Seventeen - South Melbourne 5 Hume City 0

Perfunctory match report

First half, quite good in terms of taking down an opponent likely to be near the bottom third of the table.

The second half was pure slop.

How old is seventeen really?

This post is late because I wrote about 1700 words of self-indulgent junk trying to figure out what the hell happened on Friday night, and what should happen next. That was 1700 words where I'd maybe only got halfway through writing the damn thing. This extended thought bubble is also strictly about male football, because female sport - and the cultural infantilisation of such by various parts of the media and the public sphere - is a whole other kettle of fish.

To be honest, it's probably better to fret less, and get to the point. We were 1-0 up early against Hume, and then Marcus Schroen, the scorer of that opening goal, took a shot which was well saved by the Hume goalkeeper Lucas Trenkovski with his legs. The ball remained in play however, and the South attacking move continued until striker Harrison Sawyer hit a low and relatively tame shot from the edge of the box, which was easily gathered by Trenkovski in the six yard box. 

The crowd's attention momentarily drifted away from the scene, as the save allowed for a natural moment of pause, one of many where a football crowd is not obligated to be as focused as they might be at a more pivotal moment. As Hume's defenders turned around, and as South's players turned their backs to the ball in order to retreat toward their own half of the field, Trenkovski attempted to get up from the ground after his save. As he did so, the ball slipped from his grasp and fell back across the goal line. 

One Hume defender saw this happen, his hands going to his head in shock. The South Melbourne ball-boys behind the goal reacted the same way. Instinctively, Trenkovski reached across the line to collect the loose ball and turn up field,  running past the edge of the six yard box almost as if nothing unusual had happened. The referee was alert though, and ruled for a goal. The time which elapsed from Sawyer's muddled shot to the referee's whistle for the goal was barely seven seconds.

The South players celebrated, and the crowd slowly caught on to what happened. Clarendon Corner began fumbling through the NPL TV app on their phones searching for the footage that we missed in person. Just four minutes after conceding that goal, an angled shot from Andy Brennan appears to go through the hands of Trenkovski, with the scraps tapped in by Schroen.

At least that's my view from Clarendon Corner, a view partially obscured by the congestion of the players in the 18 yard box. It's also a viewing position which is separated from the goal at the lake end of the ground by about 100 metres of grass, a ten-lane running track, a concrete concourse, and about eight rows of grandstand seating. In actuality, Brennan's shot was somewhat mishit. It bounced awkwardly in front of the goalkeeper, who managed to parry it away - ineffectively as it turned out - onto the chest of the oncoming Schroen, who in all honesty would have had zero time to react to the ball hitting him after the save.

Those two suspect goals in four minutes led to what would, in any normal league with semi-organised and vocal supporter groups at every ground, an entirely expected reaction: chants and commentary directed at the goalkeeper and his nightmare of a game to that point. Now most of the clubs in the Victorian top-tier don't have anything resembling "active" support, and so a bad day at the office would ordinarily be limited to banter from the odd keen supporter daring to supply witty comments, or a player seeking to further humiliate a vulnerable opponent, in the hope of seeking a further psychological edge.

Unfortunately for Trenkovski, his bad day was at a venue and a club with a vestigial element of active support. There was the usual, unimaginative stuff, like "pass it back to the keeper", and elevated excitement any time the ball got anywhere near him. There was also stuff more specific to local soccer history, especially the Southern Stars match fixing scandal of 2013, and the ongoing interest of foreign gamblers who pollute the social media pages of local teams when they lose their bets.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the chants and commentary. There wasn't anything particularly offensive. Whether it was even funny was perhaps in the eye of the beholder. There was certainly nothing personal in it, because we didn't know the bloke in goals for Hume. But at half time, a woman (who we later learned was a parent of a Hume player) came down to Clarendon Corner to berate us for targeting the goalkeeper, which caused a shouting match between the woman and members of Clarendon Corner. Her main point was to leave the player alone, because he's only seventeen years old, and the backup goalkeeper is only sixteen.

She was eventually convinced to leave the area. Within Clarendon Corner, there was bemusement at the incident, and also anger. Anger, because people felt that we hadn't actually crossed any lines. Anger also because we have been the victims of much more than merely verbal abuse at the hands of people associated with Hume City, on more than one occasion. But there's also laughter at the absurdity of the whole exchange, and mocking consideration of her request. I took it a little more seriously, suggesting for the sake of not causing further issues, because there's nothing to be gained from further humiliating a seventeen year old - and seeing as we were 4-0 up at halftime - that we ease off on the issue.

