Notes from the 2021 AGM

South Melbourne Hellas members are now well used to AGMs being delayed for unorthodox reasons, but the pandemic is the unimpeachable get out clause for everything these days. Attendance from committee members was poor, but that of the members was worse. A lot of regular faces at these things did not show up. Why, I do not know. Indifference? Covid? Inconvenient time-slot? Heaven help us if the senior men's preferred match day discussion ever gets combined with this topic.

And goodness knows where the armada of junior parents now eligible to attend such meetings was - thanks to Football Victoria constitutional changes some years back - because they weren't there, and have seldom ever attended since they have bee able to. Well, maybe they were at junior games. Still the meeting went ahead, and some useful information was parlayed to the small audience. 

As per usual, this is not a complete account of the AGM, because I did not take such detailed notes; nor should everything be made known to people who did not attend the meeting, or so I'm told. Then again, some people don't like any AGM details making their way into the public domain, but that ship sailed a long time ago.

There were two key presenters on the day, treasurer Mario Vinaccia, and president Nick Maikousis. At times the meeting resembled a conversation rather than a one-way information session, with the odd spiky exchange. But we get but one formal opportunity per year  (on average) to grill our representatives, and one would be wise to take it. 

Insofar as the treasurer's report went, there was generally good news in regards to the club's financial position as it ended at June 2021. The club made a profit of about $160,000, a good result considering the difficulties created by the pandemic with regards to sponsorship and match day revenue. The club is also on target to clear its external debts by June 2022. 

The club's business structure was once again explained. Essentially, the South Melbourne Hellas Club acts as the umbrella for a set of subsidiary organisations. Half of these are for profit businesses (the Bar & Grill, the Futsal Court, etc), and the other half are the various teams and clubs we operate (NPL and NPLW teams, miniroos, state league women's teams).

The assertion was made by the board that contrary to popular wisdom, it is the finances of the senior men's team which fills in the budgetary gaps (if and where they exist, though most teams break even) in other parts of the football business. How one gets that message out to a soccer public which takes as gospel that junior money funds senior wages (across many clubs, not just ours) is a difficult task. Because much more of the 2021 season was played compared to the 2020 season, there was less damage done in terms of refunds of fees to junior players due to the cancellation of the season.

The Bar & Grill more or less breaks even on match days, but does much better on special events. Of course, club hosted special events and the hiring of the function room by the general public have been hindered by the pandemic, but one hopes that will change as things open up again. The club's leasing of the futsal space to the Combat Institute of Australia for use as its National Performance Centre, which became official in January 2022, will see the club receive an annual six figure sum in rental fees. I think most of us will be glad that that space is finally earning its keep, albeit in an unorthodox manner. 

On the question of why no Sunday matches, it was made reiterated that much of the cost savings achieved by the club in recent times have been due to avoiding hosting Sunday matches, and especially the staff penalty rates that make Sunday games unappealing from a financial point of view. The four senior men's Friday night matches in 2022 are also being used as part of the attempt to garner and maintain sponsor networks.

Sponsorship is in a strong position, with the number of principle partners increasing substantially, as the club continues to leverage the business links of the current board. What might happen to that generosity should those members of the board - especially in the financial services sector, which we seem to have a focus on - depart, is a question left to the future. This approach is a variant of the construction industry funded teams in our league. Realistically, there would be few clubs in Victoria who can get by predominantly on gate takings, and in that sense we are not an outlier.

In short, gate takings and membership dues play second fiddle to sponsorship and other business ventures. While the club made a reasonable sum on the 2022 Melbourne City FFA Cup game given the circumstances, restrictive pandemic related trading circumstances diminished what could have been a higher taking. Still, it's nice to know that the club has a not insignificant item for its next financial report. Also to be taken into account for next year, is the already improved takings from merchandise sales. 

Though hampered by Lakeside Stadium being under the control of the state government rather than a local council, the club has improved its accessing of government grants. Most of these grants are relatively small, but collectively they help offset costs across our various football departments.

The president's report had some crossover with the treasurer's report, but also included other matters as you would expect. The relationship with the regular, match day staff of the Trust is currently good. However, the high turnover of bureaucrats at the Trust continues to make the management of that part of the relationship more difficult.

There was some discussion about further cementing our presence at some of our other locations, and the hope that there would be funding made available for the relaying of the synthetic pitches at Middle Park, among other improvements to our amenities.

With regards to Lakeside being used as a training venue for the 2023 Women's World Cup, there was little concrete news as of yet. There is the possibility of minor improvements being made to player amenities. It is also possible that the venue may be unavailable for several weeks, but otherwise there is scant detail on what the 2023 Women's World Cup will mean for us in an operational sense. That's something to keep an eye on for next year.

There was also discussion on the prospects of a National Soccer Division, but precious little of certainty to latch on to. There remain many open-ended questions about whether the NSD would be held during a winter or summer season; how long inaugural NSD clubs would be given to settle in, without the threat of being relegated themselves; how quickly full-time professionalism would be introduced; and of course, about how many clubs could realistically be expected to participate.

There was an acknowledgment that there would be need to be significant increases to membership, sponsorship, and attendance in order to the transition to an NSD work, with the club needing a large increase in turnover from its current position. The board however asserted confidence in its ability to make a successful transition to an NSD. In addition, the board was confident that the club could participate successfully in an NSD regardless of the ultimate format of the NSD,

Those members in attendance, while sharing the club's ingrained ambition to play at the highest level possible, generally had a more a wary disposition on the matter. Having said that, there are a wide range of opinions within the South community about the merits of an NSD, and the course of action the club should take. Thus it was disappointing not to have a greater attendance to have the range of those views considered. One hopes that the next AGM, which will hopefully see more concrete details released on the actual NSD format, will attract more interest from members.

A full-time sponsorship person has been hired.

The membership database issue is still an ongoing matter. 

Medium term, if the circumstances allow, the board is interested in re-aligning AGM dates and financial reporting to match the senior men's season, rather than going by the financial year.

At the end of the meeting, it was announced that Mario Vinaccia would be stepping down as treasurer, due to increased family commitments. The change will happen as soon as a suitable successor for the treasurer position is found. The membership thanked Mario for his efforts not only in cleaning up the club's books, but also for his efforts in changing the club's culture around transparency on these matters.

Welcome back to the 2021 season

For those of you who haven't yet caught up on last night's news, here it is. A classic case of the Friday night dump, at 5:44PM last night Football Victoria released a press release which required a few attempts at parsing because a) it didn't make much sense, and b) once it did make sense, it came across as insane. Pity the poor communications staffer (though not so much the legal team, who would have also been involved) who had to draft this dross. 

But back to the beginning of this mess, which means going back to 2020. You may remember that we barely got through five games in the top NPL division before the pandemic came in and killed off the remainder of the competition, despite efforts to revive it before the big lockdown kicked in. Since there'd only been five games played in NPL 1, and none of the other leagues had even started, there really wasn't anything for anyone to argue about. The whole year was a bust.

So on to 2021, with knowledge gained about what it would take to survive another cancelled season. Well, some knowledge, but clearly not enough preparation and planning in one regard - what to do in the event that a whole lot more than five games were played, across multiple leagues. And thus we ended up in the situation where it became untenable to resume play and complete the league season, but also the situation where a something in between half and three-quarters of a season had been played.

Football Victoria managed to complete its men's and women's cup competitions at the end of the year, but all the leagues remained incomplete. Many would have been happy enough to dismiss this as another bit of pandemic related misfortune, but not everyone - namely teams up and down the Victorian league pyramid who were leading championship and promotion races, and who had spent a good chunk of money getting into those spots.

Regardless of whether they were even allowed as amateur clubs to be spending that much money on winning games is a moot point. These clubs wanted to be crowned as champions and/or awarded promotion to higher leagues as a reward for their incomplete efforts. Magnanimously, these "winning" clubs also wouldn't seek to punish clubs that had found themselves in the relegation spots, without the opportunity to dig themselves out.

So that meant expanded leagues, and filling in gaps left by disappeared or inactive teams, as the case may be. If only we could say that this was all new. In the last 15 years alone we had the farce of the 2006-2007 relegation shambles whereby muddled yellow card bookkeeping saw both George Cross and Essendon Royals stay up, and the Victorian Premier League expanded to 16 teams. Then there was the start of the NPL, which included as a compromise to its tangled legal wrangling the inclusion of two new country teams that were not equipped for life in the Victorian top-flight.

With a history of such messes in the not too recent past, and a cancelled season in the even more recent past, you'd think someone at Football Victoria would have had the foresight to draw up contingencies just in case something like another cancelled season happened thanks to a pandemic that was not yet over. Maybe they thought that the clubs would be more gracious and understanding of the exceptional circumstances we've all found ourselves in.

If FV did actually set up constitutional or regulatory contingencies for a re-occurrence of 2020's interruptions and subsequent cancellation, clearly none of these rules was remotely watertight enough to withstand even the slightest pressure. Blame the FV board and the lawyers on retainer. And thus into this void of bylaw uncertainty came a set of aggrieved clubs, with Avondale loosely set as its figurehead - and I mean loosely, because the "bespoke" solution adopted seems dedicated entirely to placating them, and setting every other aggrieved party adrift. 

