Notes from the 2017 AGM

The 2017 AGM was destined to be dominated by the linked issues of the social club/bistro/futsal court operation, the club's overall commercial strategy, and the club's finances, and this is what happened. Other issues - membership value, the quality of the team, even perhaps the ongoing issues with the operation of the various Lakeside leases - fell into the background, or did not get any time at all.

The timing and organisation of the event - midweek, 6:00PM, and moved from the social club to presidents room at short notice - was not just "not ideal"; it was breathtakingly poor behaviour for a club owned by its members. I do not understand why the club cannot hold an AGM by late November of the relevant year, on a weekend, and at a reasonable hour so we don't have to rush through everything. That's not an argument by the way for AGMs to go on forever, but the relatively limited time allocated and the tendency of some of our AGMs to descend into shouting matches means that some of the more important and particular issues I would have liked to have seen discussed did not happen.

Having an AGM seven months after the end of a financial year also means that the information provided in financial statements is also woefully out of date. Questions and presentations about the club's financial performance frequently consisted of two parts - the information as it was presented in the financial report, and if not quite "top of the head" answers then at least answers requiring a board member to recall from memory and do mental arithmetic to discuss our current financial position.

I don't know what our quorum is either, but at the start of the meeting it was dangerously close to not being met. A few later arrivals trickled in during the meeting, but it was one of the poorest attendances for many years. Considering last year's attendance was a bumper session - all seats taken up and about a dozen people standing at the back - I can only think that the timing of the meeting, along with the higher price of a social club membership, took its toll on attendance. Most board members were in attendance, except for Bill Papastergiadis (in China) and Nick Maikoussis (personal engagement).

As I've also made clear a number of times over the years, for better or worse, unless a rival ticket emerges to challenge this continually mutating iteration of the South Melbourne Hellas board, we continue to function as a club at its mercy. That doesn't mean we should go easy on the board or adopt a strident and self-serving cynicism (the latter of which is a habit I'm all too aware that I can fall into), but we can't pretend that the situation is any other way.

Finances
For this year at least, I'm finding it difficult to separate these issue of the financial position of the club from the futsal court and bistro; indeed, it will probably be impossible to ever separate them again, since the social club is now at the heart of our hopes for future prosperity, unless we somehow end up in the A-League.

The club recorded a small profit (about $17,000) from normal activities, and a much larger profit due to abnormal activity - namely, receiving the remainder of the allocated government grant money for the completion of the social club. To complete the social club however, the club also borrowed close to $700,000 (in various arrangements which I did not completely understand), which brought the total cost of the project close to the $1.5 million mark.

Here is where the majority of the AGM's controversy began. Some members bemoaned what they considered to be excessive borrowing, especially considering we had just managed to pay off our previous outstanding debts (specifically the Toumbourou debt, but also the cash flow issues of mid 2017). The club's argument went something like this - you need to spend money in order to make money, and the extra spending on the completion of the social club was both necessary, and added value to the project.

The club also stated that because of the donation of labour and materials, the overall value of the project was twice what it cost us to build, though I do not believe any formal valuation of the work has been made. The main loan has been guaranteed by three of the club's directors, and the club aims to pay it off in three years time (four years overall). Removing the cloud of pre-existing biases and personal grudges that flavoured the discussion, the main point of difference in the discussion seemed to be one of emphasis. Either this was reckless behaviour by the club, or it was necessary to properly finish off the social club space.

Honestly, I'm not confident enough or knowledgeable to take a stand either way. That's not me trying to hedge my bets - I honestly don't know how all this will turn out.

Bistro
The club characterised the operation of the bistro in its first year as a learning experience. I'd be somewhat less charitable about that, but it's best to move on to some of the specifics. The club decided (by its own admission, without any sign of an obvious plan) to run a full-time restaurant operation, believing that foot traffic from the local area, along with patronage from South Melbourne Hellas members outside match days, would magically happen.

As I have noted elsewhere, one could easily see how this approach was doomed to fail. For starters, compared to Clarendon Street and its surrounds - with its many and varied dining options - the South Melbourne social club will never be a pop-in option for people. Most locals would not know that it exists, and considering that the club or whoever was responsible for promoting it conducted minimal advertising for the social club even to South members and social media followers, how were people outside the club supposed to find the space?

Likewise, most of our members do not live near anywhere Lakeside, making visits to the social club outside match days and club events extremely unlikely. That the club thought it would be otherwise shows an incredible amount of naivety or pigheadedness. Nevertheless, the club has attempted to spin this attempt at a full-time bistro operation as a worthy experiment which did not quite work, but which has at least yielded a certain amount of quantifiable data, consisting not only of sales, but also of consumer habits.

The more successful bistro trading days were specific club nights - especially during the junior season, including gala days - and early on in the social club's life, bolstered no doubt by the keenness of South fans to actually experience a home social club again. The club has decided therefore that "events" is where it's at for the social club, both South Melbourne oriented events and cases where we can hire the bistro space out to outside groups.

It was explained that the leaving of the previous venue manager was essentially by mutual agreement, because the goals of the two sides were no longer compatible. The club will run the bistro for the time being, with the option of outsourcing the bistro to an outside party an option which the club will consider, now that it has some understanding of how the social club space works, and what kind of turnover it can achieve.

Futsal court
The futsal court suffered from similar issues to the bistro - lack of awareness, advertising, foot traffic - as well as some different issues. The club had been made an offer by an outside entity to run the futsal court, which was declined for similar reasons (and on similar grounds of research and planning).

The club's best days for the futsal court were Wednesdays where they had a competition running, and on Saturdays, where the club ran a junior comp involving several different club sides. Outside out of that however, apart from the occasional hiring out of the futsal court to outside parties, the primary usage of the court was by our juniors as part of their training schedule.

Our juniors using the court is obviously one of the reasons the court was built, and it's good that they use it on a regular basis. However as noted by some in the meeting (and previous meetings) the court takes up a very large amount of space, and needs to work hard to earn its own keep. There is still potential for the court's operation to at least be partly outsourced outside of the hours it's used our juniors, but I fancy this will be of limited appeal to an outside operator.

No mention was made of the maintenance costs for the futsal court.

State Sport Centres Trust
The club claims the relationship between itself and the SSCT is reasonably good at the moment. Of course we all know that can change at an instant and under the slightest bit of duress.

More importantly, the club has renegotiated parts of its agreement with the Trust over the costs of ground hire and renumeration. Rather than the previous crowd percentage based payment made to the Trust, the club has moved to a fixed fee payment for use of Lakeside on match days. There was also a similar agreement made in the event that we ever played in the A-League.

As noted last year, the club has also negotiated to take over food and drink service outside the social club area on South Melbourne match days, and on days where parties hiring the venue for soccer (such as FFV) are amenable to us providing the food services.

In order to do this, the club has given up some of the monthly stipend it receives from the government as part of our tenure at Lakeside. Whether this will be a worthwhile move in the short term remains to be seen. In the medium to long term, the stipend will eventually end, and thus getting on the front foot on this matter seems like a good idea.

Cost-cutting
Among the cost-cutting measures there were two which stood out to me. First was staffing, some of which has been explained in previous posts in passing. This is mostly based around office and social club staffing. A number of staffing re-arrangements have been made. In the office, a sponsor liaison has been hired, while media and events positions have been ended or downgraded. There was no word on whether there were outstanding wages or superannuation due to former and current employees.

Likewise, as the club has moved away from the full-time restaurant model for the bistro, the staffing situation there has changed to I guess what would be best termed as an 'at needs' basis, and there are no plans to hire a full-time venue manager as a replacement for Phil. What this means in terms of the extra match days (the South women's NPL fixture is now completely separate from the men's match days), volunteers/interns, etc, I do not know.

The second cost saving measure was the switch from Puma to Kappa, which is set to save us about $40,000 across all of our teams. No comment on whether merchandise for the fans will arrive on time for our first home game. Each year our merchandise and kit deals get touted as something quite special and full of promise, and each year regardless of whose fault it is, it doesn't seem to work out that way. This is one area where it always comes down to praxis over theory.

Football
As far as the senior men's team goes, there is one bit of news that will please many of us - the Spanish experiment is over! There seems to have been a belated realisation of the difficulty of getting a Spanish player that is fit, has enough English to communicate properly, and can adapt culturally to Australian soccer. To that end, a question was cast over whether utilising visa spots at an NPL level was even worthwhile, with the answer being that unless it was someone of the calibre of Jaime Reed, it may perhaps be a waste of time.

It's implied every year that we (fans and board) want more of our own juniors getting a senior gig, but this year that desire seemed a little bit more sincere from the board's point of view. It was noted that while the club would've liked to have promoted more of its own youth, the quality wasn't there in previous years. This year though? Players that have been under this junior system for five or so years were on the cusp of making a breakthrough, or so we're told. The proof is always in the pudding on that one though.

