Around the grounds, on the couch, at the breakfast table...

It's a good thing Manny's been keeping the Blue and White Views site ticking over, because you wouldn't want to be relying on this site anymore. Though I do miss the paper fanzine, at the very least for having the player roster at easy reference.

Let's call it a day, month, year, forever - South Melbourne 0 Port Melbourne 2
Let's ignore the Dockerty Cup games for a moment. After the write-off of the preceding ten league games - two draws, eight losses, one senior coach gone, no strikers, and a goals per game ratio of about 0.3 - this is where it had to start to get good again. Maybe not "good", but at least "better". We need at least nine points from the next four league games, all against fellow relegation candidates. To be honest, "better" probably wasn't going to be good enough either, since we'd had a taste of "better" against Avondale and Oakleigh, but those are the games where you need to be "good", not just "better" than whatever slop you've been producing for three months. "Better" did show up in this game, eventually, but not before we were 2-0 down after 15 minutes against the bottom side, courtesy of them having an actual striker, as well as a gross misstep in team selection and arrangement by Uncle Buck which allowed said striker to stroll through at will. After that, I mentally started preparing for relegation or the end of the club, whichever came first. 

Modern football is rubbish
In between one globally irrelevant match and another, there was this thing that everyone was talking about - the title match for the secondary European club competition. Since it involved Old Mate - you know who I'm talking about - there was indeed heightened local interest, as well as the chance for our club to make hay while the sun still remotely shines. I turned the TV on at about the 55 minute mark I think, saw that the score was favourable to the nominal good guys, and then while wishing Old Mate all the success in the world, proceeded to hate almost every second of this spectacle. Manchester United? Rubbish. Tottenham Hotspur? More rubbish! After all my angst about Angeball vs Esteball, especially during the theatrical run of Ange and the Boss, it turns out while we had ditched Esteball (albeit for negligible benefit at this point in time), Old Mate had adopted it in his hour of need. It was filth. But these things happen, and sometimes all you can do is hope for an arsey goal, a keeper having a blinder, an acrobatic goal line clearance, and an opponent who couldn't score against you if they had another month to do so up their sleeves.

More depressing, from the point of view of someone who pretty much never watches top level football played in proper stadiums, in front of lots of people, and broadcast with all the bells and whistles, was how anodyne the experience was. Is there any personality left at that level of football? Everything has been made so slick, so clean, so neat, that you wonder if any of it leaves any sort of lasting memory? I'm not asking for a return to abject squalor, but where is the grime, where is the hint of individuality, of difference? It's a lot of old man yelling at clouds, and I'm probably a touch too young to be doing that. Well, at least Old Mate managed to do the thing that he said he would. I'm sure it'll play out well for him.

Let's not listen
Somewhere in between the previous South game and the next one, Greg Blake wrote something quite good about the woes of our club (and to a lesser extent, the Knights) that had a solid diagnosis, but also included a completely wrong solution, at least so far as South is concerned. But even if Blakey had been right, it doesn't matter, because no writing on the game matters anymore. No one listens, everyone moves on quickly. 

The most underappreciated hero in world history - Melbourne Knights 0 South Melbourne 2
Needing at least nine points from this run of four absolutely crucial league games, we'd already missed out on three, and now here we were, the 1991 NSL grand final re-match, now in the form of 14th (them) and 13th (us), on our knees in the most heinous combined position these two clubs had faced in their 65 years of competing against each other. The attendance was somehow better than I expected, though I'm aware that it did include some neutrals passing through for the sake of... morbid curiosity? Paying respects to the (soon to be) deceased? For further evidence of the host's decline, there was no match program produced by the home side for this game, which means that we're down to only Gully producing match programs on a regular basis. To be a little fair, there was a match program in the Knights' merch stall for their game against Preston, which seems to suggest that we're not worth the bother of a grand occasion anymore. Fair enough. Greg Blake's right, we're not special anymore, haven't been for a long time, but damn it, I still don't want to be like everyone else.

As for the match, we came out with the kind of intensity which might have been useful at the start of the game the week before, with the desperation move of central defender/defensive mid Lucas Inglese up front not looking completely bonkers in the first half hour or so. With supporter marshal vest on, and not wanting to be anywhere near anyone else except a select few, I ventured out to the outer side, the dismantled terrace steps meaning all that was left was red mud that turned out to be very hard to get off my shoes, and a brilliant vantage point from which to view Jack Pope (pictured above) etch his name into our exponentially marginal folklore. Cracking opener, opportunist second, and were we really going to do this? Like, maybe if not survive, than at least take these jerks down with us? The answer to that would have to wait another nervy hour. Eventually local security came by and politely told us that we had to relocate from the out of bounds area - though us two with the marshals vests could have stayed if we liked - and then we plonked ourselves near the bench, in time to see Pope get sent off for retaliation, Nahuel Bonada prevented from getting sent off by a quick thinking physio, and our "local oaf" of a back-up keeper prevented from getting sent off by the fact that there were ten people ahead of him who he would have to barrel through first; though, my word, he did try.

After that, it became all about survival for us. They botched a few chances, especially just before halftime, and eventually ran out of time completely. Whatever sympathy or empathy I might have had for their club's plight was negated by the fact that their supporters are still directing violent, racist, and violently racist chants towards anyone they consider subhuman. Then after the game their whole board resigned, which it'd be nice to take some credit for, but I reckon that was something that was brewing for awhile, at least going by the press release the departing board put out.

Kup Komedy Kapers Kontinued - South Melbourne 2 Pascoe Vale 1
Following our Pyrrhic cup victory against Bentleigh a few weeks before, and coming off a solid enough league win against the Knights on a Friday, our most favourable cup draw since 2019 continued on the following Tuesday, against the team sitting either rock-bottom or near enough to it in the division two below our own. Remember when we needed an extra time goal to beat these guys in a semi final in 2015, and they brought enough fans to be loud and rip flares? That's the beauty and terror of promotion and relegation though - yesterday's glories belong to yesterday, and (contextually) torpid irrelevance is always just around the corner. But the Cup is the great even-upperer. So we had not the strongest team we could put out there, but they had their under 23s. So, you think we should have been OK. Wrong. The visitors' reserves team ran rings around us, and took a 1-0 lead into the break. Maybe if they kept the foot on the pedal in the second half, I wouldn't be so offhand about the whole experience. I suppose having gone through something not too dissimilar against Preston in 2013, which caused a lot more angst for me, this wasn't quite as bad? I mean it was bad, but I guess our expectations were so low by this point that... look, maybe I'm trying to rationalise too much post-script about something that was a lot worse in the moment. But anyway, Paco sat back, and we worked our way into the game, chucked on a few older heads, and pulled off the comeback with the last kick of the game. Like the win over Bentleigh, considering our relegation predicament, I'm still not sure winning this game was a good idea. 

Meet the Parents - South Melbourne 4 Melbourne Victory (NPL) 2
Because of that unpleasantness from just under a decade ago, and assorted less public and meaningful incidents since then (not only with us) - and I suppose 20 years of social media and off-field hostility - here was the completely overboard security arrangement of having all the Victory supporters on the other side of the ground, and sales to Victory fans cut off an hour before kickoff. Maybe twenty to thirty people were in the northern stand, a long way from the bigger crowd that was there for the infamous 2016 match. And yet it didn't stop the nonsense between our fans and theirs! And yet it wasn't the usual suspects getting involved, that is Clarendon Corner and Victory hools. Except, also, it kinda was the usual suspects! Let's me explain. Outside of the notorious troublemakers who attach themselves to Victory's cause, the only people watching Victory's NPL team are the parents of the players. And what could be worse than having to deal with opposition fans in the stands when they are almost entirely made up of parents? They are so often insufferable at the best of times, taking any criticism of their progeny as a personal attack, when the truth is if you or I or someone supporting South is having a go at an opposition player, we do it because we know very well who they are - in which case, you can tell from the commentary - or because we have no idea who they are; ditto.

