No stress whatsoever - Port Melbourne 0 South Melbourne 4

Waited like a chump for the 234 at the usual stop at Banana Alley, for buses that would never arrive; at least not until after 7pm, apparently. I figured this out  eventually with a a fellow South fan by the name of Sam, after what should have been two scheduled buses failed to appear. A bit more signage would have helped. Maybe not having to exit the app to get to the website. Maybe a lot of things.

Walked down to the next best available stop for said bus - five minutes walk down the road - hoping that some bus would turn up in time. That wasn't happening. Started thinking might be worth turning around and going home. Contemplated a cab, but thought better of it. Tried calling a mate who lived nearby to watch it at their place, but no answer. Bus eventually shows up, gets stuck in traffic around the back end of the casino, all very predictable.

Got to the ground with about ten minutes having elapsed, but no score. Who knows if anything major or interesting had happened before I got there. but within minutes it was 2-0 to us, as utterly shithouse set-piece defending from the home side gave us a very solid foundation. After that, it all becomes a bit of a blur. We scored a couple more goals, gossiped a bit about the state leagues, about work, enjoyed some banter with the Port goalkeeper who was having one of those days, and added three points to the tally.

Insofar as I paid any attention to the game, it was to observe that while he's copped a lot of not completely undeserved stick over the past few seasons (including from your correspondent), Marcus Schroen is having a pretty good year. Playing a different role to what we're used to seeing from him, more than a few times this year he's been the one to win the ball or create the turnover which leads to a goal, which was never previously a strong part of his game. 

So, that's nice I suppose. Brad Norton up to 295 matches by count. Oakleigh lost to Altona Magic last week, and drew with Avondale last night, which helps us get one step closer to a top two spot. One more win will do it.

Next game
Altona Magic away on Saturday night.

Is there a curtain raiser this week?
Yes! The under 21s match takes place before the senior fixture.

National Second Division guff
So Melbourne Knights are taking their ball and going home. Apparently Football Australia is being intransigent with its demands. The NSD is on the verge of collapse before a ball has been kicked. For their part, FA put out something very vague about intending to do things next year as planned, kinda. The worst part of this, apart from having to re-join the anti-NSD faction (because it was never going to work, and you're kidding yourself if you ever thought otherwise), is having to emotionally recommit to NPL Victoria. More of the same! And not even Preston coming up to add some media vulture interest. 

Around the grounds
Slightly perverse
Weren't you supposed to be at work, or school? OK, if you are a northern hemispherean, or a retiree, or otherwise on holidays, I get it. But what was everyone else doing at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium on a 12:30pm on a Friday? Sure, I was also there, and I do have a job of sorts which I don't get paid for if I decide not to turn up for whatever reason. It's like when I first moved to Sunshine eight years ago (and even now, really), and I'm at the main shops on Hampshire Road on a weekday, and there's a full car park and people everywhere, and it's the same question - don't you people have somewhere else to be? Anyway, Canada vs Nigeria was a strange contest, not so much for what happened on the field, but what happened off it. It's not that Australians are averse to supporting the underdog, but their wilful support of the vintage Green Gully VPL tackling (no colour pun intended) Nigerians was wild. Poor nice little Canada. You win one Olympic gold medal, and everyone turns against you so they can support the heel team. Good game, though, thorough entertainment during that 65 odd minutes Nigeria weren't stacking everyone behind the ball, reminiscent of a certain team which doesn't wear green.

The world got itself in a big damn hurry
Finished work on Monday about three o'clock. Too early for the game, but too late to go home and come back into town. So I walked slowly down William Street to eventually have a quiet meal somewhere, and figure out how to kill two and a bit hours afterwards. Ended up instead helping some guy who'd just finished a six-year prison stint find the nearest branch of the Commonwealth Bank. No, it's not what you think. Probably. Chatting with him, of course he notices the things that have changed about the city and the world as a whole in the time he'd been locked up, things that seemed normal to those of us on the outside. Well, I got him to where he needed to get to, and then I got called back to work, which ended up going all the way to six o'clock. Damn judge. Managed to make it from Flagstaff to my seat at the stadium with five minutes to spare. Germany vs Morocco. Well, Morocco to their credit didn't try to sit back, and looked good in patches and moments, but never quite good enough. Thus there were lots of goals, and so many VAR moments. And this is the thing: somewhat like our ex-con friend, I get disoriented whenever I dip into a tournament every few years after a diet made up exclusively of non-VAR leagues. So now it seems refs and assistants are not even calling blatantly obvious fouls and especially offsides, because there's a machine somewhere which will let them know. 