Confirmation that Tim Mala had retired (whether for this year only, or permanently, it was not said), and that Jesse Daley has also left us to go back to Queensland. No definitive statements made about new players signed, though the club was confident of soon securing the services of several of the players trialling with us. (and Neos Kosmos did have an article yesterday about goalkeeper Alistair Bray signing with us)

Gabrielle Giuliano made a brief presentation on the women's teams (NPL and state league) and the success they had in 2017. When questioned about "how much money was wasted on the women's team?", she replied "not as much as the men's", which defused the question but also brought a good measure of laughter to the room.

I asked whether it was true that senior men's team manager Frank Piccione had stepped down/retired, and this was confirmed by Mesourouni. I would personally like to wish Frank all the best, and hope to see him around the club in some capacity, as he's one of the nicest and funniest blokes around the club.

The club continues to make attempts to break into the schools market, offering the services of its coaches (for a fee of course) and hoping to gain the use of some of the participating schools' grounds in return (especially for our times away from Lakeside). One member was angry that the club (according to him) had not made any attempt to get any Greek schools on board for these programs, to which the answer was that those Greek schools approached did not want to pay (or could not afford) the cost of the service being offered; there was disputation on whether any Greek secondary schools had been approached at all.

Playing facilities (outdoor)
The question about access to Lakeside was asked, and why we were again away for so many games to start the season. The answer for this season's predicament provides an interesting example of the complications we have to deal with. As the start of the soccer season starts outside our priority period at Lakeside, as well as coinciding with athletics' major events and the grand prix, this year we worked with the relevant parties at Lakeside to book in the week of February 18th for our first home game.

Unfortunately, FFV decided this year to push the start of the NPL season back a week; and thus with athletics having their major events at the end of February and early March, the necessity of pitch repairs following that, then the grand prix - and then Orthodox Easter - it was almost impossible to hold a game early in the season. No one denies that this is far from an ideal situation on so many fronts, but it seems that there's little that can be done. The women's team is effected in pretty much the same way. (it will be interesting to see how the ground holds up under the weight over senior and reserves men on consecutive days as the season develops).

The club is hopeful of at least having a better situation in terms of its temporary training options this year, but opinions on this will differ. Players and coaches have in the past been quite open with their dissatisfaction with the alternative training grounds provided for them. At least this season, thanks to the World Cup, we are unlikely to see a midyear disruption to our access of Lakeside due to the arrival of any touring teams.

In better news, our allocated turf grounds in Albert Park are apparently in the best condition they've been in for a long time, now that they have proper drainage. Here's hoping that they manage to survive through the season in decent shape. It was also noted that the lights for those grounds are among the worst in the precinct. I'm not sure what action was going to be taken to improve that situation.

I asked the question about how the club was dealing with the Albert Park Master Plan, but I was not satisfied with the answer given, which I found to be vague at best. As one of the biggest clubs (if not the biggest) in the Albert Park precinct, there's a chance here not only for improved grounds, but also perhaps more grounds, should the golf course be reduced from 18 to 9 holes.

A-League bid
The A-League bid is stalled for the time being because of the mess that is FFA, FIFA, and the matter of the National Congress. On this matter, the club remains confident that it can snare one of the expansion places in part due to the belief that:

• Melbourne and Sydney are the most desirable commercial options for expansion.
• the board do not believe that Brisbane will receive a second team.
• the board do not believe that the Victorian Government will invest in building new stadiums for Dandenong and Geelong, preferring to work with and/or improving Lakeside.

In the matter of the Roberto Carlos gala night, it was confirmed that the event did lose money, but it was claimed that the exercise was nevertheless extremely worthwhile. The loss was covered by three of our board members of their own volition; whether this was decided before or after the event lost money, it was not made clear.

Second division
As usual, it's a matter of wait and see. The club says that while it is a keen participant and observer in the AAFC and second division processes, it is not necessarily at the forefront or aiming to be the public face of these things. The club also played down the expectation that we were likely to see at first a second with promotion/relegation to the top tier, but instead were initially likely to see a truly national second tier connected to the state leagues. Wait and see, as per usual.

Closing comments
You have to expect that any South Melbourne Hellas AGM can lose time in personality clashes, statements instead of questions, and argumentative periods. Still, it is what is for lack of a better cliché. I don't know if the club's on the right track or not, and I don't even want to kid myself that I'm qualified to make a judgement either way.

Thanks to whoever the anonymous poster was who left all the questions in the comments. I'd done zero preparation for this AGM, thinking to maybe type up a quick list on the day of the AGM, but it was easier to just copy, paste and print what you'd provided. Funny how a great deal of the questions seemed to coincide with what the board covered, though not everything got covered. Where was the mention of Skip Fulton joining the board? Oh well.

Anonymous' question regarding the "South in Business'\" coterie unfortunately didn't get a run, and the board did not bring this up. This was particularly disappointing in light of that I didn't get to ask (in the meeting; I did get to have a very brief chat later) about what if any efforts the club had made to make use of the Australian Sports Foundation. Soccer does very poorly when it comes to making use of the ASF, and while FFV has made some attempts in recent times to get its clubs to get on board that programme, it's disappointing that South is apparently not one of those clubs.

There was also an absence of membership questions, discussion about how to make Lakeside (the arena area and the social club) feel more like home. The lesson from that is (and one which I have neglected) that in future if one wants to have a topic covered, they better submit it for general business in writing in the weeks leading up to the meeting after the AGM is announced.

I'll try and do better next time around.

If I've forgotten anything, or if you were there and wish to prompt me about something, feel free to add your two cents in the comments.

2017 AGM / Northcote friendly

How's this for creative fixturing? Wednesday sees a unique South Melbourne Hellas double-header, with the 2017 AGM (naturally held in 2018) followed by a pre-season friendly against Northcote. Even better, the AGM is going to be held in the social club, at the same time as the social club has been advertised as being open to the hoi polloi prior to the Northcote fixture from 6:15PM onwards.

There's so many problems with this approach, who knows where to start? Are we seriously going to have food and drink service during the AGM? The last and to the best of my recollection only other meeting we had in the current social club was this informal session, which had a small attendance but which had a bunch of juniors making a lot of noise and making it very hard to hear. Goodness knows it will be like with the terrible acoustics if we have a much larger attendance and a whole bunch of non-members in the room.

Speaking of which, AGM attendance for the South Melbourne Hellas portion of the club (and not its SMFC subsidiary) is and should remain the preserve of those who are currently members of South Melbourne Hellas - in other words, social club club members. Are we seriously going to have a whole bunch of people in the room observing the meeting who should not be doing so? Vigilance of non-social club members at South Melbourne AGMs is often not as good as it should be, but this seems mad even by our own standards.

Anyway, as per usual the AGMs (South Melbourne Hellas Social Club 6:00PM, SMFC 8:00PM) are the one official chance that members have to question the board on its performance and on its future plans. That doesn't mean that anything good will come out of these meetings, but you've got to take the opportunities you're given; after all, not all of us have a direct line to the top brass.

There's a lot of issues to get through, and while holding the AGM on midweek in January is a piss-poor effort on so many levels, we don't really have a choice in that matter. Speaking of not having any choices, while I'm sure there will be people going in all guns blazing, the chance of something changing due to those efforts is close to zero. Significant change (for better or worse) can only happen if there is a rival group - not one or two individuals - who are willing to form a ticket to challenge the current iteration of the board, which has been in charge of the club in one form or another since the end of the NSL, mostly under the presidency of Leo Athanasakis.

That needs people with a lot of spare time, as well as the requisite business and football connections, and where you find enough of those kinds of people that still support South I do not know. I don't make this point out of some sense of vengeance, but rather as a statement of fact. Yes we are a member run and owned club, but the situation is such that even if a plurality of our membership wanted to dislodge the board, who would we replace them with? That is the question that has hovered over the club for the past decade, and in some respects was true of the era before that. Once a board gets set under a figurehead president at South Melbourne, it can be very hard to dislodge.

Anyway, my main concerns this time around the operation of the social club and futsal court, which seemed to have been done with so little planning that it has undermined others areas of the club, both in the short term (in terms of being unable to maintain paid employees at the club) and in the long term (what happens when the government stipend ends if we don't have a profitable social club business?). There's also the ongoing issues with the State Sports Centres Trust, and the constantly moving goalposts set up to hinder our business. Additionally, there are the usual governance issues - AGM timing, financials, and why Leo feels he needs to do most of the presentations - hopefully every board member is there this time.

My feelings on South AGMs are pretty well known. After the first couple I attended, I was disappointed enough with the lack of questions and information that I decided it eventually time to do some preparation of my own; nothing major, just enough to show someone cared. That lead to better AGMs and better prepared board members, and more . As jaded as I am about the potential for further improvement of South AGMs at the moment, it's still important to take them seriously.

And yes, I will be putting up a post-AGM post.

An impossible situation - South Melbourne 1 Sydney FC 5

As usual, forgive the unnecessarily elegiac tone.

Yesterday there were people trying to convince me - or perhaps more so themselves - that I looked happy. Some of those people were at the ground, others merely catching a glimpse of me smiling on the Fox Sports broadcast just before the start of the game. Whatever floats their boat I guess. I was with my mates, and it was almost certainly going to be our last game of the season. A long, long season.