Tons of boys and young men go through Victory's academy/NPL programs. Most of them, once they are discarded by the program, will either drop down to lower leagues permanently, or give up the game and do something else with their lives. They are nobodies, just like I am a nobody. We are, both of us, there, but mostly inconsequential. Not yesterday's heroes, not tomorrow's legends. But try telling that to the parents. So while Victory's kids are tearing us apart in the first half, some of our people from the middle of the stand - so, not CC! - are getting a bit chippy, and some of the Victory parents start getting lippy, and it's threatening to boil over. For some reason the parents of the visiting team cannot comprehend that our people don't much care for Melbourne Victory as an entity, including any of its representatives, even transitory ones like those playing for Victory's NPL team. The situation gets settled down soon enough - apparently ex-South player Melvin Becket is in the thick of it, which just adds something to absurdity of the situation - and the Victory parents get shuffled off to the northern stand, which bolsters the numbers by about 200%, and makes the farcical security arrangements a tad more worthwhile.

A few people claim that being at least nominal Victory fans, those parents shouldn't have been allowed in our stand in the first place. Maybe those people are right. But I think it's less them being Victory, and more being parents and family that was the main issue. Really, that kind of thing could have happened at against any club with fans of a similar demographic. As for the game itself, at halftime we were down 2-1 and getting played off the park by a bunch of kids. Relegation was right there, and it looked even more real than after the close of play against Port. But more adjustments, some senior players pulling their fingers out, and we romped home. I don't think anyone was getting carried away with the result, or the performance, but out of the minimum nine points we needed to aim for in this four week stretch, we'd got six. It could have been much worse. 

This is going to cost us - St Albans 2 South Melbourne 2
It was cold, wet, and er... cold. My driver Johnny and I got into Churchill Reserve for free from one of the entrances nearer the training grounds, not thinking much of it - not that we were geniuses or that we were trying to stooge the hosts out of $40 - until it became clear that everyone got in for free, because there was some dinner-dance thing organised by Dinamo going at the same time as the game. It would have been nice as a South fan to have about this earlier, because then I guess we could have promoted it to our own people, and encouraged one or two more of them to show up. So it goes. The game? Nervy first ten minutes, pretty good up until 50 minutes being 2-0 up, and then, well... a deserved for St Albans, and the goal of getting nine points from twelve from this stretch gave me that sinking feeling again - and worse a week later when Victory crunched Oakleigh 5-2, and Dinamo drew with Avondale.

OK, this is just getting stupid now - Dandenong City 1 South Melbourne 1 (South win 3-1 on penalties)
My provisional driver being all the way in Perth, there was no way to get to this game, but also kinda like, no real regret that I was not making the journey all the way to Endeavour Hills. Especially as we were going to lose. I mean, they have a better team, a much better coach (or so some of us like to tell ourselves), a big forward, and familiarity with the cow paddock that they play on. First twenty minutes, so, so. Then bad. Deserved to be down 1-0. Some bold changes in the second half, and things turned around dramatically. Got the equaliser and then, like in so many games this year, ran out of gas. But we somehow got to penalties, including surviving a goal line scramble that's impossible to tell if it crossed the line from all the way here in Sunshine, peering into the dark Australian bush gothic corners of Frank Holohan Soccer Complex via live stream. The home side seemed convinced, but unlike the linesman who gave Andy Brennan his phantom goal against Eastern Lions, the officials decided here that the benefit of the doubt should go to us. Or maybe it hadn't crossed the line here, and they just made a good call.

This Dockerty Cup run, already being hilarious - stray gift horse in the mouth passes, phantom goals, less than convincing or deserved come from behind wins against at times very mediocre opposition -  , reached new heights of comedy in the shoot out. Ex-South men Yagoub Mustafa and Nathaniel Hancock hitting crap penalties, and Javi Lopez not really having to pull out any fancy tricks to save them, or the shot from another bloke that went flying over the bar. Sam Francou with balls of steel to take the second penalty. Three away games out of four to get to the Dockerty Cup semis, and the national stage of the Australia Cup, muddling our way through this otherwise very poor season. It's all been very strange.

Next game
Preston at home today. You probably won't be reading this until after the game anyway.

Final thought
Here's to old mate Savvas Jonis doing what I'm far too polite and/or cowardly to do, and reminding latent and lapsed fans of ours on social media that if you want to talk about current day Hellas, you have to earn that right by being here with us now.

But to get back to the main point. Yes, it's sad that we have latent fans who for whatever reason can no longer bring themselves to attend South matches. That's their choice, and if they want to define themselves by reminiscence alone, there's not much we can do. Those of us who are still attending games appreciate what we have, not just what we had. So by all means if you're a latent fan, enjoy your fill of nostalgia - but don't go complaining about contemporary happenings at the club on or off-field, or the media's treatment of the club - because if you're not going to games yourself, you should probably reconsider the merits of your indignation.

I mean, I suppose those types can comment all they want, but there is absolutely no obligation for us current supporters to pay them any mind, because realistically they are not coming back, no matter how much the club tries to accommodate them. Change the logo? Change the name? Get more Greeks on the field? As if that would make a difference. 

It occurs to me that I may have become a touch more cynical about things over the past eight years.

Precipice - South Melbourne 1 Oakleigh Cannons 2

Not much time for anything more expansive or timely this week. We're in a mess. On field, off field. Running out of players. Unable to bring in players. And every day the ordinary supporter feeling more and more helpless, hopeless, and irrelevant. Helpless to help the club, hopeless for a better future, irrelevant to everyone in Australian soccer, including the people running our club

South of the Border, now in its 18th year of once great but now spotty coverage of this club, has seldom been a haven of positivity. Chalk that down to the main contributor. But every week just seems to get worse. What's there to cling on to right now? NSD and the Oceania fantasy. Here's my conspiracy: the club is being run half-arsed on the field this year (no summer training camp, high school reunion recruitment, Danish nepo-baby, etc) so that we save money and/or get relegated so that we can have our youth team in VPL1 next year while the real seniors play in a fully fledged NSD. It's the only thing that makes sense to me, otherwise we are being run so poorly, you wonder what it is we're doing.

Younger, more rosy-cheeked bloggers like Manny - who is doing a bang up job with Blue and White Views - still has the kind of enthusiasm for the battle that I used to have a long, long time ago, searching for ways to improve, offering suggestions. There is his post, for instance, on better and/or more diverse canteen options. Sounds good, eminently sensible, and some of (like loukoumades) that we used to have before. But last week, when a lot of friends and family turned up early to watch the under 23s curtain raiser, there wasn't even any food. I can understand that somewhat right at kickoff. But a lot of people wandered in to the social club at half time, and found nothing. So before we even branch out to other offerings, could we at least have the current offerings available when people are looking for them?

In another post, Manny wonders where the club communications with its members are? We were once at the forefront of social media stuff which, while not a like for like replacement for news direct from the board, at least felt something more than the barebones stuff we put out. A few Facebook posts with results, fixtures, and players birthdays - the bulk of what we get now - is not enough. Manny is right - we need direct, and more frequent communication from the board about the ongoing plans for the club. When Nick Maikousis took over as president, we were promised more frequent member forums, and for a little while we at least had something like that. But now we can't even schedule an AGM, which apart from a moral imperative for a member-based club, is also a legal obligation. You would like to think that people involved in their personal lives in elevated positions in the corporate and legal worlds would have a finer appreciation for that legal obligation, but for some reason the ordinary South Melbourne member is treated less important.

You've got the club's general manager David Clarkson making a brief sojourn into Clarendon Corner last week asking how we can bring people back to the club, but not sticking around long enough to get a thorough answer. Yes, I would love David Clarkson to have the authority to gather that information from the remaining fans and relay that info to the club hierarchy, since we don't really have any other way of communicating it, unless - god forbid - we break open the EGM petition glass. I'm happy to offer an impromptu (and probably unhelpful, doom merchant style) thesis on the subject, but it's not just about me - it's about all of us. Speaking of all us, if you aren't a corporate member, then you basically do not exist to the club outside of match day (unless it's to apparently get banned off the club's socials). I get it, the sponsors are important, and they need their own events. But no room for even one fan table at the jersey night? Also, did you know there was a jersey night? It's a good thing that the Olympic friendly earlier this year doubled up as a family day event, because we haven't had a family day for years otherwise. We didn't even have an informal Christmas gathering last year.

So, again, who and what is this club for? And if the fully-formed NSD doesn't get up, then what? Even if we survive relegation, what are we doing? Sure, go to a game, watch a dreadful refereeing decision put a team already on the back foot even more on the back foot, but focusing on that misses the forest for the trees. How did we get to the stage where one obviously poor refereeing decision could send us down a division? How can Oakleigh have Pierce Waring on the bench, a player who probably would be starting everywhere else, while South fans in the stands are wondering who (with no disrespect intended) each new kid is on the bench? What is the plan? Are we just killing time? Should we wind the club up? It would free up a lot of time on the weekend for me, but I would miss some of the people.

