Mood Lighting - South Melbourne 3 Melbourne Knights 1

Another week, another match attended in a suit because I'd come straight from work. At least I had my beanie with me this time, for recognition purposes. Am I like Clark Kent and Superman if I'm not wearing some sort of headgear? 

Collected my membership, including the 30 years of Lakeside scarf and all four stickers. The conundrum of the stickers is that if you put them up anywhere, that's them gone, really. They'll fade and blister in the sun or whatever, or get your car's rear window smashed in by some idiot, because why not? But if you don't stick them up anywhere, they're not really stickers then, are they?

The 30 years at Lakeside thing was a nice touch, albeit another reminder that it wasn't meant to turn out this way. Ten or so years as a national league venue, and then twenty years and counting as Victorian soccer's version of Miss Havisham's ruined mansion, for which the ever increasing darkness is a nice touch. I can deal with no beer taps, or the occasional broken seat, but the lighting situation is just getting worse. We've had our issues with the Trust staff forgetting and/or not knowing how to turn the lights on, but on Monday the lights were on, and it still sucked. It being twilight at the start mitigates the issue only somewhat, because it was still awful when the it was night time proper.

Should there be so few working light bulbs on each tower that I'm able to count them without any trouble? Should the brightest lights at the ground really be those within the far end of the southern grandstand, and which may be there only because they're actually security lights meant to shine a light on possible idiotic behaviour by the handful of Knights who bothered to show up? Our treatment by the Trust continues to be worse than less than ideal. It's outright insulting. Oh, their staff were aware on Monday night that the situation wasn't good, but it hasn't been good on several occasions from a lighting point of view, and what's being done about it? All of our senior men's matches are played at night or at twilight, so this issue isn't going to go away. Someone should do something about all the problems, and all that.

But back to 30 years at Lakeside. That's about 30 matches against Knights at Lakeside, for a total of three Knights wins Two league wins (2005, 2012) and one cup win (2014), not counting the farce of the 2007 forfeit. To put that in some historical perspective, we've beaten Knights 22 times in 43 matches at Somers Street. To further emphasise the point, Knights have as many wins at Lakeside against non-South opponents (1996 and 2014 Dockerty Cup finals; 2017 promotion-relegation playoff) as they've had against us there.

Such history doesn't do much for attempts to make this rivalry seem relevant. But it's always been a strange rivalry in an Australian context. No obvious/inevitable ethnic beef, as with other match-ups. Not always in the same league. Just happening to be the two strongest Melbourne ethnic clubs for most of the period 1984-2004, and then finally, the last two Melbourne clubs standing. To be honest, even with the exhaustion of getting drawn in the cup against each other so many times, the interest had worn off this rivalry anyways.

As for us, it's early in the season, but I'm feeling like in the two games so far that I've been watching something different from everyone else. Maybe I have! I thought the Port game wasn't a great watch, but under the conditions, it was fine. Others saw it differently. This game, I thought long stretches of the first half were absolutely dire, from both teams. Others were pleased that we were at least playing it along the deck, instead of long balls. I don't know. I like having Nahuel Bonada up top, because it means fewer long balls, but we're still one bad tackle on him (by the way, check out this Jackie Chan shit from Friday night) from having to rely on the Danish guy.

Danish guy is clearly unfit, but he scored, so there's that. Was it a difficult chance? Not so difficult, but he was in the right place at he right time, and the ball went where it needed to go. That at least elevates him closer to the status of the new Kevin Nelson, in that no one's actually convinced this guy can actually play, but he's got at least one goal on the board, so... maybe there's at least a few more fortunate goals to come?

Next game
Monday night against Victory's NPL team, at the Home of the Matildas. Probably the worst time of year to get an A-League youth team, as they haven't shed most of their better players, something which tends to happen towards the middle of the year. There is a reserves curtain raiser beforehand. As far as I'm aware, Victory are charging an entry free at the gate. As for any possible unpleasantness... I suppose it's hope for the best, expect the worst, as is often the case. 

Some made up Q&A on the future of this blog
Q. Wait a minute, didn't you quit?
A. Yes, I did.

Q. So why are you back?
A. Not sure really. I know that some people miss some things about this enterprise, and I did feel a little guilty about letting those people down.

Q. Is the blog going to be an earlier good version, or the more recent bad version?
A. Probably more the latter.

Q. So... I shouldn't expect much?
A. Probably not. Think of it less as coming out of retirement, and more as moving into my over 35s/Sunday league phase. Relaxed, comfortable, maybe doesn't always turn up. No more trying to do everything, no more heroism, no more advertising, no more trying to change the world.