My happiness or at the very least not miserableness was the natural response to being at a game of no consequence, no matter how anyone tried to dress it up. The lead up to the game from many of our people was understandable. A chance to capitalise on a rare and imperfect opportunity. Ticket prices set, food organised, and the club even putting out notices about public transport options. The fans made their banners and flags, invited as many people as they thought would come, and kept tabs on the weather in an obsessive manner. I hated the commercial television networks' use of eight day forecasts before this game, and I hate them even more now.

The final crowd of 5,747 was neither disastrous, nor earth shatteringly brilliant. You can blame the midweek slot and the interstate opponent, or the Socceroos and Ange Postecoglou sucking up all the limelight in the lead up. You can blame the impending bad weather, or the $25 entry charge. But maybe after being out in the cold for 13 years in the manner that we have been, this is all that we have left. It's not exactly been like starting from scratch, but at times it hasn't been too far from it. Sometimes it has been worse.

As much as I would love to go to town on Bill Paps and his talk of selling out the ground, the harsh reality of the situation remains. No crowd would've been big enough, no scoreline good enough, no atmosphere electric enough to make the game mean anything more than what it was; we, suffering but still afflicted by pride, having to face them, not Sydney FC specifically, but an entire soccer and mainstream Australian culture that has no place for us except in such rare and strange circumstances.

Take out the financial viability questions because only a few people will ever know for sure whether we could cut it in this state or any at all. Take out even the ethnic equation of things for just a second, because as a club we've largely moved beyond that, with last night being the best example of it so far. From my point of view at least, there was no cringe factor. Yet the experience as a whole was antithetical to the way top flight sport is done in Australia, by which I mean that despite the general professionalism of the way the event was handled as a whole last night, at no point was it slick. It was, to use those words now tainted by hipsters, artisanal, organic, handmade, at times even rustic.

General admission seating and a lack of oppressive security all round helps a lot in that regard, but at no point did the atmosphere at the ground, both before the game and during, feel forced or predetermined or pre-approved. It was, for want of a better term, a boutique experience in the best possible way, different from just about anything you get in top flight sport in this country. That in itself though, much as I would love to see it sold as a highlight and as a strength, as a beautiful point of difference, can only be seen in our era as encapsulating the shortcomings of being small, of not being exactly like everyone else. So it goes.

On the field, pretty soon the gulf in capability was made apparent. This wasn't simply a case of the best team in the country taking on a second division side; they were taking on a second division side from one of eight second divisions, and a side that had played one competitive fixture in about seven weeks, missing one of its more important players. Sydney's speed of thought, speed of movement on and off the ball, and their surer touch was always going to bring us undone at some point. The fact that we didn't completely sit back and try to absorb pressure was admirable, but also more liable to see us punished.

Not that it would've likely made any difference in the long run, but for a team like ours, missing Brad Norton unbalanced the whole thing. Our players were initially overwhelmed by the occasion and the lack of space afforded to them, and they often second guessed themselves. Mistakes that would lead to nothing in our league veered closer to life or death situations here. Nothing unexpected about that for anyone involved, but it's one thing to know it and quite another to experience it. Perhaps if they could bottle those moments where we took the initiative and showed no fear, there may be something worthwhile that we could take into next season.

Our team, like others at a similar playing level - and there's so many of them - is largely made up of those who have reached the A-League but have been discarded by it, and especially those who will never reach its ranks. Often enough, despite whatever gnashing of teeth there may be about lack of opportunity, there are good reasons for this. The players at our level are too slow or too small or not polished enough. It's not for lack of heart though. Matthew Millar is a prime example. Last night he was one of our best, for mine especially in the first half (though others will point to his second half) as he got into dangerous positions on the byline on a few occasions; but the quality in the form of an end product was just not there.

An extended dose of professionalism or even a consolidated second division would improve things, but establishing either is not within my capabilities; at best I'm here only to note the mostly obvious shortcomings of any attempt to establish such things. There is also something to be said for the notion that in FFA Cup games between A-League and state league opponents, the A-League team should be allowed to field two visa players, the same amount allowed to NPL teams as per their ordinary league business. Certainly it's been a thought bubble that a few have simultaneously had on and offline, and I'd be for such a move. Still, one must also acknowledge that even if such a rule was brought in, the calibre of visa player available to an A-League team easily outstrips what's available to a state league club.

It doesn't help either that Sydney's first goal was offside. You need all the luck in the world to get close, and we didn't get ours. 2-0 down at half-time, and despite having looked OK at times, there was no sense that there was any way back. But then Leigh Minopoulos scored that goal, and for the next 20 minutes all things seemed possible.

A mint finish from Minopoulos 👌 Fully deserving of being a @NAB Golden Goal for @smfc tonight! #FFACup #MagicOfTheCup pic.twitter.com/mvHBRVnGB5

— Westfield FFA Cup (@FFACup) October 11, 2017

There was little chance that it could last, certainly not without an equaliser. We almost got there - Millar's long range effort after their keeper was caught way off his line would have brought the house down had it gone in -  but as the match wore on you could see the tiredness not merely creeping in, but storming in. The equaliser didn't come, and we ran out of gas. Some of the goals we let in were especially poor. But what a 20 minutes it was. It didn't all of a sudden make the struggle of the past 13 years worthwhile, but it was enjoyable, joyous even. There'll be plenty of chances next year and the year after and the year after that to wallow in the miserably meaningful; yesterday was about enjoying the absurd inconsequential.

After the Sydney goals rained in and the margin blew out, I got tired of chanting and of having an obstructed view thanks to hands and flags and people standing on seats, and worst of all, the score of opened umbrellas, so I went down to the concourse area. As the rain kept coming down, I got a good view of Clarendon Corner, the only full bay left in the ground, singing, chanting and enjoying themselves. What surprised me most though was how many people throughout the ground stayed to the end. The result was done, the weather was stuffed, there was no good reason for pretty much anyone apart from the usual people to stay. Yet they stayed.

That rain was something else. I guess we all knew that there was going to be heavy rain on the night, but I can't remember a Lakeside game that had a storm like that for some time. It was initially blown in from the north, chasing a lot of people out of the southern stand around to the northern side. Then the wind changed and moved it around so it blew into the northern stand. The running track threatened to turn into a lake, but the ground itself seemed to hold up well. Most surprisingly perhaps, our boys seemed to handle the conditions better than the Sydney players, especially during our best period, with even long passes to the wings being perfectly hit on several occasions.

All I wanted from the night was that we would avoid embarrassment on the field and off it. In my opinion we managed to avoid both, if not comfortably then by enough. Oh, and we scored a goal. Leigh Minopoulos, the player that gives me the most joy of any player in this team, wrote himself into a little bit of South Melbourne and Australian soccer history. Almost 18 years ago, John Anastasiadis bundled home the first Australian goal at a Club World Championship. Last night Minopoulos became the first player to score for a state league club in an FFA Cup semi-final. They're trivia questions that no one outside the dedicated few of us will be able to answer, but that's part of the story, too.

What to do with our good fortune
There's an episode of The Simpsons - atypically, I've forgotten which one - where the kids of Springfield are lined up outside the Noiseland Arcade, being shaken by a bouncer/security guard to see if they have enough loose change in order to be allowed inside. One hopes that the overpriced souvlaki (just like a proper top-flight stadium experience, as one wit noted), the $25 entry price for most patrons, and the $10 charge for social club members in direct opposition to the promises made by this board, have all raised enough money to pay off our debts to players, as well as current and former employees, with whatever's left over going towards paying off the loan the club took out to finish off the social club.

South of the Border off-season mode begins
There'll be awards no one cares about, and the usual periodic round up of news. There'll also be an AGM to discuss. And book reviews. I also have some other business to take care of and finish, so don't expect too much from me unless something dramatic happens.

Missed it by that much
There was some chatter out there that we had signed Gold Coast City striker Sam Smith. Smith, a 27 year old Englishman who didn't play against us in the FFA Cup due to injury, has instead re-signed with Gold Coast City.

Thank you
To the bloke who noticed that my keys had fallen out of my pocket during the second half.

Final thought
The season is finally over, thank goodness. See you all back in a few weeks time for the start of pre-season.

Odds and ends leading into our FFA Cup semi-final

There's news things which I could link to, but you're all pretty tech savvy individuals, so this is more of a filler piece, with some general advice about what to expect on Wednesday.

If you believe such things, ticket sales have been going pretty well for our FFA Cup semi-final, at about 3,000 pre-sales. That augurs well for a decent crowd, which will depend somewhat on what kind of hype (if any) will be built in the remaining few days, and if the relatively fine weather we've been having holds up.

At any rate, whatever the specific crowd number will be it's fairly certain that it will be one of the bigger crowds at Lakeside for a South game for many years, and thus there will be some common sense which will need to be applied on the night.

For starters, the car parking situation around the ground will likely be atrocious. So either get there early if you can, park further away, or seriously consider taking public transport. The no.12 tram goes right past the ground, while the no.1 stops two blocks away, on Clarendon Street or Moray Street. You could even take the no.96 down to MSAC.

Apart from pre-purchasing your tickets online, getting to the ground a little earlier should (though I make no promises on this) make all the difference with regards to getting into the ground in a timely manner. Whether you're new to Lakeside or have merely forgotten what it's like to have more than 200 people turn up to one of our games, it's worth remembering that our people have a tendency to turn up to games at the latest possible moment. I assume both gates will be open, which should make things easier.

