Hanging in there - South Melbourne 2 Dandenong Thunder 1

Apart from collectively managing to finish the season, South's main priority in 2022 according to at least some people, was to avoid relegation. A fairly obvious goal, even taking into account that he squad had been strengthened relative to its 2021 counterpart. That feat was accomplished a few weeks ago, which was nice, considering the odd near miss with relegation since Chris Taylor's sacking in early 2018. The next priority was to make the finals, also something fairly obvious, but also something that hasn't been achieved since CT got the arse.

Last week's win against Dandenong Thunder, combined with other results, means that we are now mathematically guaranteed to play finals. Fantastic, what a relief. Next step is to claim top spot, not so much for the very minor benefits that a top two spot grant, but for the hope that we might end up with a post-season NPL national playoff run. Embedded somewhere in there is the desire to win the championship, especially because we threw away a potential cup run, and no. I am not going to get over how and/or why that happened.

So anyway, there's five games left until the finals, and we're in a reasonable spot, even if after trying to figure out how we got here, I still feel unconvinced by the whole thing. That's a me problem. Last week we quite obviously brought in the sidelines, one assumes less to help Max Mikolla and his long throws - ineffective for a second week out of three as opposition defences catch on - and more to constrict the Dandenong Thunder's wide play. That worked pretty well, as did the idea of gifting them mostly meaningless possession, which they didn't do too much of note with, except on our right-hand side, where an overenthusiastic Andy Brennan, and an underdone Perry Lambropoulos got caught out in cases where they shouldn't have.

Having managed to carve out the odd chance ourselves, as well as restricting Thunder to the kind of slower possession game style they likely don't prefer, it was infuriating to concede goal from a set piece, especially from a guy who coaches our own under 12s. Also, thanks to the under 12s in front of whatever's left of Clarendon Corner for letting us know that irritating fact. When is paint going to dry anyway? With Oakleigh having smashed Avondale earlier in the day, we were in second place on the live ladder, and though it was not impossible to see how we could come back into the game, we had lost our way a bit, getting sucked into melees and assorted nonsense.

Thanks then to one of the more unnecessary penalties you've ever seen give away. The ball was released wide right into space in the fourth minute of first half injury time. Mikolla and his Thunder opponent sprinted for the loose ball. Mikolla got there firsr, and was clearly fouled by his opponent. My only quibble watching it live was wondering whether the ball was in the box, because surely a defender wouldn't be so daft to give away a foul at that place, at that time, when Max was by himself, on a terrible angle, and would be covered comfortably by even moderate jockeying.

Harrison Sawyer added to his "non playing against Eastern Lions" goal tally by scoring from the spot, and at half time I think we all felt a little better about ourselves. Second half was more of the same, including many of the same kinds of subs we often make, including one which continues to have minimal effect. What stood out, obviously, was Pat Langlois diverting Brad Norton's long range shot into goal for the lead, and Lirim Elmazi getting sent off probably unnecessarily, meaning our already "creative" heavy midfield corps becomes more unbalanced without a designated "ball winner" type.

Indeed, unnecessary yellow cards were a big problem last Saturday, especially after some of our players went out of their recently to reset their yellow card tallies by getting deliberately suspended. So it goes. On the plus side, Oakleigh's Joe Knowles is also suspended, which you'd hope is of some benefit to us, though Oakleigh are hardly short of attacking options.

I agree with the sentiment that we need to win this match in order to finish in first place. Win this game, and we go five points clear with four games to go, with two very winnable matches (Altona Magic, Dandy City), and two very hard ones (Port, Avondale). Oakleigh meanwhile have Bentleigh, Knights, St Albans, and Hume, an easier run to be sure, complicated only by Oakleigh's Dockerty and Australia Cup committments.

Next match

Oakleigh at home on Saturday night, in case you haven't heard. Seeing as this is a reversed fixture, there's no women's match curtain-raiser tomorrow. At the time of writing, it also appears that the men's under 21s also aren't scheduled to be a curtain-raiser. There was some murmuring that the Tony Clarke Memorial Shield might be on before our senior men's match, but I have seen nothing to indicate that that's happening tomorrow. 

If you're looking to spice things up further for tomorrow in the worst way possible, tomorrow's match is also a potential title decider for the 2021 Bespoke Cup. If Oakleigh wins tomorrow night, they get the ignominy of winning that "championship". If they draw or lose, then it's up to Avondale to beat Port the week after.

A sentence or two on the women's team

With results like that, maybe they should sack coaches more often. After knocking off Heidelberg in the cup, the senior women knocked off Bulleen in the league. And quite comfortably, too, at least as far as the scoreline goes. They say that Bulleen had a few out on national team duties, but you can only beat who's in front of you, and we managed to do that. Still a massive slog from here to make the finals, but at least we have a cup final to look forward to. Too bad it's against Calder, but you never know what could happen on the day. 

Final thought

Opposition fans turned up to a game at Lakeside last week. To borrow the sentiments of Richard Rants, it almost felt like what we do still matters.