Final thought
Always check the fixturing details for local matches carefully. And then check again. That is all.

Is everyone over it already? - Port Melbourne 0 South Melbourne 1

Arriving at Port straight from work in the city, I expected not much from the experience and just about got it. The pomegranate trees outside the ground? Basically empty, and what fruit there was wasn't quite ready yet. Tons of figs though, but like the fruit on my neighbour's tree, not close to ripe. And I had my tote bag ready to go and everything.

I got there early enough to watch most of the under 23s game. Not many South people in attendance at the time, which sounds like self-fulfilling prophecy (or self-actualised punchline). Not many in attendance for the senior match either. It's the kind of turnout you might expect in the dog days of winter, not in the first week of February. So it goes.

I saw my dad's patrioti in the canteen, though he almost didn't recognise me. A frequent traveller to Greece, they asked him there if he still saw my dad and myself anywhere. "I told them that I still see the son at Hellas games, but that the father was in the other patrida now." Quite. Chicken souv was fine, touch salty, but that's probably because they want you to buy a beer to counter the salt. Didn't get sucked into that one.

I'll reserve any withering judgements on the quality of the curtain raiser, because it'd be easy to overdo the Simpsons gags. Besides which, it may have just been an off night for everyone. Still, the Port coach may have had a point about his charges not listening to the instruction to keep the ball on the ground in midfield, especially with how windy it was, which was quite.

The wind, blowing to the Plummer Street end, didn't let up all night. The scoreboard read 12 degrees, but that detail probably hasn't changed since they installed the scoreboard. The Williamstown Road end was out of bounds, because of work to the secondary fields. It all had the potential to feel a bit less than quite the real deal as a setting, except Port's players came out with the kung fu, and the officials let it go. If there was any doubt that the NPLV MMA was back, the first fifteen minutes or so put paid to that.

Of course, if the officials let not just one bad tackles go unpunished, but several, then shit will eventually hit the fan. It is one of my biggest gripes that yellow and red cards are not dished out from the get go in matches. "Oh, but you'll ruin the game if you do that". No, players who have played the game for 15-20 years, and know very well what a bad tackle is and put in a few early ones because they assume (usually correctly) that they'll get away with it, ruin the game. Too bad for Port that they ran through their quota of bad tackles at such an insane pace, that they were down to men before twenty minutes had elapsed. The less said about the attempts by George Mells and Lucas Inglese to suck the ref 

We were on top anyway, not just because of the wind, or because we were playing against a Port team that had so few recognisable names, but also because we were sort of playing the game smart. Being a wing heavy, and set piece heavy team, it was quickly deduced that the wind, and Port's massive backline (including an ex-junior in Maker Maker), made regular corner taking useless, so we went to the short corners.

"But Paul, you hate short corners!". Wrong. Short corners are not the enemy, only poorly conceived, poorly designed, and poorly executed short corners are the enemy. Last Friday, we actually did good from them, including setting up a three on one situation from one such corner, which ended up with Max Mikkola scoring the decisive goal. 

After that, it all became a bit of a blur because it was all a bit familiar. That, and the game being largely up the other end in the second half to where I was, and a good chunk of the game being played in twilight, made my experience less than ideal. So, more of the same, then.

Next game
Monday night home against the Knights. The first of three consecutive games of Monday Madness.

Major sponsor
If you're wondering where the new major sponsor was on our shirt, I was told it'll be on there next week.

If you're wondering where the old major sponsor went... unfortunately you're going have to do your own work on that one. 

Danish / Doorstop watch
Danish got ten minutes, but didn't seem to impress anyone. Doorstop got a start in the A-League, but got subbed out after 55 minutes.

Second division news, barely

The rest of you start thinking up a name for this NSD. I don't know. Something along the lines of, say, Australian Championship - only more proactive. https://t.co/ndp81no2Lk pic.twitter.com/netAMZ4eaS

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) February 12, 2025

Final thought 
We've become so decrepit, not one of our people seemed to notice that John Markovski was coaching Port.

No community, no shield, only... victory! - South Melbourne 1 Oakleigh Cannons 0

Got a lift to the ground on Friday night, which I am very appreciative of, but... it was also slightly unnerving, in the sense that it was clear we were cutting it very fine in terms of getting to the ground in time for kickoff. It was a bit like going to games with my late dad back in the NSL days, dad being one of those people who always wanted to get to the venue at the very last moment. 