Our regulars of course know this, but it's worth noting for 'occasional' and new visitors, that Lakeside is a non-smoking venue.

In terms of food and drink, if you're not a social club member, you may find it difficult if not impossible to get into the social club on the night. I am told however that there will be other food and drink stands open around the ground, and that these will be under operating under the auspices of the club. It also seems there will be a loosening of the up to now very tight liquor arrangements. All this is part of a hoped for general improvement in what South can offer on a match day.

I don't know if there will be any significant range of merchandise. If you're into that kind of thing, you know the drill already: bring your wallet, bring your credit cards, and hope that there's enough stock to satisfy your longing for stuff.

It might rain on Wednesday, it might not. If it does, the best places to be will be under those small parts of both stands which provide shelter. If it starts getting windy, that sheltered areas is diminished further, If you're out in the outer, bring an umbrella or poncho. Fox Sports will apparently be filming from the northern stand, which will reduce the capacity of that stand by a little bit.

If you choose sit in the bay in which Clarendon Corner locates itself, especially in the rows immediately behind them, you're more likely to have an obstructed view. Clarendon Corner will be standing and they will be waving flags and arms and such. If you are sensitive to swearing for whatever reason, this might also not be the best place to locate yourself. A good thing then that the whole venue will be open, right?

If you are not a regular in Clarendon Corner, but choose to stand in there on the night, there's some pretty basic protocols. If you're going to stand right in the middle, you should do so on the understanding that you will be expected to chant. If you're not a big chanter, stand somewhere to the edges. No flares. Don't be a dick. Pretty straightforward.

There will be no segregation at the game. I don't know if Sydney FC fans will bothering to turn up in such numbers as to be creating any sort of organised atmosphere. My advice for those of them that want to congregate somewhere is to take up a spot in the northern stand or on the terracing behind the goals. As for any other Sydney fans attending, sit or stand pretty much where common sense says you should. Most of us don't bite.

One hopes that the atmosphere will be jovial and relatively lighthearted. Of course we South people want to win this game, thought realistically our chances are fairly remote. Hopefully the boys can do well enough and have enough good fortune so as to at least make a game of it. If things go bad, it's not a reflection on us specifically, but mostly on the stark inequities of the situation as a whole.

That's not much as far as inspirational speeches go, but that's never been my bag anyway. For those able to enjoy South matches, enjoy it. For those who have more trouble enjoying games with any measure of importance, you know best how to deal with it.

In other news...
Not unexpectedly Nick Epifano won our best and fairest award for season 2017, at a low key awards night last Saturday in the social club. How low key? Pretty much no one outside the players and committee knew it was on. Natalie Martineau took out the equivalent women's award.

South claim WNPL title over Geelong Galaxy in dramatic grand final

Despite the senior men starting pre-season in late November 2016, the 2017 South season just doesn't end, and so we - the few, the proud, the geeky - found ourselves out at Broadmeadows for WNPL grand final day. I got there early enough to see almost all the under 18s final, which South lost 2-0 to Calder United. It was an uphill battle for most of the game for the South girls, who trailed 2-0 at the break and took a long time to get going in this game. They were up against the bigger bodied opposition which didn't help matters, but they fought their way until the end and had they snatched a goal late, things may have have ended up differently. As it was, Calder were the better side by some margin

The bombshell news before the senior grand final was that the league's golden boot winner Melina Ayres would be out, reportedly at the behest of the national youth squad selectors who did not want her playing and further aggravating a calf injury she had picked up while training with them. It left a sour taste in the mouth, but one had to have confidence in the rest of the squad which had done so well this season. And besides which, we had the services of the Matildas' all time leading scorer in the form of Lisa de Vanna.

Lisa De Vanna shields the ball from a Geelong opponent. De Vanna was a crucial element of the championship win, even if at times her teammates went all mid 1990s Collingwood with her by looking to pass to her at every opportunity, as did those Magpie players of that era with Nathan Buckley. Photo: Mark Avellino.

After a sluggish start from both sides, it was De Vanna who put us ahead early on when she smashed a low cross from Natalie Martineau into the roof of the net. Still better was to come, with De Vanna setting up a shot for Jamie Pollock, only to have that effort sharply diverted with a header into the back of the net by Martineau. 2-0 is never a done and dusted scoreline, especially only half an hour in. This is perhaps especially true in the women's game at this level where shifts of momentum can be quick and devastating.

And thus in the second half, Antonia Niteros gave away an unnecessary penalty which was converted by former South player Laura Spiranovic, and soon enough Geelong were level when South keeper Molly-May Ramsay misjudged her positioning and saw a shot curl around her from distance into the far corner. Times like that you think the game is going to slip away, but the introduction of Caitlin Greiser off the bench, along with renewed resolve from the South players saw us get on top in the final ten minutes of regular time.

Caitlin Greiser tries to win the ball from a Galaxy opponent. Photo: Mark Avellino

We hit the woodwork four times. We should have stormed over the top of them. And while Greiser was the main culprit, missing one sitter in particular, saying something like we would've won easily if Ayres was playing is a bit of a misnomer - the chances were there were to be taken, and we didn't do it. So the game went into extra time, and this time Greiser found herself at the back post and made no mistake. 3-2 up early in extra time, and looking good, only to cough up another equaliser. So as it was two years ago when South last played in and won a women's Victorian top flight grand final, the game was off to penalties.

One got the feeling of an immense injustice about to take place, but we worked our way to a two goal buffer in the shoot-out; only to try and Melbourne Croatia 1991 grand final our way out of the game by botching our chance to finish Galaxy off. When De Vanna stepped up to take our fifth penalty, it just looked wrong. Galaxy keeper Emily Kenshole had been doing a good job in the shoot-out, and she easily saved De Vanna's tentatively placed effort. Skipper Alex Cheal stepped up in the sudden death round, and though among some of the watchers in our behind the goals group thought that this would be another Michael Eagar/Palm Beach 2015 moment. But Cheal put her penalty away, and then Geelong had their next effort saved easily by Ramsay.

120 minutes and still no winner, so now into the shoot-out. No one here seems particularly confident. Photo: Mark Avellino.

It was fitting but also pleasing that Greiser scored the decisive penalty in the shoot-out. The striker has been understandably overshadowed by Ayres' goal scoring feats this season, but got into enough good positions to win the grand final on her own and yet came away with just the one goal. Credit to Greiser though, she held her nerve brilliantly and placed the ball out of reach of the goalkeeper, who had done a good job of guessing where our penalties were headed. And thus South won the title, adding 2017 to our previous wins in 2011, 2014, and 2015, and the enforced State League 1 title from 2016 - although to be fair, the 2011-2015 titles were done under the auspices of the SMWFC.

Tiff Eliadis was awarded best on ground, and she was a worthy recipient. She was important at first in midfield, and then in defence later in the game. It also wouldn't be a South championship without the trophy coming apart upon presentation, and that was the case again yesterday as the base came free right on cue. Later on the team and some of its well-wishers returned to the social club. The kitchen was closed, but the bar was open, and there were pizzas from Blue Room up the road, and later unfortunately from Pizza Hut. Nevertheless the vibe was good, and why wouldn't it be? You'd just won one of the most dramatic grand finals by the skin of your teeth.

But all's well that ends well! Trophies, pennants, and big smiles all round for a fine season. Photo: Mark Avellino.

It's in the nature of women's football (so far as my observations go) that at this stage of its development that teams are less cynical in their play than the men, and are always looking to attack rather than defend. Even so, this South team from what I've seen of it is even more obsessed with scoring goals over not conceding than even that stereotype of women's football allows. Some of the keener watchers of this team put that down in part to the coaching of Socrates Nicolaidis, and I like to think that somewhere in that influence is a bit of the old, classic South - the one which sought not just to win, but to attack, to fear no team. If the men's team under Chris Taylor has understandably taken on a more pragmatic approach during its run of success, then it's at the very least pleasing that in the women's teams and in the juniors, the old South ethic of winning and winning well is kicking on.

The grand final win however will no doubt annoy many of the other teams. Few if any of them wanted South included in the WNPL this season, crying both for lack of depth in the local women's game as a whole, but also for what they perceived as favourable treatment from FFV in us getting in at all after we missed out on the inaugural WNPL intake in 2015. For those who kept the faith, especially those players who remained with South during our short WNPL exclusion period, yesterday's triumph will be especially gratifying.

Just quietly, too, this grand final was a cut or two above that 2015 decider at the Veneto Club, a messy and mistake riddled game. Geelong had given our women a good run for their money throughout the 2017 season, twice drawing 3-3 with us and losing the other game we played in circumstances which could've easily led to another 3-3 draw. While I think we deserved to win this game both on the balance of the day and on the balance of the season, Geelong would be devastated knowing they that threw everything they had at us and it still not being enough. Still, those of their supporters in the crowd were good sports about the whole thing, and there was a great feeling after the game at the entertainment which had been provided by both teams.

