in grandstand. On the one hand, it's a matter of professionalism and service - if something in the arena part of Lakeside Stadium is defective, then it's the Trust's responsibility to fix it. On the other hand, it's made the generally terrible pre-match and half-time music played in the grandstand that bit more tolerable. Tina Turner's version of "The Best" sees her voice disappear into the aether, turning the song into a karaoke tune; B2K's lascivious "Bump, Bump, Bump" has almost all its singing obliterated, leaving only "Yeah!" and "Bump, Bump, Bump". It's like a real time episode of Classic Albums, where a version of the mix is being played without the vocals; except you don't have Lindsay Buckingham, Butch Vig, or Brian Eno there to fiddle with knobs to bring up the vocals.

Anyway, the situation is like this. Our only recognised, fully-fledged senior striker (Harry Sawyer) is out for the next six weeks, at least. Our next best senior option, Josh Barresi, isn't a striker. Our best option after that (and this is really a guess as to who that might be), is Marcus Schroen, who'll probably be having surgery in a couple of weeks to fix up the mess his upper body's in after copping that somehow unpunished tackle against Avondale. For whatever reason, Yianni Panakos, starring in the under 21s, is not considered ready to go yet in the seniors. Every other possible option - Gerrie Sylaidos, Henry Hore, Marco Jankovic, Zac Bates - is not even close to being a genuine forward. And yes, there is a difference between players whose job includes getting forward, from those whose job it is to be a forward.

Speaking of which, does anyone have the phone number for 2012 club golden boot winner Shaun Kelly?

But given that no one expected us to be this high up the ladder or even remotely this competitive; and given that we go into pretty much every game thinking a point would be good; and given the fact that this has become a season of draws across the league - why is everyone so disappointed when we come away with a point against opponents who we all think are much better than us? It is that great paradox of 2021 South Melbourne Hellas that we are somehow worse than all the good teams in this league, who are also bad and/or overrated; that being in the top three at the midway point of the season, when few of us had any expectation that we could manage more than scraping into sixth place, is also a terrible place to be. It's classic having your cake and eating it too, which is stupid of course, but also shows that some people still care enough to work themselves into all sorts of crazy knots about this club.

I won't bore you with blow-by-blow details of last week's game. It was entertaining, we were the better team except for our utter impotence up front, and we once again played around with the starting lineup. So what did we learn from this week's experimentation? That we have multiple players that can take players on, that can dribble. Hore, Sylaidos, and Perry Lambropoulos, all moving forward, attacking opponents, putting them on the back foot. It helps that Bentleigh are an attacking team, and comparatively weak at the back, but still - how good was it to see a South team showing no fear, or at least less fear?

It helps in this particular case that without a big forward like Sawyer to lump it forward to, that the tactic of lumping it forward was dead in the water from the start in this match. It forced the team to play the ball on the ground, and to move the ball more methodically up the field without the safety valve of a long-ball option. Would that possibly work with Sawyer in the team? You'd like to think so, but it requires courage to take that chance that your boys can actually play. 

I know that defence is important, and that some people (the coach included) would be happy enough to create a solid enough base, and therefore to grind out results, but what if... we didn't have to be so extremely defensive? And what if the answer to scoring goals lies not exclusively with whoever's unlucky enough to be our one forward, but with several players getting into advanced positions?

(and how do we know that our defence is actually any good, if all we do is stack so many players in it and put them so deep that their sheer weight of numbers makes them hard to break down?)

And Perry Lambropoulos - what a revelation (maybe)! I know it won't be like that every week, but think of how many coaches he's had over the past few seasons across three different clubs. Were they all burying him at a full-back position instead of playing him regularly on a wing? 

It sucked that we conceded from Bentleigh's first chance after we had so much of the play, but we pushed on and scored from the penalty spot, maybe found a legit free kick taker (Hore), and maybe should have had another penalty. In a just world, where there still is such a thing as accidental handball, that was not a penalty; but in this modern world, where everything is handball, it's kinda surprising that it wasn't given. So it goes.

The last ten minutes was a cavalcade of chances at both ends. Daniel Clark stuffed up a great one on one chance. Kieran Dover smashed the ball against the crossbar from point blank range for Bentleigh. And right on full time, Daniel Clark had a shot from about eight yards out right in front, which he ended up hitting low and hard right at the mess of players on the goal line, instead of into the back of the net. And then it turns out it wasn't Clark, but rather Henry Hore, from whom I expect better.

Some people were reminded of this game from 2012, and that's fair enough, but at this point we're half way through the season, in a better spot on the ladder than I think even the most optimistic of us ever thought we'd be, and we don't have semi-famous somebodies telling us to bring our brand of passionate support to an A-League team. Maybe that's because our passion is not what it was, or there's no longer the veneer of there being enough to bother trying to cajole us into boosting the pathetic or otherwise numbers of our local A-League franchises.

