Finals can't get here quickly enough - Altona Magic 1 South Melbourne 4

Thank goodness there's a week's break, and that we get another one in a few weeks, too.

Another week, and another result where one need not be fussed with how any of it looked. The home and away season trundles on towards its conclusion, and we have secured a top two spot with two and/or three games to spare. We're even a chance for top spot, if that matters to you. It doesn't really matter that much to me, because finals. But I suppose some people have more pride than that.

The first half, especially the first 25-30 minutes, was awful by us. It wasn't great letting a youngish but still talented side boss us around to the point that their mouthy substitutes were having a grand old time taking the piss while they were warming up in front of Altona Magic Harismidis (or Harismovska, as the case may be). 

Coulda/shoulda been 3-0 down, but we weren't thanks to, once again, profligate opposition finishing and the heroics of Javi Diaz Lopez. This time he even added a penalty save into the bailing us out equation. After that, we gradually worked our way into the game, though my goodness it was ugly to watch. Just pure constipated grind.

One mad minute in the second half, and it was as good as ours. Ajak Riak scored his goal while horizontal, and then right after that a turnover in midfield and we were home. The other two goals were unnecessary, but nice to have nevertheless. Completely different team after the break, like someone unclogged an intestinal blockage, and things just worked again, as they should.

Other than that, not much to say, except that I should've worn a different pair of shoes (it got a bit dewy); that the Magic canteen has ditched the fancy menu in favour of reliable (and affordable) standard fare; and that the refinery next door being nowadays merely a storage facility means that the old vibe of a Paisley Park night game is not what it was. 

But then again, nothing is what it was.

Next game
The senior men have the week off. Our next game is away to Avondale on Saturday the 12th. At the moment, the fixture lists the match as being played at the Reggio Calabria Club. Seeing as how this is a Women's World Cup training venue though, it'd be wise to keep an ear out for any sudden changes.

Is there a curtain raiser?
Yes, assuming that the senior match is played as currently fixtured. However, the under 21s are listed as kicking off at 12:15, so not exactly worth the effort of getting to the game early

Around the grounds
It takes all kinds
Yes, I went to the Matildas vs Canada match. Observed a displeasing trend of teams at this tournament struggling to break down teams that had set up ultra-defensively. Had to deal with more nonsense VAR. Got seated next to a woman who knew all the ins and outs of the Matildas (with very strong opinions on the coach and the merits of certain players), while I of course was there as a much more casual spectator. Meanwhile, said superfan apparently lived right behind Monterey Reserve, but knew diddly squat about the Frankston Pines soccer club. A chance then to educate, and bore. Pointless trying to gatekeep the diverse kinds of enjoyment of the game at such a micro level.

A goal would have been nice
Brazil vs Jamaica, my fourth game, and another match where a stacked defence outlasted a blunt attack. It was so much of a stalemate, that VAR didn't even make an appearance. Two more games left for me to attend. 

Final thought
My memory has turned to mush. Couldn't remember the names of Jamie Reed, Luke Hopper, or Jai Ingham last week.

No stress whatsoever - Port Melbourne 0 South Melbourne 4

Waited like a chump for the 234 at the usual stop at Banana Alley, for buses that would never arrive; at least not until after 7pm, apparently. I figured this out  eventually with a a fellow South fan by the name of Sam, after what should have been two scheduled buses failed to appear. A bit more signage would have helped. Maybe not having to exit the app to get to the website. Maybe a lot of things.

Walked down to the next best available stop for said bus - five minutes walk down the road - hoping that some bus would turn up in time. That wasn't happening. Started thinking might be worth turning around and going home. Contemplated a cab, but thought better of it. Tried calling a mate who lived nearby to watch it at their place, but no answer. Bus eventually shows up, gets stuck in traffic around the back end of the casino, all very predictable.

Got to the ground with about ten minutes having elapsed, but no score. Who knows if anything major or interesting had happened before I got there. but within minutes it was 2-0 to us, as utterly shithouse set-piece defending from the home side gave us a very solid foundation. After that, it all becomes a bit of a blur. We scored a couple more goals, gossiped a bit about the state leagues, about work, enjoyed some banter with the Port goalkeeper who was having one of those days, and added three points to the tally.

Insofar as I paid any attention to the game, it was to observe that while he's copped a lot of not completely undeserved stick over the past few seasons (including from your correspondent), Marcus Schroen is having a pretty good year. Playing a different role to what we're used to seeing from him, more than a few times this year he's been the one to win the ball or create the turnover which leads to a goal, which was never previously a strong part of his game. 

So, that's nice I suppose. Brad Norton up to 295 matches by count. Oakleigh lost to Altona Magic last week, and drew with Avondale last night, which helps us get one step closer to a top two spot. One more win will do it.

Next game
Altona Magic away on Saturday night.

Is there a curtain raiser this week?
Yes! The under 21s match takes place before the senior fixture.

National Second Division guff
So Melbourne Knights are taking their ball and going home. Apparently Football Australia is being intransigent with its demands. The NSD is on the verge of collapse before a ball has been kicked. For their part, FA put out something very vague about intending to do things next year as planned, kinda. The worst part of this, apart from having to re-join the anti-NSD faction (because it was never going to work, and you're kidding yourself if you ever thought otherwise), is having to emotionally recommit to NPL Victoria. More of the same! And not even Preston coming up to add some media vulture interest. 

Around the grounds
Slightly perverse
Weren't you supposed to be at work, or school? OK, if you are a northern hemispherean, or a retiree, or otherwise on holidays, I get it. But what was everyone else doing at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium on a 12:30pm on a Friday? Sure, I was also there, and I do have a job of sorts which I don't get paid for if I decide not to turn up for whatever reason. It's like when I first moved to Sunshine eight years ago (and even now, really), and I'm at the main shops on Hampshire Road on a weekday, and there's a full car park and people everywhere, and it's the same question - don't you people have somewhere else to be? Anyway, Canada vs Nigeria was a strange contest, not so much for what happened on the field, but what happened off it. It's not that Australians are averse to supporting the underdog, but their wilful support of the vintage Green Gully VPL tackling (no colour pun intended) Nigerians was wild. Poor nice little Canada. You win one Olympic gold medal, and everyone turns against you so they can support the heel team. Good game, though, thorough entertainment during that 65 odd minutes Nigeria weren't stacking everyone behind the ball, reminiscent of a certain team which doesn't wear green.

The world got itself in a big damn hurry
Finished work on Monday about three o'clock. Too early for the game, but too late to go home and come back into town. So I walked slowly down William Street to eventually have a quiet meal somewhere, and figure out how to kill two and a bit hours afterwards. Ended up instead helping some guy who'd just finished a six-year prison stint find the nearest branch of the Commonwealth Bank. No, it's not what you think. Probably. Chatting with him, of course he notices the things that have changed about the city and the world as a whole in the time he'd been locked up, things that seemed normal to those of us on the outside. Well, I got him to where he needed to get to, and then I got called back to work, which ended up going all the way to six o'clock. Damn judge. Managed to make it from Flagstaff to my seat at the stadium with five minutes to spare. Germany vs Morocco. Well, Morocco to their credit didn't try to sit back, and looked good in patches and moments, but never quite good enough. Thus there were lots of goals, and so many VAR moments. And this is the thing: somewhat like our ex-con friend, I get disoriented whenever I dip into a tournament every few years after a diet made up exclusively of non-VAR leagues. So now it seems refs and assistants are not even calling blatantly obvious fouls and especially offsides, because there's a machine somewhere which will let them know. 

But here's the thing - most of the crowd doesn't seem to care. So me, in my bad position and with my even more decrepit eyesight, I can still tell (or feel that I can tell) that a goal is not going to stand several seconds in advance. So what looks to me like a situation that should be called offside instantly, the sequence of play instead continues, a goal is scored, the crowd goes wild, and I just wait in my seat. I can't get excited, or upset, or anxious, or even interested, because my instincts for what a game should look like and how it should be officiated are stuck in the past. I've got tickets to four more games, and it just doesn't feel right. The way we - or rather, they - watch the game has completely changed. They've turned it into rugby league.

Final thought
Who knows how many actually pay to watch a game in NPL Victoria these days, but there is this: Port Melbourne issue numbered tickets specific to individual matches. They also break them down by adult and concession categories; no cheapo stubs for them. Last year, rocking up early to the equivalent fixture, and having forgotten my media pass, I was concession ticket no. 90. This year, arriving ten minutes late, and no longer bothering to apply for a media pass because clearly I am less than half-arsing this thing these days, I was adult ticket no. 30. Makes you think.

Whatever - Bentleigh Greens 0 South Melbourne 2

The team having secured a home final of some sort several weeks ago now, and then seemingly having put the cue in the rack until such time as the finals series begins, it befits your correspondent to also not give too much of a toss either. With five games left, as long as no-one does something wildly stupid getting themselves an inconvenient suspension, and as long as none of our opponents decide leg-breaking time is just around the corner, I'm content to not get too worked up about anything that happens between now and week 1 (or potentially week 2) of the finals.

