A small, petty man - Avondale 0 South Melbourne 1

Your reporter could have purchased a ticket to the big AFL game that day, but instead did what he almost always does in such situations, and decided to head to the South game, regardless of the circuitous public transport path chosen, and especially regardless of the (as it turned out) even worse than usual public amenities on offer at the football arena portion of the Reggio Calabria Club, which at least in previous times had a half decent/passable canteen. Good luck to the food truck offering prawn twists and other novelty items at outrageous prices for making Lakeside's food offerings seem almost sensible by comparison. It's never a good sign when you don't see almost anyone eating anything at a game.

The worst part of the whole thing is that I got there early enough to catch about 60 minutes of the under 21s curtain raiser, so it was a hell of a long day to spend without consuming other than a can of coke, and a bit of someone's novelty Snickers bar.

For us, this was a dead rubber. A chance to continue working out the immediate future without Harrison Sawyer, while avoiding serious injuries and unnecessary yellow cards. For Avondale, it was basically win or bust, with Heidelberg likely to smash Eastern Lions, and Bentleigh Greens favourites against the all-but-relegated Dandy City. Now there was that one observant person on Twitter who noted that we must really hate Avondale considering that we played a pretty strong starting line-up, and there might be something to that. But otherwise, I think we went in pretty much as expected, minus the odd player here or there that didn't absolutely need to be out there.

And we got the job done. A 1-0 win thanks to an earlyish goal which highlighted a big part of Avondale's slip from preeminence this year; namely some pretty soft defending. I was disappointed that we couldn't add to the tally, especially as Avondale increasingly had to chase the game to give themselves some chance of making the finals; but I was otherwise happy that we seemed to be a bit more assertive overall, looking more like the side from the early parts of the season that pressed its opposition higher up the field. A good outing by Ben Djiba as well, after a few sketchy performances - when he was in the side. 

And, yes, it felt good to not only dispense with Avondale, who have given us a torrid time n recent seasons, but also to stick it up some pretty annoying characters at that club, who sought to target our supporters in prior visits to the Reggio Calabria Club. Yes, pity our poor feelings and all that, but good riddance (for the time being) of some pretty sore winners and now, also pretty sore losers judging by the antics of their coaching staff in the car park after the game. Not that I stuck around for such shenanigans, as I was hoofing it up Brunswick Road to catch a tram that would not properly sync up with the train arriving at Royal Park station.

Still, all the good feelings of the home and away season are now worth not much, as we head into the finals, which means we're either two wins from glory, or one loss from what will be deemed failure. But that's the Australian way I guess, even if New South Wales - the soccer state which loves finals systems more than anyone - is apparently dumping finals next year. Good luck to them for the principle of that move, but damned if I think they'll actually keep first past the post in the long run.

Back in Victoria, we're stuck with finals, which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't this particular finals system. In other respects, things remained much the same, as the top six was made up of five Greek teams, well earning the competition the title of NPL Greece. I mean, look at this for the most recent title winners:

• 2019 - Bentleigh Greens
• 2018 - Heidelberg United
• 2017 - Bentleigh Greens 
• 2016 - South Melbourne
• 2015 - Bentleigh Greens
• 2014 - South Melbourne
• 2013 - Northcote City

I know that it helps that the last two seasons being obliterated means that run wasn't interrupted by Avondale winning the title, but Greek teams have also frequently been the runner-up during those seasons, and have won five of the past seven Dockerty Cup finals.

Next match

Thanks to finishing in the top two, we have a week off this week, and are back again next week. We'll be playing the lowest ranked winner of the first week of the finals. As it turns out, that will be fourth placed Green Gully, who knocked out Bentleigh last night, and are the lowest ranked team remaining thanks to Oakleigh defeating Heidelberg.

The match will be on Sunday 4th September at 4pm. Apparently that's also Fathers Day, though I never took much notice of such things. It was a choice between going up against the AFL finals on the Friday night, the AFL finals on Saturday afternoon/evening, or Fathers Day. I think the club made the right choice. Port, the host of the other semi-final, are going up against the sold out Geelong vs Collingwood game on Saturday.  

The under 21s final will take place after the seniors' game.

