Interstate soccer came back... but did anyone notice? (yes, sorta)

So last Saturday Victoria played its first interstate match since 2009. Back then, Victoria's men's team defeated Northern New South Wales 3-2 up in Newcastle. Joseph Youssef, Ramazan Tavsancioglu, and Steven O'Dor were part of the men's squad, and Laura Spiranovic was in the women's team. Records of the whole event, played as part of shared 125th anniversaries of the two federations, are sketchy though, which is a funny thing to say about a game played not even 15 years ago. 

Yes, interstate football is not what it was back in the 1950s, when state pride was something serious, or the 1960s and 70s when playing for the state against touring teams also had a degree of cachet. The introduction of national league soccer, the declining quality of touring teams, the women's feds merging into the men's sphere, and even some A-League teams adopting state colours as their own has made the whole thing near redundant. All that, and there's just so many better ways nowadays to assess talent for national team squads, which was one of the primary functions of interstate competition.

But someone out there still thinks there's a place for state matches, and so a couple of years ago we had Queensland host New South Wales in men's and women's matches, and last weekend we had Queensland visit us for a double-header. I decided to go all the way out to the Home of the Matildas, so I could sit in the grandstand this time, and at the very least check out the South boys and girls who were selected. I wouldn't have gone if the Pies had lost the night before in the prelim - I'd have been in too foul of a mood - but they'd won, so it was something to do, even if neither of the two persons I'd asked to come with me were able to join me.

It's a fair hike by public transport from Sunshine out to this new soccer venue, but not altogether too bad - the worst bit is the rideshare drivers parking in the bus lanes in the city, and the walk across from the La Trobe Uni bus stop to the complex. Apparently there's a tram stop that's closer, but since the complex surrounds are not quite finished yet, it's hard to know which paths are open and which aren't. Unfortunately I missed the first half hour of the women's match, where Victoria was already 2-0 up, in part thanks to a goal from South's Danielle Wise. In that part of the second half that I did see, they should have gone 3-0 up, except for the kind of hesitant finishing from close up which was a feature of the South men in the recent grand final.

Queensland were the better team in the second half, and observers who'd watched the entire match said they were the better team through most of the game, but they could only pull the one goal back, and thus Victoria won the first match of the double-header. I think South co-captain Akeisha Sandhu won the player of match. Quite a good quality match and reasonable attendance (though I think the grand final had a much better turnout), which would ordinarily make me curious enough to check out the standard of the A-League Women's comp, but you know...

Then it was time for the men. Victoria was missing Melbourne Knights players, because the Knights had an Australia Cup game the next day, and so the squad seemed to be mostly Avondale, Oakleigh, and South players. Can't say for certain how many of them were ex-Queenslanders. All four South selections - Javi Diaz Lopez, Brad Norton, Marco Jankovic, and Pat Langlois  - started the match for Victoria. 

It was a pretty flat atmosphere, until (I think) Xander Guy came off and his Yusef Ahmed was subbed on in the first half. Then the Yusef Ahmed fan club (some South fans may remember them from the grand final) lifted the mood with cheering for their man who, to his credit, also helped restore the balance of the game, as Queensland had had the better of the opening twenty minutes by some way. A cracking finish to open the scoring didn't do any harm either.

It was not a balls to the wall kind of game. There weren't any stupid tackles or aggro, and the players had licence to play a bit fancy, with quite a few nice dribbling moves you don't normally see. It was enjoyable for what it was - something a bit more serious and meaningful than a friendly, and a good chance for players to have a bit of fun as well. It was very high tempo at times though; you'd like to think it was a taste of what a second division could look like from a talent point of view.

Played on the hybrid turf-synthetic pitch, the aesthetics of the game felt a bit like a NSW NPL match - quite a bit more futsal-like, and not much of the hard-man stuff you get in Victoria. Having said that, I don't know much of what typical Queensland soccer looks like, so it's hard to make sweeping statements. Players from both sides at times had difficulty keeping their footing on the surface.

Jankovic got subbed out at half time I think, and Langlois was OK, Lopez was solid apart from one bad pass which almost cost Victoria a goal. Norton, who was captain of Victoria, coughed up the ball which lead to Queensland's equaliser, and looked by far the least comfortable defender on the field from either side in playing the ball out from the back. At times it looked like his teammates didn't really want to pass it to him, but part of that was because of a team tactic of aggressively trying to play through the middle. There was a clear instruction also not to play any long balls out of defence, which must have disoriented the South players at least a little.

Norton and Langlois both scored in the penalty shootout, and Lopez made the winning save. I'd like to think that regular post-season interstate soccer could become a thing again, even if the high costs and struggle for interest work against it. Twenty bucks seemed steeped for entry, but I'm not sure that making it cheaper would have increased the appeal to the fickle general soccer public. Not many South people there, apart from friends and family of the players - I think the only person I saw was senior men's team manager Kris Peladarinos. Anyway, fun time had by all, which was it's all about.