Nothing that I saw on the live stream at a mate's place last Saturday gave me any reason to think we were likely to re-find our one patch of annoyingly watchable good form from midway through the season any time soon. Even Jake Marshall's wonderful goal was only possible because of two horrible attempts to get it into the box in first place; first, the corner which barely reached shoulder height of the first defender inside the box, then Jack Painter-Andrews' wayward ball off the side of his boot which just so happened to land on the chest of Big Jake, who channelled his inner Big Luke for 1-0.

The starting line-up was weird again - Ajak Riak on the bench? - but whatever. I'll grant that the team showed more pressing intent, and that it didn't look quite as poor as it did against the same team that made it look second rate back in our first meeting in 2023; but that's also down to Bentleigh also not being quite as dynamic on Saturday as they were back then. Still, the Greens had enough chances to scrounge a point at least. Quite how they stuffed up some of those chances has got me beat. I don't even really feel like looking back on the final stats to find out how many shots we had on goal.

Time to pivot

So now that the rest of the home and away season doesn't mean much to me anymore, we still have to find something to care about until the finals start. Turns out the perfect thing has been sitting under our noses the entire season. Brad Norton, who started the season on 280 competitive fixtures for this sometimes great club, is now up to 294. So the maths is pretty clear. Brad needs six games to get to 300. There are a minimum of six matches left for us this season, being five regular season, and one finals match. Brad has to play in every game to reach the mark, because we assume he wont' be back next year. (I wonder how the testimonial plans are coming along...)

Our record keeping being sketchy as fuck, reliably I can only come up with two players who have definitely reached the 300 mark for us, they being Trimmers and Steve Blair. Horsey may have got there, but some of the data from cup matches early in his time with us is not quite complete, so for now he's nominally stranded on 296.

So that's what's going to keep me occupied South-wise over the next few weeks.

Next game
Port Melbourne away on Saturday evening. Another chance to see if the school camp the Port Melbourne Plebs went on a few years back in 2018 has finally finished.

Is there a curtain raiser this week?

No. The under 21s match is scheduled for after the senior match.

Eight days a week
So not too far back, looking ahead to the rescheduled Heidelberg game set for a Wednesday, I wondered if we'd ever actually had a season where we'd played on every day of week. My instinct said that surely we hadn't, but a spare Sunday afternoon waiting for pirated sumo highlights to be uploaded afforded me the chance to go over the files and demonstrate that instinct sucks. 

I found five seasons where we'd played on each day of the week, including two within the last decade. Well, they do say that if you remember the Chris Taylor years, then you weren't really there. 

There were also several seasons with games on five days of the week, and a few with six. Usually the days not played on were Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are a certain set of conditions you need for this phenomenon to occur. You need lots of games, so a cup tournament or two helps. You also usually need to go on deep runs in those cups. Postponed and rescheduled matches are also good to have. You especially need floodlights; no floodlights means less chance for midweek games. And the big one you might not think of, public holidays. Anzac Day, Boxing Day, New Year's or Australia Day falling midweek can help you get across the line.

For the record, the five seasons are 1989, 1992/93, 1996/97, 2016, and 2017. Soon to be joined by 2023.

Final thought
Success! Random security-guy at a job-site I was at this week recognised that it was a South beanie, not a North one. Turns out he's an up and coming ref, relatively new to the local scene. Trying to explain even just the nonsense that happened last year with the grand final venue means recalling a lot of niche cultural detritus that makes one question one's life choices.

Looking ahead - South Melbourne 2 Hume City 2

Apologies for the very late and very short thing.

In just one week we went from arguing with volunteer parking attendants, to being able to park anywhere, and kids with homemade dirt bikes blowing dust into the air. The souv was good, and that's about as good as the two-week Yarraville stint was. It wasn't Yarraville's fault, mind - we've just gone back to being garbage, and borderline unwatchable. Borderline, because there are still people watching the games. More fool them. 

After taking an early lead thanks to confusion in the Hume defence more than anything we did, it was back to getting absolutely swarmed. They say why would you stand behind the goal that we're attacking, a pretty ordinary view. Well, that way you're a least further away from whatever's going on at the other end. Who can understand the lineup decisions, the sub decisions, who is liked, and who isn't. 

Anyway, we got a point. Just trudging along to the finals. Get two (or more likely now, three) stupid wins then, and no-one will care about whatever preceded it.

Next game
Bentleigh away on Saturday afternoon. My attendance at this game is unlikely, for reasons other than my disgust at recent performances.

Upload news!
Super thanks to Nick Guoth on the Australian Football Memorabilia Facebook page, who uploaded the pages of the program from the 1965 Australia Cup semi-final first leg match between South Melbourne Hellas and APIA. I have collated those pages into a PDF, and made that document available here.

Women out of the cup
Well, look. I can't say that our senior women didn't give it a good shake. Dominated the first half, had pretty much all the good chances - how many point blank chances can you have saved? - but in the end, it was a familiar story; Calder, in the cup, the end. A real shame, because in that first half, this team played as well as I've seen them play for a while now. 

Around the grounds
Spirit of the game
The spirit of the game is threatening the opposition coach that you're going to come across and break his neck. The spirit of the game is both coaches relentlessly abusing and undermining the officials. The spirit of the game is players arguing with spectators behind the fence. The spirit of the game is, apparently, Harry Noon getting paid who knows what to run around the fifth tier of Victorian soccer (north-west section), bang into people like an old school footy sniper, and barely touch the ball. Depressing, really.

Final thought
Thank you to JJ for noticing an error in my fixture list page.

Well, it's probably time to give up on the season - South Melbourne 0 Oakleigh Cannons 2

Boy, did this whole outing just suck from almost start to finish. Since I do not live that far away from McIvor Reserve, I didn't think it would be necessary to get to the ground super early (and it's not like there was a reserves game before the seniors), and public transport to that venue being what it is (shithouse), it seemed like a no-brainer to just drive. That was a great idea until your correspondent was obliged by a volunteer car park attendant to park in an exact spot, all while I somehow got into an argument with said attendant about my very poor parking abilities (thank you, bung left retina), and I remembered why I stopped taking driving lessons with my old man back in the day. The upshot of being in that particular spot was that at least one regular South of the Border reader was able to pick out my car from the mass of steel, thanks to the classiness of the stickers on the rear windscreen. 

The trauma of the car park having been overcome soon enough, it was time to wander in and wonder when we would be better off going next door to watch the hockey, a sport I otherwise don't think much of. Turns out, not very long. If you were being kind, you'd say we just had an off day coming off the faux-bye, and that one bad outing (during the regular season) against an accomplished opponent doesn't undo all the good things we've done in 2023. If you were being less kind, you'd basically write off the rest of the home and away season, and just pray for two (or if necessary, three) games in a row of complete arse to get state title no. 11, before we can finally bail on this decrepit league.

The first half was so, so bad. Like, "half a season ago, before we briefly emerged from our turtle shells bad". There was no pressure on the Oakleigh defenders when they were in possession. Like, zero, nada, zilch. Pat Langlois having to be told by a teammate to at least jog towards the Oakleigh left-back who had the ball. Instead, time and again, Oakleigh were allowed easy passes out of defence, under no duress. A little bit of carrying the ball up the field, a couple of passes, and Oakleigh's very good forward line was provided with ample opportunity to do its worst; luckily for us, they had an off day in front of goal.

You may think Chris Taylor is a great coach at this level, or merely a middling one who happens to know how to use a big budget. On Sunday, it didn't matter, because we forfeited all the initiative to such a degree it wouldn't have mattered who was coaching Oakleigh. If there is one thing I hate about the way our squad plays when it's at its worst, it is exactly that - letting the opposition dictate the nature of the contest by default. Oakleigh want the ball. They want to keep it, recycle it, move it around. We are a counter-attacking team, and that's fine - but without pressing up the field, without actively trying to win the ball back as opposed to just waiting for opposition mistakes, we are not going to have much luck against opponents who aren't borderline incompetent.

That win of ours against Avondale earlier in the season? It was good not because Avondale had a bad day, but because they actually played pretty well. They played well and still lost, not because of dumb luck favouring us, but because we went out there with a positive plan, and didn't just wait for them to gift us goals. But on Sunday, Max Mikkola was all alone on his left wing, looking a lot like Gerrie Sylaidos all alone on his left wing, no forwards to pass to, and no midfield to play with. Ajak Riak, having to go all the way back to midfield to get any taste of the ball. Fifteen shots on target to one by the end, because for some reason on a small ground we decided to have almost all of our ball and personnel in our defensive third.

That we came out in the second half trying to get back in the game with fireworks and big lineup changes reeked of desperation, not method. Of the two new acquisitions, Yagoub Mustafa looked much better than Luka Ninkovic, but neither player was going to be the solution to the underlying problem of philosophy; we came out hoping not to lose, they came out hoping to win. The nature of the performance carries the possibility of having done serious damage to the belief of the playing squad. I don't know what skipper Brad Norton said to the side after he held them back on the field following the final whistle - it probably doesn't even really matter - but that he felt the need to do that should be of concern on its own. Second on the ladder with a game in hand, one bad day at the office shouldn't need more than a quick "well, that sucked, let's shrug it off and move on".

Next match
On Sunday at McIvor Reserve against Hume City. This will be our last "home" match of the home and away season.

Is there a curtain raiser?
No. Once more, the under 21s will be playing their match at 6:30PM, a good hour and a half following the conclusion of the senior match.

