The perils of being asked to believe again - Hume City 1 South Melbourne 3

Everyone apparently hates Saturday games, so here was another Saturday game; at least this time it wasn't out fault. I watched a bit of NPL 1 and 2 action on the train. Eastern Lions vs Dandy City, with Dandy 1-0 up, and then 2-0 up with old mate Kosta Stratomitros getting sent off for what looked like dissent; a course of events which when related to another South fan prompted the response, "how could he get sent off for dissent? He doesn't even speak English!". My thinking is that it's possible that with the plentiful amount of Greeks refereeing in our division these days, Kosta could have been unlucky. 

At 2-0 I drew a line through both that game an Lions' tenure in NPL1, and moved onto North Geelong vs Langwarrin, which included old mate Fraser Maclaren in goal for the visitors. That game looked to be heading to a 1-0 win to North - whose Elcho Park home still has an NPL sponsor banner with PS4 branding - but Perry Mur must've found a penalty for Langwarrin deep into injury time; a sequence of play that I did not get to see, because I had to get off at Coolaroo station about ten minutes before the end of that game. 

I got to the ground around 5:15, with the thinking that at least I'll be able to see most of the curtain-raiser. Well, that plan was scuppered when I found that upon arrival, the match was already well into its second half, having inexplicably started an hour earlier than the match really had any right to. Hume have experimented with kickoff times for its curtain raisers - including having them not be the curtain raiser, but rather the closer - but the point of having the match finish a full hour before the scheduled start of the senior match is still perplexing to me.

Anyway, when I arrived it was 1-0 to our reserves with about a half hour to go. Then Hume got a red card, then they levelled, and then they botched about 2-3 very good chances to win the game. It finished 1-1, and I learned nothing about who may or may not be a good senior team prospect from our side. That lack of insight is probably more on me though, seeing as how apart from not being particularly impressed with either side, I was also distracted by the frequent appearance of low flying aircraft. Now I previously lived under a flight-path, and currently reside adjacent to one, but neither of those situations was quite the same as having jets fly so close so as to drown out conversation with the person next to you.

Still, there's only so many descending planes you can look at while waiting an hour for the senior game to start. That's time that had to be filled in with a chicken kebab (a little dry, but good flavour), a can of sour cherry nectar (savoured, slowly), and waiting for South people to turn up. That eventually happened, where we discussed the late collapse of South senior women's team against Heidelberg earlir that afternoon, and we then watched the frenetic warm-up of the senior men. No Max Mikolla, who was put with five yellow cards, no Josh Wallen on the bench, who was injured and also suspended. Perry Lambropoulos was back on the bench, after a long injury lay off. 

 

Hume had been in better form of late, but thanks to Dandy City's win earlier in the day, were now in the relegation zone. Their crowds - such as they were - have fallen away, much like our own and pretty much every other team's. Best indication of how everyone's crowds have dropped is people discussing how easy it is to get in and out of a car park after a game. 

In this match we reverted somewhat to early season type, and put this game out of its misery within about a half hour. No long throws, no goals from penalties, no goals from corners of free kicks. It was all rather dull, straightforward stuff. Second half, the cue was put firmly in the rack, and Hume managed to get a late consolation goal which negated the payment of a clean-sheet bonus. One couldn't call that second half performance a fade-out, though some people may still want to try, because we were so in control of the very little that happened. 

But the really horrible thing is how soft everyone has gotten. Everyone hated the coach, the way we play(ed), and now it's like... not so much of a big deal. People have turned. Apparently all it took was 14 wins from 18 games, as opposed to a mere 13 wins, and the maintenance of a four point gap at the top. So people are now like... maybe I was wrong. Or maybe after the awful results of the last few years, this isn't so bad. And like, Harry Sawyer doesn't look a baby giraffe anymore, but rather an accomplished and versatile striker who maybe should be playing in a better league. Esteban Quintas is no longer an out and out fraud, and perhaps no longer even being carried in 2022 by the superior playing personnel at his disposal, but has been turned into a more considerate, changed man, more flexible, more willing to delegate.

Editorial extract from Soccer News,
  vol. 01, no. 02, 1948.