Those who weren't there missed an entertaining game of a good quality. Those who were there maybe just for the day for a bit of fun, saw themselves perhaps being surprised by how much they cared by the end.

FFA Cup semi-final ticketing news
Details have finally been released by the club.

If you haven't received an email about it yet, head here for a rundown of what's been announced so far.

Please keep all comments about ticketing for that game in that thread and not in this one.

Around the grounds
Double dose of joy and despair
The Saturday before last I headed out to Port Melbourne for a couple of state league promotion/relegation playoffs. These are my favourite fixtures in the Victorian soccer calendar. There's something on the line, and you get two sides playing against each other, on a neutral venue, who are of a roughly equivalent level but who may seldom if ever meet because of geography. And unlike a similar meeting in an FFA Cup game, the rewards are a bit more tangible, if modest. For clubs at this level, it's not the wishy-washy 'promise' of the impossible getting to the FFA Cup round of 32, but rather the more tangible and hard-earned slog of getting promoted up the Victorian soccer pyramid.

First up was Ashburton against Dingley Stars. Ashburton had been relegated to State League 4 under the stewardship of former coach (and one time South player) Steve O'Dor, but had done well enough to earn their way through to a promotion playoff. For Dingley - the old Southern Stars, who were in turn the old Dingley - a loss would mean another relegation. First things first - the temperature was up in the high 20s, which was going to play havoc with the fitness of both sides, especially if the game was going to go the distance into extra time and penalties. Secondly, it's not often you get two sets of bantering, chanting supporters to a game at Port. Usually it's the 50 old blokes who are hanging on to Port for grim life and maybe whatever of Clarendon Corner or MCF decided to turn and try and create some atmosphere. No aggro here, just good old fashioned passion.

I'm not going to pretend the skill level was the greatest, but at least the two teams got to play on a pretty decent surface and provided a very entertaining contest, and well with the $5 entry fee - because the weather was so nice, I'd left my media pass at home in my good jacket, but no gripes from me. Ashburton looked to attack on the wings, Dingley with balls over the top. It was one of those balls over the top that gave Dingley the lead, as the lofted through ball ended up being misjudged by the Ashburton keeper and bouncing over him into an empty net. In the second half Ashburton had the breeze and appeared to be taking control of the game. They drew level thanks to a deep cross to the back post, and that moment it looked like momentum was such that Dingley would get overrun.

But Dingley worked their way back into the game, and the game went into extra time. If one was to say who deserved to win it in normal time, it'd have been Ashburton, but they didn't take their chances. Yet it was Dingley who found the breakthrough in extra time, a cut back from the right being bundled into the back of the net for an own goal. But Ashy wasn't finished yet, and managed to get another equaliser, from a corner if memory serves me correct, their many corners before that point being almost all garbage. The penalty shoot out saw both teams supporters congregate behind the Williamstown Road goals. Dingley were the better team here, winning the shoot-out 4-2, leaving Ashy to wonder what if - but at least they were good sports about it. Just a pity that I don't think anyone was there to film this game.

The second fixture was State League 4 Sebastopol vs State League 3 Fawkner (the seniors of the junior wing, not the original senior wing which ended up at Mannginham). This game was a major let down after the previous one. Both sides were ordinary. Sebastapol had the better territory, but were ineffective in attack. Fawkner were solid at the back, but couldn't really get the ball forward. About 25 minutes in, Fawkner finally managed to get the ball upfield, and scored a very easy goal. That didn't improve the game in any way, and it took a dog's breakfast of a goal for Sebastopol to get level midway throough the second half, a series of headers from an uncleared corner ending up with one being looped over the Fawkner keeper.

Fawkner went down to ten men, and then survived an almighty keeper mistake to send the game into extra time. Not much happened in extra time, unless you count Sebastopol also going down to ten men, Fakwner cracking a shot into the crossbar from six yards after the keeper spilt the ball, and Blue Thunder doing a lousy job of preempting the problems that would arise from the rowdy Sebastopol support behind the goals which was liquored up and launching unceasing vitriol at certain Fawkner players. You can bet that if that was Clarendon Corner they would've had the security teams out there from the start, but for some reason it took one of the Fawkner defenders getting into slanging match with the Sebastopol support for security to cotton on the issue.

The game went into penalties, and Sebastapol won the shoot-out 4-2 to win promotion to State League 3. Unlike the earlier game, which was finished in a very sporting manner, the Sebastapol supporters and certain Fawkner players almost came to blows on the non-social club side of the players race, with security reacting very slowly. I'm not quite sure how it didn't kick off, but credit to those who few people from both sides who managed to assert their authority and eventually calm the situation down.

Final thought
Trivial as it may seem, and loathe as I am to finish on a sour note, it was disappointing not to see any members of the senior men's team in support of the senior women.

FFA Cup semi-final ticketing details announced

Ticketing details for the FFA Cup semi-final have finally been released by the club, or at least an email has gone out to those who are social club members. The pricing structure is as follows:

• General Admission Adult - $25 

• General Admission Concession - $15 

• SMFC 2017 Social Club Members (including Parents) - $10 

• Children Under 5 - free

This pricing structure of course is absolute bollocks. A slap in the face for all members, whether they are social club members or season ticket holders, who are being asked to pay for something that they were already. There is no way of getting around it - we were promised as part of our membership entry into all club controlled FFA Cup matches at Lakeside Stadium, and yet here we are being charged $10 (plus a booking fee if you pay online, lol).

It was bad enough when they pulled this kind of stunt during the finals series, and then had president Leo Athanasakis try to provide specious reasoning to justify it at the information meeting held afterwards, but this blatant thievery is a joke. Of course most people will pay it because the event is maybe a once in a blue moon affair, and that's what the club and the people making these decisions are banking on. Goodness knows the financial mess that must exist in the background for the club to be trying to gouge those who turn up week in, week out for even more.

Now of course if they hadn't included these games in the package, or specified that games from the round of 32 onward weren't included, I doubt you would've heard a peep from anyone, and people would've been fine paying ten bucks to get in. But since it's there in blue and white that these games are meant to be included, I would just absolutely love to see what kind of pathetic reasoning those behind this pricing structure use to justify it.

On another matter, while I noted in a recent statement that I was in favour of non-members being gouged as much as possible, the $25 charge for adult non-members is still strange. The minimum charge as set by FFA is $20, and considering the big talking done by some of our club reps with regards to our A-League bid and 'filling out the joint' (not that any of that matters), wouldn't they want to make the pricing scheme for those people as attractive as possible? Look, maybe I'll be wrong and people in their several thousands will pay $25 for the privilege of coming back to Lakeside after missing out on the the last 13 seasons or maybe 20 seasons, rationalising perhaps on the one hand that that's what they pay for (at a minimum, and it's probably more) for a seat at the A-League at the Bubbledome, and on the other hand that a penance rate of $1.92 per season (for 13 seasons) or the bargain basement rate of $1.20 for twenty seasons is well worth the price.

Indeed, there's an idea, although who knows how you'd implement it: charging people varying rates based upon how many years since they've been away from the club. Impractical as that is, I suppose we can hope that at the very least that those once in a lifetime bandwagon jumpers end up paying their $25 and end up being situated on the concrete terraces a million miles behind the goals because all 5,500 odd seats have been taken up.

Anyway, all gripes aside (for now), it should also be noted only social club members, South Melbourne Life and Hall of Fame Members, and SMFC players and parents are eligible for the $10 tickets - season pass holders will need to purchase one of the $25 general admission tickets. Social club members will need to present their social club cards upon entry. The social club member tickets will be available from www.smfc.com.au/SydMember, as well as from the club offices at Lakeside Stadium from 2pm on Tuesday October 4th.

Those who are eligible only for general admission tickets should check out smfc.com.au from Tuesday for more details about how to purchase tickets. Keep in mind also that the club has stipulated that social club members and South in Business Coterie guests will enter through the social club. The 1959 social club will be open from 5pm on match day.

FFA Cup semi-final date set

By now most of you will have come across the news that our FFA Cup semi-final against Sydney FC has been set down for Wednesday October 11th at Lakeside. That's just two weeks away!

As noted in FFA's press release, this date was not originally one of the two options on the table - they being the 18 and 24th or some such - but due to Lakeside availability issues, we've been planted onto an earlier week.

Good news on two fronts then: first, that Nick Epifano won't miss the game due to overseas travel, and second, this whole thing will be over just that little bit earlier. Unless we win, of course.

The not so good news... it gives the club a week's less time to prepare. It's going to be difficult to sort out the ticketing situation, catering for a possible function, allocating space in the social club and everything else that goes with a marquee fixture like this on a skeleton crew.

What I hope for is the following:

• Members to be granted free entry as stipulated on the membership brochure.
• Everyone else - especially bandwagoners - to be fleeced to within an inch of what's allowable, and hopefully beyond what's ethical.
• Both gates open for regular punters to enter and exit the venue.
• The social club being open only to social club members, especially if the futsal court is not going to be converted to a public space for the event.
• No half 'n' half scarves.

Apart from that, we wait for the ticketing details to be sorted out, and occupy ourselves with other things during this netherworld of being neither in season or out.

