15 years, and doesn't it show

Thank you to everyone who still reads South of the Border fifteen years into its journey. It's not as good as it used to be, I know that. Times change. I've changed. I seriously thought about wrapping it up this year, but I figure that there's a second division coming, and someone should be around to talk it down. Also, maybe a bad South of the Border is still better than no South of the Border. I'll keep plodding along until I don't. I might take this thing back to its roots, and post more frequently, even if the quality isn't there. See everyone in 2023.

I never promised you a rose garden

Things got to the stage where people would expect South of the Border to post on all sorts of matters regarding Australian soccer, however tenuous the connection may have been to South. People also expected a certain degree of promptness, and usually I delivered, in great quantity, even if the latter was not quite as welcome in a time-poor reading environment. Sometimes that approach worked for the best, other times not so much.

Things are different now, and so there are fewer people clamouring to demand that I talk about the "latest big news", whatever that might be. Someone wants me to discuss this "A-League grand final in Sydney for three years" deal, and I'm like, pfft, nothing to do with us. Better off making a few pithy comments on Twitter while that site is still a going concern, while waiting for our own season to start.

But then this odd thing started happening, and I guess I just couldn't let it pass without at least some comment. That "thing" being the quite emotional reaction by some A-League fans to the A-League ownership's decision to fund its way out of some money problems; and the suggestion made by some of these disgruntled fans of coming down to NPL and grassroots levels to clubs like ours. 

Hey! Clubs like us! We're a club like us!

Some people were smoother and more subtle than others in trying to make a move on these sheep newly separated from their flock. That includes overselling, I hope more by accident than design, the actual experience of watching a team like South at a level like this.

And overselling means a higher chance of under-delivery. Following NPL Victoria and South Melbourne (for example) is a lot of things, and often enough a lot of good things, but it's also not a like-for-like replacement of what people conditioned to following the A-League are used to. The standard of play is worse. The grounds, in general, are worse. The weather is worse. The media coverage is much smaller. The feeling that you're part of something bigger, that's much worse. Oh, and the perks of having voting rights are, generally speaking, overstated.

(but yes, there are also good things, and you will come across them if you give it a chance; and I'm also at pretty much every AGM, so take that into consideration, too, when reading my downplaying of voting)

Of more importance is the fact that as a newbie fan, you're going into something that has existed for much longer than what the A-League and its teams have. The chance to move into an environment either on the ground floor, where every fan is at least nominally culturally equal, or at least within an environment where you can be anonymous among thousands? That's gone.

Unless you are a returning apostate or lapsed believer - which has its own issues - you will stick out. You will feel out of place. The crowds are low enough that even if regular fans don't know everyone by name, they know most people by face. Back when clubs like South had a lot more fans, it'd be a little easier to blend in. Still, clubs like South were always a bit insular - it was an ethnic thing, and a soccer thing - and in the post-NSL era, insularity becomes more instinctive.

But to be fair, we're not the worst, and the long-term existence of our outward looking social media efforts means that we have not regressed completely into our own shell. (and we still, remarkably, have our own independent fan forum) But people coming to South, knowing little about South other than what they've read from perhaps more dubious online sources, and knowing nothing of what it is like to follow a team at this level... it's just not that easy.

And the thing is, it's also very difficult, and actually counter-productive, to discard one set of long-standing ideologies regarding following soccer in Australia, without only gradually replacing them with another. A-League refugees coming across to a club like South might be keen for the first little bit, but then if they get lonely, or feel isolated, or feel like outsiders - or if it just doesn't match the hype they've been sold - they probably won't come back. 

Then they might come up with things like it was "too ethnic" or some other reason, when just as likely the reason was that they did not get the chance to build a social connection to the club. Their friends or family that they went to A-League games with didn't come along with them. They had no one to discuss the team or the league with, in a way that they would with a more popular competition. 

So, to those contemplating coming across (or back) to a club like South I would say: absolutely, yes, we'd love to have you join us. But also: temper your expectations of a revelatory experience, especially an immediate one. Don't force it if you don't feel it; but also, give yourself time to feel it. And come have a chat with me - I'm happy to initiate people into supporting what I think is a pretty OK club, one that's much less bad than others. 

And for South folk encountering new fans, focus on talking about South. Don't worry about running down the A-League. These people likely had a lot of good times at the A-League. In time, you want people to learn to love being with us, and then becoming one of us, on their own terms. Few as they are in the post-NSL era, we still have enough examples of people who came in tentatively, and are now all in.

2023 fixtures released

Let's try make some sense out of this.

OK, so there were going to be unavoidable issues of ground availability regarding Lakeside and its use as a Women's World Cup training venue. Thus we have eleven confirmed home games at Lakeside, and two remaining to be confirmed. Either venues have't yet been secured for those two games, or we may even be allowed back in to Lakeside at that time. The World Cup training venue issue also applies to Avondale, so the details of their home game against us also remain unconfirmed.

The grand prix also comes into its own, as per usual, seeing us away from Lakeside for three consecutive weeks in March and April, followed by five consecutive home games. The fixture finagling associated with the exclusion from Lakeside means we'll be playing our final five matches away from home.

Now, to the elephant in the room.

The justification for Friday and Saturday night home matches in 2022 (apart from trying something new) was that sponsors prefer Fridays, and that Sundays are too expensive because of penalty rates and such. It was also the case that having the women play standalone fixtures at Lakeside was too expensive. 

So we had a lot of Saturday home games in 2022, which included double-headers with the senior women. Now we're back to a mix of (mostly) Fridays and Sundays, and more standalone NPLW fixtures, including a couple of home games for the women out at Knox. Go figure. 

And if that wasn't confusing enough, we've also got what looks like a home game against Bentleigh on Orthodox Good Friday. I'm also not sure why we are playing a Monday night home game against the Knights the week before the public-holiday Monday. 

Still, one should be glad I suppose that we've got some Sundays back, and that there's still a few Fridays especially during the warmer months. No Saturday home matches might mean the chance to attend some state league soccer for me for the first time in a long, long time.

Some other NPL clubs have also changed up or mixed up their home game scheduling. Green Gully are back to Friday nights. Bentleigh's Friday night kickoff times have now been brought forward an hour to 7:30, while they're also throwing in a few Saturday afternoon games, including their game against us. 

Knights are keeping their Friday nights of recent years, but also chucking in a few Sundays, though not the game against us. The Bergers have gone almost all-in on Friday 8:30 PM kickoffs, including against us. St Albans are mixing in Fridays and Saturdays in among their usual Sundays.

Of the newly promoted teams, Moreland continue their tradition of being a Saturday afternoon side, even at their 2023 home away from home, CB Smith Reserve. North Geelong will largely be a Saturday afternoon team, including against us. Speaking of which, this year's final home and away round will be on a Saturday, not a Sunday. That might be because the final of the Women's World Cup will be on the Sunday. 

Speaking of which, for those like me attending Women's World Cup games in Melbourne, no South game will be going up against any World Cup matches in Melbourne. That's because they'll all be weekday matches, or held during the catch-up round / Dockerty Final weekend in between rounds 24 and 25.

November 2022 digest

Hall of Fame news
At a function held just prior to the recent Matildas vs Sweden match, Ange Postecoglou and Ted Smith were inducted into the Football Australia Hall of Fame last month. You already know all the things that Ange has done, but what about Ted? Ted played a couple of matches for the Socceroos (before they were even called the Socceroos) in the Melbourne Olympics, while he was at Moreland. Ted later joined Hellas and won a title or two with us, then joined Hakoah. He was an assistant coach during the early NSL years, including coaching one match while regular manager Dave Maclaren was ill (a 4-0 win over JUST). Mostly though, Ted's accolade is due to his tireless work in establishing the Hall of Fame, and especially his efforts in organising events and such for past Socceroo players, including getting former players their national team caps.

But also

Neither Ange (overseas) nor Ted (ill on the day) were present to receive their awards, but fellow Hall of Fame inductee Walter Pless was. While I'm generally cynical about the merits of Halls of Fame, it was great to see Walter receive official acknowledgment for his over four decades worth of work covering Tasmanian soccer for a variety of news publications, as well as his own blog. Reporter, photographer, historian, and mentor, Pless' nomination was greeted with jubilation by both Tasmanian soccer fraternity, as well as the anorak Australian soccer history brigade which pushed for Pless' nomination.

The anorak Australian soccer history collective celebrating a legend of the local game.
From left to right: George Cotsanis, Mark Boric, Paul Mavroudis,
 Greg Stock,  Walter Pless, Ian Syson, Greg Werner, Tony Persoglia.

Pre-season training
Get ready for the social media collage of players sweating, running, lifting, etc. Not sure when the friendlies at home will start that we can't open to the public, nor the friendlies in the middle of nowhere.

