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.