Besides which, we have a pretty ordinary track record of accidentally (and sometimes less accidentally) upsetting friends and relatives of players and coaches in this league, both from South and from the opposition. Which, when you think about it, is not such a hard thing to do, when a good chunk of an NPL Victoria crowd is made up of friends and relatives of players and other personnel.

The self-declared attempt at abstention from making comment on the goalkeeper worked for a while. But the second half was complete rubbish, and boredom and distraction set in. The game not providing suitable entertainment, we searched for ways to entertain ourselves. And so the earlier "banter" is adapted to the newly acquired knowledge about the keeper's age. "You can't drive!". "You can't drink!". "You can't vote". The adaptation of the usual "you're shit" chant from goal kicks into "you're seventeen". And of course, renditions of songs about being seventeen, like this classic.

The game ended on one more farcical note. Bumbling defending saw Trenkovski come out of his box to make a harried clearance. It was not a good one. South won possession in midfield, and Harrison Sawyer strolled through near non-existent pressure from Hume, and scored with the final kick of the game. After the final whistle, Sawyer, Brennan, Schroen and Alun Webb all went over to speak briefly to Trenkovski, and that appeared to be that. A bad day for the goalkeeper, and a bad day for his team.

Post match in the social club, there appeared to be no carry-on or after effects of the whole affair. Some Hume players stayed back for a meal, but most did not. Attention turned, at least for me and those I'm speaking with, to looking ahead to next week, and trying to get someone to put the footy on on the big screen.

That should have been the end of the matter, except that I haven't really been able to stop thinking about the incident from halftime. More specifically, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the particular choice of argument the woman chose to use: "he's only seventeen". What does "he's only seventeen" actually mean? Is there an implication that his age makes him more fragile, and less resilient to such banter than a more experienced player? Is it that he's too inexperienced in the ways of the senior footballing world to comprehend, understand, contextualise, and deal with the attention being paid to him by opposition fans?

And let's then take the implication of her argument one step further - at what age is it OK for a player to be heckled by opposition supporters? Where do you even start with this question, and how much are the possible answers informed by probably faulty notions of common sense? So seventeen is out. Is 20 OK? In 2019 when he was 22 and we were standing behind his goal, because we were spectacularly unenthusiastic about our team on the night, then Hume City goalkeeper Michael Weier begged us to throw some shade his way, We had been doing that since he was about 20. At no point did we know his age. It didn't seem important I suppose. 

Oh, I understand that a 17 year old playing senior football - and especially a goalkeeper - is likely to be under more risk of failing to live up to the grade than a more seasoned player. That goes for the mental, as well as the physical and technical aspects. And I see where the argument comes in - we should be supporting player development, and we should be more aware of mental health matters.

But we must also remember that until halftime, Clarendon Corner had no idea who Lucas Trenkovski was, except that he was the opposition goalkeeper. We didn't know his history, and certainly not his age. We didn't even know his name after the game. When we first dropped back into the state comps, your average Clarendon Corner fan knew a lot more about the identities of opposition players. That's mostly because a not insignificant chunk of them were either former players of ours, or notable rival players from the NSL. Nowadays, unless they're once more a notable former player who almost inevitably left our club on bad terms, we have next to no idea who most of the blokes running around for the opposition are. 

Turns out Trenkovski is just some kid making only his fifth start in senior football. Quite why Hume is banking on a seventeen year-old keeper is anyone's guess. Maybe he's actually not too bad of a goalkeeper? I don't know. But people out there - maybe even me, sometimes - they'll use the line if you're good enough, you're old enough. And added to that, if you're good enough to play, you're old enough to take the hits on the field, and the commentary off it.

Of course, there used to be far more up for grabs on the heckling front. Racist abuse persists, but is largely frowned upon nowadays. Sexist abuse is more prevalent, and persistent. Homophobic abuse is still going to be with us for a long time unfortunately. But even so, those three categories are at least the subject of regulations within rules of the governing body. But making fun of a player having a bad night, in such a manner that someone might consider it a mental health issue? Is that the next frontier? In which case, is there any place for booing, jeering, or condemning the play of an opponent?