It's the same kind of guff I heard a lot of when Collingwood made its unexpected run to a grand final loss in 2018, with Nathan Buckley almost becoming a coach worth cheering for.  It's like watching someone who's been burned before, slowly learning to love again. And it's sickening. The team that was considered to be taking advantage of inferior and under-prepared opposition, riding its luck on set pieces, relying on 20 minutes of good play and the acrobatic exploits of its goalkeeper, is now being touted as well, a passable unit. Perhaps more than passable. Me, until that grand final trophy is in our hands, I'm going to cling on to the idea that the only reason we're good, is that everyone is actually not what we term really good.

Next game

Green Gully at home on Friday night.

Because some of you are still wondering

After noting in the most recent match report that, barring some unfortunate accident, our senior men had mathematically avoided relegation, I suppose it's only fair to provide an update on what's going with the other irrelevant ladder race: in this case, the 2021 Bespoke Championship.

Without going back to check, I believe that the last time I posted about this matter would have been around about the time we played and lost to Oakleigh away. At the time, that result was counted by Football Victoria as three Bespoke Championship points for Oakleigh, even though it should not have been counted as such because it was an Oakleigh home match, and not a South home game which should have been designated as the relevant fixture for this nonsense.

I didn't expect FV to correct the mistake this century, but it appears that they actually have. So kudos to them for keeping up with the farce. That's more than can be said for Avondale, who have gone rather silent on their socials about this monstrosity that they helped bring into existence, as well as the anecdotal suggestion that they've been blocking from their Facebook page anyone who brings up the current status of Bespoke Championship.

For our part, as you can see on the table on the left, South is out of the running for the Bespoke Championship, with only Oakleigh and Avondale left to duke it out. Oakleigh's remaining fixture is against our good selves in a few weeks time, while Avondale play against Port the following week to wrap up the meaningful part of this meaningless exercise.

Slightly more relevant

We're 15 points clear of seventh place, with just 24 more points up for grabs - and with neither sixth or seventh place able to get any more points off us.

Final thought

Thanks to Johnny for the lift back to Sunshine, it was much appreciated.

Another day, another win - South Melbourne 4 St Albans 0

Another week, another terrible crowd. One could blame the cold, the timeslot, the lack of outside beers, the uninspiring opponent, the general lack of hope, waiting for the NSD, covid, live-streams, camping, long weekend getaways, birthday parties, not being invited to the player auction night, the kids, traffic snarls, political strife at home and abroad. But I promise you, the second all those things go away, people will turn up to watch South again. 

I would have got to the ground fifteen minutes earlier than the already absurd time I got to the ground, were it not for two blokes punching on in the first arriving (and quite crowded) route 12 tram at the corner of Collins and Spencer. Well, it was more like one tall bloke punching on with a much smaller bloke, with the tall bloke being held back by a small Asian woman, and the small bloke eventually getting off the tram and having his meager possessions tossed out onto the tram platform.

Suffice to say, I was happy enough to let that tram go and wait for the next one even if it was another 15 minutes or so away. What good would turning up earlier have done anyway? I'd already had lunch, and the assumption that there would be anyone I knew in the social club to have a quiet drink with turned out to be way off base. Everyone's got something better to do. At least there was time for one member of staff behind the bar to learn about the existence of the "scotch and dry". 

In such miserable circumstances, it only made sense to pick the wonkiest table in the room upon which to sip my drink, while watching the live stream on my phone of the women's team losing to FV Emerging in the arena outside. I have my reasons for not heading outside; and I was watching the game on my phone, because none of the television screens in the social club were on, probably because the only person who seems to know how to operate them was also not in attendance on Saturday.

Eventually enough familiar people turned up that it was worth moving to a non-wonky table, and then the game was on and one had to step outside into - it must be said - the not really all that cold weather, notwithstanding Max Mikkola wearing gloves, which South of the Border will forgive for obvious reasons. Once more, as with the past few weeks, we were forced from our regular Clarendon Corner bay, into the middle of the stand. Apparently that area that's closed off to patrons is still undergoing painting works, though people are now suspecting that it's just another cost cutting measure. While we were still able to set up camp in Row H, it nevertheless feels like being a migrant in a new country trying to replicate your existence 

Some matches zip by, while others seem to hang around. This was one of the latter. When we opened the scoring at what point past the twenty minute mark that it was, I was shocked that it we weren't so much closer to half time. Credit to Max Mikkola for that opening goal, making the most of his initially crappy free kick attempt to volley home a belter that I was oohing over almost as soon as it left his boot. Credit also to Marcus Schroen for letting someone else take a free kick. It's called delegating, and every leader should become accustomed to doing it.

