Random number generator - Bentleigh Greens 2 South Melbourne 3

Everyone South Park fan remembers the Russell Crowe episode. Well Friday night for me was a bit like - not the fighting bit, but the other more boring bit, of trying to watch something and having to do it across multiple screens and locations for all sorts of stupid reasons.

I hate missing games. If a game's on interstate and I can't go, I cut my losses and make do. If I have a competing commitment, same deal. But pretty much any other reason just annoys me. I'm not going to blame Bentleigh for everything that saw me not attend Friday night's game, but they did set things in motion. Bentleigh's Friday night home games usually kickoff at 8:15pm. For someone coming from the western suburbs by public transport, it's already a huge slog to get there, but you do it because you love your team, and you have nothing better to do.

On the way back, it's an even bigger slog, and you're very lucky to get home by midnight. Getting back means first catching the last bus from across the road near Moorabbin DFO. That's easy to do with an 8:15pm kickoff. For some reason though, Friday night's match kicked off at 8:30pm, and you know how these things go, delayed kickoffs, extended injury time for all sorts of nonsense like automated sprinklers goings off during the game. And all of a sudden, that long but manageable post-game bus transfer becomes very dicey.

Which again, I'm not here to blame Bentleigh, because they can start games at any time they like within the established rules, and they're not obliged to consider the feelings of the two or three people who may be crazy enough to take public transport out to an NPL Victoria game. But looking at the post-game public transport options on a couple of websites, and I just decided to chuck it in before the game. Never mind that after tweeting about it, several people offered me lifts back to Cheltenham station, which I appreciated, but seriously: I was just like, fuck it. Those 15 minutes crossed some sort of psychological threshold for me, where I'd just stay home and watch it on whatever free screen I could scrounge up.

Rail replacement buses on the Sunbury line also made the decision not to go, just that little bit easier; a decision further justified by an experience the next day with a shambles of a rail replacement service at North Melbourne station.

Anyway, I decided to warm up for festivities by getting a handle on the NPL TV service on my laptop, while also assuming that the YouTube back up option that was available last week would be there in case anything went wrong. Well, the YouTube backup has already been dispensed with, and so by round 2 we are flying by the seat of our Cluch pants. Things did not get off to a good start when watching the Knights-Avondale stream (which started at 7:30pm), with the stream not working. Even better, there appears to be no one manning the NPL TV social media accounts to let people know that there is a problem with the stream, and that someone is working to fix it.

The cameraman at Eastern Lions vs Oakleigh Cannons had a "have you
 ever seen anything fluffier than a cloud" moment during the first half.

Some of the issues with NPL TV are not specific to this service. Poor camerawork is not the fault of the streaming service. Some grounds - I'm looking at you Gardiners Creek Reserve - seem to just have shocking internet connections. But the stuttering, buffering product on offer so far - seldom so bad as to make you switch off, but persistent enough that it feels like an essential part of the product - is unpleasant at best. Alleged poorer picture quality aside, I found the YouTube option from previous seasons much more pleasant to watch.

Well, we could be glad at least that these kinds of issues didn't seem to affect the South game so much. But a new problem... you cannot pause a stream, and then resume from where you paused it. This is just madness. I had to go pick up my brother from his job, which is a good 15-20 minute round trip, and had no way of stopping the game and picking up from where I left off. So I'm watching this game on my computer, I've seen a goal each way - what was our goalkeeper doing by the way? - and around about 8:50 I'm on way to Sunshine Marketplace. 

Ten minutes later, I'm outside the smokers' exit at Sunshine Marketplace waiting from my brother, and I'm catching up with the goal we've scored from a penalty. That part of the app is good, and will be especially useful at halftime breaks at the footy when you just want to catch up on the goals. But despite offering the chance to watch how each and every corner is won, there is no option (yet) to see a penalty decision. Seems like a bit of an oversight.

Back home, and my brother having bought another Google doohickey with his JB Hifi employee discount, for the first time ever I was chrome-casting. I can't remember how much of the game I missed because of driving, logging in to NPL TV on the lounge room PC, casting, etc, but it worked well enough until the end of the game. Which we won! Well, we should be happy about that, and yet...