But here's the thing - most of the crowd doesn't seem to care. So me, in my bad position and with my even more decrepit eyesight, I can still tell (or feel that I can tell) that a goal is not going to stand several seconds in advance. So what looks to me like a situation that should be called offside instantly, the sequence of play instead continues, a goal is scored, the crowd goes wild, and I just wait in my seat. I can't get excited, or upset, or anxious, or even interested, because my instincts for what a game should look like and how it should be officiated are stuck in the past. I've got tickets to four more games, and it just doesn't feel right. The way we - or rather, they - watch the game has completely changed. They've turned it into rugby league.

Final thought
Who knows how many actually pay to watch a game in NPL Victoria these days, but there is this: Port Melbourne issue numbered tickets specific to individual matches. They also break them down by adult and concession categories; no cheapo stubs for them. Last year, rocking up early to the equivalent fixture, and having forgotten my media pass, I was concession ticket no. 90. This year, arriving ten minutes late, and no longer bothering to apply for a media pass because clearly I am less than half-arsing this thing these days, I was adult ticket no. 30. Makes you think.

Whatever - Bentleigh Greens 0 South Melbourne 2

The team having secured a home final of some sort several weeks ago now, and then seemingly having put the cue in the rack until such time as the finals series begins, it befits your correspondent to also not give too much of a toss either. With five games left, as long as no-one does something wildly stupid getting themselves an inconvenient suspension, and as long as none of our opponents decide leg-breaking time is just around the corner, I'm content to not get too worked up about anything that happens between now and week 1 (or potentially week 2) of the finals.

Nothing that I saw on the live stream at a mate's place last Saturday gave me any reason to think we were likely to re-find our one patch of annoyingly watchable good form from midway through the season any time soon. Even Jake Marshall's wonderful goal was only possible because of two horrible attempts to get it into the box in first place; first, the corner which barely reached shoulder height of the first defender inside the box, then Jack Painter-Andrews' wayward ball off the side of his boot which just so happened to land on the chest of Big Jake, who channelled his inner Big Luke for 1-0.

The starting line-up was weird again - Ajak Riak on the bench? - but whatever. I'll grant that the team showed more pressing intent, and that it didn't look quite as poor as it did against the same team that made it look second rate back in our first meeting in 2023; but that's also down to Bentleigh also not being quite as dynamic on Saturday as they were back then. Still, the Greens had enough chances to scrounge a point at least. Quite how they stuffed up some of those chances has got me beat. I don't even really feel like looking back on the final stats to find out how many shots we had on goal.

Time to pivot

So now that the rest of the home and away season doesn't mean much to me anymore, we still have to find something to care about until the finals start. Turns out the perfect thing has been sitting under our noses the entire season. Brad Norton, who started the season on 280 competitive fixtures for this sometimes great club, is now up to 294. So the maths is pretty clear. Brad needs six games to get to 300. There are a minimum of six matches left for us this season, being five regular season, and one finals match. Brad has to play in every game to reach the mark, because we assume he wont' be back next year. (I wonder how the testimonial plans are coming along...)

Our record keeping being sketchy as fuck, reliably I can only come up with two players who have definitely reached the 300 mark for us, they being Trimmers and Steve Blair. Horsey may have got there, but some of the data from cup matches early in his time with us is not quite complete, so for now he's nominally stranded on 296.

So that's what's going to keep me occupied South-wise over the next few weeks.

Next game
Port Melbourne away on Saturday evening. Another chance to see if the school camp the Port Melbourne Plebs went on a few years back in 2018 has finally finished.

Is there a curtain raiser this week?

No. The under 21s match is scheduled for after the senior match.

Eight days a week
So not too far back, looking ahead to the rescheduled Heidelberg game set for a Wednesday, I wondered if we'd ever actually had a season where we'd played on every day of week. My instinct said that surely we hadn't, but a spare Sunday afternoon waiting for pirated sumo highlights to be uploaded afforded me the chance to go over the files and demonstrate that instinct sucks. 

I found five seasons where we'd played on each day of the week, including two within the last decade. Well, they do say that if you remember the Chris Taylor years, then you weren't really there. 