Max's next goal, soon afterwards, was much more straightforward, except for a bit in the lead-up which ended up seeing Nikola Jurkovic get sent off. We assumed at the time it was some sort of dissent, but replays suggest that Jurkovic tried to elbow one of our players in the head while aiming to try and block our player from running downfield. Classic Jurkovic move, and that pretty much sealed the game. One more goal from a Max long throw, and another from a Max cross, and that was more than enough to settle this one. 

Incidentally, the best bit about the fourth goal, which was achieved by a lovely angled header by Schroen, is showing exactly what Marcus is best - forward play, as a sort of pseudo-second striker, something like his performance in the 2016 grand final. 

That's something for the top brass to think about, while I muse on other things, like an injured Josh Wallen deliberately getting a yellow card, so that inevitably missing the upcoming Hume isn't a complete waste.  One person did put up the suggestion that instead of potentially scoring a fifth goal, it would have been preferable to concede a goal, because that would at least eliminate the cost of a clean sheet bonus. 

Once again Mikkola was benched early, this time about an hour in. Once more he was very upset at that, and I can see why: most players want to play as much as they can; most players having the kind of night he was having want to keep that run going; and if you're being looked at for potential A-League recruitment, you want to keep showing off your wares. But I can (this time) why he was subbed off by the coach. The game was done, so there was no point in having him out there potentially getting injured; the game was done, meaning it was a chance to give some of our younger players a run; and Max also already had a yellow card (which will apparently see him miss the next match anyway), so there the risks outweighed the benefits of him being out there much longer.

Be happy with the comfortable win, and on to the remaining games in the home and away calendar.

The race to avoid relegation, the race to the finals, and the race to top spot

Saturday's win saw us reach the 40 point mark, well clear of the 30 point mark people have been throwing around only half-jokingly in terms of avoiding relegation. Relegation talk is all a bit moot now, seeing as how the two teams currently in the relegation zone are unlikely to get 30 points between them. In any case, with just 9 games and 27 more points up for grabs, second last-placed Dandenong City - currently on 10 points - can at absolute best only reach a tally of 37 points, a game behind our current tally. So, congratulations to us for avoiding relegation officially, barring some extra-curricular rule breaking nonsense. 

So attention now turns to the race for the finals, where we still have to play the teams currently in second, third, fourth, and fifth. We're currently 14 points clear of seventh placed Heidelberg (whom we already played twice, and thus cannot take points directly off us), so it would take a monumental stuff-up from here to fail to make the finals. I'm not saying it's not possible, only that it's really rather unlikely, seeing as how we also have to play each of the bottom three once more. But stranger things have happened I suppose.

The race for top spot however, is still very much wide-open, though you'd prefer to be in our position than anyone else's. Oakleigh's loss against the Bergers yesterday gives us back some breathing space - four points to be precise - which might come in handy come the end of the home and away season. Granted, first place offers almost no material advantage for finals, but it should (I hope) the opportunity to play in the NPL national playoffs.

Next game

Hume away on Saturday night. Assuming he even plays, will the 17-year-old Hume goalkeeper have turned 18 by now? Will there even be enough South fans in attendance to heckle any Hume goalkeeper? Even if there are enough South fans in attendance, will they be too precious to stand out in the cold, preferring instead to stay indoors, and eating kebabs while watching GWS vs Footscray?

Final thought

I still cannot comprehend how the social club can't just sell you a burger without a serving of chips, or a chicken sandwich without a serving of chips, or a lamb sandwich without a serving of chips; and yet hey also cannot find a way to serve plated meals which would naturally come with a serving of chips.

Losing sucks, and yet... - Melbourne Knights 2 South Melbourne 1

Six days a week of election work (two kinds!) has taken its toll on my social life over the past month and a bit, and thus here we are again with another ridiculously late post. I've barely even been on my computer in the last week, except to visit government and banking websites. 

And look, I'm disappointed with how last week ended, but also - it was a whole week ago. There's something to be said for writing posts immediately after the fact - or as close as possible to the conclusion of a match - because it gets the frothing anger vibes down good, which certainly makes for more visceral communication. But the further one gets away from the match, the more one sees the whole affair in perspective, which also has its merits.