So now we have the patently absurd "solution" of the 2021 home and away season being revived within the confines of the 2022 season fixtures equivalent to those not played last year. There will be no finals, no relegation, just points awarded simultaneously to two different minor premiership races, all to soothe the ego of whoever is funding Avondale.

Apart from a lack of foresight and preparation from FV, part of the problem, too, is an issue of nomenclature. For most of the past 30 years in Victoria, once we adopted a finals system to decide who would be the competition's champion team, the grand final was the be-all and end-all. Finishing on top of the ladder saw you crowned "minor premiers" as was the case in Australian rules, a mostly meaningless title. As a bonus for finishing top, you got a week off, a nominally easier route to the grand final, and a double chance to help you out if you needed it.

Then we had to go and copy the confusing A-League methodology of having "champions" and "premiers", based on the long running New South Wales practice of making it clear as mud as to who was ultimately the winning team from any given season. (we also adopted the A-League's horrendous finals system, which makes finishing on top less of an advantage than it used to be, but that's another story).

Still, there's little enough doubt that in Victoria, it remains the grand final winner who gets the ultimate kudos. So why all this effort by Avondale to win what is still effectively a secondary accolade? Finishing on top of a zombie 2021 campaign won't make add to the list of Victorian title winners. It won't get them to the NPL national playoffs, and with it the chance to qualify for an FFA Cup berth. The entire effort makes so little sense, especially when put up against the concerns of teams lower down the pyramid, who are at least attempting to snatch a place in a higher division.

While it would be ironic if Avondale somehow managed to cock up its chance to finish top of the table, I'd hate to think that there would be other clubs who would attempt to claim such a title as a victory in its own right. Still, as part of this compromise, FV could have at least reinstated the three point deduction Avondale incurred in 2020 for payment irregularities in the 2019 season, and which disappeared into the ether once 2020 was flushed down the drain. Another missed opportunity. 

Very strange people: Nike Cup Final - South Melbourne 0 Calder United 3

To begin with, how we got here.

While everything strictly local football was cancelled several months ago, Football Victoria decided to persist with closing out at least some of its competitions with a winner in 2021. So as with the Dockerty Cup for the men, won by Avondale a couple of weeks ago, the women's knockout cup also forced through an outcome and title winner, courtesy of two semi-finals last week, and a final yesterday.

Last week our senior women played against Bulleen at the Veneto Club in one of those semi-finals. Because it was at the Veneto Club, and because it was on at a somewhat lousy time of day, and because it was screened on YouTube, I took the not altogether reprehensible, perhaps even soft, decision to watch the game from home.

What was less excusable was not writing about the game, but that's the state of South of the Border these days, the blog that continues its trajectory of becoming exponentially slacker.

That game against Bulleen was a strange one. I get the urge to at least get something out of this awful situation, but the competition came across as farcical when most of the remaining teams were hampered by some or many regular senior players being unavailable due to competing A-League Women commitments. I can't speak for the other three teams, but South reputedly had around about ten players unavailable because of this. Add to that the lack of training and match conditioning, and you end up pretty close to conducting glorified pre-season matches.

But I guess that's how much people in this country love soccer, that everyone pulled together to get this tournament over and done with, in order to salvage something from 2021. Last week South utterly dominated the early stages of their game against Bulleen, couldn't put them away at first, let Bulleen back in the game, before finally rolling over the Lions for a comfortable 5-1 win. I'm rather ignorant of who's playing for South's senior women at the best of times, but even by those standards there were a lot of names that I was unfamiliar with.

It wasn't a particularly fluent performance, but why be harsh under the circumstances? Still, it didn't fill me with much confidence that we'd beat Calder in the final; but seeing how it was a final, and it was at the comparatively easier to get to venue of CB Smith Reserve, and what with there being a much more family friendly kickoff time than the semi-final, I decided to go to the game to support the team. That, and it probably wouldn't kill me to be a little bit more social, though who knows what disease you'll catch if you dare leave your house these days.

There was some chatter on our forum that a bunch of Clarendon Corner people who never go to any women's games would actually go to this game, but the likelihood of that happening was always very remote. As things turned out, it was probably for the best that they didn't turn up - there was no need for two sets of supporter groups taking away from the spectacle and the still generally positive, non-aggro vibe of a women's soccer match. Having one such set of self-absorbed fans at the game was more than enough. 

When your attention span gets shorter by the day, you forget things which on reflection you actually kinda knew at one point. As with everything, it's easy to blame the pandemic, but I think I can be forgiven for forgetting that Calder United now has some affiliation with Western United as part of the latter's eventually getting an A-League women's team, to the point of Calder adopting Western's colours. I'm not even sure if it was just a new away kit, because most of the obviously legacy Calder fans in the crowd still sported the team's usual navy colours.

With Western United and Calder being affiliated, the Western Service Crew - a Western United supporter group - rocked up with a megaphone, a drum, and a banner or two. Parking themselves to the left of the grandstand, they hoisted up a hastily made banner with "NO LICENCE" written on it. It was petty and stupid, and didn't have much to do with the game at hand or with Calder, but that's football fandom for you. 

Being behind the goals at the opposite end of the ground, it's a wonder that either side's fans bothered to try and abuse each other, what with the wind swirling around as it was, especially in the first half. Thank goodness the ground at least looked in amazing condition compared to the Dockerty Cup final's potato field from a couple of weeks ago. The wind was blowing across the field mostly, and if it was favouring either end it was the one that we were kicking to in the first half, but we couldn't make the most of that advantage, and went into the break at 0-0.

I reckon the game was pretty much lost right there for South, and the second half kinda showed that. Our small gaggle of regular and regular-ish watchers of the South senior women moved around to the other end for the second half. We copped a couple of goals early enough in the second half - the second of which was an absolute belter of a finish - to pretty much be out of the game. Hitting the crossbar from about eight yards out at 2-0 down was the icing on the cake unfortunately. For whatever it's worth, though we were generally outplayed, I didn't think that we were bad. Indeed, I thought we were better yesterday than the previous week, but Calder were better drilled and had that bit more experience and polish. 

It's not great to lose a final, especially of a competition you haven't won yet, but hopefully at least some of the players out there for us got valuable experience, and some knowledge about what it's like playing senior football. 

Now that we've got all the cliches about incremental personal improvement and grudging acknowledgment of a superior opponent out of the way, it's time to get into what you're really here for - reports of επισόδια and/or φασαρίες. After our earlier mentioned gaggle moved behind the southern goals, a portion of the Western Service Crew moved around to the western side of the ground next to the Calder benches. Maybe they realised eventually that their "no licence" banner (eventually joined by a "no cup" banner) wasn't visible to the cameras at home, what with the game being filmed from the grandstand and not the outer side.

This group then also began directing chants our way, about us, most of which were nonsensical and not really worth responding to. "You're not singing anymore" - well, we hadn't been singing at all. "Who are ya?" - well, like Bodie said to Marlo, "you know my name". And dumbest of all, "what have you done". I mean, you can slander South Melbourne Hellas about all sorts of things, but not having done stuff, or won stuff? Of course, when your focus is on chanting things about SMFCMike, maybe you don't have the best interests of the women's team you're allegedly supporting at heart.

(the less said about their first half rendition of the Great Escape theme when the game was still 0-0, the better)

Anyway, security and Western United officialdom got themselves in all sorts of a tangle trying to figure out what to do about that group and its banners. As the game was winding down, their group wandered around behind us en route to rejoining their mates on the grandstand side of the ground, some of them decided to get mouthy and dawdle instead of continuing to shuffle on; harsh words were exchanged, and a small child belonging to one of the Western United fans began crying. All in all, a rather unedifying, unnecessary, and rather avoidable experience.

The game done, it was time go home, except CB Smith only seems to have one exit - or at least one that anyone bothers to open. Blue Thunder Kosta had the players race closed lest (I assume) any members of South's media team, office bearers, ordinary fans, and one itinerant blogger, decided to go out with a surprise attack on the celebrating Western United supporters. When the gates to the players race were eventually opened, we all managed to walk through to the exit without hitting anybody, so kudos to us I guess. 

2021 South of the Border Awards

Player of the year: Henry Hore. He did some nice things. More impressively, he managed to escape this hellhole. 

Under 21 player of the year: The Cliff Hussey Memorial Trophy goes to no one. Not one young enough player got anywhere near enough senior game time for me to award a prize this year.

Goal of the year: Harrison Sawyer. That goal against the Bergers at Jack Edwards. It fell on his head/shoulders/neck/back, and barely made it across the line. It was shit. It was glorious.

Best performance: I think Gully away. We actually looked good. We actually went on the front foot.

Best away game: Oakleigh away. Every away game sucked, but they were our toughest opponents, and we didn't lose, so let's go with that.

Call of the year: Shouty Mike making the passionate claim after the penalty shootout win against Oakleigh that I should apologise to Esteban Quintas for my being appalled by Quintas' ultra-defensive style. Make of that what you will.

Chant of the year: "We're gonna win nil-nil." It's apt. Apt!

Best pre-match/after match dinner location: The days of comparatively exotic cheap eats are seemingly behind us. I blame covid, and other semi-affiliated lifestyle changes. So the default winner in another bastard of a year was the social club's calamari salad. Was it pricey? Yes. Was it worth the price? Probably not. Was it easily a few notches above being merely edible? Yes. That's good enough in times like these.