Next game
In a few hours against Port. Oh boy.

Final thought
Anyway, if you want more timely, positive, and good natured South material go to Blue and White Views, also available as a Facebook page.

Pyrrhic victory - Bentleigh Greens 1 South Melbourne 2

What an amazing night. I finished work just after midday (the Queenslanders who run the company call it an "early mark"), so I was able to get home, get changed, and not have to lug my bag of fruit and the rest of my stuff to Kingston Heath later that day. Thanks to Melbourne's magnificent public transport system, I got to Cheltenham station much earlier than I expected, so I had dinner at the Indian joint with pretty much only five star and one star online reviews (I'd give it 3.5) across the street from the station, before eventually heading to the ground.

Now while I was at the bus stop across from the station, I got notifications from at least two different people that rather than the game not being televised, it was actually being televised! Live-streamed to the dozens of people watching for reasons of so-called entertainment, and also a few thousand watching for reasons of loving the odds, not the game. Quite how Football Victoria came up with the idea to stream this match a couple of hours before kickoff, I do not know. Would it have changed my plans, but which I mean, would I have stayed home instead of making the long journey to and from Cheltenham from Sunshine? Maybe. Maybe not. But it would have been nice to have the choice, I suppose.

I did offer to that night's designated match commentator to help out on special comments, which some people may remember I did for a couple of games back in 2019 (to rave reviews, albeit mostly by people who knew me), but it turned out it was much more important to don a supporters' marshal vest, and be part of what looked like a knockoff Croatian I&D crew. Fair enough.

In the context of this particular season - where we are running the very real risk of relegation - this was perhaps the worst possible result. We won the game, which means that we have to play at least one more match that will make preparation for the relegation avoidance battle more difficult. We also won this game in extra time, which means we had to play an extra half hour in a midweek fixture, when we have a very tough game on the Sunday. We also lost two more experienced players to injury, which will make the task associated with league survival that much more difficult.

The loss of Jake Marshall (calf), our most solid defensive player, is going to be brutal at both ends of the field. Apart from his service at the defensive end, he's one of the few remaining aerial threats we have up front from corners. Worse, losing Andy Brennan (hamstring) - regardless of whether you think he's too old, or hasn't had a good season - means the loss of one of the few line breaking players at our disposal. So no Marshall, no Brennan, no Bonada, no Archibald, no Moller (for the sake of thoroughness) - it's not looking good, by which I mean, it's looking worse than before. 

And Max Mikkola's even abandoned the long throws, I'm not sure whether due to instruction, spite, or injury. Our one now only semi-dependant, near-obsolete weapon, and that's been tossed aside for... reasons. Maybe good ones, I don't know. But it was wild to see that on a narrow field - quite strange to see such a thing, considering every team has been widening their pitch where possible to nullify the long throw - Bentleigh's gone the other way. Well, I'm sure George Katsakis has his reasons.

And the loss was right there for the taking, too. We weren't bad, all things considered - we've been much worse this season - but everything in the final third was absolute rubbish. When they were ascendant in this see-sawing match, Bentleigh looked much more likely to score than we did in our ascendant phases. Eventually a cheap midfield turnover saw the Greens take the lead late, and blessed defeat was in sight. Then we had to go ruin it by scoring an equaliser. After all that, you might as well go win the game, right? Andriko Mesourouni's tap in from the one time we actually put in a proper low ball across the box, so there's that lesson to be taken out of this game. Play a striker, win the match? Madness, in its own way. 

Next game
Tomorrow (Sunday) at home against Oakleigh to round out the first half of the season. In a strange turn of events, the under 23s will actually be the curtain raiser.

Dockerty Cup draw
The draw for rounds six and seven was held on Wednesday night, where it was revealed that in the next round we will be hosting Pascoe Vale. It's the first time since 2019 - so, before the pandemic - where  we've been drawn against a side lower than the Victorian second tier. Back then it was Doveton, of course, after which we ended up signing their goalkeeper Josh Dorron. Maybe we'll get a striker out of this match? Who knows.

There were so many worse match-ups that could have happened. Knights again, of course. One of the many NPL sides still remaining. Another Greek club, for another chance at local community humiliation. North Sunshine, where I assume the People's Champ is still playing. But no, we got lucky, because we've got Pascoe Vale, currently bottom of the VPL2. Of course considering our own form and personnel issues, there's no guarantee that this will turn out well anyway, but we could have got a lot worse.

If we do get past Paco, we'll be away to the winner of Dandenong City or Brunswick City. so we're cooked anyway. And what if we did get into the national round of 32 of the Australia Cup? What would we do? Where we would we find useful non-cup tied players to bring into the squad? OK, calm down, one week at a time, we've got more immediate problems to deal with.

Someone should do something about all the problems
Normally I'm partial to the work of Neos Kosmos contributor Dean Kalimniou, who writes interesting articles about all things Hellenic, from the ancient to the now. One area, however, where I refuse to even bother reading him is when he starts talking about soccer, especially Australian soccer - not least because, as one reader of this blog commented, what does it mean for Dean to call himself a South Melbourne supporter, if Dean is never seen at any of our games?

Now I bring that up only to set up the scenario here - Kalimniou wrote an article about Preston Lions trying to trademark the name "Preston Makedonia", and the obvious consternation that would cause members of the Greek community. I'm not going to comment on that, but rather the reaction by some readers on Facebook to the article, as seen to the right. 

Sitting here as a South Melbourne Hellas fan, watching what appears to be an earnest discussion about forming and/or supporting a singular large Greek-backed club in Melbourne, for the sake of Hellenism... and I don't quite know what year I'm in. Is it 1959 all over again? Are we going to see Neos Kosmos articles arguing for the end to the squabbling and petty fiefdoms of Yarra Park and Hellenic, and pleading for unity for the sake of the glory of Hellenism? 

I can't see it happening myself, but I am a pessimist by nature.

Final thought
So our man at Football Australia is gone, and they just announced an $8 million loss. I'm sure this won't impact the National Second Division at all.

Expected - Avondale 4 South Melbourne 0

After disregarding the ample time available to me on Sunday to post something about this game - for whatever reason it seemed more worth my time to harvest the olives from next door's tree that hangs over our fence - I'm just popping in quickly to note that in terms of the scoreline this is probably exactly what we expected; in terms of how it happened, probably about 50/50.

I don't know how many players Avondale had out which made us look slightly better than what we are, and I don't really care. Nor do I care that they kinda put the cue in the rack after 4-0. I do care that we copped three in five minutes, but I also care that the team at least played the game out to the end, and looked closer to scoring a league goal than it has for a couple of months. Don't get me wrong, though - the experience still sucked.

Next game
Tonight, Dockerty Cup away to Bentleigh. This game will not be televised. This game will be televised. Bloody late notice.

New caretaker coach
Having gone through our entire rolodex and being hung up on by everyone they've called - including Mrs Neville from across the street - we finally have a coach to take us through to the end of the NPL season. Welcome back, I suppose, Sinisa Cohadzic, former South youth team coach and technical director.

Final thought
I know that the Dockerty Cup isn't a priority anymore, but... I don't know... I still care about it.

Perspective - Green Gully 1 South Melbourne 0

I could rabbit on about the coaching situation, being winless in the league for several months, having no strikers, no AGM, and many other things, but maybe for one week we can focus on a bigger loss.

I was devastated, and I'm still in shock at the news of the sudden death this week of Con Shomos, longtime Hellas fan and friend to many of us at South Melbourne, especially those in proximity to what's left of Clarendon Corner and the various South forums. Con was as staunch a Hellatzi as you could find, but more importantly, Con was a terrific bloke, and you'd struggle to find anyone at the club with a bad word to say about him. 

When I first met him just under 20 years ago when I came back to the club after my lost weekend away from the game, Con was an older, moderate voice among the then much larger and much broader church that was Clarendon Corner, and he retained that unofficial role up to his sudden passing this week. Along with his late father, he had his sons with him, the youngest of whom would jump on you in the old social club. Being 15 to 20 years older than the majority of Clarendon Corner's early 20s cohort, Con had a broader perspective and a more mellow approach than most of us to the way the club was run. Even now, nearly 20 years on from when most of us met him, most of us were still playing catch up.