It only occurs to me now, writing this up, that back in 2008 my dad and I gave Friday's driver Johnny a lift home from Olympic Village - 17 years ago! - where does the time go? If you've been with this blog for long enough and are still with this club, that's clearly a rhetorical question. The time went exactly where you left it - at Lakeside, and at assorted Denmark Division 6 equivalent grounds around Melbourne, and occasionally in Lara, Ballarat, and Shepparton.

Traipsing through the car park and making a note that we'd parked in the Itchy Lot, we missed the first minute or so, as we strolled past security at the gate. Yes, there was security doing magic wand searches at the entrance, which I felt was overkill - but if they're going to hire them, they might as well keep them busy, I suppose. They attempted to amuse themselves by cracking a few jokes, like pretending that they were also checking to see if people were bringing in alcohol in their bottles.

This fixture was brought into being roughly ten years ago, in an attempt to hype the upcoming NPL season, and to also do some fundraising for charity, Given that it was free entry, and that there was no sign of any charity partner for this match, I'm not sure where the "community" aspect of the evening was. Given that the game was not live streamed, I'm also not sure where the "hype" aspect of the game was either. There was a trophy on offer, but somewhat poetically, it wasn't even a shield, but rather a cup, prompting the age-old philosophical question of when does a bowl become a cup?

Having to deal with all those lies on top of each other was obviously a harrowing experience, and then there was also the ordeal of having to watch a game that meant something (there's a trophy on hand!) and nothing (it's no league grand final) at the same time. Football Victoria have tried to do things with this concept, including shifting it into the middle of the league season, but the idea just hasn't captured the imagination of the Victorian soccer public. It's a broken record by now, seeing as how I've already delegated saving the competition and Victorian soccer as a whole to them alone, but maybe only Preston can save this idea by qualifying for it next season, whatever next season looks like.

As for the game itself, it's a good thing it wasn't live streamed. It wasn't horrible, so far as pre-season matches go, but it was violent, and the referees seemed largely indifferent in trying to get the teams to tone down the kung fu even a little bit - and when they did, the officials must've thought that Oakleigh were the Kansas City Chiefs, and Joe Guest and friends were various versions of Patrick Mahomes, and that if anyone should be punished it should be the opposition for being so mean to the teachers' pets. Don't break apart this clumsy analogy by asking who Taylor Swift is in this example.

We amused ourselves in the outer by reminiscing on olden days and characters, chanting the odd chant, and trying to figure out where Joe Guest's accent was from (which led to the listing of village English rugby league teams). So, standard pre-season fare.

Next game
Port Melbourne away on Friday night to open the season proper.

Crummy Old Danish watch
But let's be genuine for a moment. 90% of the reason I attended this match was to see the man, the myth, the legend, Gustav Møller (the Danish footballer, not the Swedish writer/director) in action, and to practice my pronunciation of mid front rounded vowels. Now I didn't necessarily expect Møller to get a start, but surely they'd give him a solid run at some point during the game? Friends, they did not. The fact that Møller was subbed on after 85 minutes suggests that we're not going to be seeing much of him, at least not in the early part of the season. 

It would be madness to think someone who's barely got on the park during pre-season will be our main guy up front. But we've been mad before with players who haven't done a proper pre-season - remember old mate Billy Konstantinidis? I wonder how good Gustav is at giving behind the play gut punches? When Møller was on the field, he didn't really get a chance to do much - he won a header on the right wing which may have led to something, but otherwise the game was at a stage where Oakleigh had to chase an equaliser, we were looking to kill time, and his talents were reduced to being another body on the field.

What this suggests is that Nahuel Bonada will likely be the main guy up top for at least the earlier part of the season, which I am not opposed to, especially if it means we change our style of play away from "kick it to the big guy". Here's hoping that Bonada can get some decent service from the midfield, and some protection from the opposition thugs who are going to inevitably try and break his legs.

Delicious Doorstop watch
Harrison Sawyer got to play for a whole minute the other week in the A-League, his first appearances in Macarthur's senior team since late November. Today he played a whole 25 minutes. Someone asked me at Bundoora if it was true Sawyer was going to be released, and might we be looking to get him back. I have no idea on that, and have heard nothing to support such a suggestion.

Ruining the line of the garment
Getting my eye fixed and getting new glasses has really opened up a whole new world to me - like noticing Andy Brennan playing with massive holes in the back of his socks. Apparently this trend isn't new, and is an attempt in increase blood flow and avoid cramps. Still looks like shit, though.

Final thought
How can you make a hype video for the new kit featuring notable landmarks from the local area, and leave out the Montague Street Bridge?