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.