Nag, nag, nag

People scoff, but gentle intermittent nagging can sometimes achieve serious results. My nagging is now on record as seeing the restoration of the Dockerty Cup, the production of pompom beanies at South, and perhaps my greatest accomplishment so far, the recent availability of South Melbourne Gunners merch. Does it matter that it's via a RedBubble style outlet with $10 postage? Does it matter that the Gunners gimmick was loathed back when it was introduced, and still remains largely unappreciated now? Not a damn bit. If you can't appreciate the magnificent irony of the early 1980s attempt by Rik Booth and friends to de-ethnicise the NSL and introduce ridiculous gimmick team nicknames, and yet somehow make the South Melbourne Hellas logo even more ethnic, then that's on you. Or you could just buy the re-make of the Hellas World Order shirts, which may be more to your liking.

My Everest

Some people are asking, now that I've accomplished this trifecta, what's next on the nag wishlist? And after thinking about it, I have to say: the abandonment of short corners, which I realise is outside the control of pretty much everyone that pays attention to what I say at South. However, I will note this: last week the team played a short corner. It failed, as most corners (short or otherwise) tend to do, and I didn't even entertain the idea that we would score from it. But it was at least a short corner taken in the right circumstances, with the opposition scrambling to organise itself and not exactly paying attention to what was going on. It's a start.

Absentee Golden Boot

Congratulations to Harrison Sawyer, who despite missing the final two matches of the home and away season due to signing with Indian side Jamshedpur, nevertheless managed to finish the season as the league's top scorer. Sawyer finished on 17 goals, two ahead of Oakleigh's Wade Dekker and Heidelberg's Kaine Sheppard.

On the streams

Hello, hello (and goodbye)
Saturday last I got home in time from the supermarket to watch most of the Moreland City vs North Geelong game. The sums were pretty straightforward, even if I cocked them up twice on the South forum. First-placed North Geelong, already promoted, only needed a draw to be crowned champions. Second-placed Moreland City needed a win to guarantee promotion, and to win the NPL2 championship; a draw would leave them vulnerable to being overtaken by Brunswick Juventus, who were playing relegation threatened Werribee City. Well when I said I got home in time early enough to watch most of the game, I meant that arrived home about twenty or more minutes into the game, with the score already 1-0, and who'd know that that's the way it would stay for the rest of the game? A pretty tight, kinda ugly game, ideally viewed from the ground level camera. North had a couple of good chances late on to take the draw and the title, but didn't.

Brunswick Juve then allegedly threw their game very late against Werribee, conceding what some have called two very suspect goals, which kept Werribee in NPL2 for another season. Having not seen the late comeback in question, I could not possibly comment on whether the result was indeed suspect, much like I could not possibly comment on Port Melbourne's equally allegedly suspect 95th minute equaliser against Werribee in the final round of 2014, a result which incidentally kept both teams up. But where was I? Oh yes. We'll be seeing North Geelong and Moreland in NPL1 next season, at the expense of Dandenong City and Eastern Lions, neither of whose grounds I was able to get to this year, and in the case of Dandy City, I'm not sorry they and their impossible to get to ground are gone, even if the eually ridiculously located Elcho Park is its replacement.

But what of Moreland City? Their Campbell Reserve ground might be up to scratch (just) for NPL2, but I doubt it will pass muster for NPL1. The thinking seems to be that they'll end up playing out at CB Smith, but good luck with that considering Fawkner, Pascoe Vale, and Brunswick Juve also play out of there. Anyway, while I won't buy into the rhetoric that Moreland City have returned to the top-flight for the first time in 75 years (or whatever the number is), because I'm counting their history from their 1989 merger rather than from their individual constituent parts, we can I suppose talk some history. We last played against Moreland in a competitive fixture in 1962; against Coburg, another merger constituent in 1960, our first season; and we never played against Park Rangers. Still, the fact that the Moreland City family tree does include Park Rangers, it means that next season will see a meeting of distant cousins, in that Park Rangers were born from an early 1940s offshoot of South Melbourne United. Think of it like the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac getting together.

Through the fog

Against all your natural inclinations you try to be kind, you hope to be forgiving, you want to be understanding, and not even from a "what if I was in their place" mentality; just because it's the right thing to do, and there's not much to be gained from being unnecessarily cruel. But the NPL TV product is not up to scratch on so many levels, and while I wish it wasn't so, there's no way of getting around it. Even the things the offering does well, get undone when they're not done well or at all. To wit: the last couple of weeks, NPL Tv's social media (at least on Twitter) has begun sharing goals as they happen. A marvellous innovation, long overdue, but welcome nonetheless. But if you wanted to see last week's winning goal in the Avondale vs South game? Not there. And if you were watching the Oakleigh vs Heidelberg game on a unwieldy stream cast from a laptop to a television, because there is no dedicated NPL TV app even though the host technology Cluch TV app exists, and you wanted to catch up painlessly with the goals ftom the Green Gully vs Bentleigh game on social media, because you don't want to deal with the mobile NPL TV app... well, they weren't on the socials last night either. Sure you could get the goals from the dead rubber Kingborough Lions vs Olympia game, but nothing from last night. So it goes, but damn if it doesn't suck, despite the best intentions of everyone trying to make it work.

