Hello, Nuna! Dandenong Thunder 4 South Melbourne 1

So, for the transport engineers out there, here was Saturday's method for getting to the game. Both main car parks at Sunshine station closed, so decided to take the bus up to the station instead, thinking I would get a cab on the way back because buses stop by the time I would get back. Instead of getting the bus from my nearest stop (about 50 metres away), I walked up to the next stop (about 300 metres up the road), because my nearest stop is a bit of a mess thanks to extensive road and footpath rehabilitation works.

The wait for the rail replacement bus wasn't more than a few minutes, a stopping all stations effort to North Melbourne. Once at North Melbourne the task was to get on a train to somewhere in the city to change to a Pakenham or Cranbourne service. That didn't take more than about five minutes, getting on a train to Frankston.

Oh yes, there's this thing which still throws me off sometimes, that a train from Werribee towards the city might nowadays come under a "Frankston" designation on the screens, because Werribee trains often run through to Frankston after reaching the city. So I took the Frankston train to Richmond from North Melbourne, and changed at Richmond to a Pakenham service, which again, I didn't have to wait long for. That went pretty smoothly, and then I got to Dandenong Station.

It was freezing, and there was a 20 minute wait for the 901 bus, so what else to do but keep watching the stream of the women's game against Heidelberg at Lakeside. The NPLW can be such an unsatisfying competition to watch because of the lack of depth and its inbuilt imbalances, but the South women this season... I don't know, there's also something annoying about the way they play. It's a bit showboaty, it's a bit pull finger out only when necessary, and more than a bit careless. Heidelberg are an OK team, but we made them look a lot better than they are - at least during the first half - because there was little desire on our part to play meaningful football in the middle of the park.

Sure, there was the dangerous (and pointless) backline passing around, which attracted pressure for no good reason. But midfield proficiency? It's been a problem for much of the season as far as I can tell, where the all the caution and possession based style of the back third becomes all about booting the ball into space and hoping Melina Ayres (mostly) can run on to a loose ball and smash the ball past a helpless keeper. But where's the midfield panache, the evidence of stylistic and player growth? Hard to see where I'm watching from, but hey, we e3nded up crunching the Bergers 7-0, so everything's good, right?

Finally got to the ground, super early - because if I'm going to hike it all the way to Dandenong on public transport, I might as well get as much football in as possible - and caught most of the reserves game, which we ended up losing 4-2. One tolerable but nevertheless overpriced chicken roll was not enough to ward off the cold, and double-socked or not, there was no chance that my feet weren't going to freeze on standing on cold concrete or on dewy grass. I was disheartened also with a conversation with one of the few former South players that still comes to our games, who wanted to place most of the blame for our recent poor run of results on our injury toll, and none whatsoever on the coaching methodology. Well, we all see the game differently; we're all blind men touching different parts of the same elephant.

Still more time to kill, and not many South fans in sight, because pretty much everyone's given up, possibly for good. Having ditched the Futbol24 app some time ago because there just isn't the space on my phone for more apps, I am nowadays checking up on NPL scores via flicking over briefly onto NPL Victoria YouTube streams. Do I like what I see? Not really. That's because I see good and mediocre teams punish the poor teams in ways that we could not, even when we were "good". So you see Hume cracking four past Eastern Lions, Oakleigh crushing Dandy City, Green Gully smashing Altona Magic - with my three seconds of live viewing of that match being some goal from 30 metres out - and Port crunching St Albans. All very good, very reassuring only insofar that there should be just enough bad teams in this league that they won't all be able to catch up to us in our current mediocre state. 

And then there was Avondale vs Bentleigh, which finished 3-1 to the home side, after they trailed early on. Now, apart from the observation being made that not only does Avondale have good footballers (which costs money, I admit), there's also the fact Avondale also play good football (which doesn't cost any money, really); the kind of football that you'd like to see your team play, whether your side has the kind of resources that Avondale has, or merely half of them. It's a question of attitude, to a certain extent. And I get it - sometimes situations cause you to play more circumspect football, sometimes you need to deploy a more defensive state of mind.

But Avondale, after trailing early on, against what is a defensively suspect but otherwise pretty decent outfit in Bentleigh, amassed 21 shots on goal, and 13 on target by the end of the game. Against Altona Magic last week, a team who had not won a game all year, and whom we trailed (and eventually lost to) 2-1, we could manage three shots on target, over 90+ minutes of football. Against Thunder, we had two timid shots early in the half, to 13 on goal and seven on target from Thunder. Of course numbers don't tell the whole story, because by the end of last Saturday night's game we had more shots on target to Thunder, but that only goes to show that if want to play attacking football that we can. 