Around the grounds
24 hours earlier, three and a bit kilometres west
Finding Duane Reserve in Brooklyn - a ground I'd never been to before - was very much like finding a secret passage in a video game. You inadvertently turn left instead of going straight, follow some winding path which the developers made longer just for the sake of added mystery, and all of a sudden there you are, in a little suburban soccer oasis. Like any good oasis, there was a fresh water supply - in this case, a leaky pipe which made one side of the field muddier than you'd like, and which forced the linos to run along the left-forward wing instead of their usual place on the right. Altona North an old off-shoot of Altona City, formed by some Maltese blokes who couldn't get a game at the latter. Most of their history has been undistinguished, strictly lower league and even more obscure; now they find themselves in a league playing against teams with brief Victorian Premier League tenures, including today's opponent, Altona East, who once went within a game of a VPL grand final. As for the game, the first hour was a grind, but East got on top in the last portion of the game, and ground out a deserved 1-0 win, in glorious Saturday afternoon Melbourne winter light, as I discussed the demographic reasons for the decline of Australia's ethnic clubs from the 1960s to today. Then I did it the next day, again.

Food for thought
After the match I bought a souv. I had to wait a little bit, it cost $15, but it was more than adequate. Not award winning, but more than good enough. It was the kind of experience that makes you wonder about the possibilities about a certain other venue's comparative food offerings.

Final thought
Had a wonderful discussion post-game the other day about music, football, and one particular football book. I hadn't gone back and read this rambling review for some time. I think the book's "end of history" vibe is going to get a challenge soon. The future lasts a long time, and such.

Half-arsed - South Melbourne 4 St Albans 0

There's not enough data to make it a thoroughly resilient trend, but let's go with it anyway. When we play St Albans during one of their often fleeting Victorian top tier stints, it usually goes like this: the first game, usually away, usually early in the season, is a bit of a grind, but we get the job done. They're still enthusiastic, have earned a few points, and maybe put in enough credible performances that people think they won't suck as much as they're prone to doing. Then we turn up, get our win, and it starts going south for them (no pun intended). By the time they rock up to Lakeside for the return fixture, they're disheartened, weakened by defections, and either in or just above the relegation zone. Then it all comes down to whether we give enough of a toss to go full on and completely humiliate them.

Well, humiliation it was for the first half on Tuesday. Performance wise, it was nothing remarkable. It wasn't built around super build up play, neat passing, flashes of individual brilliance. It was just a case of a team with some talent grinding an opponent with a talent deficit into the dirt. There wasn't much pretty about it. The penalty shot for the opening goal was struck a solid arm trying to save it, and still went in. Two of the goals were bundled over the goal line after scrambles in the six-yard box. Only Jake Painter-Andrew's shot into the roof of the net was worthy of highlight reels, though I suppose there's also people who get a kick out of unicorn goals like Lirim Elmazi scoring from a short corner.

So 4-0 up the break, and even the ground announcer makes the call that South has won the game 4-0. Too bad there was a whole second half still to play, as seems to be the custom nowadays. And what a pointless second half it was, as we failed to add to the scoreboard. Still, good to get some run into a few fringe players, including youth team player Cooper Halfpenny, and wing recruit Kosta Emmanuel, who has spent most of the year injured. But overall, the whole vibe, especially in the second 45, was of a glorified pre-season friendly.

Finals secured for 2023
The win against St Albans means that the senior men have managed to secure a finals berth with eight games to spare. The highest points tally that seventh placed Dandenong Thunder can achieve is 47 - which could only happen if they won every remaining game of theirs. Since we've already reached a tally of 49 points, all that's left to decide is where within the top six we'll finish.

Barring any changes due to external administrative cock-ups, we are also pretty close to securing a home final of some sort. Port Melbourne, the team currently in fifth place, would need six wins, a draw, and a calamitous collapse from us just to reach our current tally. 

As for securing a spot in the top two and the near negligible benefits that brings, it's a still little bit early to get into that. Better trying to do those sums after our next match.

Next game
Oakleigh on Sunday, July 2nd, at our latest home away from home, McIvor Reserve. 

For those who have not had the pleasure of visiting this venue, prepare to be underwhelmed. There should be ample parking for the expected crowds for this game, as well as the match the following week against Hume. Public transport options for this ground are inconvenient at the best of times, and will be worse considering the school holiday scheduled shutdowns of all train lines heading west from the city. Luckily this is one of those venues that's within my driving range.

There is some shelter, but very little seating. The social club/pavilion, where all the shelter is, faces east. If you want to stand on the opposite side of the ground, where the benches are, bring your sunnies and a hat, because you will be staring directly into the sun. Away from the pavilion, there is very little elevation. For those watching the games at home, well, here's hoping that someone bothers to hire a cherry picker, because otherwise you, too, will be watching the game from a sideline view, possibly directly into the sun, as was the case with the match that our senior women played there earlier this year.

As for the food... look, I'm willing to be surprised, but from my experience the souv at Yarraville is pretty ordinary.

Is there a curtain raiser?
No. But also yes.

So there's nothing before the senior men's match at 3:00PM, but the under 21s are playing after the seniors, kicking off at 6:30PM. Reminds of what Weird Al Yankovic noted when his band toured with the Monkees, "We didn't open for them; they closed for us."

As was rumoured
Danny Kim, the wrong player for the wrong club at the wrong time, has transferred to Green Gully.

South women through to semis of the cup
As messy as the league season has been in terms of trying to find any sort of consistency or clear front-runner, we also have the cup which, not quite as nuts. Three of the semi-finalists are fairly obvious. First placed Bulleen, third placed South, fifth placed Calder; but there's also mid-table Victorian Premier League side Casey Comets, and that's probably who you'd want to get drawn against in the next round if you were one of the other remaining teams. To get to this round, South had to overcome fellow NPLW side Preston, who after a promising start to the season, seemed to have slipped a bit. I watched this from the couch, and again, these South girls make hard work of winning. They pulled their finger out in the nick of time to get out of jail this time, like they did against FV Emerging in the league the game before this one, but it's frustrating to watch.

A better division 2, eventually coming for you
What does this even mean? So we got the news of the progression from the 32 odd expressions of interest getting cut down to 26 well over a month ago (bonus floodlight content in there for those who want to revisit it), and it's only now that the remaining bids actually getting the paperwork for making their bids? This is even shoddier than the organisation within Vic Uni's research department, which allowed me to skate through with extensions I probably shouldn't have gotten.

Anyway, final bids are due sometime in early August, and successful bids - and whatever the format will be that we'll be proceeding with - will be announced around Octoberish, maybe. And then the whole thing will be starting in March 2024, if you believe that. 

Around the grounds
For old time's sake
Last Saturday, for probably the first time since the chaos unleashed by the pandemic, I managed to get to a non-South match. I blame the pandemic a little bit for this, but I also blame changing home responsibilities, and I especially blame that season where South and seemingly most other NPL teams changed their schedules to be playing mostly on Saturdays. But also, even I managed to get suckered into streaming games instead of attending them. Well, now that South's back to not playing games on Saturdays, and every other planet aligned, I managed to stroll down to Ralph Reserve for Western Suburbs vs Altona East, a near-enough to top of the table clash. Remembering old days, an with only large notes in my wallet, I had my mum break a fifty for me. Turned out there was no gate charge. Turns out also that Suburbs are accepting card payments in the canteen. The souv was OK; not great, not awful. Perfectly acceptable, really. Served quickly, too. Seemed like an easy enough process, which one specific club could possibly learn from. Quite a large crowd, actually, maybe about 200 people, about two or even three times what I expected, and what I'd experienced before at this ground and between these two teams. Crowd included the brother of an ex-South and current Altona East player, who seemed somewhat incredulous that I hadn't realised he'd been in Greece the past four years. My answer could only be, how am I supposed to keep track of everyone that's stopped attending South games over the past 18 years? Anyway, the wind made the game itself a grind to watch. Playing with its benefit in the first half, Suburbs went into the break 2-0 up, scored a goal against the wind to make it 3-0, and then coasted home to win 3-1.

Final thought
Everyone's looking a bit jaundiced, but apparently that's just a trick of lights.

Turn on the bright lights - South Melbourne 3 Dandenong Thunder 2

Let us begin by noting the following, without any sense of hyperbole: since the renovation of Lakeside Stadium into a combined soccer and athletics venue, and the transfer of management of the venue out of our control and into that of the government, we have suffered many indignities at the hands of the State Sport Centres Trust, the current managers of the venue.

This encompasses everything from the extremely petty (an attempted ban on the use of the trumpet), to the tone deaf (trying to clamp down on newspaper confetti thrown by a supporter with a mental disability), to the childishly fascistic (surveillance camera placed right in front of Clarendon Corner), to the bureaucratically incompetent (the whole Western United saga), and now this - firstly not knowing how to turn the light towers on from their little operations booth, and then when finding out that each tower could be started manually, showing absolutely no urgency in trying to get that done.

Something was clearly wrong when towards the back end of the first half, as the sun began to set and heavy cloud rolled through, the field of play began to get very dark, and there was no sign of the lights being turned on. One could speculate that there was a local electrical outage - it's happened before - but since the scoreboard was working, and the stadium PA was working, and the lights next door in the VIS pool were working, something was wrong with either the towers, or the button which makes the towers light up.