Now I will note of this game that it was exciting. It was of a pretty decent standard at times, albeit too fast at times. There were two injury time goals that bailed Heidelberg out temporarily, plenty of near misses, a penalty shoot-out, and lots of shenanigans. And yet so much of the experience was undermined by a stream beset with technical issues - including missing the first part of what turned out to be an anti-climactic shoot-out - and so many bouts of out of focus camera that one felt bad for the people trying to put together the product. 

I never (OK, maybe not never) like to think I go out of my way to be cruel when I criticise, but the quality of the footage stream last night was not up to scratch, I know that it's done on the smell of an oliy rag, but if we are going to offer this service which dissuades people from going to games, the least we can do is make it good. How many times last night was a team streaming towards goal, only for the footage to look like a news segment on some sporting scandal which blurred the images so no player could be identified?

The penalty shoot-out turned temporarily into a radio broadcast, and though it came back eventually,for a moment there I had to use my imagination, like some sort of caveman. The graphics for the scored/missed penalties also got botched, though I suppose luckily for all concerned the shoot-out was over almost as soon as it started.

Anyway, as for the match itself, people will talk about things like Sean Ellis' free kick with the last kick of the game. Me, I'm all about Matthew Foschini acting like a pork chop, in this case trying to start nonsense with the Heidelberg bench after Oakleigh equalised against the run of play in the first half. It was so petty and stupid, and he got the yellow card that he deserved, but it was also disappointing in a different way. Foschini has had his back and forths with us over the past few seasons, but seeing him get it on with the Berger bench and fans, well... I thought we had something special. 

Well, those kinds of antics at least help explain in part why our so called leaders at the time had so much trouble reigning in the excesses of the People's Champ.

Final thought

It's a shocking thought, but it would be nice to win the grand final.

Inauspicious - South Melbourne 1 Dandenong City 0

We said we weren't going to bring this up again, but our
win against Dandy City did see us finish as runner-up in
the 2021 Bespoke Cup. Not a bad effort after starting
so far back at the start of this mess.

Started off this adventure by getting to the ground early enough to watch the second half of our senior women's match, as their season gradually winds down. Nothing much to write home about here - the cup run is over, finals hopes are gone, and the most one can hope for is that the move away from a big name roster in 2022 will yield fruit in 2023. I think there's some scope for that, and besides - apart from Western United joining, apparently the next A-League Women's season will have a three month overlap with the the start of the 2023 NPLW season - so it's best that everyone gets used to seeing their national league players a little less.

As for the senior men's game, for a match that had little to nothing riding on it for us, there sure seemed to be a lot of misplaced angst. I get that everyone, especially the players and coaching staff, want to finish first. After all, it's a nice marker for all that they've achieved this season. But really, without the lure of the NPL national playoffs, finishing first is not much different from finishing second. It's the same reward - a week off, and then a sudden death finals match on your home ground. Considering there isn't going to be an NPL national playoffs series this year, Football Victoria might as well have used the top six finals format that was used in the VPL days, where the top two at least got a double chance.

But let's assume the match did matter to us, and that was why people got upset with us not playing particularly well. Lots of long balls. Lots of reliance on the long throw. Lots of bad decision making. Par for the course in 2022, but it's worked so far, so why not more of it? Well for one thing, we don't have Harrison Sawyer on field anymore, so we may as well try something new to better suit the personnel we do have. That's my main gripe, and last Saturday it wasn't even really a big gripe for me, because I'm rationalising it like this: that we have three or so inconsequential Sawyer-less weeks - two weeks off, and a couple of essentially dead rubbers - to try and figure out what we're going to do.

And if trying the old thing with new people didn't work, well, that's no good, but maybe we can see that it doesn't work, and try something different. The home and away season is more or less over, and the nonsense will soon begin of two games meaning more than the preceding 26 put together. But that's me speaking, a measure of calm in a perpetually emotional sea. Too many others keep looking to fulfill the truth of Tommy Docherty's observation that South fans are "the best winners in the world, and the worst losers". And we weren't even losing last week! 