Fixturing news
The ridgy-didge fixture apparently comes out today! If it does, I'll make sure to report on that some time before the 2023 season starts.

Speaking of which

Remember how we said that we'd be out of Lakeside for a couple of months around the Women's World Cup? Don't be surprised if we play a couple of our home games during that time at McIvor Reserve in South Kingsville. The home ground of Yarraville Glory, our senior women have played there before, and now that we have formalised (whatever that means) our sister-club (also whatever that means) our relationship with Yarraville, it looks like it would make sense to play a couple of lower key games there. 

See you, too, in 2023

Lirim Elmazi, Jake Marshall, Javier Diaz Lopez, Alun Webb - more or less everyone who wasn't let go last go last month, is going to be back on 2023. 

Extra people

Filling out some of the spaces of those let go are Dandenong Thunder attacking midfielder Ali Sulemani; Jack Painter-Andrews from Bentleigh, a full-back; Bentleigh midfielder DannyKim; and striker Ajak Riak, also from Bentleigh Greens. All of these were noted on the forum before being announced by the club, so the official announcement was not very surprising.

Somewhat out of the blue was the signing of young winger Kosta Emmanuel from Eastern Lions. So, one biggish name, some good players with (we hope) upside, and a couple of players we're gambling on being bolters. I'm keeping expectations muted, as per usual.

AGM

No date yet. 

Second division
Expressions of interest in 2023. Winter season to start in 2024. If you believe that, which you're entitled to do. You're also entitled not to believe it, but how boring is that?

At least it's in South Melbourne, I guess
It's a fickle world. Until last night, he was the greatest Australian manager of them all. Still, at least he was good enough for long enough to get a mural. The mural, by artist Shaun Dev, doesn't depict any local connection of Ange's to South, but that's my gripe with the Ferenc Puskas statue as well, so maybe it's a me problem. I believe the mural is located somewhere on Coventry Street, if you want to check it out before it gets defaced, or painted or with something else.

Amir Abdi

The article doesn't mention us, but The Guardian nevertheless had a decent piece on South Melbourne blind footballer Amir Abdi. All told, it's a pretty interesting story.

Hellenic Cup coming back?

At least three ex-South players (Peter Skapetis, Anthony Giannopoulos, Kosta Strotomitros) were involved with Greece's win in the All Nations Cup at Knox. In the Neos Kosmos article discussing that win in the final over South Sudan, there was also mention made of bringing back a Hellenic Cup tournament as early as next year, run under the auspices of the Greek Community of Melbourne rather than the former Hellenic Cup organising committee.

October 2022 digest

This blog's not dead yet, which might yet be considered a virtue.

Goodbye 

The first farewells so far this off-season have been announced. Back-up goalkeeper Chris Couesnon played only the one game - that cup game against Avondale - so it's little surprise to see him moved on, as is often the way with second choice keepers after a year of limited opportunity. Winger and youth-team product Matthew Loutrakis made several appearances this season, but I guess someone made the probably not invalid observation that he had hit his ceiling with us; like many before him, it's up to Matthew to prove them wrong. 

Chris Irwin's 21 appearances in 2022 was the most he'd achieved in his five seasons across two stints at South, but he could never quite cement a starting spot, and I suppose being a depth player makes you more likely to being seen as disposable. I will miss having a player around the club rocking a pair of spectacles, even if he didn't wear them on the field.

Lastly, Jai Ingham played in every single match this season, a fact that you would have had to pay real close attention to in order not to find it incredulous. Ingham started well - two goals in the first three games - but never got fit. He rarely started matches, and when he did, he'd rarely finish them. So he mostly came off the bench, and to be fair, didn't did all that much. I think we all wanted him to do more, because he clearly has talent, but one moment or half moment per match just isn't enough. 

Back again
Max Mikkola, though who knows who he's going to throw it to next season. Patrick Langlois, who scored ten goals in 2022, and I fear may not score that many in the rest of his time with South. Marcus Schroen, hovering on the edge of mug punters' tolerance, but not that of the decision makers. Skipper Brad Norton, turning 32 next season, and approaching 300 matches for South - will he make it?

Speculation
Players from Bentleigh, that forward from Thunder.

Déjà vu
If you've wondering how Harrison Sawyer's been going, here's your answer. He also headed down a corner that became another assist. 

Free feed round-up

In the spirit of 2022, this is another South of the Border segment well past its newsworthiness. 

Quite a few Wednesdays ago I was invited to attend South's low key presentation night, in the week after the grand final. I think I was invited because one of the people set for the media team table was taking his mum to the airport or something.

The presentation night was held midweek and at short notice, probably because everyone was going to piss off on holidays soon after. Fair enough. Attendance were senior men's and women's teams and reserves, as well as the blind and powerchair teams. Also sponsors. Many sponsors. One can cry about the lack of supporter oriented events, but... well, yes. There should be more supporter orientated events like this. 

But I digress. 

Awards were handed out, some small speeches were made. Revelations? Not many that I can recall. Esteban Quintas loves the club. Our goalkeeper deservedly won our best and fairest. Long serving treasurer Mario Vinaccia was awarded the Sam Papasavas award for services to the club. There are plans for a testimonial for Brad Norton.

Second division news
Apparently it's still coming. 

Scoreboard news

It is my understanding that the Lakeside Stadium scoreboard might be getting a renovation, or even a replacement.

AGM news
Nothing yet.

2023 fixturing
There's an interesting fixturing problem coming up next year for a couple of clubs, namely ourselves and Avondale. Lakeside Stadium and the Reggio Calabria Club are designated as official training venues for the Women's World Cup next year, and could well be off limits to both clubs not just for the duration of the tournament, but also some time before that. If that's the case, there's going to be some pretty big fixturing headaches for us especially, considering that we have both men's and women's teams which play out of our home ground, and considering the restrictions we face (albeit recently diminished) around the time of the grand prix.

At a surface level, it looks like there's really only a couple of ways around the issue. It's possible the women will play out of Darebin or Knox during that time, as has been the custom in the recent past. But for the men? Unless several home matches are scheduled at the start of the season, it looks like we could be playing home matches out in the suburbs. If that were to be the case, my preference would be Northcote, but we'll see I suppose.

At least some of the problem could be ameliorated if the NPL Victoria (and perhaps even the whole football system) took a couple of weeks off during the group stage of the tournament. Again, we wait and see.

2022 South of the Border awards

Player of the year: Max Mikkola. South and non-South media people agreed upon Javier Diaz Lopez. Coach agreed. Even I agreed until this morning, then I remembered Max's long throws and goals.

Under 21 player of the year: The Cliff Hussey Memorial Trophy goes to Morgan Evans. Kid did good when called upon.

Goal of the year: Max Mikkola free kick vs Avondale at home for the lead.

Best performance: The come back from 3-0 down to beat Avondale 4-3. And I missed it.

Best away game: Green Gully away in Ballarat, for the novelty of the thing.

Call of the year: The allusion to one of our more famously combustible supporters - who kept it all under control until blowing up in the grand final - to Ned Flanders going off his nut after the hurricane.

Chant of the year: "Swoop the ref!"

Best pre-match/after match dinner location: Lost my public transport travelling buddy this year, so this award almost went into abeyance. But despite the small size of the burgers, The Pickle and the Patty on Clarendon St was pretty good after watching the Dandenong City game on television at the aforementioned former travelling buddy's apartment.

Friends we lost along the way: The "choke like Oakleigh" chant. We had some good times together, but all good things must come to an end.

Barely related to anything stupidity highlight of the year: Accidentally bringing my 2021 media pass to Port Melbourne instead of my 2022 media pass. 

One game too many - South Melbourne 0 Oakleigh Cannons 5

What a letdown, and yet... I almost expected it. I think many f us did, even if half of that would have been setting up excuses for any possible loss. I don't think anyone was expecting it to be quite that bad, obviously, but still. Losing Harry Sawyer when we did always made something like this a possibility, even if we kept scrounging up wins in his absence. But the game plan largely revolved around two things - a big guy up front, and a big performance from the man between the sticks. on Sunday, we had neither. Conceding two goals from corners to an unmarked player at the back post only made things harder. Putting in our corners short didn't help. The rest was just a result of us chasing the game.

For all the controversy around Oakleigh getting to hire goalkeeper Lewis Italiano, his presence was almost a non-factor. He barely had to make a save until the game was beyond us. It would have been nice to test him, with the ball and without, but we seldom got close. So much of what passed for getting forward for us resembled a bunch of angry kids just getting stuck in and belting the ball long. Composure, spending time on the ball and moving it around, out the window. That's fine in the last ten minutes when you're a goal or two down and desperate, but if it makes up a good chunk of the rest of your day, you're not going to get far. 