(There's a hilarious Brian Regan bit on Dr Katz about flipping a switch, which my brothers and I still quote to this day, because we are sad people obsessed with obscure even in its own time 1990s television.)

As the staff emerged from their bunker in the grandstand, they merely strolled to each light tower, to the point where it took so long to turn on the lights, that the game was called off. Unfortunately the reason announced over the PA system was that the lights were not bright enough to continue, which was obviously absurd; the lights, even before they had properly warmed up, were already brighter than the lighting currently available at several NPL Victoria venues. So South of the Border will infer that the delay after halftime had dragged on too long, and not that it was not bright enough.

To be honest, I'm not even sure why they also didn't turn on the lights in the grandstand. It was all very amateurish, which made our club look amateurish. While we're good enough at making ourselves look like colossal idiots without any outside help, it did suck that what's left of our reputation got dragged through the social media mud because of the incompetence of the Trust and its employees, even if it was worth it (to a certain degree, because I don't have to moderate the club's social media pages) to watch the outrage from the (mostly) overseas gambling community.

To which I say: fuck you. My club is irrelevant except for your interest in it? Then please just piss off and gamble on some other pissant team more worth your time. 

There was also sooking from the Dandy Thunder fans once the decision had been made to resume the game on Tuesday night, from the point at which it had been abandoned. "It should have been restarted", "Corrupt Greeks!", etc. This from the club that gained infamy for the lights going out at their ground once they fell behind in important matches.

Officially, there are a wide range of regulatory options for how to resume, restart, or simply declare a match over in the case of an abandonment. Clearly many of the people commenting on this issue had no idea about that, as evidence not only by their referring to outdated rules, but also their inability to agree on what the minimum amount of time played required for a result to stand. To be fair, the fact that all these regulatory options are at the sole and final discretion of Football Victoria - an organisation renowned for the high degree of esteem it is held in by its constituents - means that consistency in such matters may not actually exist, which can be frustrating. 

However, if ever you were going to resume a game from a specific point in time, surely halftime in a game where no subs had been made seems like exactly the best time to do so? Schedule wise, I'd have preferred the next day - preferably finishing in time so I could then head to the footy - but I can understand the issue of Monday being too short notice. I was also unconvinced by some of our fans worrying about a short turnaround from the Tuesday to the (since postponed) Friday night game against the Bergers. The previous week the Bergers had to back up on a three day break after playing 120 minutes of cup football - surely us playing 45 minutes on a Tuesday shouldn't have been that much of a big deal?

It was a real pity that the game got called off when it did, because it was actually quite entertaining. We were looking a bit suspect from Thunder players running at out defence, but I still thought we'd had the better of it. Ali Sulemani was having his best game in a South shirt by some margin, though his great finish from out wide will have a permanent question mark over whether it was offside - permanent, because the cameraperson filming the game fell asleep for just long enough to miss the build up play before Sulemani received the ball. 

Anyway, as nice as that goal was, I liked Marcus Schroen's more, because it was bread and butter stuff. A turnover won high up the field in a very good position, a shot parried back into play, and someone being johnny-on-the-spot to tuck it away. Then we got complacent, conceded a goal before the break, and then had to wait until Tuesday to finish the whole thing off.

Competing family commitments meant that I couldn't attend the Tuesday resumption, but your correspondent could still manage to watch the game through the magic of internet streaming. Which sucks from the point of view of digital latency issues that one couldn't share the experience on social media, but what else we can do? The discombobulation of the resumption soon faded, as the commentators tried to figure out who'd been subbed out during the extended break, and then we went 3-1 up, and all looked good as we then began to try an shut up shop, preserve energy, and coast to victory.

Well, Morgan Evans decided to let out his inner 2022 Ben Djiba and lunge in for a two-footed tackle, and got his marching orders. OK, ten men, ten minutes, two up, should be fine. Then Marcus Schroen, who got a yellow card in the push and shove nonsense after Evans' lunge, got sent off for petty time wasting nonsense a few minutes later, and then it was 3-1 up with nine men, with five minutes or regulation and whatever the ref decided to chuck on at the end, which just so happened to be five minutes more. 

Aside from both reds being entirely avoidable, and the issues it would cause in future matches (Evans has been suspended for three matches), it did bring unnecessary pressure to the rest of the team, which conceded a goal, and then had to hang on for dear life for the win. But they hung on, and that was that, eventually. One of three Ajak Riak-less fixtures survived, and then they end up postponing one of those three anyway. 

Next game
St Albans at home on Tuesday night. This will be our last home game at Lakeside before the finals, as the Women's World Cup will be commandeering the stadium for some time after that.

Is there a curtain raiser?
No.

When three halves don't make a whole
Watched the senior women take on FV Emerging. Half of that was watched on public transport, which took its sweet time getting me to Lakeside, and the other half in the ground proper. Got the win, in part thanks to a long-throw, but crikey it's a frustrating team to watch. 

The Continuing International Adventures of Ajak Riak
During the week South Sudan copped a 96th minute goal to lose 3-2 to Gambia. They are now out of the running for African Cup of Nations qualifying, with one game left to play in September I think, hopefully after the conclusion of our season. Riak played about an hour, and is credited with an assist. South Sudan have a friendly with Egypt coming up this week, so I don't think we'll be seeing him against St Albans.

New signing alert
The club has signed striker Luka Ninkovic from Bentleigh Greens in the mid-season transfer window. Stats and reputation don't suggest that he's some kind of world beater at this level, but he looks like a capable enough depth player option; at the very least, it should mean that we're done with chucking Andy Brennan or Marcus Schroen up front when Ajak Riak isn't available. Ninkovic doesn't seem to have got much of a go at Bentleigh this season, and during his time at Heidelberg, he seemed to come off the bench a lot, or start and then get taken off.

The food
The range, pricing, and quality of the food available in our social club is not to everyone's liking. That's fair, and I don't judge anyone for not partaking. But does it also have to be served that slowly, too? Sunday was astonishingly bad on the speed of service front. You order your food, and then you stand there like a mug for ten minutes while you wait for it to be prepared. While you're waiting, you're joined by other people waiting. You also see the preparation for the post-match meal for the participants in the curtain raiser, and you wonder why you can't have food that approximates that? I get that the pasta and salads, which require plates and cutlery, might be a no-go for the plebs, but some of those grilled or roasted marinaded chicken strips looked OK. Stick that in a roll with some salad, I'll pay for that. I don't know. I've lost pretty much all hope that the social club kitchen will ever run properly, regardless of who they bring in to operate it.

Final thought
Noticed a decline in the quality of my vision the past week and a bit, about three months after updating my prescription. Went to the optometrist, whose admittedly knowledgeable diagnosis was that I'm getting older.

Right place, right time - Melbourne Knights 1 South Melbourne 2

Another week, another thoroughly enjoyable contest, provided you watched it through the filter of the netting behind the goals. Well, that's a little harsh. It was actually a pretty good game to watch, better for us having won it, but let us not forget that for a good chunk of the first half, we were on the back foot, and probably should have been behind. 

But we weren't. And then Jack Painter-Andrews, waiting on the edge of the 18 yard box and taking advantage of a poor clearance from a not very good corner, hit it low and hard through the sea of legs for the opening goal. There is nothing better than being behind the goals, even with a big black net in the way, when a player takes one of those low shots from a half-clearance, and you can see the ball going n even before it's crossed the line, with the goalkeeper and his friends on the line helpless to do anything about it; and even better for it being right on half time.

Second half, copped the equaliser, but didn't stop coming and stepping up. And for all of Knights' commendable new found commitment to a short passing game, there was evidence that they are vulnerable when trying to play out of the back. It was evident against Oakleigh the week before, and when the moment presented itself last Friday, we managed to take it. The game of risk vs reward fell in our favour this time.

Leaving the game, I had two thoughts first how nice it was to watch a win in a meaningful league game between these two sides, a game of decent quality, with an ever improving stadium experience, and that we might well meet again in the finals, maybe even in the final; the other thought was how few people had watched the game. It wasn't a poor crowd, but it deserved more than it got. But that's where we are now.

Next game
Dandenong Thunder at home on Sunday.

Is there a curtain raiser?
Yes. Our senior women take on FV Emerging, kickoff at 1:30

Fixture news
Our round 19 fixture against St Albans, originally scheduled for Friday June 23rd, has now been brought forward to Tuesday June 20th. I guess the Women's World Cup must be really keen to get into the stadium.

Congratulations to Ange Postecoglou
What's left to be said that hasn't already been said? Ange's profile is so high now, that every man and his dog have had their say on his latest move. Just as importantly, for many years now Ange has been in the position of when he talks, people listen, and he has significant say on how the narrative around his career now gets played out. It's a long way from Panachaki and Whittlesea Zebras, and this blog being among the few English language places even taking a cursory interest in his years in the wilderness. That's not intended to sound like backslapping for this outlet, only remembering what it was like at the time. Now, even Ange's stint in Patra is being raked over for insights into what came after, as is his time at Zebras.

