Solid Sunday Entertainment - St Albans 1 South Melbourne 4

Churchill Reserve being probably the second closest NPL venue to my house, I decided to get there super early on Sunday. I even drove there, because that would only take about 15 minutes, whereas the equivalent public transport trip would take close to an hour, which does not seem ideal for a seven kilometre trip. Plus if you get there early enough, there's a nice parking spot in the shade on Fox Street. Then again, if the price of petrol keeps going up, I might as well walk to games like this.

I got to the ground in time for the under 21s, and parking myself in between the two benches, I must say that I was left asking myself a lot of questions. First, whose bright idea was it to have our away kit look like a Carlton SC away kit? Frankly, it was a little sickening, and having to see that for the rest of the year isn't going to be easy.

But more questions, this time related to junior development. Now granted that on any given topic, there's always someone who knows less than you do, I'm still somewhere near the bottom of the knowledge pyramid when it comes to junior or youth soccer. But there's always a chance to learn more, even if that attempt at gaining knowledge is limited to a couple of games a year.

Do we place enough emphasis on the difference between being robotic and being automatic? I ask this, because I have come across complaints about youth players under various methods (often attributed to this or that "curriculum"), and the tendency to create robotic players who are unable to adapt to unfamiliar or especially to dynamic situations. 

And the micromanagement of the players by the coaches! I understand that they are youth players, and that they need instruction, but at what point should players in this age group (under 21s, so say about 16-18 year olds) no longer need to be constantly told where to stand, where to run, and what pass to make? At what point do not only the individual players themselves take charge of their own positioning and decision making, but also certain players adopt leadership roles to help implement whatever game plan the coach has them playing under?

I won't make much if any comment on things like the quality of first touches, or when's the right time to play back to the keeper, or decision making as it relates to playing on a small ground that has more ups and downs than a vinyl oval from the Test Match board game that's been gathering dust in a cupboard for the past 25 years. 

One thing I do know, though, is that it's never a wise idea for match officials to get involved with banter with the hoi polloi standing behind the fence. I mean, you can usually answer a rudimentary question about something that just happened without too much harm, and maybe at a more social level the whole experience is a bit more relaxed. But that young man running the line would have done better to not take the bait of arguing with a mouthy St Albans fan (and self-declared NPL player), because nothing good will come of it.

An attempt at a well-thought out post on the senior match held last Sunday is pointless if you were standing on the outer side of Churchill Reserve. That ground has to have some of the worst sight-lines in Victorian soccer, with only the social club wing affording anything approaching near unimpeded views. And of course I didn't stand on that side of the ground, but instead on the Fox Street wing, where my view was blocked by fencing, media scaffolding, poles, metal benches, and lots of people. Imagine a finals match played there, with say, double the crowd of Sunday's match?

But let me first digress a little further. If you did not attend because you are slack, not only did you miss on another great victory for Hellas, but you also missed out on one of the worst attempts at mowing a lawn you've ever seen. While our view of the game was poor, South of the Border had a first class seat to watch a shambles of an attempt at mowing a nature strip. Not sure why the bloke living across the street decided that kickoff was the right time to start mowing a lawn, but each to their own I suppose.

Initially I thought the rumble in the background was the generator being used to keep the batteries running on the camera for the live stream, but a quick look behind us saw our man in his hat, hi-viz, and gloves wielding his machine like he was trying to stab the grass. Now I'm no lawn mowing expert, but I'm pretty sure the general idea is to just mow one lane of grass, and then go back the other way slightly to the left (or right) of whatever line you just mowed?

This bloke looked like he was a devil of a time, though he did get one bit right, when he tossed a small branch onto his neighbour's nature strip. We've all done that, because you know it will come back to your side eventually, and there's nothing malicious in the act. It's the kind of entertainment you wouldn't get in a national second division loaded with proper grounds.

