I'm feeling pretty condensed already, and there's still more to come!

Our involvement with the OFC Pro League has brought about a lot of novelty - new opponents, new destinations, dealing with VAR directly - but it's also brought back one very retro phenomenon not seen for four decades, that being the obstacle of a very condensed schedule.

In modern times, three and four day breaks between matches are frequent, even for semi-pro soccer players in out of the way places like the Australian state leagues. They've certainly become more common in Melbourne since the revival of the Mirabella Statewide Knockout Dockerty Cup in 2011, and the commencement of the FFA Cup in 2014, most of whose games are played on weeknights in-between weekend (and Friday and Monday night) league matches. From the end of the NSL Cup, last played in mid-1996, through the 2010 season, as a South fan, coming across the situation where your team would be playing multiple games during the week was rare, with the exception of occasional catch-up games because of the grand prix during the NSL. Even when we participated in the Singapore Cup in 2010 and 2011, the scheduling was generally favourable to our players from the point of view of short turnarounds. 

The notable exception to that once-a-week commitment during that 1996 to 2010 span was our 1999/2000 season, where the Oceania Club Championships and Club World Championships had us playing a very condensed schedule. In the case of the Oceania Club Championships, we played matches on September 18, 22, 24, and 26; the playoff for third between New Zealand's Central United and Tahiti's AS Venus (the feeder/backer for the OPL's Tahiti United) didn't even go ahead because neither team was able to field enough players due to injuries. Then came the Club World Cup in January 2000, where we played matches on the 6th, 8th, and 11th. 

But that kind of tight scheduling was very much the exception and not the rule. Not including the three Tynan-Eyre Cup pre-season matches we played in the lead-up to 1999-2000 season, the team played 41 matches, and had it made the finals, would have maxed out at 46. So far in 2026, the team has already played in 18 competitive matches, and we've only just entered April. Indeed, the 2026 situation of having to play two days in a row on multiple occasions is something so astoundingly rare, that I thought I'd try and find out the last time it had ever happened to us, if it ever had. 

I thought I'd struck gold when looking at the official South Melbourne historian's spreadsheets that I have access to, when it appeared that such an occurrence had come about as recently as September 1996, where we had beaten Melbourne Knights in an NSL Cup quarter final on the 21st (a Saturday) at Lakeside, and then backed it up the next day (a Sunday) against Box Hill at Wembley Park on the 22nd. (Knights were also involved in the second part of the Wembley Park double-header, playing against Gippsland Falcons). 

Unfortunately, when digging through newspapers.com for more info on these matches (and thanks to my old doctoral supervisor "Kluggers" for still keeping up the subscription to that site, as well as for not changing the password), I found that the spreadsheet, as well as OzFootball's page on the NSL Cup, both had the incorrect date for the relevant NSL Cup match - it was actually played on the Friday (the 20th), not the Saturday, as seen in Laurie Schwab's article below.



Such scheduling, ridiculous to modern sensibilities, was not unheard of at the time - though increasingly rare, the 1990s saw South play several games with only a days break between matches. Most often these were early season NSL Cup matches, as in the following examples:

• against Brunswick Juventus, two-legged NSL Cup tie on October 3rd and 5th, 1993.
• against Morwell Falcons, two-legged NSL Cup tie on Septyember 30th and October 2nd, 1994
• matches on January 23rd (Marconi), 25th (Cosmos), and 27th (Breakers) in the mid-season NSL Cup in 1996.
• league matches April 6th (Olympic) and 8th (Marconi) in 1996.

There were also equivalent examples in January 1993, October 1991, January 1990, January and April 1989, and May 1984. Some of that was due to matches around Australia Day, others complicated by the Buffalo Cup, and a bit with cramped scheduling caused by the compressed 1989 and 1989/90 seasons, as the transition was made between winter and summer NSL seasons. But even with more competitions to play in during the 1980s (or at least after 1983, once Victoria's NSL clubs were brought back into the Dockerty cup fold), two-day breaks between matches were still uncommon. But then I finally found (and confirmed) the most recent occurrence of two South senior men's games in two days!

The dates were Sunday April 3rd and Monday April 4th, 1983, which coincided with Easter Sunday and Easter Monday according to the Gregorian calendar. First up was a league game against Heidelberg (1-1) in front of a crowd of apparently 16,000 at Middle Park, followed the next day by an NSL Cup match against Canberra City (6-2) in front of a Middle Park crowd of approximately 1,000. Even in an era where starting elevens were pretty stable, the lineups for the two games are almost exactly alike, with the exception of John Yzendoorn coming on for a different player in the two matches. 