So, while unhappy that we lost the game, and the manner in which we lost it, it's not the end of the season for us, much less the end of the world. After several weeks of brute force heroics which saw us win games that we probably didn't deserve to win, a couple of elementary defensive errors and some poor decision making cost us a game we otherwise had the better of. Josh Wallen was at the heart of these affairs, playing in the uncustomary position for him of right-back.

(my favourite comment on this game, perhaps the season, is the observation that Quintas' attempt to turn Wallen into a right-back is like John Anastasiadis trying to turn Gianni De Nittis into a left-back)

A few people have asked why he is playing there, when there are other options available who aren't injured or suspended. Lirim Elmazi, Morgan Evans, Chris Irwin... all more experienced and suited to playing in that position than Wallen. Maybe playing Chris Irwin at right-back would mean you could play Jai Ingham on the wing for a half, and then replace him with Andy Brennan for a half, since that is all either Ingham and Brennan seem able to manage.

(and again, what was the point of allegedly kidnapping Ingham at the airport to only play half games? or can we only afford to pay him for half a game?)

Anyway, the other big talking point was why didn't Max Mikkola start the game? Apparently he did train during the week, and thus was not selected as a starter. But apparently he did not train this week, because he was trialling at Central Coast Mariners. Which, if that is the case, it would seem silly, perhaps, even stupid, to exclude a player who was missing because of football commitments. and not because he was ill or on some kind of bender.

That's assuming what gets posted on smfcfans forum is true. 

Anyway, there were enough moments where the ball could have bounced a different way, and things would have been better for us. That's football. Well, I suppose one can be more prosaic about these things because Oakleigh are still trailing us, thanks to their 0-0 draw at Dandy Thunder. Still, we wait for them to eventually catch up and surpass us, as Chris Taylor coached teams are designed to prosper in the second half of the season, while Esteban Quintas coached sides make hay during the first half of the season and hold on for dear life during the second.

Or so the mythology goes.

As for mythology, the myth of the Original Derby took another beating, with a small crowd, and not that much tension. Maybe the last-second drama reminded people that there's something more to this fixture. Just as likely, a last-second winner in any game gets people fired up. Blame the cold, blame live streams, blame Friday nights. But all the excuses in the world won't help make the argument that these teams and this league is not only a going or worthwhile concern, but also one that deserves to developed into part of a national second tier.

Or is that what we're all waiting for? It's seemed somewhat counter-intuitive to me to talk about loyalty, and hanging in there through thick and thin, all while people hedge their bets about whether it's worth bothering to turn up unless we're in a better league. After all, we supposed to support the club, and not the league it plays in, right? 

Simple truth is that everyone's older, both literally and demographically. The young guys who used to make up the terraces are now middle-aged, with more commitments, and less time. And the young guys who should/would have replaced them don't exist. We have been staring at demographic oblivion for twenty years, and seemingly every week now we ask ourselves how much worse it can get.

Well, at least my election work is over, so I'll have to think of another excuse for why the next post is late.

Next game

Tomorrow (Saturday) evening against St Albans at home.

Positive vibes

Driving up to the gate, I could overhear the gatekeeper to the car park telling club photographer Cindy Nitsos up ahead in the queue to write something positive about the Knights. 

Then it was my turn, and I got the same treatment, after flashing my media pass, which helped me get out of paying five dollars for the car park.

But also - five dollarydoos for parking! Three was fine, but five seems obscene. 

Anyway, positive things about the Knights. They produce a serviceable match program for this league. Their players seem much less thuggish than usual. I didn't notice any racist chants this time.

Final thought

Good to see the reappearance of an old friend last Friday. Sometimes winning and losing takes a back seat to more important things.

Long throws to the rescue again - South Melbourne 3 Bentleigh Greens 2

At least for the past few weeks I've been able to palm off waning motivation for writing this stuff each week onto the fact that I have actual work. Previously that was election work that was kind of varied and interesting, and now it's an extension of election work that is repetitive and monotonous as all fuck. I get up at 5:30 in the morning, get home around 4:30 in the afternoon, and somewhere in the middle of that I work seven and half hours, six days a week, shoving senate ballot papers through a scanner and a creaser, which sometimes work well. After that, there's home business, after which there isn't much time to do anything else. My goodness, it's almost like I'm a normal person. I miss being a career student, and its attendant life of leisure. 