A word from the γκρινιάρη faction 

Anyway, some thoughts on the game itself. Going off the grand sample of two matches - one whose profitable analysis was broken by singing, jokes, and reconnecting with lost souls, and the other by living the streaming life - it looks like 2022 has brought the pleasant change of the team having more than one mode of play. 

Most of the time under this current regime, it has been one mode - defend really, really deep, stack the defense, and hope to pinch a result off a couple of chances. This ultra risk averse style of play gave the impression that despite being impotent going forward, that we were at least steady and hard to break down going the other way. Well, duh. If you play six or seven people in a defensive set-up, you should be harder to score against than if you tried to take the game on. That's not tactics, that's just sheer weight of numbers obscuring one's lack of tactical nous or ambition.

This year it appears that we've added an attacking mode, one where we press higher up the field, try to create turnovers in more meaningful areas, and generally look more keen on scoring than we've been accustomed to over the past few years. That's nice. It's even nicer that it appears to be Plan A. It's a tactic that works well in NPL Victoria. This is a league full of players who hit the panic button as a reflex, just knocking the ball forwards at first instinct because they (possibly correctly) do not trust their own collective first touch. 

(to be a little bit fair, the reluctance of players in this comp to take a touch and take control is partly due to everyone watching the games - club administrators, coaches, and fans - who will collectively turn on any player who tries to does not adhere to rugby tactics in "dangerous" areas and who stuffs it up)

Passages of broken play are so frequent, that if you have a talented enough personnel to take advantage of such circumstances, you can roll the dice on your random number generator making such an environment, and generally come up trumps. What happens when you come up against a team that not only has talent, but also even a moderate of tactical awareness and capability, well I'm sure we'll find out soon enough. But while it's not a style that will likely you see win the minor premiership (which still means nothing), if you do well enough to stumble into the finals, playing the random number generator game in a higher intensity finals match, with more adrenaline and more mistakes, just might see your team win a championship.

Heaven help us and Australian soccer in general if that happens, but that possibility is still a whole 25 games away. We haven't even played 25 league games in the past two seasons.

Besides which, the other mode, the super annoying stack the defence mode, is still with us. Which is not such a problem when it's the last ten minutes or so of a game you're leading and you're trying to play the prcentages. Two week in a row we've gone super defensive way too early. So far we've been fortunate that the Bergers were underdone and ripe for the picking, and that Jai Ingham was able to pull a rabbit out of the hat to give us the win with only our a third shot on target for the night. That's right, three shots (the header from our only corner for the game, the penalty, and Nugget Ingham's missile), three goals, ruthless and unsustainable efficiency. 

If the defensive retreat - which lasted for a good 25 consecutive minutes in the second half - was coach's direction, that's alarming. Even if it wasn't his choice, just as alarming is that no one on the field was able to show the necessary leadership to retain possession and push up the field, so that maybe Bentleigh would have to work harder for both territory and possession. To this ignoramus it wasn't like watching ice hockey, where you've sent out our your first line to do its attacking work, and then a defensive line to kill the game for a bit before the attacking line rejoins the fray.

That works well in ice-hockey, because there's unlimited interchange, but soccer is limited to making three changes. I suppose we're fortunate that one of our subs eventually made a difference.

Next game 

Melbourne Knights at home on Friday night. 

Looking ahead to 2023 already

Along with the Reggio Calabria Club and Port Melbourne's SS Anderson Reserve, Lakeside has been designated as an official training site for the Women's World Cup next year. Don't know if that will mean improved player amenities at Lakeside, but I assume it will probably mean we'll end up playing elsewhere during that time - and not AAMI Park either. Well, that's for the people of the future to figure out.

AGMs this Sunday

A reminder for those eligible to attend, the SMH and SMFC AGMs are on Sunday in the social club, with the SMH AGM kicking off proceedings at 11am.

Final thought

Another six points for Hellas!

Public transport heads up for tomorrow

Just in case anyone apart from myself had the intention of using public transport to get to the game at Kingston Heath tomorrow, here's a heads up - the match is kicking off at 8:30PM, not Bentleigh's usual kick off time of 8:15PM.

It may very well be a very tight run to the bus stop back to Cheltenham station after the game. I'm not risking it. See you next week at a more civilised time, at a more public transport friendly venue.

