Little bits of news from the first week of January 2022

Preparing for another season that, at best, might only partly be

The fixtures are out, but still we wait for news of memberships. Maybe next week or the week after. And as for the scheduling of the 2021 AGM, that's still largely a mystery to me. But I'm not panicking, because I've been assured that everything is above board, and that all the necessary things will happen in good time. There's a pandemic on, just in case you haven't heard.

Meanwhile the senior men's team - or at least some of that team, because it's hard to tell from the social media output exactly how many made the trip up - are in Shepparton for their now customary week long trip. The club's social media output - mostly vox pops with select players - is emphasising camaraderie, fitness, and even new tactical approaches. 

My expectations for many things South Melbourne Hellas are so laid back, they're horizontal; still, new tactical approaches, eh? I can't say I'm not mildly intrigued, while also anticipating disappointment. Can you believe the new season is just over a month or so away?

Still here

While you shouldn't trust anything you read on the internet, just because, it has been fun this week looking at a small subsection of the Indonesian football social media scene, and their speculating on who historic club PSM Makassar will be signing as a new forward option.

The speculating led to suggestions that PSM were looking at one Harrison Sawyer - our Harrison Sawyer - as a possible signing. Now I had to put all the relevant tweets and websites through the not altogether trustworthy filter of Google Translate, and it was a wild wide for the ten or so minutes it took to get through the commentary.

I can't vouch for the credibility of any of the sources, but it seemed to be a toss-up between Sawyer and A-League journeyman Golgol Mebrahtu. Debate centred around who PSM fans would prefer, about Sawyer's age, why another white guy, and most curiously, doubts about Sawyer because he played a second tier, semi-professional level with no promotion to the top league. 

Maybe someone should work on fixing at least that last item, but I digress.

Anyway, for those keeping track, the club signed Sawyer to a two-year contract at the tail end of 2021, which doesn't necessarily mean big transfer bikkies if he was to be signed by PSM. Are Indonesian clubs even accustomed to paying transfer fees, or are they a bit like us? 

At any rate, someone edited Golgol's Wikipedia page to add the "citation required" detail of him being signed by PSM. Meanwhile, Sawyer was verifiably in Shepparton at Camp Moray Agnew as recently as yesterday. Whether Sawyer did indeed follow PSM on Instagram - as mentioned in of the Indonesian reports or tweets - is something only someone who bothers with Instagram can know for sure. That's not me by the way.

 

Collector Graeme McGinty found this runners up
medal from the 1970 Dockerty Cup in the UK,
suggesting that one of South's British players returned
home, and either he or his family discarded
 his personal football collection at some point.

Piece by piece, bit by bit, one scrounged detail at a time

The next item is of little concern to anyone but the most obsessive, but the match details for the 1970 Dockerty Cup final have finally been completed. Previously both starting eleven's had a player missing, and as it turned out, one of Juventus' subs was also unknown. The missing Juve players were Keith Lackey and Alistair Sandison, while the missing player for Hellas was David High. 

1970 was a bit of a bust for South. Sure, we won the Ampol Cup, but coach Lou Brocic was gone by round 1 (despite a win), and the team muddled its way through the league campaign for a mediocre finish of fifth, four games behind champions Juventus. A league leading nine draws from 22 games probably didn't help.

The one remaining chance for silverware was the Dockerty Cup, which to that point we had not won. Reaching the final thanks to narrow wins over Polonia and Hakoah, and a 7-1 win over Alexander, here was the chance to salvage something from the year. Instead we put in what a very thorough Neos Kosmos match report described as a soulless performance. So it goes.

It was thanks to that article that we found the missing players, which just goes to show, that even sources that amateur researchers have likely gone over multiple times, can still yield useful details.

Speaking of which

One name missing from the South lineup in that final was Ulysses Kokkinos, who passed away seemingly suddenly on Monday. Kokkinos leaves behind a complicated footballing and personal legacy, which South of the Border may or may not muse on at some point, perhaps after the round 1 memorial planned by the club. I wouldn't hold your breath though.

Anyway, back to 1970. South were scratching around for form, but Kokkinos was in good touch, at least for the first half of the season - and then his name just disappears from the team lists and scorers sheets. What happened? Well, it looks like a serious leg injury suffered during South's fifth round Cup fixture against Polonia kept Kokkinos out for what seems like the rest of the season. 

Apparently Kokkinos wasn't the only star player to come out of the relevant cup weekend with a serious injury, with George Cross' Lou Kastner and Juve's Sandy Irvine also suffering heavy knocks. Kastner and Irvine ended up playing out the season, while Kokkinos unfortunately missed out. As with much to do with Kokkinos, it's another case of what have been had he been around more during the peak of his powers; but that's a story for another time.