Con had a dry, subtle sense of humour, but it seldom if ever ventured into cruelty. More than once he managed to burst the bubble of my outsized sense of moral superiority, but I never felt bad when he did it. He was adept at being able to disagree without being disagreeable, something that I still wish that I was better at. He was generous in spirit and in action. His generosity was ordinary and expected, but no less valuable for its simplicity. Need a lift to the nearest station? Easy. Need some help to pack something away, or to set something up? If Con could help, he would. Need a sensible voice on the forums and social media to represent South fans? Con did his bit, without any grandstanding.

Need someone to volunteer to man the barbecue back in the days when Clarendon Corner would have its annual match against Original Melbourne 21? Con was your man. He was my captain when I played for CC White against CC Blue in the curtain raiser to the main game. He got members of Clarendon Corner employment at the company he used to work at, which maintained the copying, printing, and ID card services at local universities. Again, not an extraordinary gesture, but a gesture nevertheless done out of love for South Melbourne Hellas and its people.

For those of us at South who knew him well, he was variously an indoor soccer teammate, or a fellow gig goer and guitar enthusiast. He had a predilection for bands from the Aussie pub scene that many have forgotten, but he still kept an eye on what was going on in the now. He was a footy fan in the way many in Melbourne are, not quite as dedicated as the most fanatical, but still aware of who was doing well and who wasn't. Though Hellas was his sporting alpha and omega, Con had more than a soft spot for the Pies, and I'll never forget the 2010 Queen's Birthday match a few of us South people went to, and not just because it was also Gains' first footy match, which ended in a bloody draw. 

Myself, Con, and another Con, at South's 50th
anniversary gala ball at Crown Casino in 2009.

Con was an enthusiastic traveler to South's interstate and overseas sojourns, even as they became rarer following the end of the NSL. Those who shared the trips to Singapore and the Gold Coast certainly have their stories, but I'll never forget the 2008 Canberra trip where Con, who had driven up with his boys, hooked up a speaker to his car to play a recording of Lefteri's trumpet for the patrons at AIS Field 14. He was pleasant to sit and enjoy a meal with in the social club, as well as to sit with towards the back of our grandstand, where he was a fixture at our home games. He had his favourite players and the ones he didn't like so much, just like the rest of us, because he was one of us. He will be missed.

My sincerest condolences to all of Con's friends and family, especially his three boys, Nathan, Nicholas, and James.

Next game
Avondale away today.

Final thought
What else to say? There have certainly been better times to be a South fan. Hopefully some more of those better times are not too far away.

Another sunny day - Eastern Lions 0 South Melbourne 3

Turning up to Gardiners Creek Reserve for the first time since I went to watch Eastern Lions vs Mornington eleven years ago (also a Football Chaos match!), I was expecting not quite the worst, but rather, who knows what. It'd been a hell of a week. It'd been a hell of an eight weeks. Reports from both sides of the ledger last Saturday was that Eastern Lions had three or four of their better players out. Goodness knows why. When we were drawn against each other, they were winless. After a coaching change, they'd picked up a couple of wins. For us, there was no Nahuel Bonada nor Max Mikkola, apparently due to injuries, though I did spot the latter among the onlookers.

You don't often see the club's official Facebook
 account reply directly to our supporters.

Also among the onlookers was Oakleigh Cannons general manager and occasional unlicenced doctor, Aki Ionnas. There was also one George Katsakis, which given the rumours going around about him being a possible candidate for our vacant senior men's coaching job, got tongues wagging. Nevertheless, Occam's Razor suggests that his primary reason for being there was in his capacity as Bentleigh Greens coach, as the Greens were due to play the winner of Saturday's match after having beaten George Cross 3-2 earlier in the week. The secondary reason would have been that Katsakis gets to a lot of games anyway, albeit probably not so many outside the Greek community club scene.

Still, people like to talk, and there's much to talk about. For what it's worth, all that I was able to glean from the more vaguely reputable people I spoke to was that no decision had been made at the time; and, as it turns out, no decision has been made publicly by the time I posted this blog up. I'd also heard from someone else that Goran Lozanovski had been asked to indicate his interest, but he had declined. Harder to verify that in any way, but it's probably legit. 

As for the match itself, there really isn't much that can be said. We did not look utterly transformed, in the sense that we had rediscovered some old mojo. We were, nevertheless, the better team throughout the game, and at least looked up for the battle from the start. George Mells, Esteban Quintas' chief whipping boy this season, got a start and made his mark. An early goal settled whatever nerves there might have been, for me for no other reason than it looked like a normal goal - a turnover, a couple of nice passes, and a finish from the six yard box. Hardly revelatory stuff, unless you've been South Melbourne in 2025, where even by our set piece dependant standards of the past few seasons, we'd barely scored any goals from alternative outlets this year. 

Then the second goal, a square ball across the backline to no one, not centre back nor goalkeeper, and Rob Harding bagged his second after the goalkeeper's initial save of an earlier shot. Lions had put some balls into our box, but there was nothing particularly threatening about most of them. The second half was messier. harder to watch all round. An Andy Brennan shot hit the crossbar, came down, was cleared away and was then called a goal by the linesman. I'm not sure said linesman was in the best position to make that call, and neither the Eastern Lions bench, who were in even worse position, let alone the South fans behind that goal, seemed convinced that it had crossed the line. So it goes. Subs were made, and I assume we came through largely unscathed injury wise. Pleasant day out, but nothing to get too excited about, even if the ball was on the ground a lot more than we've become accustomed to.

Next game
Away to Green Gully on Friday night. It's going to be wet, Leigh and Tyson are still going to be coaching, and there's going to be fifteen million other games on at the same time. I just hope that Gully still do match programs.

How the other half live / If you know your history
While we're on the subject. I don't normally take much of an interest in matters A-League, but I do occasionally take a perverse interest in some of the off-field stuff that goes on there when it intrudes on my social media feeds. Recently there's been some stuff about Football Australia and Melbourne Victory banning certain individuals from the Melbourne Victory's North Terrace supporter group, which of course elicited another infamous supporter group press release missive. So far, no normal.

But while rubbernecking through the responses to a recent missive on the subject on the NT's Facebook page, I did come across this curious response

After initial situation of getting my hackles all ruffled had fizzled out, the comments struck me as missing the point. Northern Terrace, the biggest organised supporter group in Australian soccer history, being compared to the remnants (with the recent exception of Preston) of suburban soccer supporter groups on life support, is just wild. And Thunder and its fans not being punished? Thunder was mauled by Football Federation Victoria following the 2012 grand final which included the infamous rocket flare.

But more to the point - when was the last time a flare was actually lit at a South game by South fans? Not that I've been keeping a tally of such things on a spreadsheet anywhere (I only recently made a spreadsheet to keep tabs on my work from days and expenses for tax purposes), but the last flare lit by someone who was nominally a South fan that I can remember would have been ten years ago, when we played Heidelberg at Lakeside. That night also included an attempt by persons affiliated with the flare lighters (or possibly even just the same person) attempting to steal a Heidelberg banner. The result of those shenanigans? That person, and perhaps a few others, were banned by South Melbourne, A year later, the main person banned from that 2015 game turned up at Lakeside supporting Victory's NPL team against us, and being subsequently banned by Football Victoria for his part in the violence perpetrated by that group of Victory fans that attacked South supporters. On December 17th, 2022, said fan became Bucket Man. 

I suppose the main point of the condensed history above here is that, well, actually, South Melbourne has banned people for pyro and related shenanigans. Does banning people from attending your games stop them from doing stupid shit? There's never any guarantees on that. But can a club, by enforcement of said bans, at least make it so that when those people are moved on, they are at least no longer your problem? Definitely, at least to some degree. Naturally it's much easier to do this at a club which has not many fans to begin with than it is for one with over ten thousand most weeks. But if you're going to turn this into an old soccer/new football comparison (yawn), we should at least get the details right.