There was a spell from after about the 15 minute mark where things weren't so bad, but the rest was largely a mess. When Max Mikkola left the field with concussion, after receiving an elbow from the eventual man-of-the-match that everyone seemed to miss at the time, that was pretty much it. No Sawyer, no Mikkola, no Andy Brennan, and having to make to do with the woefully underdone Jai Ingham for a much larger part than we should have ever done.

The worst part was that Oakleigh played the kind of soccer that South fans would like to see us play. On the ground, attacking football. Look, I get it - it was a one-off game, one loss, and these things tend to even themselves out over the entirety of a season. Thus we finished well clear on top of the table, a reward for consistency (however flukey you want to consider it), and had every right to feel ike we had been the better team over the year. But this is Australia, and for the most part we do finals. There have been times when that has been to our favour,. This time, it wasn't.

So, with the game being a bust, one then turns to the only other matter of interest, which was the match day experience, which left a bit to be desired. Considering a good chunk of people were coming from parking at Northland - and your correspondent from public transport also at Northland - only having the main Catalina Street entrance as an entry point was crap. I got there early enough that the queue wasn't an issue for me, so I can't comment, but I didn't bother trying to buy any food or drink, because that seemed chaotic throughout the entirety of my time there.

Quite why a drinks table wasn't set up at the southern end of the grandstand is really for Heidelberg to know, and the rest of us to guess at. And despite all the welcome improvements to the venue of late, quite why a PA system that works across the entirety of the venue isn't in place seems like the kind of thing that could rectified sooner rather than later.

In any event, there was a very healthy crowd of South people, augmented by Heidelberg fans, others neutrals, and Oakleigh friends and family, in that order. Someone put out the nice round number of about 4,000 people, which was good considering the negligible Oakleigh presence, lousy kickoff time, and especially lousy weather. It rained people. It rained before the game, during the game, and after the game. It rained light, mediumm and heavy. The ground held up, and there was enough shelter for everyone.

Now imagine that same weather at City Vista, or some similar venue. Really, you don't have to imagine it, because this is Melbourne, and it rains sometimes, and the weather doesn't even care if you have a major sporting event on. Quite why or how Football Victoria personnel couldn't figure this out is something for those with more intimate access to FV operational conduct to consider. 

Atmosphere wise, considering how poorly we played, it was quite good. The grandstand had a festive feel, as you'd hope for such occasions. Matthew Foschini copped his share of grief, and he sought to give it back. You could almost hear a pin drop when Oakleigh scored, really, but that's just the way it is when you get outside the big four or five in Victoria (South, Knights, Bergers, Thunder, Preston). Losing to an opponent with fans that can appreciate it hurts differently to losing against an opponent with negligible support. You're cheering for your team of course, but you're cheering against a phantom when you play these kinds of teams.

You become overly reliant on pantomime villains, worrying about focusing too much on pantomime villains, and in the case of one person, letting it all blow up Ned Flanders post-hurricane style after bottling it up all season long. We lost, it sucked, we try to do better next season in the same sucky league, while we wait for a new league that may or may not be less sucky, and which may end up being made of all these old teams we used to play against on the old days anyway. If you wanted a more psychologically healthy hobby, you'd do that instead.

Shambles to shambles, farce to farce - South Melbourne 1 Green Gully 0

This Federation! This competition! Every week there's something new. In especially good weeks, you may get several bits of nonsense all on top of each other. And if you've been very good, the Victorian soccer farce fairy might even bless you with the gift of multi-farce in grand final week. This week has been one of those glorious occasions - and we still have grand final day itself yet to come. The way the events transpired, Football Victoria comes out looking like an organisation that did not seem to have a Plan A, let alone a Plan B.

I can't help but think this is all South Melbourne's fault. If only we had folded in 2004 like we should have. If only we had not won the 2006 grand final that Oakleigh didn't qualify for, thanks to their legendary choke. If only we hadn't won the 2015 Dockerty Cup final at Lakeside against Oakleigh. If only we hadn't won the 2016 grand final n home turf against Oakleigh. If only we'd smiled and said "please sir, can I have some more" whenever Oakleigh inevitably came for another one of our players, in their vain and ongoing attempt to be us. If only we had sucked just that little more than we have managed to over the past 17 years - not quite as bad as Melbourne Knights, but somewhere in that ballpark - then there wouldn't be an issue at all.

Can you imagine anyone caring about all the things that happened this week, had it been an Oakleigh vs Green Gully final instead? Sure, there might've been some fuss-kicking, but it's probably fair to say that had Gully qualified for the grand final instead of us, the grand final double-header would have been played at Lakeside, Lewis Italiano parachuting into Jack Edwards Reserve onto the corpses of Oakleigh's seven or eight eligible goalkeepers would have been grumbled upon mostly by a handful of Heidelberg fans, and there's no chance that federations and clubs would feel the need (at implied gunpoint, in some cases) posting notices reminding people not to take recourse to abuse on social media.

But we mucked things up making the finals, then by winning the minor premiership, and we especially mucked up last week by defeating Green Gully despite much inconvenience. Within the first 20 minutes, the referee missed (apparently due to an unfortunate angle) Ben Djiba having his leg snapped by a Gully defender. The we had Andy Brennan go off with a groin injury. Twenty minutes gone, and two of five substitutions gone, and two of the three (not including half time window), substitution making slots gone. And yet, somehow despite this - and despite having to take off substitute Josh Wallen early, because had a yellow card, and who'd want to (hypothetically) play with ten men for 50-60 minutes deep into injury time in the event that Wallen got sent off - we got through.

Sure, we were the better team for most of the game, but my goodness was there also some arse involved. Morgan Evans had a solid game replacing Djiba. Alun Webb's outside-of-the-foot winning goal, past a wrong-footed and blindsided Gully goalkeeper, looked magical live, and much less magical on replay. I haven't even dared look at the last ten minutes of the match, where we sat back to hold the lead, and saw one cross after another flash across the face of our six-yard-box. I don't even really want to think about long throws, or no Harrison Sawyer, or as some (including this pseudo-reporter) have put it, getting this far with basically no midfield. I'll say this of this team - one thing it hasn't lacked for all season is heart. Normally that shouldn't be enough to get you this far, but here we are.

You won't die wondering this year. "Swoop the ref" has
 already been crowned South of the Border's chant of the year.
I will not be taking any further questions on this matter.
Photo: Luke Radziminski.

So on Sunday evening, having won our way into our first grand final since 2016, we were faced with the absurd situation that no-one knew where we were going to play the grand final, or when. To be fair, the warning signs were there even in the lead-up to the finals, when media pass holders received an email to apply for grand final access, and there was no detail about when or where the grand final would be played.

Normal people had perhaps assumed that as per the most recent grand finals prior to the Covid cancelled seasons, that'd we end up at AAMI Park. But as the finals series wore on, it appeared less and less likely that would happen. Uncertainty about if/when Melbourne Storm would host an NRL finals match was certainly something to consider. Cost too exorbitant to hire, especially in the event that South didn't make it, especially against an equally marquee opponent? Also sensible to take on board. Where else could they play it? Knights Stadium, with its pitch troubles? Olympic Village, with its lighting troubles? Anywhere else, with its everything else troubles?

It was a surreal moment when post-match some South fans threw out as a suggestion - completely in jest - Caroline Springs George Cross' ground in Plumpton, I mean, it was just a joke. It was also surreal seeing South championship winner, former Football Victoria president, and current Football Victoria CEO Kimon Taliadoros being corralled in our social club by several people, all asking the same question: where is the grand final going to be played? And all he could offer with certainty was "not Lakeside". Which, despite all the rumours going around, seemed to be the most certain detail once we'd qualified for the final. 

That only serves to reinforce the conspiracy theory that our winning the game on Sunday was the worst thing that could've happened to FVs grand final plans. You can almost guarantee that had we lost, the grand final would have been held at Lakeside, and pretty much no-one would have complained. But we had won, and our opponent would be Oakleigh, a long-term grumbler on being made to play cup finals and grand finals against South at Lakeside.

So Lakeside was out. And night fell, and no announcement had been made. And then the next morning, and still no news. Until finally the announcement came. City Vista! With 280 odd seats, limited shelter, and no elevation around the outer. City Vista, with its small car-park and poor public transport connections. 

Some of us have been around long enough to remember the 2013 preliminary final at the neutral SS Anderson Reserve in Port Melbourne, and what a magnificent occasion that was: lines out the door, crap sight-lines, rain pissing down with next to no shelter. Some of us are also able to recall the 2016 grand final at Lakeside, and in particular its shambolic organisation. Limited ticket booths and that slow Ticketmaster printing mess. People not getting in until 20 minutes after kickoff. The outer stand not opening until the second half. Not enough food vendors. The crowd being let in for free because of the gate shambles. 