Maybe. But back to the original question. Assuming that there is an age where you can start mocking an opponent, what is the formula for figuring out what the appropriate age is? How many games does the player need under his belt before he becomes fair game? Does the level of competition influence when you can "go"someone? And should the player's position have any bearing on the matter? 

One of the arguments made within Clarendon Corner was that since it is senior football, that any player taking the field should be aware of the possibility of receiving disparaging remarks about the quality of his play. So we have an ethical demarcation already - in junior sport in Australia, where youth sport is in theory at least primarily about player development, companionship, and not entertainment for spectators, such conduct from supporters would be less acceptable, perhaps even unacceptable.

We can take that argument further. The game being played on Friday night was not only of a senior level, but it was, in an Australian context, a comparatively high level affair. Compromised though the Australian soccer second tier is by being split eight or nine different ways, this was still in effect a second division match. Furthermore, players in the Victorian division of this fractured national second-tier are playing in the best or second-best of these second-tier competitions. 

The players also get paid, usually quite well considering the paucity of income they generate for their clubs or the league as a whole. Yes, payment for their services is due in terms of the high level of commitment players must make to training (including pre-seasons) and playing, effectively across about nine-to-ten months of the year. So the players are, even in their semi-professional state, professionals. And there is, I think, an unspoken acknowledgment that if you're getting paid to play, you're also getting paid to be cannon fodder for spectators.

That sounds awful when we actually spell it out like that, but it's not a new idea. Not everyone is onboard the bandwagon of integrating hate alongside love in sport, but it's been a persistent theme since sport's day dot. Can we excise hate out of competitive sporting contests? Or should we just cut our losses and strap on P Plates onto young and/or inexperienced players? Not that that stops certain fully-licenced drivers from having a go at learner and probationary drivers.

Being perhaps just a couple of steps short of phrenology, we should also be careful into how much we read into how Trenkovski's body language during and immediately after the match. This is not only because the vast majority of us have no expertise in such matters, but also because - again - we don't know him. At various times during the night he was angry - with himself or his teammates - or inconsolable, like he wante the earth to swallow him up. Any one one of those things could be indications of a faltering mental state, but equally they could also be perfectly normal reactions to playing a shit game?

We could say that his inexperience and/or his mistakes are due in part to the overestimation of Trenkovski's abilities by Hume's coaches. Or that the reaction to his mistakes by Clarendon Corner is because we didn't know he was just a kid. But Hume's coaching staff... OK, so you chuck a young player in to play who may or may not be ready. Until you do it, you may very well not know. Maybe he has four solid games, and you think this is going well. And then he has a stinker. I mean, his whole team has a stinker, but he makes the worst play of the night.

Some of his teammates rallied around him, and at the end of the game, so did some of his opponents. But maybe that attention only further served to remind him that he played poorly. Even keeping him out on the field, though it could be seen as an attempt at reinforcing trust in him and building his resilience, could be interpreted as psychological tokenism. Goalkeepers have enough to worry about without having to second guess whether their own team trusts them to do a job.

Perhaps the final word should go to Brandon Galgano, who was one of the commentators of the live-stream on the night. Galgano - a goalkeeper himself in his playing days - noted that seeing as Hume were keeping Trenkovski out there, the best thing to do would be to stay on your feet and keep going. I remember watching Galgano playing for Moreland City, where the final score of 1-0 to Brunswick City was due in part do a Galgano error. On the video, you can even hear one Brunswick fan yell out "Hey Galgano, put that in your highlights reel". 

People, and sport, can be cruel. Maybe the point is to be a little less cruel when we can. 

Next game

Green Gully on Saturday, in Ballarat. Don't know why this is in Ballarat, though it would be nice to know. I'll be taking the train and then a bus to the Ballarat Regional Soccer Facility at Morshead Park. I assume that, partly because of covid protocols, and partly because of inherent lack of fan interest, that the club will not be providing a supporter bus option to this match.

Australia Cup news

The fixture details for our Australia Cup match against Avondale have been confirmed. The match will be at Broadmeadows Valley Park (Hume City's ground), on Wednesday March 30th at 7:30PM.

Some basic ideas from improvements to the social club experience

Working beer taps.

Souvlaki that comes in a roll, rather than a panini.

Non-cardboard buns for the burgers.

A souvlaki open plate option, which seems eminently doable.

Footy on the TV screens after a match.

Final thought

You know, I don't even know if Trenkovski registered any of the crowd noise.