(both stories, through no fault of the respective writers, lacking input from the man himself)

That Whittlesea stint keeps getting brought up by a lot more people than were actually there, like that White Stripes gig in Melbourne that reputedly only had 13 people show up. I think of that second match at Lakeside between ourselves and the Zebras in 2009. There were many lows in that season for Zebras, but for Ange personally that one might have stung an little bit more, coning back to the scene of your then greatest accomplishments, and copping four (and should have been more) with one of said four being scored by a 37 year old who you were coaching a decade earlier.

But that puts it all a bit too simply, even neatly. I see some Spurs fans, as did their Celtic counterparts a couple of years ago, bring up Ange's background (not from European football) and age (now 57), and ask what's he done and why has it taken so long? And it's like, can you even comprehend the footballing distances and barriers - the mental, the psychological, of reputation - that any Australian coach has to overcome to get even close to being taken seriously in Europe? The fact that Ange even got close, considering those obstacles - and the prejudices of those who make decisions at that level - should be right up there with whatever other qualities he has as a manager.

I mean, at his first peak in 2000, coaching in the World Club Championships, the team he was in charge of was fobbed off (by people from the home of the "romance of the cup" no less) for containing tax advisors and petrol pump attendants. Never mind that the petrol pump attendant had a solid decade at a leading Greek club behind him. A decade later, he's coaching against ex-opponents, ex-teammates, and even players like the petrol pump attendant whom he coached, in no man's land. Now he's in the same league as Manchester United. My disinterest in anything above this mess we're in right now aside, I can at least admire the accomplishment of even getting close.

Vale Rale Rasic
Of the three men who have coached both South Melbourne and the Socceroos (Rasic, Arok, and Postecoglou), Rasic had by far the shortest South stint. Brought to South in late 1982, Rasic lasted just 13 matches of the 1983 NSL season, with a muddling record of four wins, three draws, and six losses. Others who were there at the time can perhaps shed some light on what went wrong, because it seems like the pieces were there for the side to finally win a league title; indeed, the team went on to finish in fourth place, just a game and a half behind champions St George. Unfortunately, Rasic's biography doesn't give away much on that period of his career, preferring to let sleeping dogs lie. The club would have to wait one more year to finally break its national league drought under Rasic's replacement Len McKendy, while Rale would win the 1987 NSL title with a dominant APIA team.

Second to last thought
I haven't paid as much attention to the senior women's team as I should, but if anyone can make sense of this what's going in this NPLW Victoria season as a whole, you're a better person than I am. Seems to be a case of get to the finals however you can, hope you have enough of your good players left, and then just pull a name out of a hat to decide a champion. Chaos league.

Final thought
The Futbol24 app is now for the tip.

Role reversal - South Melbourne 1 Green Gully 0

After coming through the dross months, and experiencing the brief Southelona sojourn after that, we're halfway back to grumbling again. OK, so it wasn't the most polished performance, but it was no fluke. Gully have their method, we have ours, and it just so happens that we're now at opposite sides of the beautiful/practical dichotomy that our two clubs occupied for a good chunk of the Victorian Premier League era. What a time to be alive that was. Sometimes playing well, sometimes not, but almost always getting bullied by a more ruthless opponent. No one watched Gully games for style, but they got the job done. Of course they still had talent, but their guiding principle was winning. 

That kind of thing - utterly remorseless practical football - doesn't always fly well at South. I mean just look at some of the (very) minority grumbling about the Chris Taylor era, and of course, much of the grief directed (including by this reporter) at Esteban Quintas' teams. Thankfully we've moved on (fingers crossed) from the worst excesses of Quintas' defensive methods, and it's not just Javier Diaz Lopez making 15 million saves (give or take) to keep us in the contest. He had to make some interventions last week, and that was fine. He was a difference, but he wasn't the only difference. The weather was a bit shit, we started slowly, and our coach threw enough of a tantrum to be banished from the bench by the officials. And yet, we weren't second best, and we deserved our win. What else can you want? Yes, more goals, more action, more domination.

But entertainment? It's there in spades. The aforementioned tantrum, Gully's Nahuel Bonada apparently throwing a water bottle from the bench into the stand, some really quite beautifully times sliding tackles from both sides, and occasionally some action on goal, too. Oh, and Andy Brennan came on pretty damn early for an injured Alun Webb, and then got subbed off late because it was ridiculous that he was out there for as long as he was; that's not a complaint about technical output, more about the old gas tank. I agree with his comment from the week before, that running doggies sucks. 

Another three points, and another week hoping that Ajak Riak doesn't get abducted by aliens during the finals.

Next game
Away at Melbourne Knights tomorrow night, in possibly the most anticipated league game between the two sides for a decade. Well, it should be the most anticipated, but you know, no one gives a stuff anymore. 

Is there a curtain raiser?
No. 

Transfers
Apparently the transfer window is still some weeks away, owing to a change to align our local transfer calendar with with FIFA's transfer windows.  

Perfunctory report on the women's team (not a report on perfunctory women)
So, look. It's a chaotic league. We were 2-0 up against league leading Boroondara by the time I got to the ground, 3-0 up by the time I got up into the stand, and 3-2 up by the time I was leaving the media operations box at halftime. By the time I was just tucking into my (above passable) lamb "souvlaki" (it isn't a souvlaki, or even gyros, but whatever), we were at 3-3, and all I could assume was that soon enough we'd be down and out. And yet, we won with a late goal. Now the margin to top spot has been cut to two points, but who knows what the second half of the season will look like with all the A-League players coming in.

Final thought
After mentally preparing for rail replacement troubles, I got almost all the way to Lakeside before the no. 12 tram made us disembark at Park Street. Tram replacement! If I'd known that ahead of time, I would've brought a bag with me to go op shopping. Oh well, at least I had some company on the way back - now that's a rare occurrence these days.

The end is near - Moreland City 0 South Melbourne 2

Could that blog post have come in any later?

For the second week in a row, a bit of a grinding, rough around the edges, albeit professional performance against a bottom-end team. Got the job done, and now on to the next match and a probably much trickier run of fixtures.

Not sure how much else can be said of the match itself, except to say that it was proof that there's no future in this. Not in the blog (that's another story...), but in the league. It's cooked. It won't be saved by us being good, or Knights being good, or Knights and us being good at the same time. It won't be saved by playing on Friday nights or Sunday afternoons. It won't be saved by the Australia Cup. It won't even be saved by the possibility of Preston getting promoted with their resurgent fanbase. 

There have been bursts of enthusiasm post-NSL, but they all fizzle out, and each burst of enthusiasm fizzles out faster than the last. Let's look at the short history of this particular fixture for example. Back in February, on a Thursday night (!), a disappointing amount of our people, and a surprisingly good amount of their people, turned up for the opening game of the season. Last Saturday afternoon, in Moreland's traditional timeslot albeit not at their traditional home, there was a disappointing amount of our people, and seemingly even fewer of their's.

The vibe is vaguely late-era NSL (but with better access to televised matches), in that even the people who are still emotionally invested in this nonsense have at least half their attention on the the unknown potential of the NSD (which is definitely happening). We are all killing time, and the only thing one can look forward to is a South vs Knights grand final which after 18 years of this slop, would sure have taken it's time getting here. 

There's a fair bit of time to go before we get to that, so in the mean time, it's more appalling crowds, more food that's too expensive for what you actually receive - Moreland's chicken/pork skewer rolls (including skewers not removed from the roll) made our own offerings look passable. And while I applaud Moreland for putting out a match program, I've never seen a match program which did not include any squad lists whatsoever. Quite remarkable. I just wanted to know who number 21 for Moreland was, so we could personalise our suburban banter about why his teammates wouldn't pass it to him.

No, it's all gone to hell, and only our winning (and currently watchable) form has made it tolerable. That, and reminiscing about the protest outside CB Smith in 2007, or the "why, why, why" incident there in 2008, or when Alistair Bray gave away that goal and Billy Konstantinidis got sent off for whacking an opponent in the guts in the same game in 2019. 

Otherwise, it's all grimly hanging on for the NSD, and wondering about all sorts of things about that - like where the hell is Brunswick Juventus - currently playing senior matches out of CB Smith, along with three (Fawkner, Moreland City, Pascoe Vale) and half (occasional Brunswick City matches) other teams - going to play if they make it in. CB Smith is used a lot by a lot of teams, has a dodgy surface in part of because of that, has no media scaffolding, has a giant pole in the way of the grandstand, and the lights are appallingly weak.

I'd call it absurd, except yet we're apparently less than a year away from finding out an or the answer to the "what would the NSL look like if it still existed?" hypothetical. 

Next game

At home against Green Gully tomorrow (Sunday)

Is there a curtain raiser?
Yes, our senior women play against Boroondara, in a top of the table clash, kickoff at 1:30. 

Final thought
Oh man, rail replacement buses tomorrow and the end of our game clashing with the end of the Pies' game at Docklands. Pray for Paul.

Flag appreciation day - South Melbourne 2 North Geelong 1

This felt so much like a preseason game that I'm really not sure if anything of value can be said of it. The crowd was small, as you'd expect of a low profile game on Mother's Day. The crowd was also relaxed, maybe relatively more tense up until we actually opened up the scoring, and then nabbed the second, but otherwise, much chatter in our vicinity was taken up arrant nonsense, like how deeply weird Don Scott is, and the crowning highlight, the five minute or so delay in the second half while we waited for someone to replace a malfunctioning corner flag.

