Halcyon Days of Making an Idiot of Yourself

Once upon a time we had a sort of intern here by the name of Cliff Hussey, who was initially inspired to create a rival or complementary South Melbourne Hellas blog, before we roped him in to do match reports and provide shaky, nausea inducing videos. Does he still come to games? I don't know. Where is he nowadays? Lighting up the Melbourne social scene judging by his Facebook ramblings.

Apart from the disturbing memories of his bizarre emo dress sense, Cliff did leave us with some great artefacts, the pick of the bunch being this video of the now banned fan known as 'Columbo', doing his usual abuse the keeper shtick before making making a fool of himself by falling over the fence and making some random kid laugh.

About four years ago - reminiscence of Langerak's brief VPL stint

Dean Anastasiadis got injured in round four against Green Gully. On came a skinny kid by the name of Mladen Tosic who, try as he might, was never able to convince the coaches, the fans or even his fellow defenders that he was the right man for the spot between the sticks.

So for the second half of the season, in came a young lad by the name of Mitch Langerak, a Queenslander on loan from Melbourne Victory. He made mistakes, to be sure - the worst of which was letting a harmless grubber of a cross by Henry Fa'arodo go through his legs for a tap in and the win for Richmond on a dispiriting Friday night. But he also showed enough in his aerial exploits, dubbed by Ian Syson at the time as either 'solid as a rock' or 'safe as houses' - I can't remember which, but it's the sentiment not the wording which matters - that even I was making uncharacteristically bold predictions like 'future Socceroo keeper'.

The years and keepers have come and gone at South in our VPL era. Deano came back after his injury and apocryphally kept Neil Young out of a job; Nick Jelic filled in for a game or two, as did Andy Sfetkopoulos; Tommi Tommich was awesome on short notice at the tail end of 2008, and then fell in a heap the year after; and the still young Stefaan Sardelic has pinch hit over the past few years without being able to nail down the starting keeper's spot.

The Agitator leaves his mark on the scoreboard

But for whatever intangible reason none of these guys excited me like Mitch did on a cold and rainy Sunday in June at Chaplin Reserve, against a dogged Sunshine George Cross outfit. It was a hard fought 2-0 win, well earned in the mud by the players, as the South fans huddled together under umbrellas not always their own on the hill at the Anderson Road end, and scoreboard shenanigans by one of our stalwart fans kept us amused as we fought off the onset of frostbite.

But just one of the enduring memories of that game was our old foe John Markovski, who was coaching George Cross at the time, doing his by that stage almost compulsory act of subbing himself on against us. When the home side won a free kick within Markovski's range, there was just that moment of dread. Loathe his as we do, he still had a phenomenal left foot shot - he hit a volley as sweetly as he would have done in his prime, but Langerak made the save, and was re-christened 'Mitso' by the faithful.

Billy Natsioulas fights for the ball.

It was a glorious day all round, back in the day when there was still a sort of VPL  camaraderie amongst South fans before we divided ourselves into innumerable factions; when Gate 1/HFC faction splitting was the height of our worries; when some people still thought we were a shoe-in for the second Melbourne A-League spot when it opened up; when a few wins against some of that season's strugglers, which included the aforementioned game, had us run into a bit of form halfway through the year before the Victory game and the subsequent collapse into an inconsistent heap, whose misery was only occasionally punctuated by moments such as this.

This morning Mitch 'Mitso' Langerak made his Bundesliga debut for the ladder leading Borussia Dortmund away at Bayern Munich. Dortmund won 3-1, their first win away at Bayern in 20 years. From all reports, Langerak had a good game, including making one great reflex save against Mario Gomez. Four years on from what for most football fans would rightly be viewed as a game between two also-rans of Australian football, a young man brought in almost as a last resort to try and solve a goalkeeping crisis at Lakeside is one step closer to achieving his potential. Now, as then, I have every confidence that he will fulfill his promise.

Happy Valentijn's Day!