Some credit must go to Dandenong City who, as per our match earlier in the season, had a red hot go, being unafraid to take the game to us. They had long odds on getting out of the jam they found themselves in, but at least gave themselves a shot. All for nothing as it turned out, as their loss - and Hume's come from behind win over Dandy Thunder, the latter of whom blew its own slim chances of making finals - means that there would be need to be two really outrageous results on Sunday for City to avoid the drop. 

And while looming relegation can't be a pleasant experience, I'm not sure that justifies calling people "tsigane" and Greek so-and-sos, especially unprovoked. (And I don't think any one of us even paid much attention that fan "favourite" Steven Topalovic was still out there for City, much less former wunderkind Peter Skapetis.) And the less said about the smashed up soap dispensers in the toilets, and the unpleasantness late on in the night with broken glasses in the social club, the better. Some people are annoyed that it's not Hume going down instead of City; I wish it could be both, but if wishes were fishes and so on. 

Next match

Final match day of the home and away season, away to Avondale on Sunday. There has been some conjecture about which way to take this game. Should we go hard core, and try and make Avondale miss out on the finals? Or should we focus on trying to avoid injuries and suspensions, and to hell with whatever happens with the race for the final two finals spots? Should we turn up to support the boys? Or should we stay at home, and not give Avondale any money? Would anyone notice either way?

For whatever it's worth, I reckon the most important thing is to use this week as another opportunity to figure out how to win games without Harrison Sawyer. 

Speaking of which

While he is no longer with us on the field, the big striker was still with us off-field last Saturday, taking part in the post-match celebrations. Still waiting on his visa to come through perhaps? South fans may have seen recently that the All India Football Federation was suspended by FIFA for "undue interference by a third party". India has already, at least nominally, lost the hosting rights to the U17 Women's World Cup, scheduled for October. While the suspension also means that no Indian team - club or country - can play international matches until the suspension is lifted, any hopes that the suspension would also block transfers of non-Indian players to the Indian Super League seem non-existent. Well, it was worth wondering about, anyway.

Also top of the league

The under 21s also finished top of their league, thanks to a comfortable 7-0 win. Several senior players stuck around to see the end of that match, including chanting everyone's favourite, "come on Hellas, score a fucking goal". Think about all the times Clarendon Corner have been told off for swearing, especially in chants, and then this happens. Well, I'm taking it as an endorsement, and something to hold on to in the event that we ever get called out on it again.

Q. When is a title not a title?

A. When you have a final series.

For whatever reason, Football Victoria has decided that this season the under 21s competition will also have a finals series. So that means that our 21s are not quite there yet. What it also means is that there's a chance that South could be host to a finals double header, possibly against a club that we'd also be matched up against in the seniors. 

The decision to go for a double-header would almost certainly preclude the match from being played on a Friday night, because even starting the 21s at 6:15PM, there would need to be the allowance for extra time and penalties, which would push the senior kickoff time to well beyond 9PM. Considering also that the second week of NPL Victoria finals coincides with the first week of the AFL finals, it's likely that no one would want to come up against a possible Saturday night blockbuster AFL finals match. So could we see ourselves playing on a Sunday, the way everyone apparently wants us to?

Final thought

Thanks to Will for the lift back into the CBD.

Goodbye Harry, goodbye hope - Port Melbourne 2 South Melbourne 1

Thank goodness we've got the week off, otherwise this crap would have come out after the next game.

It starts off bad

One of those days, weeks, years. Got to the ground early, hoping to see the 21s do whatever it is they do. No dice: Port did the thing where they scheduled the nominal reserves game for after senior game. So stuck in the Port social club listening to the end of the Pies' game on the radio, watching the last five minutes or so of Lions vs Hume, and admiring Port's new electronic scoreboard, which is finally up. It has room for the scores, a running match clock, and perhaps most surprisingly - and most useful for NPL winter nights - a temperature gauge. 

But much as we all like to laud any improvements to our suburban grounds, the scoreboard was a bit of a bust. The clock is hard to read (small black text in a yellow box), the temperature gauge doesn't update itself, and the scoreline at the end of the game sucked. To be fair, that last bit was mostly our fault, as we continued to struggle to create chances outside the usual long-throw and corner methods. And we didn't even get that many corners. 