There were also several seasons with games on five days of the week, and a few with six. Usually the days not played on were Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are a certain set of conditions you need for this phenomenon to occur. You need lots of games, so a cup tournament or two helps. You also usually need to go on deep runs in those cups. Postponed and rescheduled matches are also good to have. You especially need floodlights; no floodlights means less chance for midweek games. And the big one you might not think of, public holidays. Anzac Day, Boxing Day, New Year's or Australia Day falling midweek can help you get across the line.

For the record, the five seasons are 1989, 1992/93, 1996/97, 2016, and 2017. Soon to be joined by 2023.

Final thought
Success! Random security-guy at a job-site I was at this week recognised that it was a South beanie, not a North one. Turns out he's an up and coming ref, relatively new to the local scene. Trying to explain even just the nonsense that happened last year with the grand final venue means recalling a lot of niche cultural detritus that makes one question one's life choices.

Looking ahead - South Melbourne 2 Hume City 2

Apologies for the very late and very short thing.

In just one week we went from arguing with volunteer parking attendants, to being able to park anywhere, and kids with homemade dirt bikes blowing dust into the air. The souv was good, and that's about as good as the two-week Yarraville stint was. It wasn't Yarraville's fault, mind - we've just gone back to being garbage, and borderline unwatchable. Borderline, because there are still people watching the games. More fool them. 

After taking an early lead thanks to confusion in the Hume defence more than anything we did, it was back to getting absolutely swarmed. They say why would you stand behind the goal that we're attacking, a pretty ordinary view. Well, that way you're a least further away from whatever's going on at the other end. Who can understand the lineup decisions, the sub decisions, who is liked, and who isn't. 

Anyway, we got a point. Just trudging along to the finals. Get two (or more likely now, three) stupid wins then, and no-one will care about whatever preceded it.

Next game
Bentleigh away on Saturday afternoon. My attendance at this game is unlikely, for reasons other than my disgust at recent performances.

Upload news!
Super thanks to Nick Guoth on the Australian Football Memorabilia Facebook page, who uploaded the pages of the program from the 1965 Australia Cup semi-final first leg match between South Melbourne Hellas and APIA. I have collated those pages into a PDF, and made that document available here.

Women out of the cup
Well, look. I can't say that our senior women didn't give it a good shake. Dominated the first half, had pretty much all the good chances - how many point blank chances can you have saved? - but in the end, it was a familiar story; Calder, in the cup, the end. A real shame, because in that first half, this team played as well as I've seen them play for a while now. 

Around the grounds
Spirit of the game
The spirit of the game is threatening the opposition coach that you're going to come across and break his neck. The spirit of the game is both coaches relentlessly abusing and undermining the officials. The spirit of the game is players arguing with spectators behind the fence. The spirit of the game is, apparently, Harry Noon getting paid who knows what to run around the fifth tier of Victorian soccer (north-west section), bang into people like an old school footy sniper, and barely touch the ball. Depressing, really.

Final thought
Thank you to JJ for noticing an error in my fixture list page.

Well, it's probably time to give up on the season - South Melbourne 0 Oakleigh Cannons 2

Boy, did this whole outing just suck from almost start to finish. Since I do not live that far away from McIvor Reserve, I didn't think it would be necessary to get to the ground super early (and it's not like there was a reserves game before the seniors), and public transport to that venue being what it is (shithouse), it seemed like a no-brainer to just drive. That was a great idea until your correspondent was obliged by a volunteer car park attendant to park in an exact spot, all while I somehow got into an argument with said attendant about my very poor parking abilities (thank you, bung left retina), and I remembered why I stopped taking driving lessons with my old man back in the day. The upshot of being in that particular spot was that at least one regular South of the Border reader was able to pick out my car from the mass of steel, thanks to the classiness of the stickers on the rear windscreen. 

The trauma of the car park having been overcome soon enough, it was time to wander in and wonder when we would be better off going next door to watch the hockey, a sport I otherwise don't think much of. Turns out, not very long. If you were being kind, you'd say we just had an off day coming off the faux-bye, and that one bad outing (during the regular season) against an accomplished opponent doesn't undo all the good things we've done in 2023. If you were being less kind, you'd basically write off the rest of the home and away season, and just pray for two (or if necessary, three) games in a row of complete arse to get state title no. 11, before we can finally bail on this decrepit league.