It really was that kind of day, one where you appreciate the comfortable wins, knowing that your team is good enough to go up another gear and/or sort itself it out quickly if it needs to.  It was good (again) that we did not backslide and go conservative, but coming off the three matches before it, it wasn't our best performance. That's bound to happen, it can't always be at the highest level, but the mentality remained correct. But still, it was messy. Credit to North Geelong for having a go, which is not meant to sound condescending, even though it surely does. They made it harder for us than I expected, and not just thanks to their goalkeeper, who made some excellent saves.

But as much as North Geelong took it up to us as best they could, and even created a couple of good chances, we also made it harder for ourselves with a bit of complacency, and a lot of substandard, and perhaps even showboaty finishing. Lots of guilty parties on that front, not really worth singling anyone out. The game should have been wrapped up much earlier; instead North Geelong got one back almost right on full time, which created a nervy 30 seconds or so. 

After the three points, the best part was being able to sub on a few different players, and get some minutes into the legs of a few guys usually on the bench, and give some of the starters a bit of a rest. If there's a time to do it, it's in games like this.

Next game
On the road again, at last, tomorrow afternoon against Moreland City. Please note that this game is at C.B. Smith Reserve, not Campbell Reserve.

Is there a curtain raiser?
Yes. The under 21s take the field at 1:00 PM.

Oof files
The annual police kickaround on Lakeside really seems to be slipping away in organisation. No opponent lined up by or for them this year, after several years of ex-Socceroos taking them on.

Final thought
It's in! / What a tremendous goal! / It's that man again! / etc

A Reason To Believe - South Melbourne 3 Avondale 0

I don't know who or what is ultimately responsible for the recent change in this team. I can spuriously speculate, and will happily do so privately, but for the sake of public consumption I am content to remain merely dumbfounded. But also a little bit amazed, and relieved, and also a bit annoyed. I did not see this coming. I am glad that it has arrived. I am upset it did not happen sooner.

I wondered, coming up against an undefeated team going at an absurd four goals a game, how could we not be tempted to crawl back into our shell even just a bit? But that's not what happened. For the most part, we continued with the approach that had seen us start smashing goals in the preceding two games and look like a contender, instead of a miserable, grinding, ridiculously lucky also-ran.

I was told that Avondale were missing the services of key central midfielder Kristian Trajceski (out with five yellows), and it kinda showed - so much of what they tried to do ended up being wide things - not that there's anything wrong with that. And they controlled chunks of the first half, in a way that was disconcerting; after we started off the first ten or so minutes looking the slightly more likely, Avondale took control over the next 10-15 minutes, and they seemed to be inching closer to the opener. They even started using the long throw (if this is anyone but but Max Mikkola, you're stealing our bit), and got closer to making it work than you would have liked them to. 

But then Riak won the penalty which Mikkola converted, and it was advantage South. And speaking of Trajceski's absence, it was his replacement (ex-South man) Gavin De Niese who coughed the ball up in a bad spot (and how good to see Marcus Schroen making important tackles in forward areas), and then forward/midfielder Manny Aguek (another ex-South man) giving away the penalty. Right players in right positions, vs wrong players in wrong positions.

Riak was excellent. I don't think anyone played a bad game for us, it was a pretty solid effort right across the park for us, but Ajak was the man. He won the penalty, forced the own goal, and then scored one of his own. More than anything, each of those goals showed the value in having a forward who could run at defenders with the ball at his feet. He was too strong for their fullbacks, and too quick for their centre-backs. NPL central defenders (the good ones at least) are great when you bomb the ball at them, but attack them on the ground, and things start getting a bit more iffy.

The other standout on the day, apart from Mikkola, was Jack Painter-Andrews, who replaced Ben Djiba in the starting lineup, and held his side of the fort down well on he right. If Morgan Evans is doing a bang-up job at left fullback, then Painter-Andrews' performance in his first start after his injury layoff was also good to see - the more competition for places, the better, instead of wondering who to chuck on out of desperation. 

It wasn't all smooth sailing - at those points in time where we didn't have the ball, Avondale did look good, and our ability to play out from the back wasn't always the best. The outlet ball to the wings from defence was a problem at times, but we struck a balance between just bombing it long, and holding the ball on the 18 yard box forever. Some of the finishing once we got on top and they were chasing the game could have been better, too.

But all these are minor, fixable gripes. In just three games we've come a long way from the side that looked like it didn't believe it was allowed to cross the half way line.

Next game

North Geelong at home on Sunday, to close out the first half of the home and away season on Mother's Day. Ah, Mother's Day - the mother of all "excuse not to come to the game" days. Anyway, without wanting to assume that this will be a walk in the park, this and the Moreland game next week should in theory provide a chance to get six points, improve goal difference, and get some game time into a few players who have been in and out of the starting eleven. Or we could just power up and go nuts.

Also, if it starts getting a bit dark, can someone turn the floodlights on a bit earlier this week? They came on so late on Sunday that it felt we were back in the pre-athletics track, George Koukoulas penny-pinching days.

Is there a curtain raiser this week?
Yes. Our senior women take on Calder United, kickoff at 1:30.

National Second Division news - Welcome to Phase II
People were starting to freak out, and be all like, when's the next stage of the NSD happening? Why isn't there any news? Oh, I bet Football Australia is just trying to stooge us and/or all the old clubs again. But I wasn't thinking that, and not just because I love and have full faith in FA and the NSD, and always have. No, it's also because I was at the South Melbourne Hellas AGM not too long ago where our board (who I also love and have tremendous faith in, and have never said or thought otherwise) said that news of the successful clubs moving on from Phase I to Phase II (he attends a couple of trial days about haematology meds, and he's abandoned his humanities training for hard sciences lingo) would be announced in a couple of weeks.

And here we are. So, from 32 parties who expressed an interest, we are down to 26, of which we are one. What a relief. Of those excluded from the next phase, I suppose the most notable are Valentine FC, which means no northern New South Wales participation; the combined Western Australian bid, which means no super expensive trips to the far west; Bentleigh Greens (the only Victorian team to be ditched so far); and Blacktown City, the very successful NSW club, who have thrown a massive and eerily familiar to South fans tanty about being left out, as is their prerogative.

So now, onto whatever the next bit is, copy pasting stuff from the A-League bid but making sure to update the dates and other references to make it more relevant. 

Final thought

Woof, bark, grr, etc.

More goals! South Melbourne 5 Altona Magic 1

Everyone's all like, we need more Sunday home games. Well, there you go. Sunday afternoon, beautiful day out, team coming off a big, entertaining win and... not a great turnout. Maybe word hasn't gotten out yet that the attacking South you know and loved has been let out of detention. Maybe people just assume we're still playing on Fridays or Saturdays. Maybe people don't want to come regardless of what day it is, and how well the team is going. One change that a Sunday arvo game brought along, which made me feel aged, was how many nominal members of Clarendon Corner (and all people who sit or stand with Clarendon are only nominal members of CC) had now moved one bay to the right with their sprogs. Call it Clarendon Childcare Corner faction.

As for the game itself, much anticipation about how we'd come out and play. Would we go back to the old way? Would we persist with the attacking approach taken against Port? The answer was the latter, which as an unreconstructed Hellas traditionalist who wants attacking football and results, was good to see. What was interesting about this, as it must always be, is finding out how good our individual defenders and our collective defensive structures actually are when we actually have to do real defending, as opposed to stacking the defence and hanging on for grim life, which to me is an imitation kind of defending.

And the answers in this game were, well, there are issues, at least against teams that have pace and can exploit a wing. Magic have pace across the forward line, and found that they could attack along our right side in particular. Not that our defending was particularly bad - while Magic could have taken some of their shots a little earlier, our scrambling back into place was actually not too bad - but it actually showed things that needed to be worked on. It was the kind of performance where, with potential weaknesses highlighted, things can be learned from, worked on, adjusted.

I don't want to harp on it, but I think that I will. The previous approach, sitting as deep as we were... there was never going to be the possibility of improvement there. What are you going to learn parking the bus, and hoofing the ball long? How is the team team going to get better? So much of my emphasis in the lead up to the game against Port was on how poor we were going forward, that I almost missed an even bigger problem - that we were actually not a good defending side. How can you tell if a team actually knows to defend if all it does is park the bus? That's not defending, at least not at a level that's intended for anything other than a smash and grab, let's avoid relegation approach. Either we have good defenders (and a great goalkeeper) and a good defensive set up, or we don't. Sunday had its fair share of iffy moments, highlighted by Magic's speed in transition. 

However we had our own chances as well, even before the red card which irrevocably changed this game in our favour. What is it a red? Well, maybe. I don't know. But what was good is that, unlike other times playing against ten, we actually stepped up and crushed an opponent. It helped that they took off a forward, chucked on a defender, and tried to batten down the hatches, But we stood firm, and ground them into the dirt. Good. Yes, easier to do when you're playing against a side that's small in defense, and where set pieces matter. But there were goals and chances which didn't fall into the set piece mold. So that's ten goals in two matches, compared to the 11 goals in nine games before that. And, it could've been more. Such has been the obvious change in intent.

Next game
Top of the table clash tomorrow at home against Avondale, who are going at four goals a game. 