Glad to be back - South Melbourne 3 Heidelberg United 1

After everything that has happened over the past two years, it was just nice to be back, again. Coming in on the train, I had that sick feeling in the guts which means that I still care; that's a good thing, as I have been reassured by others, because if I didn't care, then the whole thing would be work, and not mangled joy. It was opening day, it was derby day, it was South Melbourne Hellas day.

I am now 16 years into my second South Melbourne Hellas life, the one where I have been able to be the kind of supporter that I was not able to be during the NSL years. In this second Hellas life, I have spent those 16 years largely among the same faces. Some people have left, some new people have come in, and others come in and out. But the core of the group I became attached to - based mostly around the people active on the defunct smfcboard.com, and its still extant replacement smfcfans.com - are still there.

Many of them are now married, with kids who they are bringing to games. Some of them had kids so long ago, that the kids are now the age I was when I started coming back to South. Everyone's a little older, a little tireder, a little more jaded, but also a bit more relaxed. The club's been to hell and not quite back on multiple occasions, the football remains quasi-watchable at the best of times, and the persistent promise of a brighter tomorrow is a running joke that's so old and well-worn that no one even bothers to complain about it anymore; at least not that much. And why should we? Cynicism at the idea that things might get better for us is as much a part of the club as the supporters who have to listen to the promises, as well as the people who have to try and make a better tomorrow happen.

At the bottom of the stairs outside the office entrance, I realised I didn't even have the QR code for Lakeside saved as a favourite in my Services Victoria app. Then picking up my membership, and while wearing a jersey from a few years ago now, I am told by a volunteer that it's time to update to a new jersey. My response to that is that I don't wear Kappa, so that could take awhile. The food was much the same, except for the food trucks outside which included an ice-cream truck, which along with the warm weather made it seem like an NSL revival.

Having only attended one pre-season game in the lead-up to the season opener - not that there were that many games to choose from - I had no idea about form, tactics, or expectations. All I wanted is for the team to try and score goals, which would be something to hang on to after last year's dire setup. It's easy to say you've defended well when you have six or seven players sitting so deep that you have no midfield. But that's not meant to be the South way, and it comes across as even sillier when people are falling over themselves to claim Ange Postecoglou and the pretty attacking football his teams play.

Look, I get that we're a world away from the personnel and training environments that could come close to emulating what Ange is doing, but there's also this: attacking football is more fun, for fans and for players. Conceding the initiative almost from the get-go, and preferring to try and absorb pressure from deep in your own half, is bloody draining. OK, so what was served up on Thursday wasn't necessarily pretty. in part because both teams were still underdone, especially the Bergers.

But my goodness it was exciting to watch us take the game on. Was it ball playing finesse work? No. Was is it an approach which could reliably produce more than a couple of chances a game? Yes. With the exception of a couple of teams which try and play a short passing game, NPL Victoria is still very much a turnover and counter-attack based affair. That's fine. I don't mind. As long as we consistently win the ball from midfield and not so deep that the opponent's goal looks like a mirage on the horizon, good things are more likely to happen.

Instead of bombing it to Harrison Sawyer with no support and no hope, we might this year be able to play both to and away from Sawyer. Andy Brennan put in a couple of decent corners. Max Mikkola can throw the ball a long way. Players being given the licence and setup to have a go means creating more chances, and more chance of luck going your way. Who knows how it will look when we fall behind, or playing against more capable and fitter teams. Who knows where Lirim Elmazi and Josh Wallen will fit into the team. 

But the most important thing was that the first half was enjoyable. We cruised home in the second half to the point where people could later focus on arguing about how large or small the crowd was, and how many people the Tardis space in the corporate areas can fit. We could focus on gimmick chants for winning "six points", and trying to get kids to lead certain chants.

Next game

Away to Bentleigh on Friday night.

2021 AGM date set

A date has been set - finally - for the dual 2021 annual general meetings. On Sunday March 6th at 11:00AM, the South Melbourne Hellas AGM will take place, followed by the South Melbourne FC AGM at 12:00. Both AGMs will of course be in the social club.

What happens if the season is cancelled again

Unfortunately buried deep within Joey Lynch's season preview on the Football Victoria site - I would have have preferred that it be posted in massive letters at the start of the piece - lies the answer to what happens if the season is cancelled again.