Some of the people who made the City Vista decision were literally in charge the day they realised too late that they should've opened the other grandstand for the 2016 grand final. Instead of remembering that farce, they decided to play the 2022 grand final in a phone booth. What about the elderly, those with children, those who are unable to stand for long periods of time - hell, what about short people? A venue chosen purportedly in part for its accessibility - unlike some other options, it has four changerooms, which can accommodate both the women's and men's finals - ironically excludes almost every other class of soccer person.

Even as a relatively tall, able-bodied person, I can't say that I would want to watch a match of this importance at a venue like that. Judging by the highlights videos that Essendon Royals made from their away games there, the only elevated part of the non-seated areas is the media tower. And you've also got those big, black benches like Hume City have, which also obstruct views, and those big black fences at each end. 

While things have changed over the past couple of years for me and my sojourning around Melbourne's grounds, I still like to think that I generally make an effort to get to far-flung and below par amenity wise grounds. I think my record on that speaks for itself. And yet, the decision to play this match at City Vista was so insulting, so degrading, I made the choice early on that I would not go. I'd watch the game in the social club, or at a mate's place, or at home. I'd rather not do that - I'd rather be at every game we play, especially this one, supporting our players -  but at some point even I have to think about my own sense of dignity. Others were torn on the matter of whether to attend or boycott, and I had no quibble with that. But it's fair to say that regardless of whether you were planning to go or not, the reaction to the announcement of City Vista as the grand final venue was intense.

What a way to start grand final week. The original
 announcement on Facebook had attracted tons of
mostly negative commentary before the deletions
 started; and then it was locked completely. 

And it wasn't even just South fans having a go. No one loves a crisis (and a whinge) more than Australian soccer fans, but it's been years since I've seen this level of engagement with Football Victoria's social media efforts. Like most social media efforts at this level, most posts enter the world while barely leaving a footprint in the digital engagement snow. Here though, it got to the stage where there were so many people voicing their frustration, that a Facebook post promoting the first local grand final in three years had to lock comments. Just about the only people defending the decision were a couple of George Cross supporters. I feel sorry for the people running the social media for FV. They're the ones being asked to put lipstick on one hell of a pig. This should be the week where they get to do some of their best work; yet they've been relegated to deleting comments to shield an incompetent and unaccountable board from their incomprehensible decision. 

So FV couldn't promote the final. South Melbourne couldn't promote the final. Even Oakleigh weren't promoting the final. This wasn't just because of the backlash, but also because even after having announced the venue and timeslot, and having announced the time that tickets would be available for purchase online, no tickets - not even a link for those tickets - were available at that designated time. 

One hoped that the radio silence was because alternatives were being thrashed out. It's hard to admit when you've got it wrong, especially with everyone hammering you - but there was still time for FV

to fix their mistake. Take the social media outrage on the chin, and just do what was best for the game. Show some leadership. Maybe even make a display of that core value of "openness", and explain how we got here, and how we're going to move forward to a better solution.

Somewhat incredibly, that's (kind of) what happened. 

Football Victoria put out a press release announcing a change of venue for the double header from City Vista to Olympic Village. It even explained that AAMI Park was ruled out due to expense, and that Lakeside was ruled out because it would not be a neutral venue. Fair enough. But surrounding those brief explanations about why two grounds weren't used, there was also some extremely salty prose on why City Vista, and why that was actually still a good decision. And that justification basically comes down to the venue having four changerooms, better accommodating the men's and women's matches, making sure that "the player, officials and sponsor experience would be exceptional."

The fans appeared to have been nowhere in FV's consideration of choosing a venue. What's quite astonishing about that is that it reveals a belief within Football Victoria that they doubt that there'll be much of a crowd to a first NPLMVIC (and even NPLWVIC) grand final day in three years. It's one thing for fans to moan about the state of local soccer crowds but it's quite another for the organising body itself to come out and say that a venue with 280 seats (many of which will have their sight-lines blocked from people standing on the fence line), no meaningful elevation, no shelter, big black benches, and big black fences at each end, would be more than adequate. 

Either that, or Kimon's comment in our social club following the Gully match - that they had no idea where the grand final would be played, except certainly not at Lakeside - was absolutely true, and that they made the City Vista decision on the run. Honestly, I don't know which would be worse - that FV were going to play the grand finals at City Vista all along, and only pretended to not know that in advance; or that they had no plan of what to do in case Lakeside did not present itself as an option, and then had to get their PR crew to write retconned guff about how City Vista was the perfect venue for such an occasions, if only it wasn't for the pesky fans demanding that they be allowed to enjoy the day, too. 

And even though Olympic Village is an improvement, it still could have been better. Pave Jusup, president of Melbourne Knights, noted that his club had offered Knights Stadium to FV weeks in advance of the finals, and that the problematic pitch would have been prepared with due care for the day. The lack of changerooms which apparently ruled out Knights Stadium, with its 4,000 seat covered grandstand, plentiful parking, and elevated terracing, did not rule out Olympic Village. One could gripe about not making the "perfect the enemy of the good (enough)", but the persistence in playing both men's and women's finals on the same day is an obvious part of the problem.

Given that they apparently had no plans about what to do either way, it doesn't make sense as to why FV didn't just choose to play the NPLW grand final on a different day, as a standalone fixture. They've done it before, and it was fine, good even. They could even have played it at the City Vista venue that they apparently think so highly of. That way you could also play the men's 21s grand final - which also includes South - at a venue with only two changerooms, but also one that can accommodate fans in relative comfort. The decision to play the NPLW and NPLM grand finals on the same day at a venue with only two changerooms, also means that there will be incredible delay between the two games. The men's final will now start at 6:30PM on a Sunday. If there's extra time and penalties, with all the post-match awards guff it might not even finish until 10:00PM. People have work the next day. Kids have school the next day. If we win, we can't even celebrate it properly.

As if everything else wasn't farcical enough this week, FV decided to crash a fuel tanker into the flaming rubble of grand final week, by finally making a public announcement of journeyman goalkeeper Lewis Italiano's eligibility to play for Oakleigh. He has been allowed to arrive at Jack Edwards well after any and all transfer windows have closed, but apparently because all of Oakleigh's (four, or six, or eight, or whatever it is) other eligible goalkeepers are not fit enough to play, well they were allowed to sign him. Was Heidelberg allowed the same dispensation for their goalkeeper availability issues? Do the medical certificates all check out that, over Italiano's last three or four weeks at Oakleigh, not one of the other keepers has come good?

I really want to see the hospital records, or the death certificates, whichever may be relevant. I want to know which of Oakleigh's keepers is in hospital due to gigantism caused by abuse of brain and nerve tonic. I want to know which Oakleigh keeper is lying on the barroom floor having come off second best in an argument about who was England's greatest prime minister. And I certainly want to know which Oakleigh keeper Chris Taylor sacked, because said keeper wouldn't shave off his sideburns.

Such antics are not without precedent in Victorian soccer, and yes, there are rules which make allowances for replacing keepers. Your correspondent recalls late in the 2012 season, when Bentleigh Greens lost their on-loan keeper Lawrence Thomas back to Melbourne Victory with three games left in that home and away season. Thomas was replaced by Griffin McMaster, who up until that point of 2012 had been busy playing in a hopeless Moreland Zebras side. McMaster came in for Thomas, was part of a team that scraped into the finals (at our expense), and got knocked out against an Oakleigh side who featured some bloke called Lewis Italiano; that Oakleigh side went on to lose the grand final to the rocket flare powered Dandenong Thunder side coached by Chris Taylor. 

Which just goes to show how pathetically small Victorian soccer is, and that we need more Queenslanders just to open up the family tree which seemingly more resembles a stump. And yes, Oakleigh also have a bloke who played in a championship with us eight years ago (and against in our loss in 2015), and another bloke who played in a championship with us six years years ago. 

Anyway, history lessons aside, there's now a venue and a time, and those of who can go, should. But my goodness, I am expecting the worst. Not just on field, where I expect our luck/charm/whatever to come wanting, but off it, too. Kimon Taliadoros has already copped it online, but so has FV president Antonella Care - who just so happens to be the spouse of one Aki Ionnas; the long time and well known - and already not very much loved among South fans - power-broker of Oakleigh, whose management of that club over the past 17 years has had more than the whiff of trying to become a pseudo-South Melbourne.