The first half was so, so bad. Like, "half a season ago, before we briefly emerged from our turtle shells bad". There was no pressure on the Oakleigh defenders when they were in possession. Like, zero, nada, zilch. Pat Langlois having to be told by a teammate to at least jog towards the Oakleigh left-back who had the ball. Instead, time and again, Oakleigh were allowed easy passes out of defence, under no duress. A little bit of carrying the ball up the field, a couple of passes, and Oakleigh's very good forward line was provided with ample opportunity to do its worst; luckily for us, they had an off day in front of goal.

You may think Chris Taylor is a great coach at this level, or merely a middling one who happens to know how to use a big budget. On Sunday, it didn't matter, because we forfeited all the initiative to such a degree it wouldn't have mattered who was coaching Oakleigh. If there is one thing I hate about the way our squad plays when it's at its worst, it is exactly that - letting the opposition dictate the nature of the contest by default. Oakleigh want the ball. They want to keep it, recycle it, move it around. We are a counter-attacking team, and that's fine - but without pressing up the field, without actively trying to win the ball back as opposed to just waiting for opposition mistakes, we are not going to have much luck against opponents who aren't borderline incompetent.

That win of ours against Avondale earlier in the season? It was good not because Avondale had a bad day, but because they actually played pretty well. They played well and still lost, not because of dumb luck favouring us, but because we went out there with a positive plan, and didn't just wait for them to gift us goals. But on Sunday, Max Mikkola was all alone on his left wing, looking a lot like Gerrie Sylaidos all alone on his left wing, no forwards to pass to, and no midfield to play with. Ajak Riak, having to go all the way back to midfield to get any taste of the ball. Fifteen shots on target to one by the end, because for some reason on a small ground we decided to have almost all of our ball and personnel in our defensive third.

That we came out in the second half trying to get back in the game with fireworks and big lineup changes reeked of desperation, not method. Of the two new acquisitions, Yagoub Mustafa looked much better than Luka Ninkovic, but neither player was going to be the solution to the underlying problem of philosophy; we came out hoping not to lose, they came out hoping to win. The nature of the performance carries the possibility of having done serious damage to the belief of the playing squad. I don't know what skipper Brad Norton said to the side after he held them back on the field following the final whistle - it probably doesn't even really matter - but that he felt the need to do that should be of concern on its own. Second on the ladder with a game in hand, one bad day at the office shouldn't need more than a quick "well, that sucked, let's shrug it off and move on".

Next match
On Sunday at McIvor Reserve against Hume City. This will be our last "home" match of the home and away season.

Is there a curtain raiser?
No. Once more, the under 21s will be playing their match at 6:30PM, a good hour and a half following the conclusion of the senior match.

Around the grounds
24 hours earlier, three and a bit kilometres west
Finding Duane Reserve in Brooklyn - a ground I'd never been to before - was very much like finding a secret passage in a video game. You inadvertently turn left instead of going straight, follow some winding path which the developers made longer just for the sake of added mystery, and all of a sudden there you are, in a little suburban soccer oasis. Like any good oasis, there was a fresh water supply - in this case, a leaky pipe which made one side of the field muddier than you'd like, and which forced the linos to run along the left-forward wing instead of their usual place on the right. Altona North an old off-shoot of Altona City, formed by some Maltese blokes who couldn't get a game at the latter. Most of their history has been undistinguished, strictly lower league and even more obscure; now they find themselves in a league playing against teams with brief Victorian Premier League tenures, including today's opponent, Altona East, who once went within a game of a VPL grand final. As for the game, the first hour was a grind, but East got on top in the last portion of the game, and ground out a deserved 1-0 win, in glorious Saturday afternoon Melbourne winter light, as I discussed the demographic reasons for the decline of Australia's ethnic clubs from the 1960s to today. Then I did it the next day, again.

Food for thought
After the match I bought a souv. I had to wait a little bit, it cost $15, but it was more than adequate. Not award winning, but more than good enough. It was the kind of experience that makes you wonder about the possibilities about a certain other venue's comparative food offerings.

Final thought
Had a wonderful discussion post-game the other day about music, football, and one particular football book. I hadn't gone back and read this rambling review for some time. I think the book's "end of history" vibe is going to get a challenge soon. The future lasts a long time, and such.