It begins... Gold Coast City 0 South Melbourne 6

Drawn against this mob again. No Brad Norton, in Spain for whatever reason, and what looked to me like a weak bench. Sure, they didn't have one of their gun forwards, but they were supposed to be better than the team we played, dominated and still found a way to lose against two years ago.

Talk about anticlimactic.

And if there is one lingering frustration with Wednesday's result in amid all the relief and joy, it's that this is exactly what we should have done to Palm Beach/Gold Coast City two years ago. Give or take one or two players, we had a better team then, but it is what it is, and one should not take for granted what we actually have compared to what we lost.

If that's too many cliches for a Friday morning, consider it a warning for what's about to come. The circus is about to come to town and every idiot with a pathological hatred of us, and every South fan with an axe to grind is going to come out swinging with so much confected outrage and bile that certain sections of the internet may well collapse from under their weight. And that's not including whatever the club decides to put out in the public sphere. Indeed, they've already begun.

Unlike the apparently 300 odd travelling supporters, your correspondent was located in our social club, arriving early enough for happy hour drinks, $7 burgers, and what looked likely to be a less than stellar turnout. Thankfully numbers arrived close to kick off, and the place was fullish albeit comfortable - not many people bumping into each other, if you know what I mean. Fatalist that I am, I had already written us off in this game weeks ahead of time. Contrarian that I am, I still got instantly got nervous once the game begun. Like most of you, I'm only human. The first goal did little to settle my nerves, and if anything it made them worse. The second goal didn't help much either. 2-0 up within ten minutes? Plenty of time to screw that up.

Can I also say that the young lad who announced the fact that we were 2-0 up before the stream had caught up to that fact - I assume he was being messaged from a mate or checking an app - may have thought he was doing us a favour, but he snuffed out the instinctive joy of that moment.

Under the circumstances, the lineup was fine. Michael Eagar was back in the starting eleven, though his absence in several lead up matches continue to confound. Luke Pavlou filled in at left back, but unlike every other time that move was tried and found wanting (including with Liam McCormick), nothing happened, Gold Coast simply failed to exploit that or any other situation available to them, Getting two goals up early helps a lot, but it looked like - and I agree with our resident tactically aware friend - Gold Coast set up absolutely the wrong way to play us.

We had so much time on the ball. It was mad. If there is one thing we are good at as a team, it's feeling comfortable when we are given acres of space. There was no shutting down - Lujic was given more room in this match than he has been all season in the NPL - and everything seemed to roll around in slow motion. Even in that part of the game from about 20-40 minutes, where the match was more even, City did little to make me feel like they had a way of getting back except by accident. Of course we all know that such accidents are possible, and that they can lead to chain reactions, but Jesse Daley's goal finished it off, For once we found the space on the edge of the box, and for once we took that shot. I don't even remember anyone yelling 'shoot!' like they would at a South game; I was already celebrating the goal before it had even halfway reached the net,

The second half was pure farce. Milos finishing off what should have been a much easier goal from four or five shots and passes before that. Stefan Zinni scoring with his first touch after coming off the bench. Millar's icing on the cake, nodding home the header from a tight angle after the City keeper made a mess of his attempt at a chip pass or clearance. 'If in doubt, kick it out' is what the rugby pundits say, and at 5-0 down what harm could there be from just conceding a corner? Each goal was celebrated, but with less gusto as the game wore. The social club descended turned to idle chatter in between goals. The crowd noise from the TV seemed less intense as the match wore on. Do you make a big deal of celebrating putting goals past a team which played like a pub side? Taylor not only made early subs, he made all his subs. That's how comfortable it was.

Reaching this stage of the tournament, albeit via the 'designated mandatory NPL side in the semi-finals route of least resistance' helps ease some concerns, and introduces others. Of those things which have been soothed, the idea that this season was close to being a bust. No league success, no finals success, no post-season success, no Dockerty Cup success, not even a Charity Shield! Well, this has made everyone very happy, because even though in reality we've won squat this year, this is the thing that everyone cares about, both for 'relevance' and the money it'll bring. (Not everyone agrees that merely reaching this stage is a marker of success however).

It has also helped further diminish the notion of failing in 'big matches', especially under the Chris Taylor League Grinder method, so prone - apparently - to getting results in the workaday world of NPL Victoria, but less good at getting the job done in winner takes all affairs. Of course there's been a ton of luck involved with this run, but who I am to argue that it's a well overdue correction for all the luck that went against us in the past. Maybe this run of good fortune will be corrected in due course with some particularly amazing piece of stunning bad fortune.

After the game, we all waited for the result for the other game to be decided, and there was some trepidation that Blacktown City would get up over the Wanderers, something which might end up jeopardising our big payday. Unfortunately for the Demons - the best second tier team in the country across the past decade, maybe more - they couldn't get the job done. Which ended up with us getting drawn at home against Sydney FC, at a date yet to be decided upon.

What kind of preparation can the team do in the meantime? The A-League teams will probably have sorted out their schedules, and certainly closer to the date they'll be in their own season. An A-League youth team perhaps? Our WNPL team? Syria? Everyone on the ground seems relaxed about things, so much so that Chris Taylor is off on holidays for three weeks. That'll mean he'll hopefully miss most of the off-field nonsense that's going to build up. We've had already had Bill Papasteragiadis promise to sell out Lakeside, I assume with a crowd mostly made up of sellouts. To be a little fair, if you talk a big game like we do about ambition and latent and dormant support, you're going to be judged on your crowd. But promising a sell-out already seems to suggest that we're going to be in a for a long few weeks.

Next game
For the men, a home FFA Cup semi-final against Sydney FC some time in October.

For the women, a grand final appearance on Sunday week against either Calder or Geelong.

For me, probably some state league promotion/relegation playoffs on Saturday out at Port.

Hellas Ain't A Bad Place To Be/Highway To Hellas/Hellas Bells
Something strange is happening. There has been a gentle reemergence of a word which we had perhaps thought was banished to the historical vernacular.

"No nerves from Hellas from the start, scoring after 90 seconds."

*head explodes* #FFACup pic.twitter.com/dDEgOQbivD

— Ante Jukić (@a_jukic) September 20, 2017

Of course, the emphasis here is that in the vernacular, it didn't disappear. Our supporters have never stopped calling the club Hellas. Clarendon Corner, its Greeks and non-Greeks, still chant Hellas The club because of modern bylaws and constitutional necessity calls itself a different name - South Melbourne FC - and adapts that marketing angle for most of its social media product. Thus SMFC TV, smfc.com.au, @smfc etc. But the club has never abandoned the Hellas name. There are the retro 1991 style S. M. Hellas shirts. The club's business name is still officially South Melbourne Hellas. Our enemies use the term, and it sits along the short-form 'South' as a term of convenience and easy recognition.

Sure, some people use 'Hellas' out of spite, as 'proof' that we are not a broad-based club, a club not fit for the A-League, not even a club fit for Australian society. But that's for the comments pages of newspapers and the dumpster fires that are internet forums, not the mainstream media. Here's another one.

How this for a headline from a Brisbane Paper pic.twitter.com/lfsX3W4jhW

— Pablo (@pavlaki1969) September 21, 2017

Once upon a time it was absolutely normal for journos and commentators to avoid saying the 'H' word on air, and we became accustomed to it. Nor did we expect to hear it said or written, except in very particular circumstances, usually in the past tense, sometimes searching for the romantic. Of course there were always outliers. The late Laurie Schwab was famously recalcitrant in his disobedience, refusing to buckle down under the weight of governing body edicts to erase ethnicity. More recently, Ante Jukic has dabbled with using the old nomenclatures. But people like that are the minority.

So what do we make of this small, probably unintentional tear in the fabric of the Australian soccer cosmos? My feeling is that it's mostly older people in the journo game, who are out of habit with what to call us because we've been irrelevant to them and everyone else in their world for so long. On the ground, the situation seems to have remained much the same.

You can make us cover that foul word "HELLAS" on our banner but you will never ever stop us singing it,discrimination @ it's best #smfc4life

— Nick Vertsonis (@NickVertsonis) September 21, 2017

But that's Australian soccer for you.

Final thought
Call us Hellas a million times, I don't care; just please don't refer to us as 'Souths'.

WNPL - South Melbourne 4 Calder United 2

The view of Lakeside Stadium yesterday from the media control room, during
yesterday's girls under 15 NPL match between South and Geelong. 

I rocked up to Lakeside early enough yesterday that I got sit in the media box and watch about three quarters of the under 15 girls elimination final between South and Geelong Galaxy. I can't I was particularly impressed by the standard, but that's partly a depth issue - it'll get there eventually, and one can't be too harsh, yet. I was most impressed with the general composure of South's two centre-backs, which went a long way to securing a 5-1 win for us.

After a burger in the social club, it was time for the main business at hand, the WNPL qualifying final between South and Calder United. It sounds stupid to even have to ask, but is there no requirement in the WNPL franchise/licence system that the teams have to have an away strip? It seems utterly mad that I rocked up to Lakeside yesterday and had to watch the home team (us) in its (more or less) traditional deep royal blue kit play against the away team (them) in a hue of navy blue (except for white socks) that became very problematic (to me at least) at certain points in the game, especially when the sun was directly overhead (or near enough to it) and the players were masked by shadow.