• Laumets, Russell, Blair, Xanthopoulos, Davidson, Halford, Crino, Murphy, Brown, Egan, Wooddin (Yzendoorn 75').
• Laumets, Russell, Blair, Xanthopoulos, Davidson, Halford, Crino, (Yzendoorn 55'), Murphy,  Brown, Egan, Wooddin.
  

This was also the case in the previous season, 1982, where South lost 1-0 away to West Adelaide (June 13), and then the next day (June 14) lost an NSL Cup match against Heidelberg on penalties after a scoreless draw.

• Tsigaras, Nicolaidis, Blair, Xanthopoulos, Bennett, Campbell, Davidson, Shirra (Buljevic 76'), Egan, Rogers, Halford.
• Tsigaras, Nicolaidis, Blair, Xanthopoulos, Bennett, Campbell, Davidson, Shirra (Buljevic 75'), Egan, Rogers, Halford.

The statistician and record keeper Andrew Howe notes that when including NSL Cup games, NSL teams played on consecutive days 43 times from 1978-1985; 23 of those occasions were league games played on consecutive days. In August 1984, Canberra City and Footscray JUST played two league games in two days against each other. And all this in an era with very limited substitutions.

There were a couple of two day breaks in the 1977 season, one in April 1980 (around Anzac Day), and one in May 1981. Before then, to get the previous occasion of games on consecutive days, one has to go back to the 1976 season, and the Queen's Birthday long weekend, where Hellas defeated Mooroolbark 1-0 on Sunday the 13th, and lost a Dockerty Cup quarter final 2-1 to Alexander on the following day. The Hellas starting lineups were:

• Kennedy, Pye, Batticciotto, Xanthopoulos, Walker, Mackay, Kalifatidis, Cummings, Ollerton, Armstrong, Daperis. 
• Kennedy, Pye, Batticciotto, Xanthopoulos, Walker, Mackay, Kalifatidis, Cummings, Ollerton, Armstrong, Andrews. 

There was a day break between matches on the Queen's Birthday weekend in 1974, but in 1973, once more on the Queen's Birthday long weekend, South played matches on consecutive days. On Sunday June 3rd, Hellas lost 1-0 at home to Polonia in the league, and followed that up the next day by beating St Albans (the pre-Dinamo takeover version) 3-2. St Albans were near the bottom of the division below South, and were trailing 3-0 at one point.

In the 1960s there was also the added complication of players backing up for league games and state rep matches on consecutive days. In 1969, for example, John Bedford played for Hellas on June 15th (5-1 loss to Wilhelmina), and followed that up with playing for Victoria the next day (1-o win over South Australia). In 1969 for example, John Bedford and David Kelly played games on consecutive days on three occasions, combining club and state team duties. Bedford likewise played back-to-back league and state matches in April, and Hellas teammate David Kelly did that twice in April.

Going back to the early 1960s, there was also still the Laidlaw World Cup, a kind of local cup of nations. The team representing Greece in that competition was a defacto Hellas, with a couple of players from Alexander and minus Hellas' non-Greek players. It was a tournament held in such importance at the time, that the local Greek community (press and laity) considered the Laidlaw World Cup of more importance than a league or cup match on the same weekend, and so Team Greece would get the benefit of a full-strength line-up, while Hellas would get fringe senior and the reserves for the state league game on the same weekend. Luckily, in the case of 1961, this was a time when South's reserves depth was quite deep.

Of course the 1960s were a different time - games and players were slower, and poorer pitch quality also would have made it harder for players to storm up and down a field relentlessly. The fact that it's not been even remotely the norm since the mid-1990s to play two games in three days says a lot about different attitudes to player welfare, ground management, and even spectator fatigue.

Quite how we've able to get away with the results we have so far in 2026, including the relatively low injury count, has been utterly confounding. It's been mitigated only a little by Gully's awfulness (not only in their loss to us, but in general), and by having the first of our "two games in two days" while being in Melbourne, including playing against a weak Altona Magic side. Let's see how it goes when we have to do it twice in the space of a week, against much stronger opposition especially in the NPL, and with the senior squad split by nearly 4,000 kilometres of ocean.