After our 2006 championship, in late December, the club started its trials for the new season. So we found ourselves, for some reason, out in Burnley, at Kevin Bartlett Reserve, in the evening sun, playing a game against Richmond's trialists. We got smacked something like 7-1, but there's a tall blond kid who looks kind of interesting.
Then in early 2007, I was standing on the outer side of Chaplin Reserve, watching the lads have a pre-season hit out against George Cross, with a few more regulars and new signings playing, including Yusef Yusef. The tall blond kid, who rumour has it is Dutch and named Jasper, and has walked in off the street, does well in defense but looks less sure when crossing the halfway line. Bloke next to me says he looks ok, but lacks control. Cue Jasper pulling out two 360 degree turns to get himself out of trouble.

He gets a few starts in the Hellenic Cup, and we kinda assume he'd be close to getting in - after all he does get his picture taken in the new jersey on the official website - but come the start of the season he is nowhere to be seen. Not on the bench, not in the country. So that little saga was seemingly over. But whatever happened to Jasper Valentijn?

Well, his career didn't end. He kept playing back home, and in 2009, was playing in the Finnish 2nd division for Atlantis FC - the Heidelberg of Finnish football, if the following excerpt from this article is anything to go by

The problem at Atlantis boiled down to money. Like most Ykkönen clubs, Atlantis find it difficult to finance operations. Unlike most, they signed new players while failing to pay those already under contract, before sacking the coach and bringing in a new man after a poor start to the season.

So several players walked, amongst them Valentijn, to FC Honka, where he's still apparently on the list at Pallohonka, FC Honka's 2nd division feeder club. Before we let you go, here's some more things we've learnt about Jasper.

• He was a product of Heerenveen.
• His dad, Jos Valentijn, was a speed skater in the 1970s.
• His mum, Haitske Pijlman, was also a speed skater.
• His sister, Rikst, was a competitve gymnast

I'm surprised to see it lasted this long

Let's start by remembering the good times.

It's adios to this, thing, which I don't think anybody ever knew the purpose of.


TEAMelbourne would like to thank their valued supports, members, partners and sponsors for their support and commitment over the past three years.

TEAMelbourne has been placed into solvency and should you require any further assistance in the form of corporate hospitality or event management please contact the member clubs directly

50th anniversary jersey, combines old and new into stunning design.

In a South of the Border exclusive, we can reveal to you dear readers a prototype of the jersey we'll be wearing in this, our 50th anniversary year. The crack design team from Cartoon Stock, who were commisioned for the project, issued the following explanation of some the design's elements.

"Owing to the mass amnesia of the involvement of South Melbourne United in the creation of South Melbourne Hellas, it was a no brainer to not even consider using the original red 'v' design. The thing to do then was to use the traditional blue motif, but instil some new and old meanings into the design; we wanted it to tell a story. So while maintaining blue as the pricniple colour, we've gone with a more faded blue, in homage to the Jim Marinis-not-washing-the-shirts-as- punishment-for-playing-like-shit-and-with-no-heart in 2007 era. We've also gone for a very, well what we thought was a cutting edge move, in putting a whole potato, to symbolise, well, the literal potato on the shoulder of the club. It also quietly pays due respect to South's place in Australia, the land from the which potato came, specifically the old Middle Park and its immediate surrounds, and the club's role in cultivating the crop which has been crucial in alleviating world hunger."

Cartoon Stock's fee for the design has been the subject of much speculation, with rumours even circulating that they have received monies from South Melbourne's 2012 World Club Championship money, which the club will receoive once they receive entry into the A-League and win the title at it's first attempt.