Call it an issue of no great significance to anyone but people like me, but surely it is one of the fundamental tenets of the game, essential to every level, that the two teams should wear easily distinguishable playing strips? I've made this point before regarding Bentleigh's propensity to wear green at Lakeside against us, when they do have a suitably garish orange thing they could wear to make things more distinct. I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle on this one, but I'm going to keep chipping away.

For South there was no Lisa De Vanna (national duty), and golden boot winner Melina Ayers was on the bench (apparently unwell). And then 67 seconds in, while I had my back turned while climbing the stairs, we already 1-0 down. Soon afterwards we should have been 2-0 down,  but Calder muffed a near enough to unmissable chance, hitting the crossbar and post in one go. That didn't quite serve as enough of a wake up call, but we seemed to to at least get the game onto an even keel, though we never really looked like scoring. All we had was Caitlin Greiser up front, who worked very hard but had little support, and certainly no number following her into the box. Tiff Eliadis was a bit of a one woman show in midfield, but the whole thing uncoordinated. We looked flat, and worst of all were making elementary ball control mistakes across the park.

The second half didn't start off much better, and even the inclusion of Ayers off the bench didn't seem to be making a difference - she seemed to be moving around listlessly for the first ten or so minutes of her stint. But then the game plan or a part of it, at least from the left hand side (I think it was Alex Gummer) started to kick in and things changed quite quickly. All of a sudden we had a deserved 2-1 lead, but just as it seems that the momentum of the second half was going our way, we coughed up another very soft goal, and were then fortunate to hang on for extra time.

Calder should have finished it off in the ninety minutes, but in extra time we found another gear and overran our opponents, not without some fortune. Three of our goals crawled over the line, two having had got a touch off the Calder keeper but not enough to steer them wide, and the last goal by Ayers one which was comical in the ball's slow motion effort to cross the line, where I would have expected the Calder defence to clear it off the line.

Not out side's best effort for the season from what I've seen, but enough to get them into the grand final a week off.

Next game
The WNPL side now has a week off as they wait to see who they'll play in the grand final out of Calder and Geelong Galaxy. The grand final will be played at Hume City's ground.

Of course before then our senior men take on Gold Coast City on Wednesday. If you're not heading up to the Gold Coast, come to the social club and watch the game. Or stay home. Up to you really.

What (some of) they don't want you to know, for reasons I can only speculate on (but won't)
The men's team played a closed door friendly against Melbourne Victory's senior squad last Wednesday at Lakeside. We lost 1-0. Apparently we weren't too bad.

Gold Medal night musings
What's there to muse on... apart from Melina Ayers winning the golden boot  - a non-partisan decision if there was one, because they wouldn't give it to the woman who scored the second most goals, would they? - we didn't win anything in either the men's an women's categories. I'm not too bothered by that, though some people closer to the coalface were upset that WNPL senior coach Socrates Nicolaides didn't win the WNP coach of the year, ostensibly because his team finished top of the table in its first year of being in the competition.

I myself have no such issues with the awarding of the prize to someone else, because it's not every team in the Victorian WNPL that has the squad that we have at our disposal, including Lisa De Vanna from halfway through the season. More justifiable is the wonderment that Melina Ayers, who scored 38 goals this season, didn't even manage to crack the top ten rankings for player of the year.

On a personal front, I was disappointed that there were no Hall of Fame inductions, but I was relieved that Shona Bass got her induction from last year awarded this year, after personal circumstances prevented her from receiving the prize in 2016.

I was also disappointed that there was no article of the year prize awarded alongside the other media prizes. A sign that the written word is losing its relevance in Victorian soccer? I certainly hope not, because there are still good people doing good work in this area.

The Continuing Adventures of 'Bill Paps is on fire, the truth is terrified'
Cometh the South Melbourne Hellas FFA Cup match, cometh the Bill Paps' whopper. This time in an article on The World Game our man gets quoted saying:

If we make it to the semi-finals, we will be only the second non-A-League team to have done that.

Which is so, so wrong it unsettles even my rock-solid jaded cynicism.

Of course, as many non-delusional South fans have pointed out, because of the corrupted draw for the FFA Cup national rounds, a non-A-League team is guaranteed to make the semi-finals every year. This is how in turn Bentleigh Greens, Hume City, and Canberra Olympic were able to make it to the FFA Cup semi-finals. Thus the achievement of a state league team making the FFA Cup semi-finals is just as much a sign of having received the most favourable draw as it is actually winning the games put in front of you, and why you - by which I mean this year, South - will look incredibly inept if we don't get to the semi-finals.

This is why some people - including some South Melbourne directors - don't really care about progressing in the tournament, because they would rather get a big payday from a Melbourne based A-League team in the first round and who cares if we get bundled out as long we make the $$$.

But it's not all Bill's fault. I also blame Dave Lewis, the article's author, who let Papastergiadis get away with making such an obviously wrong claim.

But it's also not all Dave's fault. I also blame every soccer journalist in this country who has become so enamoured with South Melbourne's ability to drive click-bait that they're happy to let us waffle on like idiots at the drop of a hat and refuse to challenge even our most obviously wrong claims.

But I also blame our fans, at least those who unflinchingly support such idiocy out of some apparent sense of necessary gamesmanship. It's a rubbish attitude which leads to unjustifiable behaviour and makes us all look like an even stupider club than we actually are. It justifies the attitude that lies and nonsense and bombastic statements are more valuable than actually putting together a coherent plan.

Not that any of that matters, of course.

Kicking It!
In all the goings on of the past few weeks, we completely forgot to note that James Stefanou, a member of our 2006 Victorian Premier League winning squad, is now playing as an American football place kicker for Colorado Boulder. There's a good piece here about how that came about. Of course he's not the first ex-South person to make the move to college football, with Nick Jacobs playing as a punter for the Memphis Tigers. But it is unusual to see an Australian taking on place kicking duties.

Well, we'll always have (the cafe a few doors down from) the laundromat

PAVE JUSUP: Now, you realise if I become Melbourne Knights president,
we can no longer be friends, unless you become a Knights fan.
ME: Hmm. That's probably never gonna happen.

That time when things got odd, even by my standards (woe was sort of me, but now it's much more complicated than that)
As the noted philosopher Ben Folds once opined, 'I was never cool in school / I'm sure you don't remember me'. We'll return to this point later.

This week my Twitter avatar - me looking at the camera with a well-developed self-disciplined non-committal scowl - ended up being plastered over parts of Windsor station by a bunch of kids mostly from St Michael's Grammar, several of whom seem to have the name Josh which makes things harder to keep a track of.

For me this was both cause for concern but also bemusement. The concern was a reflex. Of course anyone in a similar situation would be stunned to see their image used like that in a public space out of the blue. My bemusement came from a different place, because this was an apparent homage by the boys responsible, for the work that I do here.

This is still something I'm going to have to get my head around. Back in primary school, I was never one of the cool kids, but I was definitely included in the main male social group, not bullied for having glasses or above average (for that school) intellect. Within about a week or so of starting high school, that changed. And while one can repeat Vonnegut's fatalist maxim 'so it goes', it does take a toll and it does cloud my perspective on things decades down the line. I'm precious like that.

So for this to happen, I suppose I was flattered but also uneasy at the same time. But attached to this was also the sentiment expressed by the boys responsible that they love to read the work that I do here on South of the Border, to the point that it apparently makes reading fun:

Great job..at the start of class we have to do 10 mins of silent reading and I always love reading the blog.

— Alex (@Atletifan101) September 16, 2017

Which at least means I'm helping preserve a key lesson of the Sonic the Hedgehog animated series. There's also the slightly brain-melting revelation that my regular audience extends to people beyond the core demographic of 35-49yo males employed in middle management jobs, and people who like the heady mix of occasional Simpsons gags and quasi-esoteric references.

And what kind of writer would I be if I got upset at that? At least it wasn't the screen-cap of me in a coffin I suppose.

Final thought

Hopefully I can do this in front of sold out crowd next week! 🇦🇺V🇧🇷 https://t.co/N4t2yEhpms

— Lisa De Vanna (@lisadevanna11) September 9, 2017

Close enough.

Spent - South Melbourne 2 Bentleigh Greens 2 (South lose 5-3 on penalties)

I took a little longer to get around to this post not because of some sort of despair, or anger, but because I didn't know what to say. I did some reading, I went and watched a couple of other games, and yet still I didn't find myself particularly motivated to write this post. Maybe because I had expected we'd lose this game? Sure we'd beaten them in our last meeting and they were coming off a three day break, but that was different. This time around their three day break was not so bad, because they rested a good portion of their squad.

It's actually kind of funny - after beating North Geelong, Melbourne Knights and Hume on the road, the only team we beat in the league was Bentleigh - in fact we won more games in the FFA Cup in that period than in the league. So basically our form has gone out the window, though who knows why... the usual gimmick for the club, at least under Chris Taylor, is to start solidly, slip up in the middle somewhere, and time our best run for the end of the season. Perhaps because we sucked in the middle, had to claw our way back in the middle, and then had the money issues (which some say still exist...), everything's just come to a point where everyone is mentally and physically drained. Or the team is just not that good this year. It's been able to scrape and fight and pinch wins against the odds in circumstances say we shouldn't have.