You can imagine the commentary that's come out, both level-headed and otherwise, trying to draw connections between Oakleigh being in the grand final and not wanting to play at Lakeside, and getting their wish; by being able to sign a replacement goalkeeper, when another club could not. Just about the only thing that they haven't got is a changing of the date away from tomorrow, which would allow them more rest before (or after) their upcoming FFA Cup semi-final. I imagine that vitriol tomorrow will be much worse which, from a purely angry perspective, I understand. What I don't hope to see is the clu  getting punished because things go too far, especially of things are going badly for us.

I guess the best that I can hope for is that nothing said or chanted tomorrow crosses the lines of targeting someone based on protected category (race, gender, etc). I already expect for any all FV officials to cop a worse reception than Tony Labbozetta did after the 2001 NSL grand final. Maybe the aim tomorrow should be for sarcasm? Instead of chanting "fuck the FFV", how about "we love the FFV"? They couldn't do much against something like that. 

Anyway, all this, and the grand final to come tomorrow.

Awards

Somewhat lost in the kerfuffle over the venue, South picked up a few awards at the Gold Medal night on Monday. Our media team won some kind of award. South fan and photographer Luke Radziminski won the Les Shorrock award for best photo. Harrison Sawyer was officially awarded the golden boot, and finished just one vote behind the two joint winners of the Gold Medal; one naturally wonders what would have happened if he'd closed out the home and away season with us, instead of heading to India.

Our biggest win on the night - and really no surprise - was Javier Diaz Lopez winning the goalkeeper of the year award. That sees Javier join Dean Anastasiadis (2005, 2006), Peter Zois (2010), and Peter Gavalas (2013) as state level goalkeeper of the year prizewinners. 

Final thought
Only just figured out this week that my new job is basically Dodgy Asian Betting commentary, but in a courtroom.

A small, petty man - Avondale 0 South Melbourne 1

Your reporter could have purchased a ticket to the big AFL game that day, but instead did what he almost always does in such situations, and decided to head to the South game, regardless of the circuitous public transport path chosen, and especially regardless of the (as it turned out) even worse than usual public amenities on offer at the football arena portion of the Reggio Calabria Club, which at least in previous times had a half decent/passable canteen. Good luck to the food truck offering prawn twists and other novelty items at outrageous prices for making Lakeside's food offerings seem almost sensible by comparison. It's never a good sign when you don't see almost anyone eating anything at a game.

The worst part of the whole thing is that I got there early enough to catch about 60 minutes of the under 21s curtain raiser, so it was a hell of a long day to spend without consuming other than a can of coke, and a bit of someone's novelty Snickers bar.

For us, this was a dead rubber. A chance to continue working out the immediate future without Harrison Sawyer, while avoiding serious injuries and unnecessary yellow cards. For Avondale, it was basically win or bust, with Heidelberg likely to smash Eastern Lions, and Bentleigh Greens favourites against the all-but-relegated Dandy City. Now there was that one observant person on Twitter who noted that we must really hate Avondale considering that we played a pretty strong starting line-up, and there might be something to that. But otherwise, I think we went in pretty much as expected, minus the odd player here or there that didn't absolutely need to be out there.

And we got the job done. A 1-0 win thanks to an earlyish goal which highlighted a big part of Avondale's slip from preeminence this year; namely some pretty soft defending. I was disappointed that we couldn't add to the tally, especially as Avondale increasingly had to chase the game to give themselves some chance of making the finals; but I was otherwise happy that we seemed to be a bit more assertive overall, looking more like the side from the early parts of the season that pressed its opposition higher up the field. A good outing by Ben Djiba as well, after a few sketchy performances - when he was in the side. 

And, yes, it felt good to not only dispense with Avondale, who have given us a torrid time n recent seasons, but also to stick it up some pretty annoying characters at that club, who sought to target our supporters in prior visits to the Reggio Calabria Club. Yes, pity our poor feelings and all that, but good riddance (for the time being) of some pretty sore winners and now, also pretty sore losers judging by the antics of their coaching staff in the car park after the game. Not that I stuck around for such shenanigans, as I was hoofing it up Brunswick Road to catch a tram that would not properly sync up with the train arriving at Royal Park station.

Still, all the good feelings of the home and away season are now worth not much, as we head into the finals, which means we're either two wins from glory, or one loss from what will be deemed failure. But that's the Australian way I guess, even if New South Wales - the soccer state which loves finals systems more than anyone - is apparently dumping finals next year. Good luck to them for the principle of that move, but damned if I think they'll actually keep first past the post in the long run.

Back in Victoria, we're stuck with finals, which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't this particular finals system. In other respects, things remained much the same, as the top six was made up of five Greek teams, well earning the competition the title of NPL Greece. I mean, look at this for the most recent title winners:

• 2019 - Bentleigh Greens
• 2018 - Heidelberg United
• 2017 - Bentleigh Greens 
• 2016 - South Melbourne
• 2015 - Bentleigh Greens
• 2014 - South Melbourne
• 2013 - Northcote City

I know that it helps that the last two seasons being obliterated means that run wasn't interrupted by Avondale winning the title, but Greek teams have also frequently been the runner-up during those seasons, and have won five of the past seven Dockerty Cup finals.

Next match

Thanks to finishing in the top two, we have a week off this week, and are back again next week. We'll be playing the lowest ranked winner of the first week of the finals. As it turns out, that will be fourth placed Green Gully, who knocked out Bentleigh last night, and are the lowest ranked team remaining thanks to Oakleigh defeating Heidelberg.

The match will be on Sunday 4th September at 4pm. Apparently that's also Fathers Day, though I never took much notice of such things. It was a choice between going up against the AFL finals on the Friday night, the AFL finals on Saturday afternoon/evening, or Fathers Day. I think the club made the right choice. Port, the host of the other semi-final, are going up against the sold out Geelong vs Collingwood game on Saturday.  

The under 21s final will take place after the seniors' game.

Nag, nag, nag

People scoff, but gentle intermittent nagging can sometimes achieve serious results. My nagging is now on record as seeing the restoration of the Dockerty Cup, the production of pompom beanies at South, and perhaps my greatest accomplishment so far, the recent availability of South Melbourne Gunners merch. Does it matter that it's via a RedBubble style outlet with $10 postage? Does it matter that the Gunners gimmick was loathed back when it was introduced, and still remains largely unappreciated now? Not a damn bit. If you can't appreciate the magnificent irony of the early 1980s attempt by Rik Booth and friends to de-ethnicise the NSL and introduce ridiculous gimmick team nicknames, and yet somehow make the South Melbourne Hellas logo even more ethnic, then that's on you. Or you could just buy the re-make of the Hellas World Order shirts, which may be more to your liking.

My Everest

Some people are asking, now that I've accomplished this trifecta, what's next on the nag wishlist? And after thinking about it, I have to say: the abandonment of short corners, which I realise is outside the control of pretty much everyone that pays attention to what I say at South. However, I will note this: last week the team played a short corner. It failed, as most corners (short or otherwise) tend to do, and I didn't even entertain the idea that we would score from it. But it was at least a short corner taken in the right circumstances, with the opposition scrambling to organise itself and not exactly paying attention to what was going on. It's a start.

Absentee Golden Boot

Congratulations to Harrison Sawyer, who despite missing the final two matches of the home and away season due to signing with Indian side Jamshedpur, nevertheless managed to finish the season as the league's top scorer. Sawyer finished on 17 goals, two ahead of Oakleigh's Wade Dekker and Heidelberg's Kaine Sheppard.

On the streams

Hello, hello (and goodbye)
Saturday last I got home in time from the supermarket to watch most of the Moreland City vs North Geelong game. The sums were pretty straightforward, even if I cocked them up twice on the South forum. First-placed North Geelong, already promoted, only needed a draw to be crowned champions. Second-placed Moreland City needed a win to guarantee promotion, and to win the NPL2 championship; a draw would leave them vulnerable to being overtaken by Brunswick Juventus, who were playing relegation threatened Werribee City. Well when I said I got home in time early enough to watch most of the game, I meant that arrived home about twenty or more minutes into the game, with the score already 1-0, and who'd know that that's the way it would stay for the rest of the game? A pretty tight, kinda ugly game, ideally viewed from the ground level camera. North had a couple of good chances late on to take the draw and the title, but didn't.

Brunswick Juve then allegedly threw their game very late against Werribee, conceding what some have called two very suspect goals, which kept Werribee in NPL2 for another season. Having not seen the late comeback in question, I could not possibly comment on whether the result was indeed suspect, much like I could not possibly comment on Port Melbourne's equally allegedly suspect 95th minute equaliser against Werribee in the final round of 2014, a result which incidentally kept both teams up. But where was I? Oh yes. We'll be seeing North Geelong and Moreland in NPL1 next season, at the expense of Dandenong City and Eastern Lions, neither of whose grounds I was able to get to this year, and in the case of Dandy City, I'm not sorry they and their impossible to get to ground are gone, even if the eually ridiculously located Elcho Park is its replacement.