Of course the instruction to our players is obviously to play awful, boring, dispiriting football, in the hopes that we will win 0-0; which will only happen if the opposition is stupid enough to play a suspended player. But what we witnessed on Saturday night would have got most coaches sacked. Hell, I would've had the coach sacked at halftime, or even 30 minutes in if that was an option. Apart from a moderately promising opening five minutes, the team spent the rest of the half basically camped in its own half, gifting the opposition possession and territory. Thunder have good some players, they're no mugs, but they're also no world beaters, and yet we could not get possession of the ball in the opposition half. 

1-0 down, and then 2-0 down, both goals coming from corners - which is three goals conceded from corners since lockdown ended - and probably lucky not to be further down. And despite all of that, we continued to try and do the stupidest things imaginable under the circumstances. Down and out, under siege, we invited even more pressure onto ourselves by trying to play out the back from every situation. The goal kicks were the worst of it. Pierce Clark, seemingly not trusted to just belt the ball long under any circumstances, would inevitably play the ball left or right (usually to his left), no further than the edge of the 18 yard box, whereupon usually Brad Norton would pass the ball back to Clark, who would be rushed upon by Thunder forwards who knew exactly what we we're going to do all along, and then good luck hoping that we wouldn't concede.

The lack of situational awareness from anyone on field or on the bench was astonishing. In a game of soccer, there's skill level, there's tactics, and there's psychology. Our skill level is good enough to be competitive against almost any team in this competition, but our tactics are dire, but we've already said that. But our situational awareness is also completely shot. You have an opponent that is fired up, is in the ascendancy, and looking to press high up the field. They want the game to be played at the same high tempo that's benefiting them at that moment of time. So instead of taking the sting out of the game, we try to match that tempo, try to knock the ball around right on our goal line, and keep playing the game on the opposition's terms.

It was astonishing stuff, watching South Melbourne psychologically capitulate to the extent that no matter how many times it failed, that our players would robotically perform Nunawading "Evolution of the Idea" playing out of the back. Sure, there had already been the robotic qualities earlier in the season with our retreats from midfield back to the keeper, but on Saturday night the situation had become deploringly bad. It was, dare I say it, Southern Stars 2013 bad, and I don't use that comparison lightly.  It was a gut wrenching, soul destroying, club destroying spectacle. Two subs made on the half hour mark only served to show that Quintas had got the starting line-up badly wrong, and that he has no switch-up from Plan A (whatever that means in a non hit it long to Harry Sawyer world) to whatever else he might have up his sleeve.

That we came out in the second half in a more positive frame of mind, pulled a goal back, and almost levelled the score was even more dispiriting. Clearly we have the talent on our books to play imperfect, but still generally good attacking football. But let's say for arguments sake that we did equalise. Let's even say for argument's sake that we somehow went on to win the game. That would only prove the point that we are being coached horrendously, and that just about anyone else in this state could do the job better. At this stage of the season, it's barely about personnel anymore. Tactically and psychologically, we are shot. No one out there playing for South is enjoying the game anymore, you can see that at least half the senior squad is beyond fucking miserable. It's been a grind for the whole season, salvaged only by a ridiculously fortunate unbeaten run to start the year, and no amount of Shepparton bonding trips and renditions of Sweet Caroline can make playing this kind of football under this manager feel worthwhile. 

Apparently on 3XY Radio Hellas on Sunday, the sports program read out a message from president Nick Maikousis that Quintas will remain as South coach for the rest of the season. You can read that in classic "he's got the full support of the board" style, which means he'll be sacked soon, but the reality is that we probably can't afford to pay out his contract. Why this is the case when we were told that Quintas' performance was tied to certain KPIs is anyone's guess, but it seems we are stuck with him until the end of this year, unless he falls on his own sword. 

So what's left to do? Hope the players perform a quiet mutiny, by taking over control of training and matchday themselves, completely cutting out management? 

(Big hint to any of our players stupid enough to read this blog - you should totally do this) 

I mean, what could possibly go wrong with such an approach that would be worse than the last two months worth of performances, and the misery you have (and we, the supporters) have been forced to endure?

Next game

FFA Cup qualifier tomorrow night against Oakleigh Cannons at Jack Edwards. A win here gets us into the national stage of the competition, and into the Dockerty Cup semi finals. No one expects us to win though.

Final thought

Big thanks to Johnny for giving me a lift back to Footscray, and to Kartsi for offering to give me a ride back to somewhere approximating civilisation. Then when I got back to Sunshine station on the rail replacement bus at about 10:30, there were no cabs in the vicinity, so I walked the kilometre and a half home. A tiptop end to a tiptop day.