Magic of the something or other - South Melbourne 0 Macarthur FC 1

If you want to read something closer to a match report without the hand-wringing, see this post.

Being that this was the one time that pretty much everyone in Australia who cares about such things wanted South to win a match, it's almost satisfying to me that we didn't. As soon as the brackets for the latter part of the Cup draw were made, there was all this internet fuss about Victory vs South, and playing it at the MCG to accommodate the crowd, and proving some kind of point about something. A rivalry that exists almost entirely off field? The chance to test out theories about assumed torn loyalties? A litmus test on what kind of latent support we actually have?

Of course internet fuss when it comes to domestic soccer in this country, at least on the social media platforms I tend to use, is rather a niche topic, which is a point I've laboured for many years. Still, that doesn't mean that this kind of particular internet fuss doesn't matter, but discussing it solely within the ideological confines of old soccer/new football does it a disservice in terms of the simplicity of that binary - especially now that pretty much everyone is an "FC" anyways. Where were the literary and philosophical allusions in these discussions? As far as I could see, there was no mention of shadows, of strange doppelgangers, or the umheimlich - it was pretty much all politics, and tending to scabby wounds that never heal (that's us), and a form of victory (no pun intended) that will never be complete nor satisfying (to them), no matter how long, how enduring, and how complete our exile and ongoing cultural humiliation is.

(it's worth adding, maybe, that even the irrelevance of our cultural obscurity is itself another form of ongoing humiliation)

Even history sort of got chewed up and regurgitated in the most predictable way - I get that it's 20 years on, but almost no-one cared to see a possible South vs Adelaide United match up. Maybe there's not enough meaning there for anyone except the most esoteric or bitter among us for an attempt to avenge the loss in our final NSL game. But forced attempts at creating "meaning" are a relative thing. What does Macarthur FC mean, apart from the licence fee they stumped up, being the unwilling party to certain Sydney Croatia fan nonsense, and a punchline for alleged match fixing? Right, something about a cowbell. Oh, and Matt Millar ending up there during the course of his wanderings, and now... not.

(By the way, I hear that Dushanbe is lovely at this time of year. And yes, I checked, Australia doesn't have a bilateral extradition treaty with Tajikistan, not that that's important for anything in this discussion. Also, did you know, in the 9.5 clubs Millar has played at, his 65 league for South (84 all up) is still the most he's played for any one of them?)

Apart from those items listed above, I knew squat about Macarthur, and couldn't care less. How do they play? What kind of support do they have? What do they think of us, if anything? I didn't really see anyone talking about them during the lead-up to the game, except that they looked ordinary against Oakleigh the week before, and that they took our Sawyer away. That pretty suggest to me that as in the NSL days, that the gulf between the teams that people care about (whether they like them or not) and those they don't is still as large as it ever was. 

There was, however, one crutch of familiarity - the presence in the Macarthur back-line of old school genial thug Tomislav Uskok, who's been crashing into our players on and off since 2009, back when he was still known merely as "Tom" Uskok. It's unclear whether his particular style has rubbed off on his teammates, or whether he's there because he fits in with a preexisting leg chopping style, or he and his teammates just haven't learned the lesson yet that it's not smart to try and deliberately collect yellow and/or red cards too obvious.

At any rate, the ref did not oblige with even the pretence that he was out there to create a safe environment for the players, because we were hack'n'slashed almost from the start, and certainly to the finish. It made no sense. We were missing our best defender (gallivanting around Europe), best midfielder (on the bench, carrying an injury), and our best forward (raptured), who was also like approximately 85-99% of our game plan. What threat were we to them that they needed to resort to such brutality, against an undermanned team semi-pros coming to the end of a gruelling near-40 game season?

Anyway, promising 20-30 minutes at the start where we actually played (all things considered), but couldn't create much of value. Then the war of attrition and the professionalism of the opposition ground us into the dirt. Them winning it via a late penalty (which some of you still contest) is almost a moot point. We gave everything, but didn't have enough to give. If we had Sawyer... if, if, if. It was kind of predictable in the end. And I'm on that side of the fence that thinks it was a penalty, but in the context of what hadn't been given all game by the ref, that penalty call was nothing. Well, we had a good run I suppose.

So after that disappointment, what was there left to say? That's right, crowd numbers. That was not a great crowd - the 6pm Sunday timeslot that everyone loves, no junior soccer, no footy, fantastic weather, school holidays, and yet there was no threat of the northern side being opened up. It was also not a terrible crowd - enough people turned up to more or less fill the southern stand, even if they didn't necessarily sit or stand in it, preferring to stand along the fence or line up for a souv; the crowd was also in fine voice, passionate and engaged. There were people there I hadn't seen for some years, who had time and/or a reason good enough to come back, at least for one match.

It was also an unknowable crowd, because no one can believe any crowd figure dished out, official or otherwise. People doubted the 4,000 odd figure announced for this game, in part because they doubted the 4,000 figure announced for the Wellington game, because they doubted the 6,000 figure Preston quoted for our game back in May or whatever it was, and... well, I think you get the picture. There has been that much bullshit made about crowd sizes going back decades, that only the select few who have access to the actual numbers - and that assumes that they themselves have access to accurate numbers - can know for sure what is real, and what isn't on this topic.

(and there's a difference between the number of people who turned up, and the number of people who actually paid for a ticket)

Ordinarily I wouldn't care so much, because it's been 20 years and we're running on fumes anyway, and the live stream images of most of our games in front of our malnourished stand tell their own grim story. But this NSD thing, you know, the thing that's going to save us (and Australian soccer!), I kind of have this odd idea about it - and that odd idea is that for the NSD to work, apart from much better crowds then pretty much all bar one lower tier crowd is currently getting, it will actually need accurate counting of said crowds, if only for the sake of bookkeeping and future planning. And maybe something real to tell sponsors and investors about why they should their put their money into such an enterprise.

Unless it's just a front for money laundering - but no-one in Australian soccer would ever dabble in such antics.

Next game
Well, see the thing about that is...

Next year

Assuming there's no NSD - and I'm going to assume that as hard as I can - as someone on the terraces noted a few weeks back, it's going to get a bit stabby next year. Maybe that's a bit of an overreaction. Let's bookmark this post and come back to it at the appropriate time if needed.

NPL Victoria will see some changes next year, apart from Preston and the Victory NPL side coming back up. First, there are going to be roster rule changes. There won't be any match day age requirements for 2025 (they're coming in 2026), but you will need to have a minimum of three home-grown players (whatever that means), in your senior roster. That really shouldn't be a problem for anyone, and certainly not for us as a club which has spent this year giving actual extended first team starting action to our own youth team players.

A bigger problem for us is that first-team goalkeepers must now be Australian, unless the visa goalkeeper had a contract prior to September 2019. Three-time goalkeeper of the year Javi Diaz Lopez has only been playing in Australian since. 2021. Makes you think.

Relegation down to VPL1 has also been increased from two to three teams, and all of those are automatic relegation spots - no playoff for third last.

A few rumours floating about Esteban being on the way out (after his most successful year, no less), but that's all it is for the moment. Just a bit too early for definitive news from us, having just finished our season, about which players might stay or go. I'd start some scuttlebutt about players with NSD related clauses not sticking around in the event of there being no NSD, but that would be very irresponsible of me.

Match program news
Added the grand final match program to the collection. 

Final thought
What am I even doing back here?