Milos Lujic has scored a lot of goals, but in the last month or two it feels like the well has dried up a bit. The early part of the season his tally was initially buffeted by penalties, but his four year bonanza had to stall at some point. And the service and style hasn't helped. Players like Marcus Schroen and Matthew Millar have fallen away. Schroen has the ability to turn a game on its head even when he's having a down day, but those efforts seem to few and far between. Millar is the opposite, a workhorse whose turns to shine on Friday night were left wanting no fewer than four times.

Michael Eagar has ended up on the bench for several weeks, for reasons no one I've spoken to seems to understand... some fans seem to think Eagar is on the way out. Luke Adams and Kristian Konstatinidis have been good, KK more than that when he keeps his feet, but Eagar was one of the players that turned the season around when he returned from injury after our horror start to the season. The other player to contribute to that turnaround was Nick Epifano, but on Friday night he wavered between his best and worst. He was a menace to Bentleigh on the left hand side, but also went missing, regressing to his bouts of low self-esteem. Leigh Minopoulos was handy, but was dragged. He doesn't have the stamina. Jesse Daley came on, and could've done more.

Luke Pavlou came on, a decision which confounded those of us who wanted us to chase the win. Stefan Zinni's pace was never used. Considering that Zinni played a good deal of the pre-season, often as a starter, and considering that we were apparently disappointed to see him leave for his Wanderers stint, upon his return we haven't seen much of him. Where we could've used someone with fresh legs, someone who could exploit a tired opposition and rejuvenate our own spirits, we had old fashioned Chris Taylor caution. Not exactly the kind of thing some of us want to see before a game against the former Palm Beach Sharks.

Both teams ran and then walked themselves into a standstill. We had enough chances to win it in normal time, and didn't. In fact we probably started withdrawing into ourselves around the eighty minute mark, which I can understand if there's going to be a renewed emphasis on attack in extra time, but it didn't happen. At some point during extra time I walked down to the fence. By the penalty shootout I was back in the stand, waiting for us to lose it. We hit most of our penalties well enough, but Brad Norton's was tipped onto the post by the keeper. Every single one of their shots seemed unstoppable, but Nikola Roganovic had also seemingly resigned himself to not saving them. I'm not sure he even got close to any, but that's me and my bad eyes and pall of doom looking at it from a hundred metres away.

The team should not have found itself 2-0 down. It did well to get itself level, and it should've won the game, but nerve and skill failed us at critical moments. Tyson Holmes' goal to open the scoring will be the cause of some angst for our fans for some time. It was probably a handball, it likely shouldn't have stood but the officials didn't and probably couldn't see it clearly. Neither did our players, who are more than happy to call for even non-existent handballs, seem to get up in arms at the decisions. And while Holmes should never have had the chance to even get his head or hand on the ball, neither can we get on our high horse about these things, lest we forget another 2-2 finish and we earned that point.

Though of course that's a logical response to such matters, and there's no imperative for you folk to be held to that standard.

If it feels like I've singled out a lot of people for the loss, that's not the intention. The squad is a good one, it has deficiencies, but so does the rest of the league. The team did well enough to finish second, but under the current nonsense finals system, received little more advantage for doing so than a home game and in this case a short turnaround for our opponent. They should either bring in a fairer finals system - my preference is the McIntyre final five - or ditch the finals entirely. But that's another debate for another team.

It feels odd not having anything to show for this season, having won the championship in two of the past three seasons and a Dockerty Cup in between those. Maybe this will shake things up a bit during the off-season. But of course there's also our...

Next game
Our FFA Cup quarter-final in a few weeks time...

FFA Cup news
Hahahaha, lol, roflcopter etc. We've been drawn against Gold Coast City, the former Palm Beach Sharks.

The match has been scheduled for Wednesday September 20th, 7:30PM at Robina Stadium, Robina - otherwise known as CBUS Stadium, you know, the place we played at the last time we played these guys.

I'd like to have been able to go, but I've got a specialist's appointment the next day. Also, I hate the Gold Coast. But as for the rest of you, start booking your flights and accommodation before the algorithms pick up that people are interested in heading up for the game.

Who knows what form we'll be in by that stage - probably no form, because it will have been 19 days since our last official game, and probably the same in the event that we can't rustle up some local oafs to play against in the mean time.

Gold Coast City will be in much the same position as us, except for playing at home. The prize here is an almost certain lucrative home gate against an A-League opponent, for our boys who lost the corresponding fixture a couple of years ago a measure of redemption, but really it's about the cash. We need the money, we need to show off our magnificent stadium, we need to keep up the delusions of grandeur and relevance.

Speaking of which
I got to the ground before 5:30, but apparently those who got to the ground closer to the 7:30 kickoff faced long queues, with many people not getting into the ground until 15 minutes into the game. Now I assumed that the main gate would be opened, but apparently the club thought it could get away with having two people at the social club entrance. As if charging members for entry wasn't going to piss off enough people! What are the few absolute basics that every club needs to be able to sort out? Cobbling together a senior team; securing a patch of grass to play out a season; rustling up enough cash to pay the refs; having some sort of food service; where necessary, being able to organise orderly entry and exit points if the venue demands such.

Everything else seems optional, and I know that we have particular circumstances which make our situation less than ideal, but one never stops being in awe of how we make things even more difficult for ourselves.

In amid all that...
The WNPL team keeps rolling on. They're on top of the table going into the last round of the home and away season, two points ahead of Calder. We play Geelong at Lakeside on Saturday afternoon. I'd love to have been able to go, but I made a promise to Clifton Hill coach Leigh Tsoumerkas to go see his team at Quarries Park before the season was out, and time just flies when you try and put something like that off.

Apart from matches played as double headers, some of which I watched the entirety of and others I only saw bits and pieces of, I would've liked to have seen more of their games. Most of the women's away games being on the very wrong side of town for me with atrocious public transport connections made things harder, but the one game they played near my place - against Calder in Keilor - I skipped because I went and saw Altona East vs Rosebud in an early round FFA Cup match instead. I guess some part of me knew that it would be the only time I'd watch East win a game all season.

Nevertheless there'll be a finals campaign for the women to get on board with soon, and I look forward to doing so.

'Clog wogs are not real wogs' part 7472902

Look, it was my own fault for looking, and it'll be my fault again when I do the same tomorrow and the day after that
There were some preliminary sketches here about something or other that I was going to post about something I read on Twitter, but I thought better of it and bailed. I might unwisely revisit it someday, if and when I get annoyed by that same theme.

Around the grounds
That's it! If I go, I'm taking you to hell with me!

The fixture was last placed Altona East vs second last placed Westgate. Two mediocre sides who have done their best to undeservedly avoid relegation in the past few seasons but were now this close to going down together. Taking into account possible tribunal decision ramifications and theoretical league reshuffles, the win here for either side would give them a chance to survive at the expense of the other. So of course they drew the game. East went in front twice, Westgate equalised twice. Westgate took a 3-2 lead, but in a classic example of mutually assured orthodox brotherhood destruction, East equalised with about a minute to go. There were great goals and great drama, and in the end a great big nothing result for two very ordinary sides who deserve to go down, and who would maybe even benefit from being relegated, but who may yet survive due to nothing else but arcane post-season machinations.

Strange priorities
Aside from our own involvement, I haven't been a to VPL or NPL Victoria grand final for many years. I missed the 2013 Northcote vs Bentleigh lunchtime at AAMI Park affair. I missed the 2012 Dandy Thunder rocket flare/Oakleigh choke. I missed the 2011 Green Gully win/ Oakleigh Choke. In fact the last time I went to one of these deciders was in 2010, and that was as much to see the Bubbledome as anything. But as for relegation and promotion playoffs, well that's a different story. As long as there isn't an A-League team's youth side playing in the game, I do my best to get along. This year is going to be extra special, because Melbourne Knights are going to be playing sister club Dandenong City in a match to decide whether Knights can legitimately call themselves the most important Croatian club in Melbourne for another year, while simultaneously seeing to it that Dandy City have pissed a lot of cash up the wall. Happy days that this year this fixture will coincide with the grand final day, at Lakeside on Sunday. City won their way to a playoff having finished runner up to Dandy Thunder in NPL 2 East, and proved their league to be stronger than the West side by pretty comfortably beating Moreland Zebras 1-0. You know I didn't even notice that Steven Topalovic was sent off in this game for City? Apart from being a lesson to look up from my phone every so often, it made no difference to the game whatsoever. Dandy City took longer than they should've to open the scoring against a very mediocre opponent, but were rarely under threat themselves. Losing Topa for next week will make things harder. Me, I look forward to an enthralling contest, one which satisfies me so much that I would not feel guilty in skipping the grand final afterwards, like I didn't care about skipping the meaningless Dandy Thunder vs Northcote game held after the City-Zebras match.

Final thought
It feels like the end even though it's not. One day it will be over and perhaps we won't feel that it is.