But again, to be clear - people like this have been a problem in Australian soccer for decades. They've been at turns banned and appeased, castigated and then used in promotional campaigns. They can spring up  anywhere, any time (good chance someone will pop up at South vs Preston that we don't and will never see again after that), and it's usually a matter of one of two outcomes - either they quickly get bored quickly of whatever club or scene they've attached themselves to, or they hang around long enough to eventually force someone's hand because one of them has cross some critical line of the law or good taste. Then it's up to not just governing bodies, or the clubs to deal with the issue, but also the fans nearest to them. It really has to be all three, and from the latter, that means a wholesale form of social ostracism. Unfortunately, history suggests that last aspect is the hardest to achieve, because there's usually enough of a rump within the relevant supporter base which tolerates or sympathises enough with the transgressive supporters, that the combined efforts of everyone else to get rid of these people just can't take hold.

Final thought
Being driven home from the game last week, and I've got my glasses off and just doomscrolling on my phone, when my driver, who has stopped at the lights at some intersection just outside the southern part of the CBD says "what the fuck", and I look up and there's some chick in hot pants on the pedestrian crossing juggling three balls. It takes all kinds, I guess.

Now what? - South Melbourne 0 Heidelberg United 3

Well, that was one of the more dispiriting things that I've seen as a South fan. Apart from a 15 minute period in the first half where we at least got the ball up field and won a few set pieces, last Sunday was disastrous. For the vast majority of the match, we could not get the ball; in the second half, we could barely get over the half way line. Heidelberg were able to zip from one end of the field to the other with ease. Quite how it was 0-0 at halftime is anyone's guess. We were clapping the team just for winning a corner; meanwhile the Berger fans were disappointed that they weren't putting away clear one-on-one chances. That's where it's at now - looking like a team one or two divisions below where we actually are.

Once the first goal went in - via a deflection, but that piece of luck for the Bergers only made up for the lack of it earlier on - the team capitulated. Most worryingly, it capitulated psychologically. Those players on the field lost all hope and desire, becoming training cones, mere cannon fodder. Those who were benched were furious - at themselves, at the coach, at the entire situation. The star recruit was brought on, but he must be living hell on earth. The only real striker we have left was brought on, but he's hurt, and what's he supposed to do in a one against five situation anyway?

And at the end of it all, there was the coach making the call that his time was up. All that we could infer watching on from the stand, as Esteban Quintas gathered the players around him for a brief chat, and then acknowledging the crowd on his way out, was that he had made the call himself to step down. Somehow, for those of us who have wanted to see the back of him for some time, it was the final indignity - that Quintas had more sense that his time was up and was willing to fall on his own sword, than those at the club who had decided to keep Quintas on seemingly indefinitely.

It was such a soul-sucking experience that you wonder what the plan was for this year? Go cheap as hell for the NPL, and bank it all on the Australian Championship being a success? I've never been a fan of Esteban Quintas, but how did we end up making our off-season recruiting the equivalent of a high school reunion, and some random nepo-baby Dane who was probably here on holiday anyway? That's something those in charge of the football department might want to cover at the next AGM, assuming that we ever have a next AGM. Maybe that will happen after the new coach is announced, whoever that is. Lots of names being thrown around, but none seemingly of much recent reputation. That's assuming anyone of note actually wants to coach us.

Remarkably, considering the nature of the loss, a lot of people stayed back in the social club after the game. Usually people are desperate to get out of there, regardless of the timeslot and the result, and this was a particularly disastrous result and performance. Yet, people hung back. 

So ends this extended period of strangeness
The hiring of Esteban Quintas as coach of South Melbourne Hellas was the culmination of a series of decisions. First, there was the decision to give Chris Taylor a five year contract, with the addition of job titles and responsibilities that he never really wanted. Then, for whatever reason, he was sacked on the eve of season 2018, after all the players had been signed up for the year. Whatever the merits of that decision to sack Taylor, the way the players were deceived into signing up for 2018 created a black hole of trust in management, which essentially required most of those players to be let go at some point, because they sure as hell wouldn't want to stay. The Sasa Kolman era started with a bang, and then quickly collapsed. Con Tangalakis was brought in, but that didn't work either. And then we hired a coach with almost zero senior football coaching experience, who was connected to the Genova International School of Soccer academy, not my idea of a reputable soccer entity. He was also an outlier in that he was not Greek, nor was he an ex-player of ours. 

Quintas got us to survive 2019, just. 2020 didn't look promising, but COVID soon sorted that out. Apart from a sputtering FFA Cup/Dockerty Cup run, 2021 wasn't great either, but COVID sorted that out, too. 2022, 2023, and 2024 all ended up with grand final appearances, but through a mixture of outrageous misfortune (key strikers missing for 2022 and 2023, as well as injured players), and poor tactics and management (not taking off your one consistent line breaker in Andy Brennan before he got sent off in the 2024 semi), we ended up with no league titles in that three year span, and a for and against tally of 0-10. There were celebratory moments though - finally in 2024, we picked up a trophy under Esteban through a grinding, fortunate penalty shootout win in the Dockerty Cup. We also had a great run in the Australia Cup, albeit once more the final game of our season was marred by not having our main striker up front. Maybe things could have gone differently against Macarthur if Harrison Sawyer was there. Wouldn't that have been something? And Esteban was voted by his peers as coach of the year in 2024.

But overall, despite the high ladder positions of the 2022-2024 span, the experience was an incredibly demoralising one, at least for me. We were defensive on default. We often had no central midfield, at least not an attacking one. As most teams grew out of the physical, second-ball style of play that was a feature of Victorian soccer for so long, we became bogged down in it. Going to matches became tedious, an experience in religious self-flagellation. Instead of going to experience joy, we went to experience the pain of devotion, with little tangible earthly reward. Somehow, for myself and others around me, winning under Quintas often felt like losing. And losing, of course, felt even worse. 

Though I was never a fan, I will give Quintas his dues. He often had to do more with less compared to many of his predecessors. He gave more youth team players meaningful opportunities than pretty much every South coach in the last twenty years, with the exception perhaps of the by necessity early John Anastasiadis years. Some of those young players worked out better than others, but at least they got a chance.

Quintas was a hard worker. He studied opponents in depth, thought deeply about the game, and created complex plans for the players. A recently departed player, who played under both Taylor and Quintas, has related the difference between the two. Taylor would give minimal instruction during the week, and got by on generally putting the right players in the right position and let them go for it. On the other hand, Quintas would fill his whiteboards with ink, and would provide endless instruction. 

Yet somehow on game day, the game plan always looked the same. For the last half decade, everyone in Victorian soccer knew what to expect when playing against South Melbourne. For all the preparation and planning, somehow it always came back to long balls, and goals from set pieces, including the now infamous long throws. Despite playing on one of the best fields in Melbourne, South's style more resembled the territorial rugby union play of a mid-2000s George Cross team playing on the ankle rolling minefield that was Chaplin Reserve.

Quintas put a priority on defence. If the team didn't concede, then at the very least, the team couldn't lose. But the defensive strength of the side looked much better on the raw data of the "for and against" column of the competition table, than it did when you actually looked at the deeper numbers, let alone when watching the games themselves. For those of us who have watched our club since Quintas became head coach in 2019, we have seen the following. 

First, an overreliance on overwhelming numbers in defence to crowd out the opposition, so that even while being on top of the table, players like Jake Marshall were leading the league in blocked shots. This year, with a more forward stance than usual, the players have become exposed all over the backline. Second, there was the outrageously good fortune of having certainly one of the greatest goalkeepers to ever grace Victorian state league soccer, in the form of Javi Diaz Lopez, who was pulling out incredible save after incredible save for years on end. South has had some good goalkeepers during the 20 years post-NSL, but to get to the stage where your goalkeeper is the face of the club, winning league awards because of how many saves he makes when he should be making far fewer saves than most of his league contemporaries, is emblematic of what we have been about for the past five years.

Quintas loved South Melbourne Hellas. He was genuinely passionate about the club. Yet he never understood some of the core principles underpinning the club. That the club's supporters have, in the main, always wanted attacking football. Not necessarily pretty, possession football, but certainly attacking, front-foot football. It's an entertainment thing - we work during the week, we pay our money, we want to be entertained. Match day should be an occasion. We want to enjoy ourselves. Yet so much of what his teams provided was tedious, watching us bludgeon and grind our way to wins. Opposition supporters, and those missing fans of ours who only paid attention to the results and ladders, also didn't understand. "You're on top of the ladder, and you're still complaining?". It makes you sound ungrateful for being successful, but so many of us who actually watched the side were always wondering how we kept getting away with it, and how long it would be until it fell apart.