But what of Moreland City? Their Campbell Reserve ground might be up to scratch (just) for NPL2, but I doubt it will pass muster for NPL1. The thinking seems to be that they'll end up playing out at CB Smith, but good luck with that considering Fawkner, Pascoe Vale, and Brunswick Juve also play out of there. Anyway, while I won't buy into the rhetoric that Moreland City have returned to the top-flight for the first time in 75 years (or whatever the number is), because I'm counting their history from their 1989 merger rather than from their individual constituent parts, we can I suppose talk some history. We last played against Moreland in a competitive fixture in 1962; against Coburg, another merger constituent in 1960, our first season; and we never played against Park Rangers. Still, the fact that the Moreland City family tree does include Park Rangers, it means that next season will see a meeting of distant cousins, in that Park Rangers were born from an early 1940s offshoot of South Melbourne United. Think of it like the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac getting together.

Through the fog

Against all your natural inclinations you try to be kind, you hope to be forgiving, you want to be understanding, and not even from a "what if I was in their place" mentality; just because it's the right thing to do, and there's not much to be gained from being unnecessarily cruel. But the NPL TV product is not up to scratch on so many levels, and while I wish it wasn't so, there's no way of getting around it. Even the things the offering does well, get undone when they're not done well or at all. To wit: the last couple of weeks, NPL Tv's social media (at least on Twitter) has begun sharing goals as they happen. A marvellous innovation, long overdue, but welcome nonetheless. But if you wanted to see last week's winning goal in the Avondale vs South game? Not there. And if you were watching the Oakleigh vs Heidelberg game on a unwieldy stream cast from a laptop to a television, because there is no dedicated NPL TV app even though the host technology Cluch TV app exists, and you wanted to catch up painlessly with the goals ftom the Green Gully vs Bentleigh game on social media, because you don't want to deal with the mobile NPL TV app... well, they weren't on the socials last night either. Sure you could get the goals from the dead rubber Kingborough Lions vs Olympia game, but nothing from last night. So it goes, but damn if it doesn't suck, despite the best intentions of everyone trying to make it work.

Now I will note of this game that it was exciting. It was of a pretty decent standard at times, albeit too fast at times. There were two injury time goals that bailed Heidelberg out temporarily, plenty of near misses, a penalty shoot-out, and lots of shenanigans. And yet so much of the experience was undermined by a stream beset with technical issues - including missing the first part of what turned out to be an anti-climactic shoot-out - and so many bouts of out of focus camera that one felt bad for the people trying to put together the product. 

I never (OK, maybe not never) like to think I go out of my way to be cruel when I criticise, but the quality of the footage stream last night was not up to scratch, I know that it's done on the smell of an oliy rag, but if we are going to offer this service which dissuades people from going to games, the least we can do is make it good. How many times last night was a team streaming towards goal, only for the footage to look like a news segment on some sporting scandal which blurred the images so no player could be identified?

The penalty shoot-out turned temporarily into a radio broadcast, and though it came back eventually,for a moment there I had to use my imagination, like some sort of caveman. The graphics for the scored/missed penalties also got botched, though I suppose luckily for all concerned the shoot-out was over almost as soon as it started.

Anyway, as for the match itself, people will talk about things like Sean Ellis' free kick with the last kick of the game. Me, I'm all about Matthew Foschini acting like a pork chop, in this case trying to start nonsense with the Heidelberg bench after Oakleigh equalised against the run of play in the first half. It was so petty and stupid, and he got the yellow card that he deserved, but it was also disappointing in a different way. Foschini has had his back and forths with us over the past few seasons, but seeing him get it on with the Berger bench and fans, well... I thought we had something special. 

Well, those kinds of antics at least help explain in part why our so called leaders at the time had so much trouble reigning in the excesses of the People's Champ.

Final thought

It's a shocking thought, but it would be nice to win the grand final.

Inauspicious - South Melbourne 1 Dandenong City 0

We said we weren't going to bring this up again, but our
win against Dandy City did see us finish as runner-up in
the 2021 Bespoke Cup. Not a bad effort after starting
so far back at the start of this mess.

Started off this adventure by getting to the ground early enough to watch the second half of our senior women's match, as their season gradually winds down. Nothing much to write home about here - the cup run is over, finals hopes are gone, and the most one can hope for is that the move away from a big name roster in 2022 will yield fruit in 2023. I think there's some scope for that, and besides - apart from Western United joining, apparently the next A-League Women's season will have a three month overlap with the the start of the 2023 NPLW season - so it's best that everyone gets used to seeing their national league players a little less.

As for the senior men's game, for a match that had little to nothing riding on it for us, there sure seemed to be a lot of misplaced angst. I get that everyone, especially the players and coaching staff, want to finish first. After all, it's a nice marker for all that they've achieved this season. But really, without the lure of the NPL national playoffs, finishing first is not much different from finishing second. It's the same reward - a week off, and then a sudden death finals match on your home ground. Considering there isn't going to be an NPL national playoffs series this year, Football Victoria might as well have used the top six finals format that was used in the VPL days, where the top two at least got a double chance.

But let's assume the match did matter to us, and that was why people got upset with us not playing particularly well. Lots of long balls. Lots of reliance on the long throw. Lots of bad decision making. Par for the course in 2022, but it's worked so far, so why not more of it? Well for one thing, we don't have Harrison Sawyer on field anymore, so we may as well try something new to better suit the personnel we do have. That's my main gripe, and last Saturday it wasn't even really a big gripe for me, because I'm rationalising it like this: that we have three or so inconsequential Sawyer-less weeks - two weeks off, and a couple of essentially dead rubbers - to try and figure out what we're going to do.

And if trying the old thing with new people didn't work, well, that's no good, but maybe we can see that it doesn't work, and try something different. The home and away season is more or less over, and the nonsense will soon begin of two games meaning more than the preceding 26 put together. But that's me speaking, a measure of calm in a perpetually emotional sea. Too many others keep looking to fulfill the truth of Tommy Docherty's observation that South fans are "the best winners in the world, and the worst losers". And we weren't even losing last week! 

Some credit must go to Dandenong City who, as per our match earlier in the season, had a red hot go, being unafraid to take the game to us. They had long odds on getting out of the jam they found themselves in, but at least gave themselves a shot. All for nothing as it turned out, as their loss - and Hume's come from behind win over Dandy Thunder, the latter of whom blew its own slim chances of making finals - means that there would be need to be two really outrageous results on Sunday for City to avoid the drop. 

And while looming relegation can't be a pleasant experience, I'm not sure that justifies calling people "tsigane" and Greek so-and-sos, especially unprovoked. (And I don't think any one of us even paid much attention that fan "favourite" Steven Topalovic was still out there for City, much less former wunderkind Peter Skapetis.) And the less said about the smashed up soap dispensers in the toilets, and the unpleasantness late on in the night with broken glasses in the social club, the better. Some people are annoyed that it's not Hume going down instead of City; I wish it could be both, but if wishes were fishes and so on. 

Next match

Final match day of the home and away season, away to Avondale on Sunday. There has been some conjecture about which way to take this game. Should we go hard core, and try and make Avondale miss out on the finals? Or should we focus on trying to avoid injuries and suspensions, and to hell with whatever happens with the race for the final two finals spots? Should we turn up to support the boys? Or should we stay at home, and not give Avondale any money? Would anyone notice either way?

For whatever it's worth, I reckon the most important thing is to use this week as another opportunity to figure out how to win games without Harrison Sawyer. 

Speaking of which

While he is no longer with us on the field, the big striker was still with us off-field last Saturday, taking part in the post-match celebrations. Still waiting on his visa to come through perhaps? South fans may have seen recently that the All India Football Federation was suspended by FIFA for "undue interference by a third party". India has already, at least nominally, lost the hosting rights to the U17 Women's World Cup, scheduled for October. While the suspension also means that no Indian team - club or country - can play international matches until the suspension is lifted, any hopes that the suspension would also block transfers of non-Indian players to the Indian Super League seem non-existent. Well, it was worth wondering about, anyway.

Also top of the league

The under 21s also finished top of their league, thanks to a comfortable 7-0 win. Several senior players stuck around to see the end of that match, including chanting everyone's favourite, "come on Hellas, score a fucking goal". Think about all the times Clarendon Corner have been told off for swearing, especially in chants, and then this happens. Well, I'm taking it as an endorsement, and something to hold on to in the event that we ever get called out on it again.