Is there a curtain raiser
Yes, our senior women are taking on Preston, kickoff at 1:30 PM. 

Around the grounds

Going soft
Had intended to go to the Friday night game at Paisley Park, but then it started raining, I'd chucked the footy on, and then fell asleep on the couch.

On the streams
Quality
Sat down on the couch on Saturday afternoon and watched Avondale and Oakleigh. Very good game. 

Final thought
Sorry for the severe lateness. One of those weeks I guess.

Ode to Joy - South Melbourne 5 Port Melbourne 2

Look, one utterly brilliant performance, one magical night of attacking football, should not make up for some of the utter dross we've had to put up with (and yes, I know we're in second place). I've been duped by grand romantic gestures like this before. How about that Gully game from earlier in the season? Or the 3-2 win away at Bentleigh last year? My brain tells me to be wary, that we'll be back to the usual way too defensive stance very soon; but my heart wants to do its own thing, to believe that I can love this team, that it has changed its ways.

(In some respects it also reminds me of our win over Oakleigh at home in 2007, and not just because of the score line - but also because of the same kind of vibe that night, including the cherry on top final goal - that we could do some good things if we wanted to. Then the season started falling apart again a couple of weeks later.)

After the AGM the other night, a board member said to me that he hadn't seen me leave a game smiling like that for a long time. Think about that - we finished top of the table last year, and have lost only one game in the league so far this season - but still, it didn't make me as happy as it should have. Sure, I can be a hard taskmaster and an all round curmudgeon. But I think what I felt is what a lot of you have felt - that while it was good to win, that at some point the whole enterprise should also aim to be joyful. 

(something, something, the game is about glory; something, something, it is about playing with style)

People work all week; the players train. I imagine a good chunk of our players also work, maybe at jobs that are psychologically fulfilling or perhaps not, but probably unlikely to provide the opportunity of being able to express themselves individually and collectively (on an admittedly small scale in this case), in a situation where they can bring joy to themselves as individuals and as a collective, and to those of us watching them. Yes, we take it seriously. But it's also a game. If the players don't have the freedom to express themselves within that context, if we as fans aren't provided the opportunity to be entertained, then doesn't it become just another version of work? And that's me saying that as person who kinda likes their job.

In a previous life I was a hack academic, and it's probably unwise to retrace your steps and go back to what you wrote years ago; but I can perhaps at least look back at some of my old work and see who I quoted. Ken Inglis said "by studying a people’s ceremonies of leisure one may get closer to understanding them", which makes immediate sense to me. If you turn leisure into work, is it still leisure? Inevitable as any form of organised sport may be to being cast as part of Brohm's "prison of measured time", are we not as least partly obligated to try and not make it as bad as he said it was? What about Pieper's rejection of the view that leisure should be a reward for work; that a Sunday or lunch break should not merely be reduced to a device by which someone can be called upon to work once more.

But I'll stop here before I start quoting Proudhon. The performance from both sides on Monday was a credit to the game of soccer. Both teams sought goals, it's just that one was better at seeking them than the other. When Port's Dor Jok scored a cracker to bring it back to 4-2, South fans applauded the goal. Sure it's easy to do that when you have a two goal buffer, but it's no crime to admire excellence, even if it comes from your opponent. When Andy Brennan stormed up the field and smashed home the final goal of the game, in retro 2015 Brennan style, it near on brought the house down. That's as it should be. 

I understand that not every game is going to be like that. And I understand why not every game can be like that; I don't expect the team to score five goals every week. But I do have the expectation that we should look like we want to score that many every week. Not just because we are South Melbourne (though why not have that as a reason), but also because scoring goals is fun. The intent to move the ball with purpose was evident all night; players were also willing to run with the ball and create space for teammates. How good to see Riak working his arse off, but with actual help from his teammates. How good to see the fullbacks repeatedly get up the field. How good to see every midfielder looking to receive the ball, or to win it back from the opposition. How good in general not to see the team (especially Lirim) camped on its own 18 yard box when it's not needed.

How good is it when people see something so good, that they can't wait to come back? That was my favourite part of the night. People seemed genuinely excited by what they saw. There was no feeling of "oh, we were lucky to win that game". No, the feedback was we deserved to win that game, and that we could've scored more goals, and not just from our usual set piece routines. The long throw and corner goals aren't the problem. They were never the problem. They're not the problem for other teams when they score from those situations. The problem was that we were seemingly intent on creating nothing else. So, yes, two long throw goals on Monday night, but also three goals from open play, from counters, from winning the ball in midfield, from pressing Port up the field, from the full backs getting up the ground and putting good crosses in. And scarcely a player on the field for us that I could criticise.

(and how close did Morgan Evans look to putting Brad Norton out of a job?)

Some were quick to attribute this performance to Esteban Quintas being forced into watching the game from the stands, thanks to receiving a third yellow card during the course of this season thus far. I think that's unfair. He still trains the team, he still picks the team, and his mere absence from the touchline shouldn't negate all the work he puts in. It does help when you get most of your players available again from various absences. It helps when you play against a team that plays open, passing football, which makes them vulnerable in certain ways that other teams are not. Indeed, it's probably no accident that our best two performances in 2023 have been against Gully and Port, two teams with not the best of defenses, and who also like to attack and knock the ball around.

But something was different. There were passes and moves that had not been seen much this season. There was a hunger in the side all across the field, and not just desperation on our own 18 yard box. Who knows what switch was flicked, why it all clicked into place the way that it did, and whether we'll get to see more of it. But please, more of it, because it gives me joy, which is the whole point of this endeavour.

Next game
Altona Magic at home on Sunday afternoon. I am looking forward to it.

Is there a curtain raiser this week?
Yes. The senior women take on Alamein, kickoff at 1:30PM

Room for improvement
Would have been even better if we could have bought a drink outside the social club.

Our other senior team
I had not seen much of the women's team this year, and what I had seen hadn't filled me with much optimism. It all looked a bit clunky. But I had a free afternoon last Saturday, and for whatever reason their game against Box Hill United had been moved to McIvor Reserve, not a long drive for your correspondent. I was wondering whether there would be any food, and as I was driving to the ground I went past Edwards Reserve, where the Melbourne City (Argentinian variant) reserves were in action, and thought about stopping there for a moment, to see what their canteen had to offer.

But I drove on, and saw a decent enough turnout at McIvor Reserve, and a functioning canteen. Not a great souv, mind you, but passable under the circumstances of being hungry. I'd checked earlier to see if the women's under 19s were playing the curtain raiser, and they weren't, so I didn't get to the ground too early, only to find out upon arrival that the men's 21s team had just finished their game. 

The ground was in excellent condition, though the grassy areas around the perimeter could do with a good mow. Also, it's possible that because it was just the women playing, but the lack of scaffolding and /or an appropriate elevated position to film and commentate the match from was not a good look. Credit to Joey Lynch doing a professional job at ground level while staring into the sun for a couple of hours.

I probably should have brought a hat instead of a beanie, and possibly applied some sunscreen because it was a lot warmer than I expected. Or maybe I should have just stayed in the shade. Anyway, it was a cracking performance from the senior women, who dominated proceedings up until they scored midway through the second half, and then let Box Hill fight their way to the end; the visitors probably should have equalised, but that's what goal line clearances are for. Before all that, we were being scuppered by a huge amount of offside calls.

But late fade-out aside, I was pleased and pleasantly surprised with how the women played - it was smooth, attacking, attractive football, and the only thing that annoyed me about is that I only wished that the men's team could do something similar. Wish granted!

More room for improvement
There was an ice cream truck at Yarraville. If we can't get beers outside at Lakeside, can we at least get a Mr Whippy van to turn up? Or bring back the loukoumades!

Final thought
Still buzzing.

Spoiled Brats - South Melbourne 1 Bentleigh Greens 0

Sitting in second place, and still complaining. Good. 

Finding new ways towards self-loathing for a team continuing to eke out wins, despite a few injuries. Also good.

Hearing news of an old foe copping eight goals, and being unable to take much joy from that either, because the style of play of your own team is utterly joyless. You better believe that's good.

The thing is, our style of play is what it is. You can raise the problem of injuries and outs, but would it really be that much different even with everyone back in? Not really. We cop stick from non-South people for complaining about winning, but they don't watch whatever this is, week in, week out. It's hard to watch and hard to cheer for. Wins feel more like getting something where we shouldn't have, which is OK once in a while; but make it routine, and it feels like a guy always winning the lottery. 

Since I stopped really trying to do anything of note with this blog, the already limited readership has tanked. I bring that up only to make this observation: that the things I say here really have such minimal impact nowadays. And I only bring that up as a preemptive defensive stance against any accusation that my misery guts point of view here has any sort of profound influence on others in the South Melbourne community. At best it seeps out, but it's easy enough to ignore.

What's a little harder to ignore is that others feel much the same way. They're not just wondering where the goals are - currently at just 1.2 per game despite our high ladder position. They're also wondering about where the Hellas mentality is? And where is the desire to create joy? Some people can wring joy merely from good results, and that's great. But what if you want something more? I suppose if the results are enough - and cup shambles aside, they've been good - why would you actually go to a South game? No one's going to South for the food. Some people might go for the social aspect. But for the football? That's debatable. 