However, in the event that COVID does its unwelcome thing and the season is forced to be cancelled for the third-straight year, the premiership and promotion and relegation will all be determined via ladder position on the condition that at least 50% of the league’s fixtures have been played. If all teams have played the same amount of games it’s a pretty easy determination, but in the event that there is an uneven spread then a points per game basis will be used, followed by average goal difference per game, and then average goals for per game. 

So there you go, the protocol that should have existed a year ago and which could have saved us a lot of bother and the need for bespoke solutions, but didn't. 

Show me the money

This bit of news is a little bit out of date now, in that it's from February 1st, but it's worth noting nonetheless. Channel 10 reported back then that Ross Pelligra and the Pelligra Group had made an offer of around $20 million to purchase Adelaide United. 

You may know the Pelligra name from some of the sponsor boards around Lakeside, or the brand's prominent position on the scoreboard during matches. You may even remember the Pelligra name from our most recent A-League bid, even if you'd rather not remember that we made a bid, preferring instead to pretend that you were always in favour of pro-rel and a second division. Me, I always preferred the (hypothetical) drawbridge model; that is, getting in, pulling up the gate, and filling in the moat with crocodiles. But I digress.

Anyway, for that most recent bid of ours, Ross Pelligra and his property development concern were set to be the major financial backers for the entity representing South Melbourne Hellas in the A-League. So, that's one question answered three years down the line - yes, the money was actually there for a South aligned bid. The second question was a bit more current: would the Pelligra purchase of Adelaide United, and the Pelligra Group's wider Adelaide sporting interests, see a diminishing of its sponsorship of South Melbourne? At the moment, that does not appear the case. 

Maybe people can support both the A-League and a former NSL club? Shocking if true. Also kind of icky.

Australia Cup Mk II

No one at South needs to worry about this for a few weeks yet, but just in case you haven't caught up on this little bit of oldish news, the FFA Cup has been renamed to the Australia Cup. This change was likely deemed necessary when Football Federation Australia decided it no longer wanted to be a Federation, and instead wanted to... I don't actually know where I'm going with this, except to say that an unnecessary name change in one department has led to led to a stupid name change in another.

A handful of people reading this are probably aware that there was already once an Australia Cup for soccer, which ran from 1962-1968. It ran on a sort of Champions League format, in that qualification seemed to be offered not only to champions of the various state federations, but also state cup winners, and teams that finished in the upper echelons of the bigger state leagues. The original Australia Cup was ended due to the high cost of travel, and diminishing fan interest in the tournament - which was probably a reflection of the wider cooling off of interest in local soccer as the effects of the ethnic boom started to peter out.

The FFA Cup trophy was modeled on the Australia Cup trophy, which was named the Henry Seamonds Memorial Trophy in 1963, after the then recent passing of the Australian soccer administrator. You may recall that this trophy was found in a skip outside the Hakoah club in Sydney. After a refurbishment, the original trophy now resides with Caroline Springs George Cross, the 1964 winners of the Cup.Modeling the FFA Cup trophy on the Australia Cup trophy was a clever and respectful nod to the past, without claiming direct continuity. 

This name change though comes across as neither clever nor respectful, just slack. They could've named it after Alex Pongrass. They could've named it after Frank Lowy. They could've even named it after the skip they found the old trophy in.

The PR statements around the name change claim that there was consultation with people, and that everyone seemed to be happy with the name change. Well, they didn't consult me, or the other layabouts involved with Australian soccer history. Frankly, it's just an attempt to hitch a ride on the coattails of a defunct competition that was won by several now dead clubs no one cares about, played under a different format. Instead of doing something new or thoughtful, they did something cheap and lazy, which will muddle statistical compilation and historical narrative as people inevtiable conflate the two competitions. And they'll call it respecting history.

Around the streams

The future of NPL streaming is here, and it's called npl.tv, accessed via the "Cluch" app. Horrible name, who knows where the "t" ended up. Anyway, Cluch seems to be a streaming platform which focuses on a lot of minor sports, as well as second and third tier competitions of otherwise major sports. Four state federations have jumped on board with NPL TV, Football Victoria being one of them.

The service - which you need to register for - is available via a phone app, and also via desktop through the NPL TV website. At the moment it's a free service, and I haven't seen any indication yet of if or when that might change to a paid service. You do have to wonder though at what point someone will actually try and make some money from this. 