Q. When is a title not a title?

A. When you have a final series.

For whatever reason, Football Victoria has decided that this season the under 21s competition will also have a finals series. So that means that our 21s are not quite there yet. What it also means is that there's a chance that South could be host to a finals double header, possibly against a club that we'd also be matched up against in the seniors. 

The decision to go for a double-header would almost certainly preclude the match from being played on a Friday night, because even starting the 21s at 6:15PM, there would need to be the allowance for extra time and penalties, which would push the senior kickoff time to well beyond 9PM. Considering also that the second week of NPL Victoria finals coincides with the first week of the AFL finals, it's likely that no one would want to come up against a possible Saturday night blockbuster AFL finals match. So could we see ourselves playing on a Sunday, the way everyone apparently wants us to?

Final thought

Thanks to Will for the lift back into the CBD.

Goodbye Harry, goodbye hope - Port Melbourne 2 South Melbourne 1

Thank goodness we've got the week off, otherwise this crap would have come out after the next game.

It starts off bad

One of those days, weeks, years. Got to the ground early, hoping to see the 21s do whatever it is they do. No dice: Port did the thing where they scheduled the nominal reserves game for after senior game. So stuck in the Port social club listening to the end of the Pies' game on the radio, watching the last five minutes or so of Lions vs Hume, and admiring Port's new electronic scoreboard, which is finally up. It has room for the scores, a running match clock, and perhaps most surprisingly - and most useful for NPL winter nights - a temperature gauge. 

But much as we all like to laud any improvements to our suburban grounds, the scoreboard was a bit of a bust. The clock is hard to read (small black text in a yellow box), the temperature gauge doesn't update itself, and the scoreline at the end of the game sucked. To be fair, that last bit was mostly our fault, as we continued to struggle to create chances outside the usual long-throw and corner methods. And we didn't even get that many corners. 

Well we got one long throw goal - I think that's about nine of them this season - but apart from that, looked second best for most of the game, at least during those parts that I could see the game. SS Anderson Reserve seems to get darker every year. The benches are in near total darkness, and a black clad Esteban Quintas was able to scurry through the back half of the field almost unnoticed by anyone who wasn't directly behind the Williamstown Road goal. Hopefully the fact that the ground will be a Women's World Cup training venue next year will draw out some improvements to the venue.

Taking the "National" out of National Premier Leagues

I could complain more about this loss, but it was cold, and besides which, what was the ultimate prize on hand anyway? Finishing first? Yeah, I suppose that would be nice, but what's the prize for finishing first anyway? Oh, that's right, finishing first gets you into the NPL national playoff series, with the chance of getting straight into the Australia Cup round of 32. Looking into the matter in the week or two before, a few South fans seemed to notice that there was nothing in the Football Victoria or Football Australia competition calendars indicating dates for the post-season tournament run from 2013-2019, and thuse the question got asked, and eventually answered as per this Peter Filopoulos tweet; with the answer being there's apparently no longer an NPL national playoffs series.

(let's also take a moment to marvel somewhat at Filopoulos' comment on the tournament not having been in the calendar since 2019, as if there might not be some obvious reason why that was the case)

Quite what the "National" part of National Premier Leagues stands for anymore is anyone's guess. At any rate, while I'm disappointed that it's not happening for selfish South related reasons, let's not pretend that it was a particularly popular tournament while it was around. People like to point to occasional carnivalesque NSW grand final day crowds, and the equally "event oriented" midweek Australia Cup turnouts as proof of what a national second division could achieve... and yet I tend to look to the NPL national playoffs as a much more realistic sense of the kinds of interest that would be generated by a national second division. Hype low, interest minimal, outlook bleak.

And then it gets worse

So finishing on top now means diddly squat, except for some skerrick of morale I suppose. But we've got a top two spot sewn up, which means we only have to win two more games - as long as they're not out next two games - to be crowned champions. That's the dream, anyway, and I use dream in the sense of fanciful, because according to a good chunk of our online natterers, we're basically done, because one of our three most important players is gone. There's the goalkeeper, there's the long throw guy, and then there's the guy up front who a lot of people hated, but who nevertheless became so integral to our game plane over the past three years (whatever was completed of them), that who knows what the team will look like in his absence.

Midweek, out of nowhere, and to the dismay of everyone, the club announced that Harrison Sawyer had departed the club effective immediately to join an Indian Super League club. Still don't know which one (doesn't matter really), or for how much (probably diddly squat). Fair play to Sawyer. Players coming down from Brisbane to play in Melbourne aren't coming here for the climate. Some lucky few get into the A-League, and some might even get across the sea. Sawyer had been a professional in Asia before, so it must be pleasing for him to get back into full-time football.

For us though, on the eve of finals, this is near enough to a disaster. The game plane revolved so much around Sawyer, that fans spent most of the season what we'd do if he got injured, as he did last season. Other wondered why we didn't even try and sign a forward back-up; but then again, if the game plan is based around a super-tall centre-forward who can run all day and pressure defenders, I'm not sure where else the club would have found one. The good thing I suppose, if one can find a silver lining in this situation, is that we have a solid month before we play our first final to try and adapt to a new game style. The only other genuine striker we have is Alun Webb, the complete opposite in style from Sawyer, except for his workrate.

Whatever the more gung-ho approach was earlier in the season - high pressing, numbers forward, with occasionally reckless numbers forward leaving our defenders exposed - it's basically gone. I can't remember when we last saw it, and I can't even say that it was around long enough to say that it was fun while it lasted. Yes, you've got to grind out some wins here and there over the course of a home and away season, and this is still the (N)PL Victoria we're talking about, so don't expect miracles in terms of style, even if you think that we should be doing better than what we are.

And thinking we could be doing than what we are is very bad according to some people, because there's a table, we're on top of it. I can see their point. 

Next game

It's Dockerty Cup final week, so there's no South senior men's action this weekend. We're back next weekend at home against Dandenong City. The kickoff time for this match has been brought forward to 5:45PM, one assumes so that the under 21s can finally play at Lakeside this year, and hopefully clinch their title on home soil. The women's curtain raiser match against Heidelberg has also been brought forward an hour, to 3:00PM

In the mean time, our senior women are playing in their cup final on Sunday  - ie, tomorrow - out at Broadmeadows, against Calder United. 

Final thought

What a marvellous feeling eating an affordable, rather straight-forward, more than passable souvlaki. Revelatory in its ordinariness. 

Never get high on your own supply - South Melbourne 2 Altona Magic 0

Just a short one this week because I'm back in what by my standards would be considered gainful employment, and time is no longer my friend. Well, that's my excuse this week, and there's always an excuse.

Welcome back to the blog for South fans who love to metaphorically slash wrists. Welcome back to normal diabolical crowds, but still continuing on with the same results, with much the same method, with one frustrating exception. What was it with all the short corners? It's not just having Harry Sawyer, Marco Jankovic, and Jake Marshall to aim at, but also little Pat Langlois - remember him that scored those headers from corners early in the season? But also, apart from having all those perfectly cromulent targets to aim at, we also have Andy Brennan who has mostly been providing rather excellent service from corners.

Let's put it down to feeling so comfortable with our position and our opponent, that we decided to use this situation as an opportunity not to showboat - because we would never, ever do something like that - but rather to attempt some in game variations which may become useful in the finals. Now I don't believe that for a second, what with my pathological hatred of short corners (at this level), but it might help other people rationalise what they were watching, assuming anyone else loses sleep about these the way I do. It felt like a targeted hate-crime against me, and in this fishbowl that is South Melbourne Hellas post-NSL, every time we take a short corner attention is brought to me.

Well, I painted that target on myself I suppose, and it's not like one can un-paint that now. Speaking of paint and other brilliant chemicals, how good was the smell of paints, sealants, and whatever other alchemic concoctions are being piled into, under, and on top of our grandstand? It was like being in the back of the old Capricorn Floors van - there's an inside joke for like, three people, tops. I suppose since we're not not allowed to take booze outside the social club (except for trace amounts of alcohol in a lemon, lime & bitters), and the outside beer tent went back into hibernation, why not substitute liquor for fumes? What could possibly go wrong?

Apart from the awful second half, where we lost all shape, the only really bad thing to happen was Ben Djiba's red card, which felt contentious live, and much less contentious once we saw the replay of someone with way too much adrenaline after dribbling past three or four opponents, like your correspondent back in a CC White vs Blue match many, many moons ago. At least I had the good sense to finish my poor run with a mere crappy pass, and not trying to knee-cap someone. 