Friends we lost along the way: Griff. If you're out there buddy, I hope you're well.

Barely related to anything stupidity highlight of the year: Winning not one, but two penalty shootouts, on route to a glorified pre-season pseudo-testimonial game for players that weren't even here for that long really, that's going to keep the club afloat for at least a few more months.

Been there, done that - South Melbourne 0 Melbourne City 3

As it turns out, just about every thought I had about Friday night's game, I already had in 2017, to the extent that I'm actually a bit stumped about what to write.  

I suppose I could note the major difference between then and now. Back then, there was a sense of desperation, eagerness, anticipation, and hype. We had a good team with an imperfect build-up to the game, and an A-League bid in the works. On a number of fronts we had made ourselves the centre of attention, to the extent that the entire experience felt like an audition in front of the entirety of Australian soccer.

Of course we were never actually a legitimate chance to succeeding at that aforementioned audition no matter how well we did; but there's no mistaking the fact that the entire club, from top-to-bottom, treated the game against Sydney FC as a matter of life and death for the club. The ensuing years have since shown that like any club, we are just as likely to hurt ourselves as be hurt by others. Oh, and then covid happened as well. 

As it happened, the 2017 effort didn't make an iota of difference to either our short or medium term prospects. We were trying to prove the wrong thing to the wrong people at the wrong time. Perhaps what the focus should have been on was proving to ourselves that we could rise to that level. What 2004 and its aftermath did was not just gut the club of fans and finance, but also of know-how. We had to start from the start, so to speak, on the field and off it.

It's not like the 2017 game didn't have its issues with ticketing and organisation, but it went well enough. If Friday night showed anything, it's that the club has really nothing much left to prove to the small cartel of people who control top-flight Australian soccer. Everyone with any influence knows what we can do, what we can offer, what we're about.  All that was left to do was to demonstrate to ourselves once more that we can hold events like this at a professional standard, and that we have over the course of the past 17 years accumulated some experience about how to run an event at this scale.

And thus dutiful preparation from our behind-the-scenes people aside, Friday night seemed to lack 2017's sense of danger. There were no outsized concerns about whether our crowd would be big enough, or whether people would behave, or even if the team would get completely crunched. 

Again, covid provided some cover on all those fronts. The official crowd of 4,219 was apparently just short of the venue's covid capacity limit of 4,500. Anyone getting upset or choosing to mock the fact that we didn't reach that limit would be better of acknowledging that it is rare for capacity at any sporting to be reached, ever, even for the highest profile games. A recent example was the 2021 A-League grand final, where AAMI Park's 30,050 capacity was reduced by 50% due to covid, but managed a crowd about 1,000 short of the 15,000 cap.

Having a near (conditional) full-house didn't make stumping up $25 for a ticket that much more palatable for many people, especially with a lack of kids and concession offerings. But one must also acknowledge that the club has so few chances to cash in on games like this, that it must be hard for the people in charge not to try and leverage the situation for all it is worth. At least this year members had the chance of getting complimentary tickets, unlike last time.

The crowd was majority South, but admonishing the lack of a Melbourne City fan turnout seems a bit harsh. Doubtless some of their regular ordinary mum and dad fans would have baulked at the ticket prices; more likely, many of them would have been unaware the game was even on. More surprising was that City's active support couldn't even fill out a bay in the northern stand; considering how little of their team they've been able to see in recent covid affected years, it was a bit strange.

On the field, I was prepared for the worst. Funnily enough, I was both pleasantly surprised and genuinely appalled. Surprised and pleased that we didn't ship more goals. Appalled that from the beginning we didn't even pretend that we had any intention of getting the ball and trying to possess it, maybe even launch an attack. Some have made the comment that apart from the exaggerated scale of City's dominance, in general the South side on the park didn't look that much different in tactical approach to the one that was dominated by Eastern Lions during the earlier rounds of the cup.

Still, apart from the coach, I sympathise with almost everyone else involved on the game side of things. In 2021 we were the 9th best team of a second tier competition that got cancelled several months ago, with a match-day squad made up of semi-pros and a bench filled out by kids. Just be glad that we only lost 3-0, and instead get upset the at things that really matter - like that ridiculous decision to take a short corner during that three minute burst of goodness in the second half. 

Everything else I could make allowances for, but that decision was just astonishing. I could not believe it. It made no sense. I'm getting angry again just thinking about it. Maybe it's time to make an adjustment to the club's constitution to ban short corners, except when killing the clock at the end of a game. Tactical approach aside, I couldn't fault the effort of the team. Given they had so little of the ball, they ran and ran and ran, and did what they could. Ben Djiba stood out above all our players, defending stoutly throughout the game.

Apart from all our other shortcomings and disadvantages, we were playing the well-drilled champions of Australia, who were fitter, more skillful, and more coordinated than any South team has been since 2017. As with the 2017 match against Sydney FC, the difference in speed of movement and speed of thought was immediately apparent. Drop some of City's players down to our level, surrounded by players who weren't quite good enough to make it, give them day jobs, and irregular life schedules, and see what would happen. While you may still see moments of individual class, it'd be a lot harder to single-handedly bring up the standard of those around you.

Of course that's just a rinse-repeat of one of the good arguments for a proper second division, but that's a story for an interminable future. While we South plebs wait for that day to arrive or for someone with more clout to make it happen, we have to deal with our team and our league as they are. Here's to 2022 then.

FFA Cup fixture date confirmed, again

Friday November 12th. More specific details yet pending, because of, you know, *waves hands with half-exaggerated exasperation* everything.

One assumes South members will get priority to what will likely be limited tickets, due to the aforementioned "everything".

Now, seeing as how

a) we are likely to get crunched in the match itself
b) there is nothing left to prove in terms of crowd and atmosphere or spectacle, and

c) even doing anything or even everything perfectly in order to prove our top-flight worthiness is absolutely pointless,

 

I am now more interested in the logistics of the event, insofar as I am curious to see if any kind of Neos Kosmos Facebbook page covid/vaccine article commentary slips into the discourse in the lead up to the match.

Henry Hore departs for A-League

It was being talked about around the traps, and now it has officially happened - South Melbourne midfielder Henry Hore has joined Brisbane Roar.

It's a pity for South, as he was one of our better players this season - and it'd be nice to have him in the team when we take on Melbourne City in the FFA Cup - but it's exactly the result Hore would have been aiming for when he made the move to Victoria from Queensland.

As others have noted, the covid interrupted season meant we didn't get to see the best of him at South. To covid, I'd also add the very conservative playing style deployed by our team as also hindering Hore's proficiency. 

Still, brief and interrupted as it was, I'm sad to see Henry leave, but wish him well.

Report on Lakeside / Western United situation, as heard on 3XY Radio Hellas

I'm not sure if they did a coin toss for who got to go first on the night, but it was our own president who was first cab off the rank. 

Nick Maikousis, South Melbourne president

South Melbourne were approached by Western United for discussions several months ago, which did not end up happening for reasons Maikousis was not clear about.

In the past week, Western United were advised by South Melbourne not to make an announcement about playing their games at Lakeside. They did anyway. South then exercised its legal rights to prevent that from happening. The process of getting a formal response from the Trust is ongoing.

Maikousis noted that Victory and City have also locked out Western United from AAMI Park, and that if fellow A-League teams are not going to look after each other, then its certainly not the place for South Melbourne to look after A-League teams. Also, weren't they supposed to build their own stadium? Isn't this the reason why they got picked over South?

There was also note made that training will resume for our senior men's side tomorrow for the FFA Cup, as that is classed as professional  sport.

Chris Pehlivanis, Western United CEO

Attempt at a conciliatory and collegiate tone throughout. Noted that the scheduled (but never held) meeting mentioned above was cancelled due to covid, but was not going to be about using Lakeside; rather it was about establishing good relations with all Victorian clubs. Pehlivanis then set up the framework under which the situation arrived at this point: lack of suitable soccer infrastructure; changed A-League season window; covid, etc. 

United were not locked out of AAMI Park because of Victory and City directly, but rather because the trust that operates that venue was concerned about overuse of the pitch due to the A-League season now having more crossover with the NRL and Super Rugby seasons. Also because Victory have moved their allocation of Docklands matches to AAMI Park. At least that's how I understood the situation.

Pehlivanis seemed to also insist that at all times Western United's discussions were conducted with the relevant Trusts for AAMI Park and Lakeside, without any knowledge of what tenancy rights were due to the extant leaseholders.

Alternative venues were not suitable for a variety of reasons: being used by other, primary tenants; resurfacing of turf; covid related seating capacity limits; limited time to implement necessary improvements to venue before start of season, and lack of government support to do that. Pehlivanis contested the claim in a recent Melbourne Knights press release that no stadium audit had taken place for Knights Stadium.

With time running out for Western United to sort out venues before the A-League fixture was released, they then decided to pursue Lakeside as an option. They approached the Trust, and had negotiations with the highest level within that organisation. The stadium audit revealed that Lakeside's lighting needed improvement to adhere to A-League standards (which the Trust was willing to do), and some minor improvements to media facilities. They got approval from the A-League governing body.