The senior match seemed to go the way most of our games have gone so far this season. Fair start, messy middle, reasonable finish. That whole messy middle bit is an ongoing concern, especially when we come up against better teams. Again, there were signs of panic and an inability to wrest the initiative when under sustained pressure. The small ground however meant that in this case, flailing long balls to Harry Sawyer were automatically more dangerous than they would be on a larger ground.

Improved set piece taking - and decision making - has been a boon so far this season, and so it proved again on Sunday, with corners and such helping bail us out when we needed it most. Credit to Pat Langlois and his surely unsustainable run of headed goals. Credit also to Max Mikkola, Jai Ingham, and sub for this week Alun Webb for at least showing that we'll be a consistent counter attacking threat this season. In 2021, we scored just 19 goals in 18 leagues matches. We're already up to 12 from 4 games in 2022. 

Once we get Sawyer not trying to jump too high to connect with crosses he could really just walk to, we might be even stronger. Sometimes I'm not sure that he realises how tall he actually is.

The real hardcore cynics out there, in an attempt to outdo themselves, are still stuck in a 2018-2021 mindset, counting down the points needed to reach 30 in order to claim safety from relegation. Half-joke it may be, but I think this season's personnel make relegation extremely unlikely. If this team doesn't make finals, it'd be an astonishing failure. 

There are defensive issues, issues with tactics, issues with giving up initiative for long periods of time, and of course the possibility that we haven't exactly come up against the strongest opponents as of yet. But for the most part the 2022 team has not been a side cobbling together undeserved points, but rather one that has deserved, clearly, to win at least three of its four games so far. It might not yet be time to believe that good things will inevitably happen, but it might soon be time to start things that bad things inevitably will.

Next game

Hume City at home on Friday night. This is an ordinary match, for an ordinary three points. How dull.

In case you were wondering

That's four from four from our eight twenty-twenty-one six pointers for twenty-twenty-two. 

Here at South of the Border we're going to track this novelty as it relates to us, though good luck to anyone trying to keep tabs on how the entirety of the bespoke solution is going. Our revised 2021 points tally is now 37 points, well clear of the hypothetical relegation placings; and with Port Melbourne being docked 18 points for 2021, we're also in with a real shot at a hypothetical finals place.

For the record, we have four more bespoke six point matches to go:

• Round 9, at home against Oakleigh
• Round 13, at home against Avondale
• Round 15, away to Eastern Lions
• Round 25, at home against Dandenong City

Australia Cup news

The Australia Cup fourth round draw was conducted last week, and we were drawn against away to Avondale. Oh well, we had a good run. Just for the record, Victoria has been granted five spots in this year's national stage of the cup. Because there was no national NPL championship last season - of which the winner would receive a place in the Australia Cup as a reward - Victoria was granted that extra spot because the state's superior performances in FFA Cup tournaments past.

NPL TV app updates 

The other week on the steps outside the social club, a fellow Hellatzi noted that the Cluch app on his Android phone wasn't working - furthermore, it was asking for an update which didn't seem to exist in the Google Play Store. Whatever the issue seemed to be, it had not yet caught up to my ancient Nokia - but South of the Border eventually reached that point on Saturday while trying to catch up with some of the overnight goals. 

An uninstall/reinstall maneuver only managed to turn my phone's Cluch app into the soccer-less, and largely pointless version of the app that's been available on Google Home devices. Not ideal. A search for NPL TV in the Play Store did unearth an NPL TV specific app however; so if you came across the same problem of your Cluch app carking it, it seems like we are being migrated across to a new app.

Now, it does seem like that there are incremental improvements being made to the product, like the ability to go back and forth in ten second increments, as well as rewind in some games, but I haven't really had the chance to check it out fully. I'm not even sure if they've added the ability to pause matches. Still, what we wait for most is a smart TV app so we're no longer casting from PCs.

But I'm told it's still a much better product than whatever Paramount+ is offering for its A-League coverage, so apparently I shouldn't complain so much.

Final thought

Oh boy, those Dinamo kids behind the goal with those firecrackers. Someone could blown a finger off, or an ear drum out, or... well, since no security or marshals cared on the day, I probably shouldn't either.