South women play final game of season Sunday

... against the Bendigo Vipers at Field 13, 1:00 start I think. I'm going to try and make it down there, and not only because I don't mind a bit of the old women's football, but also because I've got this strange feeling. The feeling that, as good as open forum's are, and gutsy or foolish as Leo is being in this situation, I've got the feeling that some numpty or numpties are going to unleash a tidal wave of stupid. So being a couple of kilometres down the road seems like a good idea, in the wide open spaces, cold wind coming across the lake, picturesque pit lane behind me... anyway, the last time I had this feeling was in early 2007, before the Richmond away game, where there was a analogous level of tension for different and yet, oddly, somewhat related reasons. So therefore I won't be in a position to relate directly the events of what will transpire in that meeting. Maybe someone else will do it for me, maybe Ill just relate 2nd hand facts, but either way, I'm choosing not be there, just as a happy coincidence prevented my being at the Richmond game last year. In that case, I was at the Prince of Wales seeing Elbow for the 2nd time, and having a blast. This time Elbow are busy touring overseas - hopefully they come by next year - and therefore other arrangements need to be made. At least this time they'll be South related.

Enruoblemaet

Remember this stupid gimmick that everyone was falling over themselves to praise the South board for getting us in there ahead of the Victory who wanted nothing to do with it? That sentence could have done with some punctuation. Anyway, remember

Teamelbourne

Well about a year later and what happened? Well firstly, we certainly are not in there. But would we want to be? What the hell is Teamelbourne all about anyway? It looks like the only people they've managed to rope in are, a glorified pony club, an aussie rules team which stands for nothing, a thugby league team bankrolled almost entirely by Rupes, the city's premier basketball team which plays out of the netball centre, and a netball team. Oh, and the MSO. Whoopee. And what do they do? I can't really tell to be honest. What would be the benefit of joining this illustrious group? You tell me, because I can't bloody figure it out. All that getting your jollies off for nothing, except that like most of your wanks, they weren't memorable enough to file away to reminisce upon during a quiet autumn evening.

So, where to from here? Well, there was this book I read by some schmo called John Carroll, called The Wreck Of Western Culture: Humanism Revisited. It's all about how western society, from the Renaissance onwards, destroyed all its central myths to the point where we believe in nothing and stand for nothing, and therefore our lives have no centre to turn to when it all goes pear shaped. Or something like that. Anyway, even if you end up disagreeing with it, you'll still remember it long after sham enterprises like Teamelbourne end up in the sportsentertainmentmarketing toilet. Well, one can only hope that's how it ends up.

2008 membership package part 2 - Cards

Concluding South of the Border's look at South's 2008 membership package are the membership cards themselves. This was the part I was looking forward to the most, in my quest to be the no.1 'gold' category member. But I was in for a shock. No no.1. In fact no numbers at all. I was, to put it mildly, disappointed. But I learnt fairly quickly that it was a cost saving exercise, as we don't have too much money don't you know.


That disappointment was put aside, when I recognised the socialist principles lurking beneath the surface of this move (no rank! no hierarchy! in card form!), and how when the club inevitably falls into administration again, this time it'll re-emerge (or be reborn if it gets that bad) as an anarcho-syndicalist collective. And if you don't know what that means, watch the beginning of Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail where the peasants are toiling in mud and replace the mud with soccer and medieval Britain with the FFV. Perhaps more alike then I'm comfortable with. Also the new card looks smashing. Would have been nice to have an unclipped one to show, but they were not available prior to the day of the first home match for the year. Still good but.

By the way, could you imagine the amateur league derby between the right-wing/Hellas Fan Club supported South Melbourne reformation and the ultra left wing anarcho-syndicalist branch? It would absolutely shit all over any derby in this country, perhaps even the universe. Almost makes you want to see the club go under just to see it happen. Finally the unclipped sections are for 2006, the Kingston game where I was sick, and for 2007 the Melbourne Knights game which never happened but we still lost anyway.

Alex Duric on The World Game

Continuing on from an earlier entry, comes this very poorly done but still clear enough video of Alex Duric on The World Game show. All time leading scorer in Singapore? Jeebus! We had him as a defender!

No lah, so old lah, so tall lah - Alex Duric plays for Singapore National Team

When I first heard about this, I was like no way, but good on him, another South player on the international stage, scoring a goal as well against Tajikistan. It came a bit late for my presentation last year on soccer and globalisation, but what the hell? And yes i realize this is old news, but this is still a new blog, it's still catching up.

Some forum

Straits Times profile

Singaporean blogger eating his words