A meeting with Nick Maikousis took place, where Maikousis said he'd discuss the matter with the South Melbourne board before providing a formal response. With time running out before the fixture announcement, and before the South board could make a formal response, Western United announced that Lakeside would be one of their venues for the upcoming A-League season.  

South have exercised their legal rights to the stadium football veto, and are waiting a response from the Trust. United still intend to play those seven games at Lakeside.

At last, Football Victoria calls off (most of) the 2021 season

Ordinarily I'd apologise for the long silence, but frankly there is nothing to apologise for. Nothing was happening until Friday afternoon, so there was really nothing to report. But now there is, and the news is pretty much what we have all expected - the 2021 metropolitan season has been called off for everyone.

For our senior men, that means that the only thing we might have left in 2021 is the remainder of our FFA Cup run, and hopefully some sort of payday against Melbourne City. Assuming that this fixture and the competition as a whole are even a remote chance of going ahead, goodness knows what physical shape our squad would be in. But since the likelihood of the competition progressing still seems very remote, I'll deal with that when it comes.

For our senior women, Football Victoria has held out the possibility of completing the women's state knockout competition. Again, I'd not want to get ahead of ourselves, but it would be nice for them to win something this year, seeing as how they were the best team up until the cancellation of the league season, my complaints about their playing style notwithstanding.

And yes, there have more meetings and chat the national second division, but nothing that I think merits writing about.

In closing, I would summarise this shambles of a year and hand out my meaningless awards, but I'm going to wait until our 2021 season is finished off for good, which should be any minute now. In the mean time, I'll continue to busy myself South-wise by uploading retro South videos - currently my channel is cleaning up the 1993/94 season, and I have enough weekday material to last until early December. Some good stuff coming up in November especially.

The Sound of Fear - Hume City 3 South Melbourne 2

This is no way to live. Yes, there's a pandemic on, and we're in and out of lockdowns, and that sucks. But along with that, watching this South team is hard work, and that's saying something, because being a South fan for the last (insert your own timeframe) has been hard enough work as it is. 

What is of greater concern, and I've said this a number of times before, is just how long can our remaining people endure this? And I mean all of this. The lockdowns, the watching the games at home, the watching a team that, in all honestly, has scarcely looked like winning a game in the last two or three months when they've actually been allowed to play. And beyond, the lack of any hope on the horizon.

Massive apologies to those who are still clinging on to the hope that a second division will be created, that we'll get in, and the entire future of the club will turned around for the better.

We've had lean periods before; apart from the inexplicable non-losing (as opposed to winning) run at the start of the 2021 season, it's been pretty damn lean on the good times front since late January 2018. Only some of that can be put down to sacking Taylor, because we've also hired coaches who weren't up to it, and the money's drying up, and we're playing youth, and we do things like sign only one striker, and a million other things on top of that.

What was troubling about last Wednesday night was the utter cluelessness. I mean, there was an opponent that we could take on, and that was defensively suspect, and that we even punished on a couple of occasions that we got forward on the night. But the first instinct which has been drummed into the squad is fear and trepidation, so it looks like even when we are good, even when we manage to score more than one goal, I don't think any of our honest fans thinks we're going to win a game.

And that's really sad, this idea that we can only feel safe about winning a game if we take the lead by breaking the deadlock with a couple of minutes left to play. So Henry Hore scores a goal within 15 seconds of kickoff and all I can think of is, great, how are we going to lose this now. And I'm not thinking it in a classically doomist, typically contrarian manner - you know, my signature pessimist schtick - but rather because it has been beaten into us by the entire method that this team has been built on

Now there's no guarantee of success in this business no matter how much money you chuck at the problem, and in any given year there's going to be one league winner, one cup winner (sometimes the same team), and twelve teams which have pissed their time and money up the wall for no gain at all, except for the players who get overpaid for their time considering no club gets close to making its money back at the gate. 

And yes, haha, we're all idiots for watching this stuff, and it's hilarious, except when it comes to the point where it's not. Shared joy is shared, shared grief is shared, but shared indifference doesn't really exist. You can't not care together, because not caring exists on the level of the individual; and if we're all individuals watching this club, then I don't know what it is, but it's not a club anymore. 

The price of long-term and widespread indifference is death, and boy is there a lot of indifference about at the moment. Even worse, when people deign to complain about the obvious sub-par performance and joylessness of the team, apparently that's a bridge too far for some people. Well, fine. They're entitled to their opinion, too, I suppose, even if they don't think you're entitled to yours. 

Watching the team this season, when we have been able to, has not been a completely joyous experience, but it's not meant to be. But it is meant to be something you as a South fan would like to do. You shouldn't even be thinking, "am I emotionally connected to this?". But all I can see when I do go to games is increasing rationalisation of the experience, instead of just feeling the experience. There's a lot more trying to understand why we're here, instead, of merely taking it for granted that everyone who's left wants to be there.

Everyone's process for going to South games is a bit different. Some eschew away games entirely, some people have other commitments that also need to be met, and which may take precedence. My experience is as follows. I go to South Melbourne senior men's team games, as many as I can reasonably get to. The team's fixtured matches are inserted manually into my crappy phone's calendar when the fixtures are released, and modified as the season progresses and changes are made. Within my schedule of personal and family commitments, attendance at South Melbourne senior men's matches is my allocated almost non-negotiable time just for me. 

(If I can get to South senior women's games, I like to do that, too; I don't get to go as many as I would like. For the purposes of this post, I'll be focusing on the senior men's team.)

I usually take public transport to games, which means the journey to a game can sometimes take hours. At a game I like to socialise with people, South fans and non-South fans, pleb fans and non-pleb fans, and am happy to chat with anyone who is willing to discuss any and all matters in good faith. Sometimes what I write here comes up in discussion on a match day, but usually it doesn't, and that's fine. My main goal as a South fan, much as it may surprise people who are familiar with my general disposition and this blog's oeuvre, is to enjoy our games. 

And as for the game itself? I watch some of it intently, and much of the rest distractedly; both of these are done through impaired vision, which excuses some of what ends up on here, though not all. I watch our games as a South fan, not as an emotionally detached chinstroker. When I am at my most motivated, I watch and write about our matches more as a cultural observer than I do as a match reporter. If the writing sometimes comes across as disinterested or impersonal, or less passionate - especially when put up against the more obviously emotional output of some of our fans - it's probably because of a personal writerly affectation of trying to appear fair.

Sometimes I confuse being honest with being fair. It is a longstanding failing of mine, one I have to remain vigilant of. I am not usually ashamed of what I write, because if I was, I wouldn't print it. Sometimes I overstep the mark, which causes me incredible psychological anguish; these moments are often compounded by my initial tendency toward being oblivious, and by my personal obstinance in not wanting to be seen at diluting my personal ethics. The funny thing about moments like those, is that oftentimes some of my readership thinks I should have gone in even harder, and dug my heels in even deeper. 

If I am ashamed of anything with this blog - apart from of moments of supreme lack of judgement - it is those times when I don't put enough effort into writing these posts, which of late has been an increasing issue. Part of that is a reflection of where I am in my life, but part of it is also, I think, a symptom of the general malaise the club has found itself in the post-Taylor, post-A-League bid era. We have not made the finals since 2017 - indeed we have barely looked like it for most of that time. There is no obvious way out of this NPL hole, as our repeated A-League bids have failed, and the promise of playing at a mooted national second division remains at best a few years away.

We have weathered sixteen years of humiliation and waning interest, broken up by intermittent successes which always fail to lead to renewed growth in the club, whether due to natural causes or our own club's ability to sabotage its own good fortune. We lack generational renewal, and our supporter base continues to atrophy. Under such circumstances, all I want - apart from a competitive team - is football that adheres to some notion of what this club has stood for over the past 62 years. Attacking football, fearless football, football that entertains, football that is about goals. I have no miraculous expectations about the ability of the players to replicate the heroics of our greatest teams and players, but I do have an expectation that we at least try and play in a style befitting the club's pedigree and former sense of self.

And while I acknowledge that there is often a time and a place for pragmatism, the manner in which we have played this year has not been noticed and critiqued only by myself. It has also been noted by other South fans, and by people outside of South. And the commentary, regardless of how much it varies in where blame (or responsibility) lies, often comes back to this point - that the way we play now, is not the way South Melbourne Hellas should be playing.

I don't want to comment any further on the quality of writing here, because that would be self-indulgent. But if I were to talk about the content for just a moment. The great strength of this blog is that it is not an official blog. It is so unofficial, that in the past I have refused assistance from the club to gain media accreditation. It is so unofficial that - apart from my disinterest of interviewing players and coaches - it has no interest in talking to any of our players and coaches.

Every player and coach that comes through our club, to me, is a transient. While they play in blue and white, and adhere to the general values of the club - at the least better parts of it - then I will support them. Once they leave the club, they become someone else's concern, or more usually, no one's concern at all.

The problem that exists now, is that the South team I watch barely resembles South at all. And if South doesn't play that many of us think South teams should, than what's the point? Call it fantasy - I certainly have - but if you're a player or coach who is looking to be part of the self-delusion that is the ongoing existence of the South Melbourne  Hellas Soccer Club, than you have a duty to play into that fantasy. 