The opening weekend hasn't been all smooth sailing for the new service, with reports of crashes, games not even starting, and people struggling to sign up. Having not watched any of the games on a television via Chromecast or some such, I can't vouch for whether the video quality is better (significantly or otherwise) than the YouTube or Facebook streams. I don't know squat about smart TVs and such, so I can't elaborate on how those things will work, except that Apple TV and Android TV applications are in the works

I have a pretty dated Nokia smartphone, with a small screen and not much of a memory cache, but I was surprised at how well the app worked for the most part. There was some minor, occasional buffering, but otherwise I didn't seem to run into some of the problems others were reporting. I was not exactly thrilled however that the phone app seems to redirect to a browser function rather than merely running the stream through the app itself.

The desktop variant is much the same, but here's where I ran into some problems - namely that some streams didn't even seem to be working, as in the case of Avondale vs Bentleigh, including the quite unhelpful message "this video file cannot be played: error code 232011". At least there was a backup YouTube stream for all of this week's games, which I found myself defaulting to in preference to the app and desktop options. In time, once the new app overcomes its teething problems, it is likely that this service will see the end of the Facebook and YouTube streams we have become accustomed to using for the past few season. The Facebook streams are already gone, and the YouTube streams seem to exist mostly as a backup. 

This is a pity, though I do understand the reasoning behind it. No point in making a big song and dance about a new streaming platform, and then having a competing service running against it. Part of NPL TV's reason for existing will be to gather more accurate demographic data about who is watching Australian second tier soccer, likely minus much of the European and Asian gambling fraternity which piggybacked off the more easily accessible Facebook and YouTube streams. It's the kind of data that might prove useful for trying to figure out how to make a possible national second division broadcasting arrangement work.

The NPL TV desktop and app options have a couple of nice features, the best of which is a list of videos of important moments within each game such as goals, shots on goal, corners won, and cards dished out. Of these, the "corners won" feature is clearly the most pointless, but it's nice not to have fling back and forth on a whole match timeline looking for footage of goals. 

Switching to that highlights menu, and especially switching between games, is a pain in the arse. Others have also bemoaned the inability to start watching a game from any given point in time, being forced to watch the game from that moment you log in. After giving both the app and desktop version a run, and despite being pleased with some of the NPL TV add-ons, I still find the YouTube stream easier to use, just because it's so much easier to switch between different simultaneous streams. With so many overlapping matches, I'll likely be sticking to the YouTube option until its no longer available.

Scaffolding news

Viewers may have also noticed that many of the camera angles on the opening round's streams were closer to ground level than is usually the case. I noticed this at first on the stream of the Port Melbourne vs St Albans game yesterday, though I should have also noted that it was the case at some other games I watched, like Dandenong City vs Melbourne Knights.

This is because the kinds of temporary scaffolding many clubs use for camera and commentary positions are no longer covered by Football Victoria's public liability insurance. It's a change in policy which seems to follow in the wake of the tragic death last year of a Queensland man, who was crushed by collapsing media scaffolding while watching his son play.

The only way to change the status of such temporary scaffolding is to convert the relevant temporary structures into permanent ones; or to follow a three step process whereby the third party provider/installer of a temporary structure (which may include a local council) provides a certificate of currency, as well as significant liability insurance of its own.

It makes you wonder about the day in 2014 when South fans put together a temporary gantry out at Werribee. Goodness knows who would have been liable if anything happened to Tim the cameraman on that day.

Final thought

A shame about the minute's silence for Ulysses Kokkinos. Hell of a time for the PA system to go awry. So it goes.

Friendly vs Manningham tomorrow

The match against Manningham is at Lakeside on Wednesday night, with kickoff at 8pm. Memberships will also be available for purchase and collection.

An assortment of items

Except for a lucky few, the flicker of love fades over time. Or at least it changes. Nothing stays as it was. But never doubt my commitment to this club on my good days. Sure, those good days might be fewer in number than they used to be, but what kind of idiot would otherwise take a train out to Dandenong on a Saturday evening for a practice match, unless his level of commitment was at some sort of peak?

