The ironing is delicious / making hay while the sun shines with edit

Edit: Damn you to hell South Melbourne board, make me write things for the first time in months and then you post this update, lol.

Near everything below is now redundant, carry on as you were.

In this current environment of not very much South news, something popped up today which will intrigue and enrage South fans in unequal measure - namely, the announcement that A-League team Western United will be adding Lakeside Stadium to its home venue repertoire for the next A-League season. 

Quelle horror, and such.

Of course you may remember Western United as that property development enterprise which took the form of an A-League expansion licence bid, whose bid centrepiece was the promise to build a new soccer stadium precinct in Melbourne's western sprawl. More pertinently as it applies to South Melbourne Hellas, it was a bid which was successful at winning an A-League licence at a South related bid's expense. 

(the Western United bid also won at the expense of that Dandenong/South-East/Team 11 whatever thing, which is neither here nor there for the purposes of this discussion, and which is now literally not here, there, or anywhere anymore because that south-east angle was absorbed into the City Group empire, and the latter's future plans and schemes)

The Western United licence was won in large part because of that promise to build that stadium and accompanying precinct, thus attracting hoards of soccer fans in the western suburbs to its cause.

To some people's surprise and to the confirmation of many people's cynicism, that promised stadium hasn't yet materialised. Seeing as I am not a member of the construction, government, town planning, or civil engineering fields, I assume the reasons for this are both pandemic and non-pandemic related, but I'm not willing to take a guess as to the exact reasons it hasn't happened, because frankly I'm a coward; but also, what if I'm wrong? There's too much misinformation going about these days as it is, and we don't need obscure, half-moribund blogs covering obscure, half-moribund soccer clubs adding to the ongoing crisis of a lack of trust in media.

At any rate, Western United say they're about to start their stadium build for real this time (even if it's just the construction of a dirt road), and for whatever my opinion is worth, that's probably true. But whatever the truth may be, their promised stadium is still some time from actually existing, let alone being functional.

But one stadium which does exist, imperfect as it may be for national league football - or apparently was until at least a few hours ago - is Lakeside Stadium. On top of its inbuilt imperfections - its lack of corporate spaces, limited seating capacity, the running track around the field, and its suboptimal media facilities - many people (lay and otherwise) at the time of the most recent A-League expansion bidding process also objected to Lakeside Stadium's mere proximity to the Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, extrapolating from that fact that the South bid was geographically too close to the main (shared) home ground of the extant Melbourne A-League licence holders.

That people from outside Victoria could make such generalisations about the geographical particularities of Melbourne's sporting culture was forgivable, albeit irritating. That some people within Melbourne also tried to use the same arguments was less tolerable, but regardless of my feelings, time moves on. And South of the Border has spieled at length on this matter in the past anyway, so there's no need to go over it again.

While time has indeed moved on, Western United have spent the past whatever number A-League seasons (two, I think, but it's all such a blur), wandering aimlessly and unsatisfactorily from the CBD, to footy ovals, to country towns, to Tasmania, and even to failed (irrespective of whoever was primarily responsible for that failure) attempts to get access to Knights Stadium.

And now here we are, after so much failure from Western United to settle in anywhere, much less build their promised stadium. Here we are, after so much objection to Lakeside being deemed a suitable national league venue for men's soccer, and thus by at least some logical extension to South Melbourne being a suitable club for the national league. Here we are, in the situation where Western United will play seven games in the upcoming A-League season at Lakeside, the little venue no-one wanted.

And I, for one, am OK with that. As long as the price is right - that is, we get significant compensation for doing so - we would be mad to decline the offer. Remembering that our monthly government stipend is due to permanently reduce in size very soon, that we have had negligible income from home games for nearly two seasons, and that sponsorship under pandemic parameters is very tight, I think we should take the money. 

It's just good business. At some point in the not too distant future, our government stipend will reduce even further. At some point Western United's stadium will be built, and they won't need to even consider Lakeside. At some point we should actually make use of our veto over competing soccer usage at Lakeside for the purposes of creating a subsidiary, non-South match day dependent income, instead of using it as a means to feel momentarily good (read: smug) about ourselves and our place in Australian soccer.

You would also hope that such a move would lead to at least temporarily improved relations with the Trust, and maybe some investment in the stadium from the government, but that's by the by really.

Seeing as we have the veto over soccer usage, clearly this is a decision that has been made possible by our board. Western United would have approached either the Trust or the club or both, some negotiations would have taken place, and our board would have then made a decision agreeing to this situation, I assume because the offer made was too good to refuse.

Of course this decision has enraged a good number of our fans, as you would expect, and it would be nice if they came out with their reasoning to the membership sooner rather than later. Club boards of all sorts sometimes have to make decisions that will piss off their supporters. And look, for better or worse it's a member run and owned club, and people have a right to their air their grievances on the matter. So you know, sack the board because they're sellouts and such. Still, I doubt that the board would have expected a different response from our fans in making this move. 

But then again, what's the alternative? 

Sack the board (who at least partly fund the club's ongoing existence through their sponsorships) and replace them with who? Reject the deal, and replace that possible income stream with what? Would people rather we wind up the club? I mean, I'm OK with that if that's what the members want, because we've had a good run, and I'm sure that once the current lockdown ends and autumn and winter swing around again, there's other things we could all be doing if South ceased to exist, even if we would miss it. 

For those people still pining for the old days and the prestige and clout that South used to have, all I can do is defer to Slim Charles on such matters. And distasteful as the entire situation may be, think of it this way: the Australian soccer public will get to see Lakeside functioning as a legitimate national league venue (outside the more limited reach in public consciousness of Lakeside's intermittent usage as a W-League venue) - which may in turn help push along the legitimacy of the cause of the national second division, and thus our own cause - and we get to enjoy the short term irony of those who promised big on the stadium and have yet to deliver, paying us for the privilege of using the ground they said wasn't good enough.

Just make sure the cheque clears before they play on the ground though.