That fantasy doesn't just mean the silly, absurd rhetoric about being a big a club; it's the fantasy that the club was built and and maintained on certain on field principles, which include fearlessness. 

But I fear that's gone for good.

Next game

Who knows.

Final thought

Congrats to the women's team for making it through to the next stage of their cup tournament. 

+1.5 goal - Hume City 1 South Melbourne 1

So last week soccer came back and what did we see? A competent performance I suppose from our end, and many of the same problems also. But 2021 has gotten to the point where the season has become garbage. It's not anyone's fault, the pandemic is what it is, but locking down and opening up again on multiple occasions has made the whole thing feel farcical.

Maybe even worse than farcical - how about pointless, a dirge, something we are collectively pushing through just to say that we made it to the end. Well, I hope that we manage to get there, because even though we've had some awful seasons of late, where every game felt like a chore, each game worse than the last, this season feels worse than the lot put together.

No spectators especially just makes the whole thing feel like it's being put on for the sake of the gambling fraternity. And I know that it's (probably not), and I know that Football Victoria and everyone else pushing through are merely performing their civic duty, but by god, I think the only ones actually enjoying themselves are the gamblers.

I mean, that's who I was stuck with on Saturday night, earphones plugged into my phone, watching the blurred action play out on a screen the size of half a Salada biscuit, while trying to munch down on chicken patties at the dinner table with my family. And there we were, me, Our Resident Cockney, a handful of gamblers asking which team was which, and trying to appease the YouTube football live stream gods for +2.5 goals.

It's sad enough when we can go to games and chide ourselves for the insanity of supporting South Melbourne andNPL Victoria as a whole, but at least there you are with like minded souls in the shared delusion that this thing (and your support of it) matters, no matter how tenuous; it's a whole other level of sadness when we are compelled to keep our distance from our heroes (and the players we hate), and most of the people we have to share it with are people who fill up the Facebook comments section with abuse that the various club appointed moderators have to delete, delete, delete...

I could fill this report with more hatred and bile for the way we play, and the people who are responsible for it, but it feels kinda pointless. I'm not even inclined to say that everyone gave it their best or their worst, because does it even matter under the circumstances? The point is to get to the end. That's it. We might even make the finals (we probably won't), we could win the Dockerty Cup (I suppose anything's possible), but the main point is to make it to the end. 

Next game

Dockerty Cup semi final tonight, against Hume City. No, you're not allowed in.

Final thought

Downloaded the most basic, near fool-proof video editing program I could find, so I can extract more morsels from the South compilations I've been given alongside the clips that were already cut up for me. Also, while it's still a work in progress, I've created and begun maintaining an inventory of every South Melbourne Hellas match video that's been uploaded to YouTube, and the format (short, extended, full) it exists in. More for my benefit really, in order to have a more user-friendly list at hand for my uploading work, but someone else may find it useful as well.

Soccer's back, but you're not

So the latest lockdown is easing, but it looks like there'll be a slower return to games with spectators this time. Thus, while our scheduled league game away against Hume on Saturday evening will go ahead, spectators will not be allowed to attend. 

Moreover, this policy looks like it will carry over into next week as well, but I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Any guesses on whether the FFA Cup - and our hopeful payday - will be able to proceed given Sydney's extended lockdown, remains to be seen.

Still, at least we'll be able to watch the NPL games on the streams. How good are the live streams, by the way? Never doubted their value for a second.

News to tide you over during the lockdown

Weekend's matches cancelled

I'm sure you're all already on top of this. This Sunday's senior men's match against St Albans has been postponed, due to the current lockdown. Tomorrow's highly anticipated match between South's senior women and Bulleen has also been postponed.

Close contact

The senior women ran into a little trouble on Wednesday prior to their scheduled cup match against Casey Comets, when it was found that a player in the match "had been identified as a secondary close contact through an exposure site". By agreement of the two teams, the match did not go ahead.

New fixture date no. 1

During the week the date and venue for our Dockerty Cup semi-final tie against Hume was set. The date is this coming Wednesday, July 21st, and the kickoff time 7:30PM. Unfortunately, the neutral venue chosen was Kingston Heath Soccer Complex. I was 50/50 on whether it was going to be worth the bother. Now with the lockdown extending until Tuesday, one has to think that this fixture may also be altered. For the time being though, let's assume that it will go ahead.

New fixture date no. 2

Our FFA Cup round of 32 fixture against Melbourne City has been given the match date of August 29th. Unusually, this is a Sunday and not a weeknight, in line with the powers that be seeking to try and branch out from the usual midweek timeslots. Even more unusually, the August 29th date already had a fixture set for it - our round 26 match away against Bentleigh. You may recall that round 26 is the final match of the home and away season, when all fixtures are meant to kick off simultaneously. I'm sure that all involved will figure it out.

Vale John Anderson

Three time state championship winner John Anderson passed away during the week. The Scots midfielder won championships with South in 1964, 1965, and 1966. He also represented Victoria and Australia; the latter included being part of Australia's first World Cup qualifying campaign. Tony Persoglia has written a good summary of Anderson's background and accomplishments on the Football Victoria site.

Vale Chris Christopher

Former long-serving committee member Chris Christopher also passed away during the week. Christopher was president of the club in 1987, but he will likely be best remembered for making a large loan to the club in 2004 which, along with a contribution from the late Tony Toumbourou, helped stave off the club's death from the Australian Taxation Office. 

Vale Michael Christodoulou

Not directly South related, but this week also saw the passing of Michael Christodoulou, aka the Bentleigh peanut man. A fixture at Victorian soccer grounds for decades - at NSL, state league, and A-League - Christodoulou was always good for a chat, and was one of its more well known characters. His death probably brings to an end the era of the local soccer nut-sellers; the others have also passed on or retired, and I can't see anyone emerging to take their place.

National Youth League videos unearthed

Here's an absolute treat. Thanks to George Cotsanis (My World Is Round), who acted as the pivot for getting these two videos from former South Melbourne youth team players Tim Schleiger and Mike Lilikakis.

These homemade videos are from South's 1991/92 National Youth League finals campaign. The club had won the title in 1990/91, and reached the final in 1991/92, losing to a start-studded Sydney Croatia team.

The first video contains almost the entirety of the Southern Division preliminary final against Heidelberg at Olympic Park, and closes with some changeroom hijinks and tomfoolery; several of the players became if not quite National Soccer League household names, then certainly Victorian Premier League mainstays. It also includes quick moments with the training and support staff.

The second video is a more manageable 20 minutes or so. This is a bit different from the first tape, in that it is a compilation of South's three finals matches. It includes the above mentioned preliminary final against Heidelberg; the Southern Division grand final against Preston; and the national grand final against Sydney Croatia. This video, narrated by goalkeeper Mike Lilikakis, also includes trophy presentations.

These are remarkable videos for a variety of reasons. First, for the sheer scarcity of footage from the NYL as a whole. Second, for the videos' time capsule quality - the Olympic Park that is no more; the players that would and would not become household names; the cameos by Eddie Thomson and Ferenc Puskas; the Sade background music, and the banter by the players. Third, the reiteration that such  archival material still exists, and that we must cherish it each time we come across it.

Hit "like" and "subscribe"

So, some of you may have been seeing the videos I've been uploading to my YouTube channel, which is mostly classic South gear. Well, I hadn't quite exhausted the tranche given to me a few months ago, but I'd done just about all the 1980s stuff... that is until I got given another collection of digitised VHS tapes couple of weeks back. So sure, there's bound to be a lot of crossover between the first set and this one, but this second set also seems to have some 1988 match footage that the previous set doesn't have, and which I have certainly not seen before. This new set also includes little set pieces as well - interviews, gimmicks, and the like - which will be interesting to dig out, because that's not the kind of thing that usually gets uploaded to YouTube. I've also started a little project (which will take time to complete, if I actually do complete it) which will aim to track every South match that's available online, classing them as either "short", "extended", or "full" - but that's for the future.

Boking Accident - South Melbourne 1 Green Gully 1

Dear readers of South of the Border,  I have been given a most precious gift; the gift of an epiphany. I wasn't looking for it, I didn't realise that I needed or wanted this gift, but I was chosen to receive it.

Since South of the Border was launched in December 2007, I believed I had the right to voice my own opinions, whether they were right or wrong, fair on unfair, and untethered to popular or official opinion. 

I now understand that this was a dangerous illusion, a devastatingly heretical one. I now understand that not only were my opinions wrong, but so too was my belief in the right to have my own opinions. I cannot express how much I was crushed by the sudden onset of the reality of my long-running egoism! All the lost years spent agonising about what to think and how to think it and how to express those thoughts, when all I needed to do was to look at the status quo, and just sit back and bask in its perpetual and permanent acceptability; no, its divine infallibility, for whatever happens must by design surely be good and right. 

As recently as last week I was like many of you, criticising people at our club who make decisions, focusing my stern judgments on those who have more than nominal responsibility for where the team has found itself this season. Ladies and gentlemen, I now know that it was wrong to feel this way. I don't blame the coach anymore. It is clearly the players' fault that we are where we are. They're the ones not following orders, or following orders too hard - I'm not sure which anymore. They're the ones who need to weather Spanish insults screamed at them for 90 minutes, and being rotated in and out of the match day squad for reasons they cannot comprehend. They need to play with less flair and intent! They need to comprehend better! It's for their own good! It's for our collective good!