Of more immediate concern is that the bar in the social club needs to sort itself out just a smidge by having an ample selection of essential drinks on hand. That would be good. How do you not know where the dark rum is? Why is there no raspberry cordial on hand for those who want a raspberry lemonade? If the club's going to die from loneliness, they could at least have the drinks the few of us left enjoy.

Next game

It's meant to be Heidelberg at home on Saturday night; yet the latest covid outbreak and its attendant restrictions on public gatherings may scupper or alter those plans, and possibly the FFA Cup fixture against Eastern Lions the week after as well. Check your local guides for details I suppose.

Women's report

So, I'm asking for forgiveness in advance for the comparative spitefulness of this report. I did not watch this game in the flesh, for reasons which will become clear soon enough. I had a late lunch at home, and jumped on the train towards Southern Cross. The train went through the loop instead of direct to Southern Cross, which normally irks me, but here it was a blessing of sorts, because it meant that I could watch more of the South senior women playing against Alamein on the live stream, before having to pause the stream so I could get to the tram stop on Collins Street, because who wants to be one of those pedestrians walking around the city while staring at a screen? 

Now I don't know much about Alamein this year, except to say that I don't think they're one of the contenders for the championship; certainly that's not a term I've seen attached to them as this year. South's women meanwhile, as the senior men were for a little bit until recently, are sitting on top of the table, without having set the world on fire. How that's happened I'm not exactly sure, because I've watched less of them, and paid less attention to their league this year than I would have liked, but it is what it is. What I do know about the South senior women (thanks to social media) is that they keep bringing in new players (some returning, some genuinely new), so that it looks like whatever youth development policy may have been put in train recent times (can we even say that after they didn't play for more than a year?) has fallen by the wayside.

With that much talent and experience and firepower on the books, you'd expect South to comfortably win games against mid-range opponents (no disrespect is meant) like Alamein, and to do so with a style befitting the quality on the park. Well, that first half was awful to watch from us. The team looked slow, sluggish, unfit, sloppy, and one dimensional. We played with a back three, which I assume was done to overload the midfield and overwhelm the opposition with numbers going forward. Instead, very poor passing and the one dimensional game plan of hitting the ball long toward the corners, saw us create almost nothing of value in the first half. We even fell behind, when the plucky visitors scored a penalty, after having already tested Melissa Barbieri from long range.

Then came the one good bit of work from us in the first half, where we played the ball through the middle with some good passing, ending with Reona Omiya levelling the score. By the time the second half was starting, I had reached the ground, but I heard the death cries of a wounded walrus coming from the arena, and so I decided to stay in the social club and watch the second half of the game on the stream in there, while drinking and being briefed on ongoing club matters by the president. From what I could tell, the team looked a little better in the second half, and scored a couple of goals from tidy one on one finishes - but they'd want to be a lot crisper if they want to stay at the top of the ladder.

On the streams

Scrapping together complex narratives based on about five minutes of footage

I care less and less for the rest of this league, but sometimes you're at a loose end in terms of, I don't know, you have this magical e screen at your disposal with limitless (OK, not limitless, limitless for all intents and purposes) entertainment and educational possibilities, and instead of watching Law & Order (original version) clips, you decide to branch out into the wonderful world of NPL livestreams. Some of you may do this without even putting a bet on one of the games, instead just watching it to cease the thoughts racing in your head, wondering if you're one of the likely candidates working at the private security compound who is going to get sacked from your job taking staples out of old documents. (Spoiler alert: you will be). I can't remember exactly what I was doing at the time. Maybe I was parked in a loading bay at Sunshine Marketplace waiting to pick up my brother after he finished work. I switched on to a livestream, checking into see the live scores, hoping for a good finish to a game, and as many favourable results for our ends as possible. 

The good finish at whatever time it was at the time was Knights vs Eastern Lions. The Knights looked mediocre, which is absolutely their right - after all, they can't play us every week, and it's hard to get motivated for games against teams that aren't South. It's hard enough apparently for South fans to care about games involving South, so I suppose we should be glad that someone cares about us. even if it has to be non-South fans. The Lions also looked mediocre, bless their hearts, but they fight and scrap, and they're on a budget likely several order of magnitude lower than pretty much everyone else in the competition, which will make it extra embarrassing for us should they beat us in our cup tie next week, covid permitting. And what a finish out of nowhere for Lions to win the game here away from home.

In another example of trying to make "You Can't Play South Every Week" the league's official slogan, on Sunday evening I was made aware of former South goalkeeper Rory Brian - he, currently of Avondale, and of the one handed penalty save heroics against us the previous week - making an absolute howler which led to Heidelberg equalising, and eventually splitting the points. Go and find it. Find it and try and make sense of it. I saw it, and didn't even laugh; rather I was sickened by it, and in turn sickened by this whole shambles of a league. 

Final thought

Preston - I knew it was them! Even when it was the Knights, I knew it was them! 

Anyway, keep up with the QR code sign-ins, mask up where necessary, and get tested if you have any covid symptoms.