Anyway, one thing which has remained constant is consensus that there is a diminishing interest in all things South Melbourne - not from me, mind, but from pretty much everyone else. This isn't new, and we have all moaned and despaired for a good 17 or 18 years or so now. Sure there's an argument to be made that's even worse now, with even former rusted-ons looking for reasons not to turn up. It doesn't help that the club does give them reasons not to attend - inconvenient match times and lack of beer outside the social club cited as two recent examples - but on the whole, it's not a new problem. People have been saying the same or similar for the past nearly 20 years, and those of us still consistently attending will keep saying until we are no longer there to say it ourselves. 

In short, we keep learning the lesson that being loyal is like being pregnant, in that you are until you aren't. Me, I blame streaming more than most other options as being responsible for league-wide declines in attendances, interest, and general banter. Soccer-forum's dead, Twitter is dead, and like our club, everyone at this level has put their effort into standby mode until the National Second Division happens. And yet South supporters still have an old fashioned web forum like it's 2002. It may not be going strong, but it's still going, which basically sums up everything

What's somewhat tragic about all of this is that our support is becoming more diminished even as the team is having its best run of results since 2017. That's not quite the same as saying that the team is plating great football - but it is winning a lot of matches, even if these wins are sometimes/often painful to endure. 

Cue the howls of derision from opposition fans who watch us as we despair over a team clear on top of the table. They have a point, it's true. Results wise, things are better for South then they have been for some time. And it's also true that South fans tend to have a reflex that nothing is ever good enough, even with the allowance that there is an abhorrence (from some, if not all South fans) at the methods we're using in getting these results, and the apparently huge amount of luck also being amassed along the way. But most opposition fans also don't watch our games in full, so they're no more likely to be reliable interpreters of South's 2022 season up until this point than South fans with all their own biases and hangups.

A case in point - how do you make sense of what happened last Saturday night? At times we were comprehensively outplayed. Once again it was revealed that we have a weakness against teams that keep it on the deck, like Bentleigh, Avondale, and Oakleigh do. 

It's not just the keeping it on the deck that causes us issues - it's also that these teams play keepings-off well, not turning it over cheaply. We rely too much on teams giving us the ball back in midfield, so that we can quickly release Mikkola or Webb on the counter attack. Teams who play short passing games to get around our insipid central midfield presence, will keep on having a field day. And if we do win the ball back in defense, we tend to just pass it around the back before launching it to Sawyer. We keep trying to use Schroen as a midfield distributor/link man/play breaker-upper, and it doesn't work because he's almost none of those things, except in very specific circumstances - which is pretty much him facing the goal we're going to, or where he can turn on to his left.

And yet, with the exception of Oakleigh, most of these teams have also managed to repeatedly also concede a barrage of goals against us. Our team has scored in every single match this season, which is astonishing considering how apparently awful we are. Perhaps much as we are deficient in all sorts of ways, we have managed to expose that many opponents are also deficient in one specific area, and that is in defending set pieces. Remarkably, the particular set piece that opposition sides are having difficulty defending against us is long throws. 

I'm not sure if Max Mikkola's throw-in technique is legal, even it's surely more legal than all those dinky little drop at the feet throw-ins that are obviously foul throws. I don't know if his technique - or any long throw-in specialist's for that matter - is teachable. At some point late in the game, a Bentleigh player attempted a long throw, which wasn't too bad for what may have been a first try. But then Ben Djiba chickened out from trying the same after Mikkola was subbed off, and all you could do was laugh. 

As nice as it was to win, even if two and a half of our three goals were a result of the long throws, much time was spent o the terraces trying to figure out why Bentleigh goalkeeper Pierce Clark and the Bentleigh defence were having so much trouble defending the long throw in. Was it the angle? Was it dip, was it the lack of pace on them, compared to a corner kick? At face value, it seems pretty straightforward - a ball is thrown in a straight line, at a relatively flat trajectory. And yet time after time, Bentleigh floundered. The third goal was the was epitome of this failure, because Clark ran more or less underneath Mikkola's long throw, wherein the ball landed on an unmarked Harry Sawyer's head.

At the other end of the ground, Javier Diaz Lopez was making save after save, all of which got turned into a well-meaning though ultimately depressing compilation video, which showed how lucky we were in the greater scheme of things at both ends of the ground. Every week I say it's not a sustainable way to a title. Most weeks it turns out I'm wrong. As long we keep winning, I'm OK with being wrong.

Next game

Tomorrow night at Somers Street against Melbourne Knights. 

Final thought

Time to get some insurance for Max Mikkola's arms.