Anyway, Djiba will be out this week and probably for at one game after, but what a great chance for someone else to do something. I give Esteban credit for this - pretty much everyone gets a go of some sort, sometimes more than I think they should, and sometimes less, and sometimes not in a role I think they're suited to; but it's not like you die wondering most weeks over whether we'll make a sub. It is easier to do now that we can make five a subs a game, but that doesn't mean that the sub will always get made. Look at Chris Taylor for example - still stuck to his more rigid method of well, it's 1984, we've got a squad of 14 players, and you have to fight tooth and nail to somehowbreak your way into the starting XI.

Whatever works for you I suppose, and like I always maintain, there's more than one way to get to your destination in this game. There's pretty and ugly, there's big spenders and slightly less big spenders, and there's even apparently playing with no meaningful sense of a central midfield and not even bothering to make a mid-season transfer to at least pretend to fix this. If we win this title - and I hope that we do - it just may be the first time South (or any club) has won a title mostly through sheer spite. The throw-ins, the set pieces, the playing 15-20 minutes of comparatively good football a game - all while knowing (or some of us fans believing) that we could be doing even better. 

Now you may ask what's better than being three games clear at the top with three matches to go, but that's what the easily placated like to say. I just hope we're not getting complacent. I saw Max Mikkola sit on the main subs bench instead of by himself after he got subbed off last week, and I'm worried we're going soft.

Next game

Port Melbourne away this Saturday. Thanks to Oakleigh's loss on Monday, we are now just one win from claiming the minor premiership and the chance to play in the NPL national playoffs... wait, I'm being passed a note which says that no one seems to know whether the NPL national playoffs will actually take place this year. It seems like there's no mention of them on either the Football Australia or Football Victoria competition calendars. Well, I'm sure everything will turn out fine. 

I hope that if it's not going ahead that the thing was cancelled due to COVID or a failure to attract a sponsor for it, and not because people were planning to fill in the space with a National Second Division. 

Final thought

Whatever stupid thing happens in the rest of this season, let us all bask in the quiet relief that Avondale did not win its stupid 2021 Bespoke Cup. They might still win the 2022 title - and good luck to them if they do - but their failure to take out the title they felt they so deserved, and which they spent so much money on lawyers on, and which they thought was a right laugh until their seven point lead got chipped away to nothing, and then they stopped posting about it on their socials, and then started blocking people on their socials who brought it up... where was I going with this? Oh yes: the Bespoke Cup is over. Let's never speak of it again. 

Not dead yet - South Melbourne 1 Oakleigh Cannons 0

The most important news must come first.

So this "painting" the grandstand business, which has been going on for quite some time now, and which has been testing people's patience, especially constituents of Clarendon Corner, who have been exiled from their usual locale while this "painting" takes place. Last week this seeming farce continued, with now just the lower half of that bay cordoned off - as well as sections at the lake end of the grandstand - and setting off the thought bubble that at some point they'll end up cordoning off Row H by itself just out of spite.

However, I got a message from one of the bigwigs last week - always a concern, because any message I get from them these days I assume is going to be bad news, or some form of berating. Sort of like when you get an email saying that you have a message in your MyGov inbox. In this case, the message was educational rather than hostile, which is always welcome. And the message? It's not just painting that's taking place on our stand, but rather extensive restorative work. The stand is leaking in parts, creating a risk of eventual damage from rising damp. The stand is receiving repairs from both on top and from underneath. I am told that the works are proceeding in a piecemeal fashion, partly so they can see how the repairs go on particular sections of the stand, but also because the persistently inclement June and July weather this year has made progress slower than would ideally be the case.

So having informed nearby people of this, our collective thoughts then turned to the future, and the imminent national second division which I am assured is coming next year. Imagine the buzz of the first couple of weeks of this competition, as all sorts of people come out of the woodwork to watch South play Sydney Olympic or some such. A chunk of this almost certainly temporary renewed interest would centre on Clarendon Corner; its numbers would swell, and the increased weight in and around Row H and the lower half of our usual bay would see the stand creak and groan, and ultimately collapse, inuring many, and possibly killing a few. In the event that the club didn't die as a result of this imagined tragedy, the outpouring of grief among the latent and former South supporter network would see the club reborn, as those who abandoned in one hour of need, returned to it in another. The CC martyrs would be commemorated with plaques and memorials; each year on the anniversary of the tragedy, our fans would remember their fallen brethren; and though those most dedicated would no longer be with us, their sacrifice would lead to the rebirth of South Melbourne Hellas. Αδέρφια ζείτε, εσείς μας οδηγείτε and all that.

Or the repairs could just go really well, and the club can continue making us miserable for all the usual reasons, dragging on its interminable existence in this or some other equally interminable competition.

Back in the real world. there was a game to be won, and surprisingly to me, we won it. I'm not anti-winning matches, especially highly anticipated ones, but I must reiterate: I don't trust any of what's happening this season, which makes my enjoyment of this farce of a rather good run in 2022 conditional on us actually winning the championship, whereupon I can retcon all my ramblings into something altogether more positive and assured. 

Not counting last season's penalty shoot-out win in the cup, this was our first outright win against Oakleigh since 2017. Think about all that has happened since then. Three coaches, a failed A-League bid, and two cancelled seasons because of a pandemic. How many people got married, and/or had one or more kids? How many jobs have I had and lost in that time? The only thing that hasn't happened is the national second division.

What these Oakleigh clowns are trying to claim,
 I have no idea. Photo: Kostas Deves.

There were too many close calls for us in the first half, including one ball that sort of everyone just let roll across the face of our own six yard box. Seemingly close but not really, was a low shot or whatever it was from Oakleigh being saved by Javier Diaz Lopex, clearly well in front of not only the goal line, but also in front of the post. Cue some Oakleigh players, but especially Daniel Clark trying to claim that it was a goal. I get that players get excited, but come on guys, have some respect for physics at least.

The second half from us was better, but my goodness, we are still such a hard team to watch compared to some other teams. I know, I know, get the results, grind out the wins, not how but how many. But watching South players panic with the ball anywhere in the defensive third, launching long balls when keeping the ball would be better and no less dangerous, and avoiding playing the ball in the middle of the field as if their lives depended on it. That last thing must surely have been a direct instruction, because it was pretty much all wing play. I've never seen a team of this calibre - in that they are top of the table so late in a season - so determined not to play the ball anywhere near the central channel, until a cross can come in around the area of the six yard box.

It was fascinating to watch in its own nihilistic fashion. If we were going to turn the ball over, we were to make sure as hell that it was nowhere the middle of the field, which doesn't say a lot for what we think of our central midfield combinations. 

(yet Patrick Langlois, part of that midfield combo, was awarded man-of-the-match in the post-game awards ceremony of the Tony Clarke Memorial Shield business.) 

For apparently the eighth time this season (though who's counting?) we scored a goal from a Max Mikkola throw-in. Not much different to the usual pattern here: long throw into the vicinity of Harrison Sawyer, hoping for a keeper mistake, and eventually a goal. Every week I keep asking how long we can keep getting by on these shenanigans, and every week the answer seems to be, "at least one more week". I'm not comfortable with it, but lest I be castigated for being a Negative Nancy, I'm trying my best to just enjoy the ride. The effort is good. The results are good. The method sucks. But two out of three after five years of mostly crud is, for the time being, acceptable I guess.

Next match

Altona Magic at home on Saturday night. Magic have lost their last five matches, and are still in the relegation scrap. We're expected to win, but the last time we played each other should act as a warning not to be complacent. Remember that game, where some heinously profligate finishing from Magic in the first half left us in the game? 

The mathematics

Eastern Lions are now mathematically relegated. Everyone between 9th and 13th is still in a relegation battle, though it'd be a collapse of all collapses if Knights end up 13th. Finals wise, realistically the top three are in, with the remaining three spots to be fought out by four teams. Knights or Thunder could theoretically make it in, but it would take an amazing set of coincidences for that to happen.

More likely is a finals series with four teams and possibly five of the six being made up of the Greek NPL clubs, in which case, why mourn the absence of the Hellenic Cup, when we play in a Hellenic League?

So far as South is concerned, a top three finish is locked in. Three points from out remaining four matches guarantees a top two finish. Eight points from our remaining four matches guarantees first place; seven points makes us dependent on goal difference, assuming Oakleigh wins all four of its remaining matches.

2021 title race almost over, thank goodness

Oakleigh's loss means that the 2021 Bespoke Cup is Avondale's for the taking, as long as they can beat Port Melbourne. If Avondale lose, and we beat Dandy City in a few weeks time, we can finish as a runners up.

New program uploads

Haven't had one of these for awhile. An early 2000/2001 season effort was sent in this week by a reader, filling in a couple of gaps, which I'm grateful for. Highlight is Steve Panopoulos winning the South Melbourne go-kart challenge. I've also scanned and uploaded the 2021 and 2022 Knights and Gully away match programs.

Final thought

Second division