I decided to add value to the trip by making a stop into the State Library, ostensibly to check out a couple things on newspaper microfilm. First, anything to do with two matches in Shepparton, one in 1960 and the other in 1961, between girls teams from Shepparton and Echuca, following a lead in a copy of Soccer News that has otherwise been lost to the digital ages. 

Going through the Shepparton News though, I did find one South Melbourne Hellas item of interest, a match report of a post-season friendly against Hakoah from October 1961, played at the Shepparton Showgrounds. There's all sorts of curious moments, but the one I want to focus on today is the observation by the journalist that Hellas played a short passing game, and Hakoah a long ball game. Oh, to be following a team that plays the short passing game that Hellas is adept at, instead of whatever it is we were trying to do the past few years.

Anyway, the journey from the State Library to Dandenong was interrupted by a rail replacement scheme, which meant that I missed the first bus connection to George Andrews Reserve from Dandy station, and had a 25 minute wait until the next bus... so vending machine chocolate and Christos Tsiolkas' latest thing to pass the time. Arriving to the ground five minutes late, I am made aware that we scored within the first 30 seconds of the game. But what game? I can safely say that collectively, our new and old attacking options look a cut above what he had last year, and that in general the whole team looks more assertive.

But it's just a pre-season friendly, against a mediocre looking opponent, who were absent their talismanic striker from last season because he's shopping himself around for better offers. So, several below par opponents might help build a bit of confidence and fitness, but it's nothing reliable to attach your hopes to. Even Marcus Schroen scoring another free kick - this one looking a lot more legit than some of the other ones against dodgier looking walls and goalkeepers - does nothing more than set up a situation where I get made when he doesn't get close during the whole season proper.

The thing is, however, that any sort of show of concern - of anticipation or of dread - would be stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. It used to be that there was chat about what every team is doing, who they'd signed, who they playing against pre-season. Now there's almost nothing. I know I've said it a few times, but this is really worrying. Hopefully the first few rounds, stacked with a couple of derbies for us, helps light things up, but at the moment we're in an awful, league-wide state of malaise, that might be only partly due to the pandemic.  

But like I said, love is a funny thing. A few years ago I would've moved heaven and earth schedule wise to get to South's next friendly, probably on Wednesday, likely against another lower league opponent. Instead I'll be at the Myer Music Bowl with a mate, at a concert by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. I was told a few years ago, by the most alarmingly intelligent and well-read student I came across in my uni teaching days, that the MSO was more or less a third-rate orchestra; but since I'm a comparative philistine in such matters, and the concert is free, that it doesn't matter so much as long as you have good company. 

And pandemic permitting, there'll be plenty of chances to see South this year, right?

Like doughnuts signings, and the possibility of more doughnuts signings to come

The club has signed another attacking player, one Jai Ingham. People may remember Ingham from his Hume City days; while others will remember him playing for Melbourne Victory, because they are bad people who watch the A-League. Ingham was very recently signed by Gold Coast Knights, who also put out a terse press release noting that Ingham was no longer a player of theirs. How long he remains one of ours, well, that's for Fate to decide.

In any case, it looks like we are throwing the cheque book at all sorts of older already credentialed people, while the stated goal, made so many AGMs, of trying to get more of our own juniors into the team, becomes something that only gets said at AGMs. "Yoof!", as the Victory fans used to say about something or other.

By the way, when is the next AGM?

Accredited again

Just a passing note that I have once again been accredited as an official media pass holder by Football Victoria. It was a near run thing though. I tried to apply roughly when the applications came out late last year, or early this year, but the system would not accept my photo upload. Wouldn't have a bar of it. Not interested. A sloppy email sent to the FV communications team alerting them to this fact, and letting them know to just to re-use last year's application if that was allowed, was met with no response. The application deadline drifted by, and I just figured to myself that maybe I would just pay to get into away games in 2022, I'm on a concession card anyway; and besides, the blog's output has been comparatively crap for years now.

Then FV extended the application time-frame, I tried the site again, and this time it worked. And later I got an email saying you are accredited, and isn't that nice? No need to lineup, no need to pay to get it, and all I need to do to maintain that status is keep up a reasonable output of nonsense. A more daunting task than it used to be.

Friendly on Saturday night at Thunder

7pm senior kickoff, 5pm for the u21s at George Andrews Reserve.