It's also an ego thing - no matter how much the fantasy deviates from reality, we still like to believe that we're a big club, one which expects to win every game that it plays, and one where a good number of teams whether coming to Lakeside or hosting us in their own ground, will gladly take a draw playing against us. Quintas repeatedly referred to South being a big club, yet his tactics and approach to the game often made us look and feel small. The greatest irony of all this came towards the end. While Ange Postecoglou was winning hearts and minds overseas for his rhetoric and monomania on playing a style of football centred on bringing joy to the fans watching, and then the Ferenc Puskas in Australia documentary Ange and the Boss making the argument that what made that South Melbourne Hellas team special was the devotion to joy, and letting players express themselves, and that there was an expectation among South fans that you would see the team attack; that attacking was its natural state.

How hard must it have been for people at the club to try and market the current team under those conditions? Already hamstrung by our irrelevance, our being in a backwater competition, of having no way out, and then when your most famous name, and all the video evidence of the past shows a desire to take the game on, to be forward on approach whenever possible, to be assertive; and all you could possibly cobble together in a highlights package showcasing the now, was goals from corners and long throws. The match day experience of the past five years, insofar as what was presented on the field, only reinforced in the mind of the people no longer going to our games that the current South Melbourne bears little resemblance to the former one. Whatever misfortune we've had under Quintas, and it has been there, and whatever winning record we had, and we did have a good one overall, the loss of the assertive, front-footed South Melbourne was a heavy price to pay.

So, I thank Esteban Quintas for his service to the club often under difficult circumstances, I acknowledge the good that he did, and I am well aware that he and I have very different opinions on how the game should be played, at least at this club. But I'm not sorry that he's gone. Now the club has to find someone to help us survive this season, and then someone to at least bring back the mentality of the famous Danny Blanchflower quote:

“The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It’s nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It is about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”

Next game
Away to Eastern Lions today in the Dockerty Cup. We'll be coached by Leigh Minopoulos, who'll be assisted by Tyson Holmes.

Final thought
They tell me that the 2006 championship team meets up annually for a reunion. That they don't it with  and/or at the club tells me we have a very sorry cultural problem.

But I digress - Altona Magic 0 South Melbourne 0

It's gotten so bad that now we're being overrun by teams nearer to the bottom of the table than even we are, and that's with them being down to ten men. At least we somehow kept a clean sheet for the first time in a couple of months.

Next game

Home against the Bergers tomorrow (Sunday) evening. Curtain raiser is the senior women against Brunswick Juventus. 

Yoink?!

?

So, Gustav Moller is gone, and more than fittingly going by the last twenty years, his exit is actually the most South thing that I can think of - like 99% of our now former fans, rather than stick around Lakeside being miserable, Moller realised he wasn't having any fun, and just walked away. Honestly, I'm a little jealous. Granted, Moller didn't have the same level of emotional attachment that most South fans have (or at least claim to have had) to the club, but the gesture was achingly familiar:

This sucks, why do I have to be here? Wait, I don't? OK, bye.

It was a strange situation from beginning to end. Since our game plan over the past five years was based around two pillars - outrageously over-competent goalkeeping, and a big guy banging in goals up top just by being big, the departure of Harrison Sawyer late last season threatened to bring down the entire Esteban Quintas edifice one and for all, as was the case when Sawyer got injured in 2021 and we were barely able to win a game after that - thank goodness (sort of) that COVID destroyed most of the rest of that season. Enter Gustav Moller from the sixth division of Danish football who, from the scant online evidence available, was basically nobody, had played for no one of note, and was being signed because whoever's in charge of this stuff at the club these days could apparently find not one person better anywhere else.

(There's some talk that he was recommended to us by Thomas Sorenson which, if true, would make a kind of awful sense - what with Gustav Moller being the son of Danish pundit and former international forward Peter Moller. But who wants to think that we signed someone based on someone at the club being starstruck, and that the famous person making the recommendation was just trying to do a mate a favour?) 

Still, whatever Moller's credentials or lack thereof, and whoever recommended him to us, the club did get to see something of him in the pre-season, and ultimately made the decision to sign him either as cover for Nahuel Bonada, or with the intention that Moller would at some point become the main guy. The latter, were it to actually happen, would have taken awhile. Gustav Moller was clearly not match fit. I don't know if he'd been in Carl Piergianni-style holiday mode - and we saw that once big Carl did get fit on returning to England, that he was actually decent - but whatever the case, Moller wasn't able to last more than fifteen minutes without becoming completely gassed. 

And whatever his skillset may have entailed - he was probably OK in the air, and he seemed to at least have some semblance of touch - he was utterly the wrong player, for the wrong system, for the wrong coach, at the wrongest club possible. It was a hopeless situation for all concerned; but while Moller can walk away with perhaps only his ego and dignity bruised, the club is now down to one forward for the next few months until the transfer window opens. 

Neos Kosmos digital archives, free to access
Now, I was aware that Neos Kosmos had digitised its archive going back to 1957, Initially I think they were charging for access to it, but I've been informed that the archive is actually free to access. The user interface is a bit of a pain to use, and nowhere near as good as what you would get with Trove - and I have no idea why Neos Kosmos didn't go with Trove - but it's still good that it's available. Search works a lot better when you have exact phrases at hand, and also in later years where the quality of the scans is better.

The club's official historian John Kyrou sent me an email alerting me to the fact that the archive was free to use, as well as some notes on the 1960 season after he went through the archives, a frustrating season from a historical perspective both for broader coverage as well just plain statistical stuff. At first, Neos Kosmos shows indifference to the club. Indeed, sport is not a big part of the paper in 1960, which accords with my memory of the last time I went through the 1960s papers on microfiche. What sport coverage exist is initially centred on the Greek league and local pro-wrestling, mostly Alex Iakovidis. When Hellas establishes its on-field bona fides, it gets not just more coverage, but also more detailed coverage. Eventually reporter Nikos Kyriakopoulos' column becomes a fixture of the paper, to the point where you begin getting not just full lineups for most games by the end of the season, but also ratings of each player. 

Kyriakopoulos is particularly savage in his criticisms of players he considers lazy, unsporting, or not team-oriented. The senior squad is large and hard to manage. Some players do the right thing, but others have poor attitudes to training, and the team is prone to arguing amongst itself. They're a cut above their league, but arrogant. Kyriakopoulos is effusive in his praise of Terry Budgen, one of the few non-Greeks in the squad, as well as goalkeeper George Karpouzas, but has it in for Antonis Karagiannis (lazy, arrogant), Stefanos Fortomanos (unsporting, greedy on the ball), and captain-coach Chris Georgoussis (listless, heavy).

He also really hammers home the angle of the club's role as representative of the Greek community in Melbourne. That's not just limited to the players, but also the supporters, whose behaviour he's often critical of - except perhaps when it counts most, after the ugly scenes in the Dockerty Cup semi against Hakoah, where he blames the referee for the riot by the Greek fans. Kyriakopoulos also places much emphasis on the Laidlaw Cup - a local mini-world cup tournament, where Team Greece was effectively South Melbourne Hellas rebadged. He also promotes the club's and the Greek community's wider effort to build a stand at Middle Park. Little mention is made of Yarra Park or Hellenic, none of Alexander or South Melbourne United, and nothing of Hakoah in the context of being a co-tenant at Middle Park.

The crowds fluctuate between the very large (10,000 at games at Olympic Park, far and away the best venue in Victorian soccer) and a few hundred at games at Middle Park and elsewhere, where shelter is extremely limited. Indeed, wet weather sees games postponed, and one game at Coburg was played "in an ocean".

One bonus of running through and double-checking the club historian's reading of this material, is apart from confirming several lineups and a few scorers, we can now confirm one previously elusive club record detail, that of most goals in a league game. For ages the provisional club record for most goals in a league game was four, held by ten different players. Hellas racked up some big scores in 1960, but confirmation of the scorer details proved elusive for whatever reason. Thus, Antonis Karagiannis' six goals against Moonee Ponds stands alone.

Final thought

Well, seven years too late for my thesis, and five years after the old man passed away, I finally found it. Silly bugger insisted it was from the 1980s or early 1990s, but it was from February 1995. It's probably not even the complete poem - whatever drafting page that was on is long gone - but it's more complete than the couple of stanzas I had access to for my thesis, and which sent me searching in vain for the published version on several trips to the State Library. 