But hold on - what if "blame" is the wrong word, too? What if this has been the plan all along? Maybe apportioning blame to anyone is not good enough or supportive enough of the team either? Forgive me; I'm new at this no longer thinking for myself caper. So instead of apportioning blame, let's start apportioning credit. I credit the coach for where we are now. I pay homage to the quality of his management skills, which see a squad capable of more, achieve less. Credit also has to go to the board. It takes a lot of guts to stand up to so-called reality. It's imperative that we South Melbourne supporters also reject this false reality, and substitute it for the one that management sees. My new and enduring hope is that one day those of us left in the crowd who don't agree with the current trajectory of the team, can squeegee their collective third eye and come to the same conclusion. Only then can we become not the bitter few defenders of a rump state, but rather, the discerning few.

This revelation means that I now understand that the last two months of football have been incredibly adequate. Maybe even more than adequate! Why demand excellence, even relative excellence, when you can accept the sweet comfort of midtable, or wherever we end up? Higher, lower, what difference does it make? What sweet release to now see that we are not in competition with other teams, but only with ourselves and our own expectations; even then, the only worthwhile struggle is to stop struggling. to stop having expectations, so that we can finally and genuinely let go of the infatuation of competing. 

You win this year or the next, or you lose this year or the next, what does it matter? And I don't mean what does it matter in the context of no one caring about this club or this league. I mean what does it matter at all what we do, if concerning ourselves with whether it matters only causes more psychological and spiritual torment? I've been going to games and seeing the anguish on our supporters' faces, and not seeing it for what it is; the agony of trying. So why try? Why not just be? Just go out there and do anything, and let the chips fall where they may. Give up trying to understand, give up the idea that South Melbourne Hellas should be doing better. Acknowledge the genius of the strategy, and acknowledge its genius wherever it leads us. 

Ideas of stature and pedigree? Let them go. Consistency? Throw it to the wind. Fluency? Ask yourself why we should make the effort. Come to the realisation that forwards and backwards are actually the same thing. Learn to love short corners. 

Next game

At St Albans away on Sunday. Now I know many of you aren't quite with me yet on the path to "who gives a stuff" enlightenment so I'll phrase this next section in a way that will hopefully gently start you on your journey. St Albans are struggling, but I don't us expect to roll over them; I expect us to walk alongside them, being neither better nor worse. Why make the opposition feel bad about themselves? We have a great chance to make them feel better about themselves - not so much better because they've managed to beat us, but hopefully at least enough to give them the taste of being able to know what it's like to match it with the great South Melbourne Hellas. And you also wouldn't want to win, because you only really need 26-30 points to definitely (probably) avoid relegation, so anything more than that would just be a waste of effort, and of course win bonuses. So, no showboating please, and absolutely no goals unless we need to equalise to keep our draw tally going. 

Women's news

In all seriousness, despite playing against an obviously inferior opponent, I was pleased with what I saw on the live stream on Saturday by our senior women against Alamein. Granted, Alamein didn't push as high up the field as say, the Bergers did the other week. But I think we moved the ball around well in midfield, and seemed more in control of the tempo of the match, even in those moments were Alamein had a decent spell. Big game at home against Bulleen on Saturday though, to show how far this team has really come.

Final thought

At least the last half hour of the game was kinda entertaining, if you're into that sort of thing. But if you are into that kind of thing, I must warn you, because it's a hell of a drug, and you're going to be chasing that high for the rest of your days if you're not careful.

Oakleigh Cannons 0 South Melbourne 0 - South win 6-5 on penalties

Let us begin our now customary report for the transport engineer.

Drove to Sunshine station, as only the main car park was closed. Missed the first available train by mere seconds, had to wait a little for the next one. Got to Flinders Street in reasonably good time, and had Pakenham train waiting on platform 7 ready to depart within a minute. Sadly the departure of this service was delayed by quite a few minutes, because of an operational matter further down the line somewhere. I don't know what it was, someone maybe chasing a dog onto the tracks? Train eventually leaves Flinders, and makes good pace down to Huntingdale station, after which it is a short walk by myself to Jack Edwards Reserve through the relatively poorly lit industrial backblocks of Oakleigh, with cars and truck trailers blocking the footpath, and then there was the bit where there's no footpath near the ground.

I was fortunate that as a media pass holder, I was able to skip the queue outside the ground and head straight in. I overheard some people being frustrated with there being no eftpos facilities at Oakleigh (still!) but as far as I'm concerned, if you're going to a suburban ground, you just have to bring cash. I suppose it tends to sort the wheat (those who go to local regularly) from the chaff (those who do not).

A bigger crowd than you would usually get for a league game here these days between these two sides, but not as big as you might have had in the past. Maybe it was too cold, maybe the pandemic still puts people off from attending sporting events, maybe even the FFA Cup has lost a tiny bit of its sheen. God, I hope it's the latter.

Onto the game. This fixture provided irony upon irony, and cliché upon cliché, as well as the chance to revive some of old favourite lines. Not many expected us to win this fixture; not neutrals, and not our own fans. Some of our own fans thought we were going to get buried, based on Oakleigh's recent goal scoring run, and our own flailing efforts where the one (mostly) unquestionably good thing we'd had going for us - our defence - had also gone down the gurgler. 

That wasn't my thinking by the way, the getting buried part I mean. Certainly, I thought we were going to lose because:

a) we were in the middle of a wretched run of form, and

b) I generally think we're going to lose most games, even when we have a very strong team and good form

But getting buried? I didn't think that would happen; or at least not nearly as fervently as some other South fans seemed to think. But props to some of my fellow South fans for fully embracing doomism! 

In retrospect, if there was one game where an overly defensive and cautious set-up could work, it just might be a knockout cup game where no-one expects you do anything good. The morbid joke on the terraces last week was that Esteban Quintas sets up his team to win games 0-0, but a knockout fixture allows you to progress to the next round doing just that, assuming everything falls into place.

And in this case, it kind of did. Though they had a day's extra rest from the previous round of league matches, they'd also had a more congested fixture thanks to the multiple postponements of their previous FFA Cup fixtures. So, you'd hope that fact, as well as the matter of some of their important players being well on the wrong side of 30, would help us.

Additionally Oakleigh's narrow ground provides diminished opportunities for playing the ball into wide spaces. Credit where credit is due, we limited Oakleigh's ability to get wide and behind our back four or five or six players. Granted, the dimensions of the ground - being both short and narrow - make that easier, but the frustration of our fans wanting some of our defenders to step up and press the Oakleigh midfielders sometimes missed the point - that being to keep them at a collective arms' length.

The proof in the pudding was that Oakleigh struggled to get through the defence's middle channels, and were rarely able to get behind us out wide. Often times, when I thought they had the chance to move the ball wide away from the places we'd overloaded our defensives stocks. When they did, things looked terrifying,. but thankfully there was usually no one there to meet the cross in the six yard box. I can't say what the stats said at the end of the full 120, but after 90 minutes Oakleigh had had just one corner for the game. Considering how dire our defending from corners has been of late, that was just sensible risk mitigation.

As for the old line that was revived? It was an old forum chestnut, when critics of Chris Taylor would note that his teams and his methods, were not built for big games. It was, largely, an unfair criticism, because we won two league titles, a Dockerty Cup, and had a deep FFA Cup run 2017 - but it's a criticism that's stuck. It stuck because of notable failures especially in knockout games - against Bentleigh in the cup, in a final, and in the grand final - and of course the calamities of the losses to Palm Beach and Hobart Olympia.

That it came to the lottery of a penalty shoot-out was also fitting, because part of Taylor's reputation for failing at South comes down to penalty shootout losses. Again, that's a little unfair, because there were only two penalty shoot outs during his time with the club, which just goes to show that more often than not his teams got the job done well before it came to the point of needing a shootout to resolve a situation.

(as for Taylor's dislike of practicing for penalty shootouts, I tend to instinctively agree with him that the anxiety of the actual shootout can't be replicated in training; still, here's an opposing argument backed up by some sort of legitimate science; and there's something to be said for the chat some of us had at the game that it was practicing at least for the sake of making our players be comfortable with a penalty taking routine)

But the penalty shootout was still a long way away from happening during the game. We'd set up a tight defence which made it hard for Oakleigh to score, but also made it even harder for us to score. Poor Daniel Clark was left floundering up forward like Brodie Mihocek under Nathan Buckley; an undersized forward being asked to do too much against too many, without nearly enough support.

Chances were few and far between for both sides. We had two good chances - one sequence of play with a header onto the crossbar and a follow up attempt cleared off the line, and Henry Hore hooting the post from a tight angle. Oakleigh managed to get behind our defence and around Pierce Clark, only for (I think) Luke Adams to clear off the line. 

If this was not a cup game, with the knowledge that one team would win, and one would lose; that one team's prize would be the national stage, and the other's a return to the drudgery of the league; if all the tension built up in the crowd creating an atmosphere of expectation; without any of those things, this game would rightly have been called a dour, frustrating, and poor spectacle of local football. 

There's no way of getting around that. It was not a good game to watch. I commend the players from both teams for giving it all their all, especially ours, but it was a difficult game to watch as a piece of entertainment, as a showcase for what teams in this league can achieve. A good thing for all concerned that that's not what people are going to remember then.