Well we got one long throw goal - I think that's about nine of them this season - but apart from that, looked second best for most of the game, at least during those parts that I could see the game. SS Anderson Reserve seems to get darker every year. The benches are in near total darkness, and a black clad Esteban Quintas was able to scurry through the back half of the field almost unnoticed by anyone who wasn't directly behind the Williamstown Road goal. Hopefully the fact that the ground will be a Women's World Cup training venue next year will draw out some improvements to the venue.

Taking the "National" out of National Premier Leagues

I could complain more about this loss, but it was cold, and besides which, what was the ultimate prize on hand anyway? Finishing first? Yeah, I suppose that would be nice, but what's the prize for finishing first anyway? Oh, that's right, finishing first gets you into the NPL national playoff series, with the chance of getting straight into the Australia Cup round of 32. Looking into the matter in the week or two before, a few South fans seemed to notice that there was nothing in the Football Victoria or Football Australia competition calendars indicating dates for the post-season tournament run from 2013-2019, and thuse the question got asked, and eventually answered as per this Peter Filopoulos tweet; with the answer being there's apparently no longer an NPL national playoffs series.

(let's also take a moment to marvel somewhat at Filopoulos' comment on the tournament not having been in the calendar since 2019, as if there might not be some obvious reason why that was the case)

Quite what the "National" part of National Premier Leagues stands for anymore is anyone's guess. At any rate, while I'm disappointed that it's not happening for selfish South related reasons, let's not pretend that it was a particularly popular tournament while it was around. People like to point to occasional carnivalesque NSW grand final day crowds, and the equally "event oriented" midweek Australia Cup turnouts as proof of what a national second division could achieve... and yet I tend to look to the NPL national playoffs as a much more realistic sense of the kinds of interest that would be generated by a national second division. Hype low, interest minimal, outlook bleak.

And then it gets worse

So finishing on top now means diddly squat, except for some skerrick of morale I suppose. But we've got a top two spot sewn up, which means we only have to win two more games - as long as they're not out next two games - to be crowned champions. That's the dream, anyway, and I use dream in the sense of fanciful, because according to a good chunk of our online natterers, we're basically done, because one of our three most important players is gone. There's the goalkeeper, there's the long throw guy, and then there's the guy up front who a lot of people hated, but who nevertheless became so integral to our game plane over the past three years (whatever was completed of them), that who knows what the team will look like in his absence.

Midweek, out of nowhere, and to the dismay of everyone, the club announced that Harrison Sawyer had departed the club effective immediately to join an Indian Super League club. Still don't know which one (doesn't matter really), or for how much (probably diddly squat). Fair play to Sawyer. Players coming down from Brisbane to play in Melbourne aren't coming here for the climate. Some lucky few get into the A-League, and some might even get across the sea. Sawyer had been a professional in Asia before, so it must be pleasing for him to get back into full-time football.

For us though, on the eve of finals, this is near enough to a disaster. The game plane revolved so much around Sawyer, that fans spent most of the season what we'd do if he got injured, as he did last season. Other wondered why we didn't even try and sign a forward back-up; but then again, if the game plan is based around a super-tall centre-forward who can run all day and pressure defenders, I'm not sure where else the club would have found one. The good thing I suppose, if one can find a silver lining in this situation, is that we have a solid month before we play our first final to try and adapt to a new game style. The only other genuine striker we have is Alun Webb, the complete opposite in style from Sawyer, except for his workrate.

Whatever the more gung-ho approach was earlier in the season - high pressing, numbers forward, with occasionally reckless numbers forward leaving our defenders exposed - it's basically gone. I can't remember when we last saw it, and I can't even say that it was around long enough to say that it was fun while it lasted. Yes, you've got to grind out some wins here and there over the course of a home and away season, and this is still the (N)PL Victoria we're talking about, so don't expect miracles in terms of style, even if you think that we should be doing better than what we are.

And thinking we could be doing than what we are is very bad according to some people, because there's a table, we're on top of it. I can see their point. 

Next game

It's Dockerty Cup final week, so there's no South senior men's action this weekend. We're back next weekend at home against Dandenong City. The kickoff time for this match has been brought forward to 5:45PM, one assumes so that the under 21s can finally play at Lakeside this year, and hopefully clinch their title on home soil. The women's curtain raiser match against Heidelberg has also been brought forward an hour, to 3:00PM

In the mean time, our senior women are playing in their cup final on Sunday  - ie, tomorrow - out at Broadmeadows, against Calder United. 

Final thought

What a marvellous feeling eating an affordable, rather straight-forward, more than passable souvlaki. Revelatory in its ordinariness.