Half-arsed - South Melbourne 4 St Albans 0

There's not enough data to make it a thoroughly resilient trend, but let's go with it anyway. When we play St Albans during one of their often fleeting Victorian top tier stints, it usually goes like this: the first game, usually away, usually early in the season, is a bit of a grind, but we get the job done. They're still enthusiastic, have earned a few points, and maybe put in enough credible performances that people think they won't suck as much as they're prone to doing. Then we turn up, get our win, and it starts going south for them (no pun intended). By the time they rock up to Lakeside for the return fixture, they're disheartened, weakened by defections, and either in or just above the relegation zone. Then it all comes down to whether we give enough of a toss to go full on and completely humiliate them.

Well, humiliation it was for the first half on Tuesday. Performance wise, it was nothing remarkable. It wasn't built around super build up play, neat passing, flashes of individual brilliance. It was just a case of a team with some talent grinding an opponent with a talent deficit into the dirt. There wasn't much pretty about it. The penalty shot for the opening goal was struck a solid arm trying to save it, and still went in. Two of the goals were bundled over the goal line after scrambles in the six-yard box. Only Jake Painter-Andrew's shot into the roof of the net was worthy of highlight reels, though I suppose there's also people who get a kick out of unicorn goals like Lirim Elmazi scoring from a short corner.

So 4-0 up the break, and even the ground announcer makes the call that South has won the game 4-0. Too bad there was a whole second half still to play, as seems to be the custom nowadays. And what a pointless second half it was, as we failed to add to the scoreboard. Still, good to get some run into a few fringe players, including youth team player Cooper Halfpenny, and wing recruit Kosta Emmanuel, who has spent most of the year injured. But overall, the whole vibe, especially in the second 45, was of a glorified pre-season friendly.

Finals secured for 2023
The win against St Albans means that the senior men have managed to secure a finals berth with eight games to spare. The highest points tally that seventh placed Dandenong Thunder can achieve is 47 - which could only happen if they won every remaining game of theirs. Since we've already reached a tally of 49 points, all that's left to decide is where within the top six we'll finish.

Barring any changes due to external administrative cock-ups, we are also pretty close to securing a home final of some sort. Port Melbourne, the team currently in fifth place, would need six wins, a draw, and a calamitous collapse from us just to reach our current tally. 

As for securing a spot in the top two and the near negligible benefits that brings, it's a still little bit early to get into that. Better trying to do those sums after our next match.

Next game
Oakleigh on Sunday, July 2nd, at our latest home away from home, McIvor Reserve. 

For those who have not had the pleasure of visiting this venue, prepare to be underwhelmed. There should be ample parking for the expected crowds for this game, as well as the match the following week against Hume. Public transport options for this ground are inconvenient at the best of times, and will be worse considering the school holiday scheduled shutdowns of all train lines heading west from the city. Luckily this is one of those venues that's within my driving range.

There is some shelter, but very little seating. The social club/pavilion, where all the shelter is, faces east. If you want to stand on the opposite side of the ground, where the benches are, bring your sunnies and a hat, because you will be staring directly into the sun. Away from the pavilion, there is very little elevation. For those watching the games at home, well, here's hoping that someone bothers to hire a cherry picker, because otherwise you, too, will be watching the game from a sideline view, possibly directly into the sun, as was the case with the match that our senior women played there earlier this year.

As for the food... look, I'm willing to be surprised, but from my experience the souv at Yarraville is pretty ordinary.

Is there a curtain raiser?
No. But also yes.

So there's nothing before the senior men's match at 3:00PM, but the under 21s are playing after the seniors, kicking off at 6:30PM. Reminds of what Weird Al Yankovic noted when his band toured with the Monkees, "We didn't open for them; they closed for us."

As was rumoured
Danny Kim, the wrong player for the wrong club at the wrong time, has transferred to Green Gully.

South women through to semis of the cup
As messy as the league season has been in terms of trying to find any sort of consistency or clear front-runner, we also have the cup which, not quite as nuts. Three of the semi-finalists are fairly obvious. First placed Bulleen, third placed South, fifth placed Calder; but there's also mid-table Victorian Premier League side Casey Comets, and that's probably who you'd want to get drawn against in the next round if you were one of the other remaining teams. To get to this round, South had to overcome fellow NPLW side Preston, who after a promising start to the season, seemed to have slipped a bit. I watched this from the couch, and again, these South girls make hard work of winning. They pulled their finger out in the nick of time to get out of jail this time, like they did against FV Emerging in the league the game before this one, but it's frustrating to watch.

A better division 2, eventually coming for you
What does this even mean? So we got the news of the progression from the 32 odd expressions of interest getting cut down to 26 well over a month ago (bonus floodlight content in there for those who want to revisit it), and it's only now that the remaining bids actually getting the paperwork for making their bids? This is even shoddier than the organisation within Vic Uni's research department, which allowed me to skate through with extensions I probably shouldn't have gotten.

Anyway, final bids are due sometime in early August, and successful bids - and whatever the format will be that we'll be proceeding with - will be announced around Octoberish, maybe. And then the whole thing will be starting in March 2024, if you believe that. 

Around the grounds
For old time's sake
Last Saturday, for probably the first time since the chaos unleashed by the pandemic, I managed to get to a non-South match. I blame the pandemic a little bit for this, but I also blame changing home responsibilities, and I especially blame that season where South and seemingly most other NPL teams changed their schedules to be playing mostly on Saturdays. But also, even I managed to get suckered into streaming games instead of attending them. Well, now that South's back to not playing games on Saturdays, and every other planet aligned, I managed to stroll down to Ralph Reserve for Western Suburbs vs Altona East, a near-enough to top of the table clash. Remembering old days, an with only large notes in my wallet, I had my mum break a fifty for me. Turned out there was no gate charge. Turns out also that Suburbs are accepting card payments in the canteen. The souv was OK; not great, not awful. Perfectly acceptable, really. Served quickly, too. Seemed like an easy enough process, which one specific club could possibly learn from. Quite a large crowd, actually, maybe about 200 people, about two or even three times what I expected, and what I'd experienced before at this ground and between these two teams. Crowd included the brother of an ex-South and current Altona East player, who seemed somewhat incredulous that I hadn't realised he'd been in Greece the past four years. My answer could only be, how am I supposed to keep track of everyone that's stopped attending South games over the past 18 years? Anyway, the wind made the game itself a grind to watch. Playing with its benefit in the first half, Suburbs went into the break 2-0 up, scored a goal against the wind to make it 3-0, and then coasted home to win 3-1.

Final thought
Everyone's looking a bit jaundiced, but apparently that's just a trick of lights.