The happy little rut

What is life without risk? Secure. Safe. Routine. There have been many ups and downs over the past 20 odd years at South Melbourne, but one thing has more or less remained the same: that you'll see the same 200-300 people at most home games, making the same jokes and the same complaints about the futility of the enterprise, and while the results matter to us, they don't matter much to anyone else. It's an insular story of a comfortable, quiet despair. But days like today change that. Sure, we've had little moments like this before: a couple of Australia Cup semi finals, the Championship final last year, and even on occasion an NPL grand final, which not only break the monotony of the routine, but remind people outside the club that we exist, and that we have ambitions that many consider beyond our station. Days like this also remind ourselves of what the club was, and what we hope it may be again, but today's match, today's event, is on another level. Today is not necessarily about the football, though of course we want to win, and it's the footballers who have got us to this stage. Today is about affirming to ourselves as a club that we should be operating at a higher level, and convincing others of the same. When Sydney United made its Australia Cup final, unsavoury crowd actions aside, no one was talking about their ambitions beyond the NPL. Heidelberg took the lead last year in the final, and yet even then, no one was seriously discussing Heidelberg as a top-tier aspirant. There's something in our image and bluster, and yes, our history, that has people inside the club and outside of it, that maybe we could be more. The scale of the event, the particular opponent, all have created a sense of magnifying the arguments. And thus if we were to fail in an exceptional manner on the field or off it, we are open to a level of ridicule that we have not felt for decades. But that's the point, isn't? No risk, no reward. Today, we get out of our comfort zone.