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It's the day of a national final of sorts (more on all of that some other time, maybe), so it seems like a fitting opportune opportunistic moment to take stock of things.

Let us remember where we were not that long ago, and where we might plausibly be again at a moment's notice. This is not meant to sound alarmist; rather, it's a reminder of the fickle nature of this business. Midway through the NPL season, we were close enough to last place, and staring down the barrel of going down to depths we had never been to - the third tier. And that was just the physical space we would occupy. The psychological space would be unfathomable to us.

Among several things, it took a memorable Jack Pope cameo (whose worth he threatened to undo with his red card) to get us over a plucky and desperate but not very good Knights outfit. It took George Mells (who is no longer with us because of reasons he's probably said on a podcast I haven't yet listened to) pulling his finger out to help drag us back from the relegation cliff edge half time deficit against Victory's children. It took a bit of luck (I mean, come on, an own goal and a Max Mikkola overhead in the same game against Preston?) to help avoid disaster, and even momentarily have some people dreaming of a finals run. There were a few useful recruits (I still and will always miss Ren Nagamatsu), and by the time the NPL season proper had ended, we were glad to have come out of it alive, and with a Dockerty Cup trophy that we'll be resented for winning for a long time. 

Of course, as I've noted to anyone who listens to me (more in person these days than on here, because I haven't been posting much), so much of the good things that have come about have been down to a change in attitude. The style was so much better at the start of the Sinisa Cohadzic reign (yes, yes, it couldn't have been much worse), and if it has regressed (not necessarily the right word, but it's the only word that's at hand right at this moment) into something more pragmatic (some say more Esteball-like), than it still emphasises scoring goals over not conceding them. It dares to win, instead of being afraid of losing.

So there's a game on this week with high stakes (apparently; like I said earlier, more on all of that some other time, maybe), in which we are the warm favourites. This is strange in the context of having finished top or near top a few times under Esteban Quintas, and having made three grand finals and a Dockerty Cup final under him, and yet never feeling confident that we were the team to beat for reasons outside of his control as well as within them. It feels strange, but it also feels good - like there's something tangible to look forward to. You're not only thinking of all the ways it's likely to go wrong, but also maybe genuinely leaving some space for the good things that could happen.

I am not afraid of losing today's game, because I've been treating this whole Australian Championship like an extended holiday, which is the cipher through which the hypothetical post I make on that topic will be written. I am not afraid of losing today's match, because season 2025 has seen us face the possible end of the club right in the face (for once I feel that I am not being hyperbolic), and thus losing one game, even one talked up like this, has fewer negative consequences than what could have been.

Looking back, 2025 has surely been the year of "there but for the grace of God go I". You don't have to look far for examples. Near neighbour Port Melbourne relegated, and rumoured to be broke (if you believe that). Melbourne Knights, already on the ropes on the field, seemingly self-imploded off it at a board level, compounding their immediate issues; as Mark Ivkovic noted somewhat ruefully on the NPL Victoria podcast this week, while South is in a championship decider (of sorts) in December, Knights are playing North Sunshine in a pre-season friendly. Meanwhile Western United now exist on an almost entirely conditional level: if the courts do this instead of that, or if the Tax Office pushes harder or backs off, or if Scott Pendlebury wins or loses in his court case against his former mate. I can't believe that some portion of my Collingwood membership fees figuratively - perhaps even literally! - went towards Jason Sourasis' Megali Idea in Tarneit.

But before one could even begin celebrating the struggles and/or pending demises of other teams, if one is inclined to do such things, on more or less the same day that Western United was put into stasis, ASIC cancelled the Australian Financial Services licence of South president Nick Maikousis, owing to his and his company's connection to the Shield Master Fund situation. Within days, Nick had resigned from the South board and from his presidency, an ignominious end to what had otherwise been a solid stewardship of the club. Now we have co-presidents (Andrew Mesorouni and Bill Papastergiadis), along with some new board blood that was added to the club mid-season.

The courts will probably be dealing with the fallout from the Shield Master Fund, Keystone Asset Management, and related entities for years. Some of you will know that I work as a contractor in transcription services at the Federal Court, so you'll understand why I can't and won't make any further comment on those cases. At any rate, I make sure to ask my manager to make sure that I'm not assigned to work on any of those matters - it was unnerving enough when I unknowingly sat in on a matter involving former major sponsor (CF Capital) and board member Paul Chiodo.

All of which is to say that things can change very quickly. One day you're enjoying the schadenfreude of the failure of your rivals; the next, you're wondering what else can go wrong at your own club. Whatever other qualities Nick had as president, one of his contributions was in bringing his business networks into the club, and turning them into sponsors. So what happens to that money? Does it filter away without Maikousis there as its focal point? Does the Australian Championship and pending Oceania business negate that loss? How are we even going to manage two competition directly overlapping? When is the AGM going to be? Why can't we have AGMS like normal, peasant clubs? 

Anyway, all valid complaining aside, I guess my main point is that right now, we feel like a medium/bigger/big (take your pick) club again, as opposed to the very small one that we were just a few months ago, watching awful football with awful results in front of awful crowds. A few months ago someone on Twitter asked, with sincerity, how Knights could end up in the situation that they did, because they were a "massive" club. My response to that person was that their framing was misguided; that apart from Knights' near 20 year stretch of mediocrity (which is perhaps worse than the accelerated success/failure/revival cycle of a club like Heidelberg), that there were actually no massive clubs. 

All of our clubs are one moderately sized disaster away from, well, disaster. It's happened to other clubs. It's almost happened to us. It could happen to us next year. Look at Sydney Olympic's floundering, it's now former president openly saying that sinking money into the NPL blackhole isn't worth the the time or effort, while he pursues the Central Coast Mariners' licence. Marconi has turned it around on field, but people are still trying to rationalise that the 20,000 people signed up to gamble their paychecks away in the Palace pokie den makes them "big". In the face of such absurdities, it can be hard to just go an enjoy a game, but that's what I'm going to try and do today: hoping for a win while dodging cigarette smoke, and looking for a brief respite from the insanity.