Like the rest of his poetry, it's doggerel, but that's beside the point. As I wrote in an appendix to my thesis:

My father, Athanasios Mavroudis, despite his limited formal education – only up to grade six in rural 1950s Greece – fancied himself as somewhat of a poet. He wrote  several poems in his scrapbooks, and even had some published in the letter and editorial pages of Neos Kosmos, the Greek-language paper of record in Melbourne. 

His style is plain and straightforward, and if we are being fair, not far removed from doggerel. His themes were broad, and usually related to the issues of the day – the political and cultural concerns as they related to the Greek community of Melbourne, and the Greek diaspora as a whole. This was in keeping with one strand of poetry submitted to Neos Kosmos, the other, more common one being poetry on important dates, festivals, the seasons, the sanctity of mothers, and the pain of living in a foreign land. 

I have included my father’s two extant and complete soccer poems here for a couple of reasons. First, as a way to preserve them in some fashion on the public record. Second, because whatever their literary merits, they are outstanding examples of what this thesis is about – the search for the most obscure portrayals of a marginal game, written by a member of a marginal community, preserving moments and points of view otherwise destined for utter oblivion. Also, they have a naff charm which appeals to 

me.

Despair - South Melbourne 1 Dandenong City 3

Monday night was pretty bad. Outcoached and outplayed, morale down the toilet. In the relegation zone, no chance to get reinforcements for another three months, and no trust in what depth players we do have, including the one notable off-season signing who's been banished to the bench. The captain chucks a wobbly and gets sent off, we've run out of strikers, and the "get out of jail" long throw plan has stopped working. No wins since round 2, no clean sheets since round 1. So much for being the team built on a solid defence, although we know that stacking players in the eighteen-yard box from minute one was never really good defending, just weight of numbers.

The bigger concern is, as always, the bigger picture. Teams lose games and have bad runs all the time. But it's everything above those losses that amplifies the sense of doom. The cheapskate recruiting, the last minute major sponsor announcement, the lack of any friends anywhere. Who wants to hang out with South Melbourne? Not our fans, who ditched us en masse 20 years ago, and of those who remained, still gradually drift away. Not the media, who have no interest in whatever it is that we do. Not the Trust which operates Lakeside, which gets far more out of a single marquee athletics day than whatever we can muster over several years. Maybe only Preston likes us, and that's only because they need other teams for the Australian Championship to go ahead; but also, Preston doesn't really need the Australian Championship either, not like we do.

And just as an aside, if you can, have a look at the scenes from the athletics last week where Lakeside's stands and terraces are full, and the numbers on the concourses are six deep. That's what a legit crow of 10,000 looks like.

Anyway, we seem to tread water every season in one way or another, but is 2025 the year things finally come to a head? If the Australian Championship fails, if this Oceania business turns out to be the impossible insanity it appears to be to an outsider, does it even matter if we get relegated from the NPL or not? Good results won't bring people back to South Melbourne, and neither will good football. Only the impossibly long and difficult graft of trying to reengage the community that has abandoned us remains as an option, but it seems like a task so massive, that one can't quite conceive.

All this seems like something that could at least be discussed at an AGM, but it appears that we may never get one of those again. Fair enough, it's not like we're a member based club. 

Next game
Altona Magic away tonight.

Manny swears he came up with this one before
I rocked up to a South game in a suit and tie
for the third time this year already.

Blue and White Views
This 100% unofficial fanzine which, for the record, I have no hand in creating, is really winning people over, even at the most basic level of "oh, that's who number 88 is". For those who miss out on the physical copies handed out at games, there is a website you can visit, which includes comic strips which are in the style of former South of the Border contributor Manny. That's probably no accident. Once the season is done, I will be scanning all issues of Blue and White Views and chucking them up somewhere.

Around the grounds
Value for money
Last year it was $7. This year it costs $10 to buy a ticket to a fifth tier Australian soccer match in Melbourne, the same price as for a second tier Australian rules match. I suppose because I'd had a media pass for so long, and then COVID happened, and then my eyesight made it so that going to non-South games was largely pointless, I'd become distanced from the reality of what others had been putting up with for so many years in regards to prices at the gate. But $10 for a fifth tier match? In Melbourne? At least Western Suburbs has some elevated seating and some shelter. No goals on offer last week though against Banyule. Not the worst game I've ever seen though.

Final thought
Man, these crazy online gamblers, accusing us of throwing games, as if the preceding five or six weeks hadn't happened. They should take up knitting, jogging, volunteering for the homeless, anything but sports gambling, not for any moral reasons, but simply for the fact that they clearly aren't any good at even the most basic aspects of sports betting.

I need Ramadan to be over so the manoushe place I go to can reopen - Hume City 1 South Melbourne 1

So here we are, at last. Some grounds are naturally wider than others, some narrower. We've been using narrower field for some time now in order to make use of Max Mikkola's long throws, but we are now at the stage - finally - where teams are happy to widen their own fields in order to diminish our over-reliance on our one reliable-ish weapon. Or maybe other teams had been doing it earlier, too, but I hadn't been paying attention.

The Danish guy started, and after seven games I think I can proffer a verdict. I don't think anyone expected him to be the messiah, and he's not. He has neither the strength, height, and gut effort of Harrison Sawyer; nor does he have the tricky mix speed and guile of Ajak Riak. We've wrung a couple of goals out of him from relatively limited opportunities, and chances are that he'll pinch another few if he remains out there. 

But the worst thing about the Dane isn't necessarily his skill (potentially dubious) or fitness (confirmed dubious) - it's that he's completely unsuited to playing under either of the two main Esteban modes. Moller's no good on the long ball when we sit deep, and he doesn't have the speed or fitness to make an impact when we press. He seems like a touch/close in player, a forward who can lay off passes for other forwards or midfielders coming through the middle. 

Unfortunately, that kind of style is almost non-existent under Esteban. It's like Esteban coaches basketball or handball rather soccer, there's so little midfield action. And yet, there were actually some moments on Friday where we did successfully go through the middle (goodness knows how that happened), but then didn't lay off the ball for the shooter, who was occasionally the Dane. Can you play Bonada (when he returns from injury) and Moller in the same team? Absolutely you can. Will we? Probably not.

But enough about the game. Most amusing on the night (in a very limited comedy field) was the atmosphere, or rather the lack of it for most of the night. After the eleventy billion that went to the game at BT Connor (and scores more who streamed on YouTube), and the boisterous vibe from the home fans at George Andrews, Westmeadows was dead. Where were all my young bloods? Where was the drumming? Did the cheques fail to clear? Or were they all at an iftar? Then after the equaliser some persons realised that they were at a football match.

But that still didn't compare to drama of the security running (OK, more like jogging, but still) all the way to the other side of the ground where few fans were, making it seem like there was some drastic emergency, only for rumour to spread that they just wanted to tell someone to pipe down, because they could be heard too clearly over the top of the commentary. All those times (at least twice) where security at Hume were completely useless when we were being attacked by underworld adjacent characters with no intervention from "official" security, and this is what gets them hyped into action? Classic Victorian soccer, always aiming at the low-hanging fruit.

Next game
Dandenong City at home on Monday night.

Dockerty Cup news
For the fourth time since 2017, we've been drawn against Eastern Lions, this time as the away side.  Though the game is listed for Lions' Gardiners Creek Reserve home on Easter Saturday, that venue is apparently having its field resown, so who knows for sure if this match will actually take place there. Lions are currently bottom of VPL1 (the tier below us), winless after seven matches. They weren't doing much better ladder-wise last year when we met them in the cup, yet they still almost pushed us to extra time when we decided we wanted to be smart and rest everybody towards the end of the game.

Being paired up against Lions also means that 2025 is another season where we haven't been drawn (yet) against a side that's been lower than the Victorian second tier. That's a streak that goes back to 2019, when we played against Doveton, who were then in the third tier. 2019 is also the last season that we played against a Victorian opponent in the cup that we've never played before (Doveton, and then Langwarrin). The winner of this fixture will play away to the winner of the Bentleigh Greens and Caroline Springs George Cross match - so even progress from the fourth round into the fifth won't provide much novelty, except for a possible trip to the City Vista ground.

Final thought
Everyone thought it was Quintas getting another yellow last Friday, but good on assistant coach Leigh Minopoulos, whose collection of a yellow card on the bench last week is the moral/cosmic equivalent of getting someone else to get your demerit points for you.