What they'll probably remember is atmosphere in the stands, and the no quarter given on the pitch, and even some of the back and forth between South's fans toward former Hellas boys Tyson Holmes and Matthew Foschini. The fans might also remember a pretty ordinary and one-sided performance from the referee, which saw us collect yellow cards at will (and in the manner and rate in which we were collecting at the start of the year), while Oakleigh seemed to get away with a lot more.

(And as has been noted to me elsewhere, when will Victorian referees finally tell Holmes that he is a not referee, and to just piss off? And Foschini kissing Oakleigh's cartoon cannon badge was just bizarre theatrics)

But what they'll remember is the penalty shootout, taken to the railway end of the ground, which started well for us, until it was almost scuppered by Gerrie Sylaidos' smashing his penalty - which would have won us the tie - against crossbar. I don't blame Gerrie for his miss, in much the same way I wouldn't blame anyone for missing a shot in a shootout. I felt sick just watching the shootout preferring to sit down instead of getting a dizzy spell and losing my bearings.

And I don't even blame Gerrie for taking the shot the way he did; maybe it was a correction against the penalty shot he had saved against Avondale earlier this year, but he's entitled to try and score anyway he likes - and if that means a powerful blast down the middle that'll be strong for any keeper to save should they even avoid diving left or right, then so be it.

As it was, we got into the sudden death element of the shootout, with Lirim Elmazi's squib of a shot trickling underneath the Oakleigh keeper, and then Pierce Clark comfortably saving Oakleigh subsequent and just as squibbish shot. And there it was. the cup tie won, and onto the next stage of two tournaments to much rejoicing. And maybe, whether by accident or design, it was revealed that this team is one built not so much for league success, but for cup runs. Maybe all it needs to prove its worth is a Dockerty Cup title; or somehow sneaking into the finals, and grinding its way through three do-or-die fixtures.

Again, credit where it's due - this has been our most difficult cup run to date in combined opposition calibre, certainly at least since the FFA Cup was attached as the main thread of knockout of football as opposed to the Dockerty Cup. Aside from the terribly youthful Werribee City, we had to face three NPL opponents in a row, when in other seasons we'd had difficulty getting just past one. And while Eastern Lions aren't one of our division's better teams, they still put up a good show in most games.

And winning two ostensibly "rival" games to get to this point is not worth sneezing at either; we'd overcome Knights, who knocked us out of this tournament two years ago, and who prize our scalp above all others; and this was our first "win" over Oakleigh (however you want to define it) since 2017, and against them at Jack Edwards since 2013.

That's not to say the journey has been anything close to aesthetically edifying, though it's had its moments of moral schadenfreude. Apart from the six goal Werribee romp, we won the remaining games by scoring just three goals, two of them penalties. In two of the games we played football that was beyond dour,. and most troubling, those were the recent games; but we won, and thus we are expected to be in nothing other than a good mood.

Me though? I prefer the linearity and subtlety of league season over cup football, which is for the excitable and the easily distracted fan, who can't commit to an ongoing storyline with depth; cup football is the pay per view event of local soccer - you come for the endless high spots, and forget about the graft that's needed to keep things going on and off the field for the rest of the year.

But that's just me I guess, a man renowned for taste in all things subtle and sophisticated.

One more thing

The day after the game while I was at home, my brother picked up the phone; he mumbled something about "Hellas", then passed the phone to me. It was my mum calling from her work - a customer in her shop was a mostly lapsed South Melbourne supporter from days of yore, asking to find out whether we'd won the cup tie the previous night. To which I replied that, yes, we'd won the game on penalties after the game had finished 0-0, but that geez it was very hard to watch.

Which when put like that, is a much shorter version of everything that I'd written before that paragraph, so sorry if you had to wait until here to get the summarised version.

Next game

Back to league action, against Green Gully at home on tonight. I wonder if we tried to get this game moved to the Saturday? Anyway, here's hoping the team don't feel the pinch too much from 120 minutes of effort, as well as last Saturday's game. Here's hoping also that at least some of the bandwagon from last night turns up as well.

FFA Cup draw

The draw for the national stage of the FFA Cup was held last night, with its new and not so national zoning system. I'm not sure if the zoning system is a pandemic related change, or something more permanent; then again, who knows what's permanent anymore? This greatly reduced the range of possibilities for a match up, making it more likely that we would get an NPL Victoria team as opponent. Except that's not what happened, with us getting Melbourne City instead. 

There are, broadly, three schools of thought on what an ideal FFA Cup match up is once you reach the national stage. One stream of thought suggests that the best course of action is to avoid an A-League team for as long as possible, which allows you the best chance to go deep into the tournament; people in this camp are divided about you want to play more home games (to maximise crowd revenues). The second stream of thought is that it's best to get an A-League opponent first up (ideally a local one), which will get you the biggest chance of a full-house, and the best chance of winning a game against an underprepared and understrength top-flight team during their off-season.

The third stream of course, is your correspondent's island of one position that the FFA Cup is a horrible competition wholly without merit.

But under the circumstances, a game against the current A-League champions is probably the best draw we could get. For those who'd prefer to travel, the pandemic continues to wreak havoc thanks to sudden border closures and lockdowns. And considering the suddenly increased workload Tuesday's night win has brought forth - at least one FFA Cup game, one Dockerty Cup game, to add to the three catch up games lost due to the lockdown - how deep do you expect our players to go? How many games do we expect semi-pros to be able to play in a short amount of time?

And for those who don't care about the FFA Cup

A reminder that our Dockerty Cup semi final will be against Hume City, after they beat Monbulk Rangers 3-0. No date or venue has yet been arranged for this fixture, but if recent practice is any guide, the semi-final venue will likely be a neutral venue.

Final thought

Thanks once again to Johnny for the lift back to Footscray.

Hello, Nuna! Dandenong Thunder 4 South Melbourne 1

So, for the transport engineers out there, here was Saturday's method for getting to the game. Both main car parks at Sunshine station closed, so decided to take the bus up to the station instead, thinking I would get a cab on the way back because buses stop by the time I would get back. Instead of getting the bus from my nearest stop (about 50 metres away), I walked up to the next stop (about 300 metres up the road), because my nearest stop is a bit of a mess thanks to extensive road and footpath rehabilitation works.

The wait for the rail replacement bus wasn't more than a few minutes, a stopping all stations effort to North Melbourne. Once at North Melbourne the task was to get on a train to somewhere in the city to change to a Pakenham or Cranbourne service. That didn't take more than about five minutes, getting on a train to Frankston.

Oh yes, there's this thing which still throws me off sometimes, that a train from Werribee towards the city might nowadays come under a "Frankston" designation on the screens, because Werribee trains often run through to Frankston after reaching the city. So I took the Frankston train to Richmond from North Melbourne, and changed at Richmond to a Pakenham service, which again, I didn't have to wait long for. That went pretty smoothly, and then I got to Dandenong Station.

It was freezing, and there was a 20 minute wait for the 901 bus, so what else to do but keep watching the stream of the women's game against Heidelberg at Lakeside. The NPLW can be such an unsatisfying competition to watch because of the lack of depth and its inbuilt imbalances, but the South women this season... I don't know, there's also something annoying about the way they play. It's a bit showboaty, it's a bit pull finger out only when necessary, and more than a bit careless. Heidelberg are an OK team, but we made them look a lot better than they are - at least during the first half - because there was little desire on our part to play meaningful football in the middle of the park.

Sure, there was the dangerous (and pointless) backline passing around, which attracted pressure for no good reason. But midfield proficiency? It's been a problem for much of the season as far as I can tell, where the all the caution and possession based style of the back third becomes all about booting the ball into space and hoping Melina Ayres (mostly) can run on to a loose ball and smash the ball past a helpless keeper. But where's the midfield panache, the evidence of stylistic and player growth? Hard to see where I'm watching from, but hey, we e3nded up crunching the Bergers 7-0, so everything's good, right?

Finally got to the ground, super early - because if I'm going to hike it all the way to Dandenong on public transport, I might as well get as much football in as possible - and caught most of the reserves game, which we ended up losing 4-2. One tolerable but nevertheless overpriced chicken roll was not enough to ward off the cold, and double-socked or not, there was no chance that my feet weren't going to freeze on standing on cold concrete or on dewy grass. I was disheartened also with a conversation with one of the few former South players that still comes to our games, who wanted to place most of the blame for our recent poor run of results on our injury toll, and none whatsoever on the coaching methodology. Well, we all see the game differently; we're all blind men touching different parts of the same elephant.

Still more time to kill, and not many South fans in sight, because pretty much everyone's given up, possibly for good. Having ditched the Futbol24 app some time ago because there just isn't the space on my phone for more apps, I am nowadays checking up on NPL scores via flicking over briefly onto NPL Victoria YouTube streams. Do I like what I see? Not really. That's because I see good and mediocre teams punish the poor teams in ways that we could not, even when we were "good". So you see Hume cracking four past Eastern Lions, Oakleigh crushing Dandy City, Green Gully smashing Altona Magic - with my three seconds of live viewing of that match being some goal from 30 metres out - and Port crunching St Albans. All very good, very reassuring only insofar that there should be just enough bad teams in this league that they won't all be able to catch up to us in our current mediocre state. 