No one else to blame - Dandenong Thunder 1 South Melbourne 0

I should have gone to the footy instead.

Next game
Hume away on Friday night. I should probably go to the footy instead.

Final thought
Who am I kidding? I'm not going to the footy instead.

Public Image Ltd - Preston Lions 2 South Melbourne 0

Prior to kickoff on Friday night, an adolescent Preston supporter, who found himself by some clerical error in the part of BT Connor Reserve allocated to South Melbourne fans, complained as he made his way around to the area designated for Preston supporters, "why was I directed to go to the South end, do I look like a Turk?".

The National Soccer League is dead. Long live the National Soccer League. Long live dubious crowd numbers. Long live cigarette smoke. Long live ethnic bullshit. I'll leave out my usual take on flares, because at least unlike last year's Dockerty Cup match between the two sides, the flares lit on Friday night didn't end up being thrown at anyone. Call it progress of a sort, at least on this occasion.

Anyway, for all that Preston has managed to achieve during its unlikely resurrection - and it has been some feat to buck the trend suffered by pretty much every ethnic soccer club in this country - some habits die hard. If that "Ellas, Ellas, Turkiye" chant happened once or twice early on, and was then stopped by their marshals, I'd understand - it's just a bunch of hotheads getting carried away, but someone from their side took responsibility for it. But it was non-stop throughout the game, and everyone's just ignoring it because it was part of "a cracking atmosphere".

It's not about being offended (because it's a chant that's too stupid to be offended by), or being humourless (I was dead inside long before this), or being unable to handle banter (there's no cleverness here). It's acknowledging that this stuff did drag down what came before, and that people ignoring it, or not acknowledging that it's happening and burying it under the guise of "atmosphere", do a disservice to the game in the here and now, as did those who excused this stuff before.

It's also not about ignoring the past, or pretending that we're all friends now, because we aren't. Some people are willing to buy into that part of the current story, because they think there's some greater good to be achieved by that. Some people in the ground are choosing not to pretend, not to hide what's in their hearts. That's their prerogative, of course. But then maybe in the return fixture, some people from our side will choose not to pretend, and what should or could be pantomime rivalry, hostile, but within the bounds of good taste and decency, instead becomes... well, you know the history. It's in print, it's on video, and it's in folklore.

I don't really care much for either pretending we're all mates, or in getting carried away by thinking that when I attend a South Melbourne Hellas match in Australia, that I'm responsible for bringing with me the badly framed and badly taught history lessons I received at Greek school 30 years ago, excised of all complexity and nuance. I want to go to a game, have a laugh, and hopefully see my team win. But I get that that approach isn't enough for some people. 

It's the age old problem of big time soccer in this country, ethnic or otherwise, that people are drawn to these games because they can get close enough to the possibility of something going wrong, potentially spectacularly so. Now most don't necessarily want something to actually go wrong, but some clearly yearn for it to at least be a possibility - if something couldn't go wrong at a fixture like this, then the kayfabe spell is broken. If all that hate isn't actually real, then it becomes just another game, like all the other games.

But for the sake of a feel good story, and especially for the sake of the Australian Championship, and for some, sticking it up the A-League, the narrative will be "passionate fans, great crowd". And yes, the fans were passionate, and the crowd was good, but that 9,000 figure... I'm not the only one querying that one. And this is where the suspect crowd figures of the past come back to cast doubts on the reliability of today's numbers. 

BT Connor Reserve has a smallish stand (nowhere near the capacity of Lakeside's southern stand, let alone that of Knights Stadium's much larger one). It also has no terraces, and on Friday night a western wing almost completely out of bounds. And the ground has no history of getting a crowd that size during the heady days of the early 1990s summer NSL years. And yet we are expected to believe that, were all parts of the ground available to spectators, that this venue could accommodate up to 13,000 - just under what the old pre-athletics Lakeside could squish in.

Goodness knows that South has an appalling reputation for rubbery crowd figures, and that's long before some people made it a social media sport. So why begrudge other clubs from getting in on the act? Why assume the worst of others, just because you assume the worst of yourself? I suppose that's the overall point for me - that whatever hope I have that things could be better, and could actually get better for us, I ultimately have no belief that they will - and especially not if I don't feel like I can trust even a fundamental element of soccer story telling, like "for better or worse, this is how many people were actually there that day".

It'd be easy to accuse someone like me of actually wanting the game to be smaller, and even for South to be small. Small fish, small pond, small problems, small headaches. But that's not the case at all. I want the club to be successful on and off the field. I want more people to come watch our club, and to support it. And somehow I want it done with honesty, and without giving in to crass attempts at public relations. I guess this is just one of the many reasons why I'll never be close to anything resembling a place of responsibility at a club.

As for the game
The high press from the first three matches of the season is gone. Thus against Preston it was more of what we've come to know and love over these past five years or so, except without Javi Lopez and Harry Sawyer (or Ajak Riak) to make it somehow work. It continues to be the case that those who see us play only occasionally and almost exclusively during so-called "big matches" were, and continue to be, surprised by the ugliness of it. The two or three hundred regulars, well, they aren't surprised at all. 

Quite what was the point of resting all the players on Monday, we'll never know. The one player who probably should have been rested (Javi Lopez), wasn't. Now, barring some luck at the tribunal, or Javi recovering in time for Saturday's match, we're down to our third choice goalkeeper, and therefore on the bench, our fourth. Nahuel Bonada getting injured means we're down to one striker, that being the Danish guy who, while he isn't fit enough, is also apparently not worth putting on to try and rescue a game at 1-0 down, only at 2-0, even though two of his substitute appearances have yielded goals this year.

The field at BT Connor Reserve is very wide. We knew this from last year, when Max Mikkola's long throws weren't getting close to troubling the keeper. So what did we do on Friday? The same thing as last year, of course. To be fair, it's pretty much the same thing as every other game anyway. If it worked at all in last year's fixture, it's because of the same reason it works in any game - the opposition is ill-equipped to deal with anything coming in from the air, not just throws. That was certainly the case in last year's match, but not so much on Friday. 

I'm not sure what the alternative was, because given our general lack of composure on the ball, once we went down, all we could resort to was knocking it forward chaotically, thus creating a series of 50/50 balls to be won, which some basic mathematical principle says will work eventually, while at the same time acknowledging that it will hardly ever work, especially once you're down to ten men. It was not a great experience for player or fan.

Next game
Dandenong Thunder away on Saturday night. Please note that due to the very hot conditions forecast for Saturday, kickoff has been changed from 7:00pm to 8:15pm.

Vale George Karantonis
The club lost of one its staunchest supporters this week, with the death of George Karantonis. A reserves player in the 1960s, a volunteer of many years, and a long time presence in local Greek language media, especially in radio, George was a big personality with strong opinions on all things soccer, and especially all things South Melbourne Hellas. I'm not going to lie and say that I had much to do with George, because I wasn't a listener to his radio programs, nor did I really run in the same circles as him at South. But I always appreciated his forthrightness, especially his contributions at AGMs.

In particular, I'll never forget that AGM around 2008. We'd just had a second lousy season in a row, the club was going nowhere, and George gets up midway through the meeting and heads towards the exit of the old social club, and everyone's just quiet... like, fuck, if Karantoni's giving up, then the club really is fucked... only for him to say in his unforgettable voice of a million cigarettes, "I just go for a smoke". The tension in the room just disappeared. He will be missed.

The cost of masochism going up
Those of you who ended up paying to go to Friday's match may have noticed that the ticket price was $20, not the more usual $15. That seems to be your unofficial notice that the price cap for NPL Victoria matches has gone up. It almost makes a certain someone want to put in more effort into this blog, so that they can qualify for a media pass again. For others, it might dissuade them from going to away matches, especially at venues lacking certain amenities like adequate shelter and seating. Some people might decide to go the footy instead. On the other hand, it just made buying a South Melbourne membership that little bit more value for money. Only on a cost per game basis, of course, not in terms of entertainment. 

Ange and the Boss national release
After a successful festival run in the back half of 2024, the documentary is now going to have a short national run. Tickets and further details available via the website.

Final thought
How did learnings become a thing? Whatever happened to lessons? And I don't care that Shakespeare used "learnings", because none of the LinkedIn Lunatics using that word have read any Shakespeare since high school.