And then there was Avondale vs Bentleigh, which finished 3-1 to the home side, after they trailed early on. Now, apart from the observation being made that not only does Avondale have good footballers (which costs money, I admit), there's also the fact Avondale also play good football (which doesn't cost any money, really); the kind of football that you'd like to see your team play, whether your side has the kind of resources that Avondale has, or merely half of them. It's a question of attitude, to a certain extent. And I get it - sometimes situations cause you to play more circumspect football, sometimes you need to deploy a more defensive state of mind.

But Avondale, after trailing early on, against what is a defensively suspect but otherwise pretty decent outfit in Bentleigh, amassed 21 shots on goal, and 13 on target by the end of the game. Against Altona Magic last week, a team who had not won a game all year, and whom we trailed (and eventually lost to) 2-1, we could manage three shots on target, over 90+ minutes of football. Against Thunder, we had two timid shots early in the half, to 13 on goal and seven on target from Thunder. Of course numbers don't tell the whole story, because by the end of last Saturday night's game we had more shots on target to Thunder, but that only goes to show that if want to play attacking football that we can. 

Of course the instruction to our players is obviously to play awful, boring, dispiriting football, in the hopes that we will win 0-0; which will only happen if the opposition is stupid enough to play a suspended player. But what we witnessed on Saturday night would have got most coaches sacked. Hell, I would've had the coach sacked at halftime, or even 30 minutes in if that was an option. Apart from a moderately promising opening five minutes, the team spent the rest of the half basically camped in its own half, gifting the opposition possession and territory. Thunder have good some players, they're no mugs, but they're also no world beaters, and yet we could not get possession of the ball in the opposition half. 

1-0 down, and then 2-0 down, both goals coming from corners - which is three goals conceded from corners since lockdown ended - and probably lucky not to be further down. And despite all of that, we continued to try and do the stupidest things imaginable under the circumstances. Down and out, under siege, we invited even more pressure onto ourselves by trying to play out the back from every situation. The goal kicks were the worst of it. Pierce Clark, seemingly not trusted to just belt the ball long under any circumstances, would inevitably play the ball left or right (usually to his left), no further than the edge of the 18 yard box, whereupon usually Brad Norton would pass the ball back to Clark, who would be rushed upon by Thunder forwards who knew exactly what we we're going to do all along, and then good luck hoping that we wouldn't concede.

The lack of situational awareness from anyone on field or on the bench was astonishing. In a game of soccer, there's skill level, there's tactics, and there's psychology. Our skill level is good enough to be competitive against almost any team in this competition, but our tactics are dire, but we've already said that. But our situational awareness is also completely shot. You have an opponent that is fired up, is in the ascendancy, and looking to press high up the field. They want the game to be played at the same high tempo that's benefiting them at that moment of time. So instead of taking the sting out of the game, we try to match that tempo, try to knock the ball around right on our goal line, and keep playing the game on the opposition's terms.

It was astonishing stuff, watching South Melbourne psychologically capitulate to the extent that no matter how many times it failed, that our players would robotically perform Nunawading "Evolution of the Idea" playing out of the back. Sure, there had already been the robotic qualities earlier in the season with our retreats from midfield back to the keeper, but on Saturday night the situation had become deploringly bad. It was, dare I say it, Southern Stars 2013 bad, and I don't use that comparison lightly.  It was a gut wrenching, soul destroying, club destroying spectacle. Two subs made on the half hour mark only served to show that Quintas had got the starting line-up badly wrong, and that he has no switch-up from Plan A (whatever that means in a non hit it long to Harry Sawyer world) to whatever else he might have up his sleeve.

That we came out in the second half in a more positive frame of mind, pulled a goal back, and almost levelled the score was even more dispiriting. Clearly we have the talent on our books to play imperfect, but still generally good attacking football. But let's say for arguments sake that we did equalise. Let's even say for argument's sake that we somehow went on to win the game. That would only prove the point that we are being coached horrendously, and that just about anyone else in this state could do the job better. At this stage of the season, it's barely about personnel anymore. Tactically and psychologically, we are shot. No one out there playing for South is enjoying the game anymore, you can see that at least half the senior squad is beyond fucking miserable. It's been a grind for the whole season, salvaged only by a ridiculously fortunate unbeaten run to start the year, and no amount of Shepparton bonding trips and renditions of Sweet Caroline can make playing this kind of football under this manager feel worthwhile. 

Apparently on 3XY Radio Hellas on Sunday, the sports program read out a message from president Nick Maikousis that Quintas will remain as South coach for the rest of the season. You can read that in classic "he's got the full support of the board" style, which means he'll be sacked soon, but the reality is that we probably can't afford to pay out his contract. Why this is the case when we were told that Quintas' performance was tied to certain KPIs is anyone's guess, but it seems we are stuck with him until the end of this year, unless he falls on his own sword. 

So what's left to do? Hope the players perform a quiet mutiny, by taking over control of training and matchday themselves, completely cutting out management? 

(Big hint to any of our players stupid enough to read this blog - you should totally do this) 

I mean, what could possibly go wrong with such an approach that would be worse than the last two months worth of performances, and the misery you have (and we, the supporters) have been forced to endure?

Next game

FFA Cup qualifier tomorrow night against Oakleigh Cannons at Jack Edwards. A win here gets us into the national stage of the competition, and into the Dockerty Cup semi finals. No one expects us to win though.

Final thought

Big thanks to Johnny for giving me a lift back to Footscray, and to Kartsi for offering to give me a ride back to somewhere approximating civilisation. Then when I got back to Sunshine station on the rail replacement bus at about 10:30, there were no cabs in the vicinity, so I walked the kilometre and a half home. A tiptop end to a tiptop day.

Calamitous - South Melbourne 1 Altona Magic 2

You wait a few weeks to get back to Lakeside, and you get served that rubbish. Maybe one or two shots on target in 90 minutes, against a side that hadn't won a game all year.

Once again, I get that we have suspensions and injuries, but a good chunk of this terrible run of form (especially after the lockdown break) feels like chickens coming home to roost.

The constant rotations on and off the field remain mindboggling, How can any player feel secure, when they are in and out of the side, on and off the field, and played in several positions, with little sense of rhyme or reason?

How can the team as a whole feel confident about scoring goals, when the default set up has them playing so deep, that even mediocre opponents feel confident in taking the ball up field, knowing that they will not be pressured?

I know that it's not 1966, or 1976, or 1984, or 1991, or 1998, or 2001, or even 2014. And I know that sometimes as a coach you've got to deal with the hand you've been dealt (or the one you've dealt yourself).

But there is still room for mythology, and an acknowledgement of the club's history: that this club was built upon entertainment, and that a desire to score goals is in the club's DNA. It is an indispensable part of what this club represents to its supporters.

What happened to the South team that, just a couple of months ago, pressed the Knights, and Gully, and Bentleigh, and looked like a million (NPL equivalent) bucks?

If the coach and anyone else with a say about how things are done on the field doesn't want to do things the South Melbourne Hellas way, there are plenty of other clubs they can go to where they can be timid.

Next game

This Saturday night away to Dandenong Thunder.

FFA Cup draw news

Just when you thought things couldn't get worse, for the next round of the FFA Cup we've been drawn as the away team against the winner of tonight's Oakleigh vs Green Gully match. The game is due to be played next Tuesday or Wednesday. The way we're going, they only advantage we're likely to have against either opponent is that they'll have played a rather more congested schedule than us, especially Oakleigh. 

Things could not really have gone much worse in this draw. I mean, we could've got Avondale, but this ain't much better. It does kind of feel like all roads will lead to a Chris Taylor (and Foschini, and Matthews, and Holmes) vs South clash for the national stage, as some kind of massive let's see who was right after all these years.

What I wouldn't have done for another match up against Monbulk; but one has to admit, we've at times had a blessed run in this competition. While we've done quite poorly in FFA Cup qualifier fixtures against NPL teams (two wins, four losses), we'd never lost against a lower league opponent (something like fourteen wins) even though we struggled in more than a few of those games.

And notwithstanding how overpowered Dandy City were for an NPL2 side in 2017, in that year we didn't face a single foe from our own division in qualifying. So if this is the universe righting itself after a number of years, than I suppose we can't complain too much about finally getting a difficult run to the FFA Cup national stage. And who knows, if we actually do manage to make it through to the FFA Cup nationals (and the Dockerty Cup semis), we'll have really earned it this time.

Women's chat

I watched the first half of this game against Box Hill United in the social club, and the second half outside in the grandstand. After smashing Bayside last week, and getting off to a very fast start here, I was expecting another avalanche of goals. It did not happen that way, and that can be put down to some untidy finishing, but also to Box Hill's tenacity throughout the game, never throwing in the towel. But the South women did get the win, and they remain on top of the table.

Merch chat

How good did those retro bomber jackets look in the pro shop? Now if only they made them in adult sizes.

Food chat

Had the salt and pepper calamari, with salad. Calamari was a bit too much salt, and not enough pepper, but otherwise it is a significant improvement over the chicken burger.

Final thought

Just behind Row H, someone made a comment so obvious and insightful, that it'll be carved into Esteban Quintas' coaching tombstone: "he tried to win games 0-0".