Why not stay home, and flick across this and whatever other game is on NPL TV? Why not just check score updates on Futbol24? Why not just come across the result by accident while scrolling through social media? If the result is all that matters to such an extreme, there's no reason to watch the game. Just send the team out there, in front of no one (not as far-fetched a concept as you'd like it to be), and play the game out for the benefit of insomniac overseas gamblers.

I'm reminded, for the first time in many, many years, of the online football manager game Hattrick, which a few South people used to play. It was a random-number generated game if ever there was one. You'd set up your team lineup, conditional subs, tactics, and then the team would play twice a week in real-time matches. There was no action to watch - you'd get intermittent textual updates about important or interesting events during a game. Sometimes, a game might be so dull, that there'd be very little t report.

Then the game would finish, you'd train players, make limited business decisions, and do the whole thing all over again. The main point of the basic game was to set up your team in such a way that the random-number generator that ran the game engine would more likely favour you over your opponent. There were other goals you could set yourself - collect flags in international friendlies, develop players for the national team - but the basic game remained the same. Crunch the numbers, figure out what the percentages were, and go.

Since I suck at maths, and refused to do my homework, I was never very good at the game. But sometimes it was obvious what your only hope was. Sometimes you would clearly be the inferior side, and all you could do was set up your team for a smash and grab. So basically the most all-round defensive set-up your training regimen would allow, and hope that the random-number generator would make you a winner.

And on those rare occasions when it happened, it was marvelous. You'd try and expend the least amount of attacking effort to get the best possible result. Almost inevitably, such wins would contain a ton of luck, and your goal(s) would often come from what were called "special events". Back then Hattrick would allocate about ten chances in each game, which the two teams would fight over. Apart from that pool of about ten chances, each team had access to a limited number of "special event" goals - based on player specialties (speed, power, heading, technique).

During a live match, the match engine would fire up a text update. Maybe one of your "quick" players had burst through the offside trap. Or just as likely, your team took a corner... one of your players with the "head" specialty rose up, and connected with the ball... oh, what a save! But the ball is still live, and it's tucked away by one of the other players fulfilling the need for the text update to come up with some scorer! 1-0 to Juniper Hill, or whatever your team was called!

If it was the league you'd take the points and take pride in potentially ruining someone's promotion run, or if it was the cup, the extra money, and roll on to next week. You'd show some good grace for your win on the forum, while your opponent might take their frustration out on the same forums, slamming "too much random" being in the game.

Anyway, such were matches between the strong and the weak, and no really cared about style, because what could you read into a clutch of prepared text updates? But here we are in the real world, playing against an absolute no-name Bentleigh side - I knew just one player of theirs, goalkeeper Bon Scott -  who'd won one game all year. And they torched us, as much as a clearly battling side could do so. We gave them the ball, and territory, and let them come at us, as they intended to do.

Meanwhile it took about 12 minutes for us to get a meaningful touch in the opposition half. Thank goodness for set piece special events to get us out of jail, again. I counted about five minutes of play by us in the first half that showed initiative; others counted about seven. The second half was not much better. Marcus Schroen was a little wasteful, but that's about all you could say. We are fortunate in that our league opponents so far have been more than wasteful. Surely it can't last?

Next game
Anzac Day eve at home against Port Melbourne, kickoff at the non-overwhelming public interest time of 7:30pm.

Is there a curtain-raiser?
No. The women play tomorrow afternoon (Saturday) at McIvor Reserve in Yarraville.

AGM coming up
They tried to keep this very quiet. Goodness knows why, it's not like anything stupid is going to happen. Do they not want a quorum? Ah, memories. Anyway, mark down Wednesday April 26th in your calendar;  the SMH AGM is at 7pm, and the SMFC AGM is at 8pm. 

On the streams
A little bit more like it
Flicked across to Oakleigh vs Port for a bit. Not the best standard of game - and if you think we score a high proportion of goals from set pieces, Oakleigh's not far behind - but what stuck out was the intent from from teams to play, and play quickly. And play quickly didn't play panicky. It meant see an option, and go for it, don't let the defence get set. Pass and move. 

Final thought
This seems to come up every year now, if not twice a year. Sometimes it's our fault, more often than not it's theirs. Saturday was particularly farcical; at least at Kingston Heath we have the excuse of the painted grass fiasco from a few years back. But you'd think Bentleigh would be bursting at the seams to get some sort of mileage out of their away kit, whatever it is. Instead we had the farce of ourselves in a dark royal blue, and the visitors in a dark green that was even darker on the front, on a gloomy day. The cherry on top was the refs, who you think might have something to say about this, being in all black.

Look, if you're some two-bit club near the bottom of the pyramid, you can say that these things happen, and people would understand, albeit begrudgingly. But this is meant to be the de facto national second tier. Against better judgment, it's broadcast all over the internet. People bust their arses to make it look and feel presentable, and then Bentleigh just decide to make it look more amateurish than it really is. AT least the Lakeside lights are a bit more than passable, even if they don't all fire up. Bentleigh did the same to away to Oakleigh - who wear navy blue, and who's ground is not so well lit - earlier in the season, so clearly no one cares, and nothing is going to change.

At least we'll be out of this league soon enough, and hopefully joining something with a bit more professionalism, and a tad more aesthetic sense.

Monkey's Paw Curls - South Melbourne 3 Kingston City 4

Getting done over by a lower division team helmed by two former coaches of ours, while fielding several ex-South players was bad enough. But you know how they say "it's the hope that kills you?" I'm wondering where the hope is nowadays. We trudge on, bedraggled, now reduced to the forlorn hope of being rescued by getting into the National Second Division, and leaving the dregs of the last five and a bit seasons behind, regardless of how 2023 ends. A true restart, a new team, a new coach, and maybe a new (old) approach as distant from whatever this is supposed to be.

For the time being, no visiting team should show any fear or deference toward South Melbourne. In the past, poor or lesser teams might put in more effort to take our scalp. In recent times, some of the better teams in our own division have paid no mind to it being an away game, an overrated concept in this league anyway. Now we're at the stage when any opponent of ours - even a lower division one - is well advised to just play. Play with the ball, knock it about, take the game on, take the ball up the field. 

It will sound flippant, but in the game we played against Kingston during the pre-season in the Greek Cup, I noted of one of their goals that it had the style of how I would want a South team to score a goal. Sure, all goals count the same, but the usual ways - set pieces and scraps - will always be there. So why not add style to that, to create more avenues to goal?

Watching this game, it was difficult to tell that there was an entire division between the two sides. That can happen in a cup match - one team plays out of its skin, and gets the rub of the green when it counts. But there was almost no rub needed for Kingston. Their goal scoring chances - the ones they scored from and the ones they didn't - were almost all from quality build-up play, and a welcome fearlessness. 

And what's to fear from us? We started with our second choice keeper, even though we have the best keeper in the league. (though to be fair to Lejeune, not one of the four goals we conceded were down to him). Our vice-captain and key mid (Schroen), played just an hour, before being dragged. Our only striker (Riak) was also benched after an hour, with the game still very much in the balance. He was replaced at first by a winger (Brennan), and then by a defensive mid (Langlois). 

Despite all that, we still scored three goals. But the more important thing, at no point did this game feel safe. Worse, at no point do I think that any South fan felt with anything resembling confidence that we would take this out. It's not about doomsaying, or death-riding. It just felt like there was no point in hoping. We might have won, but it would have somehow felt hollow, unearned. The three goals we scored were all from our holy trinity - penalty, corner, long throw. It was the "monkey's paw curls" of goal hauls, emphasising only that we have little else.

Next game
Tomorrow afternoon (Saturday) against Bentleigh.

Is there a curtain raiser?
Yes. The senior women kick off at 1:00 PM, playing against Bayside United.

Final thought
Someone says to me after the game, "there's more to life than South". Thank goodness for that.

Everybody Knows - Hume City 0 South Melbourne 0

You know me, I don't like to complain. Things don't always go the way you planned. Case in point: I wanted to go to Saturday night's game, but events transpired so that I couldn't. So instead I sat on the couch and put the game on the television instead. How good is NPL TV? You don't get cold or wet, you don't have to give bad people money, you (or really, me) don't have to spend hours on public transport to get to games. And if you tune in early enough, you get to hear the commentators doing the sound check using such phrases as "big boy, big boy". Sure, sometimes there's a pole in the way, or the lighting is crap, or the cameraman gets bored and starts spacing out, but you get what you pay for, and usually it's watchable from a technical standpoint. And I'm sure all those kinds of idiosyncrasies will be absent from broadcasts of the National Second Division.

Anyway, it's been 30 years since an out-and-out ruckman won the Brownlow, and it's been 20 years since Jim Kourtis achieved the even rarer feat of winning Victorian soccer's Gold Medal for player of the year as a goalkeeper; but geez, I reckon Javi Lopez is going to give it a good shake in 2023. That's surely two games in a row where short of the refs ignoring what's right in front of them, that Javi's going to grab six votes. That's an endorsement of how well Javi's playing, but clearly not an endorsement of everything which leads to him being in that situation where he has to be a superstar week in, week out.

It's like this. Last week we had two shots on target against eleven. This week it was one shot on target against eleven, and I think that one shot was Ajak Riak having his shot deflected for a corner late in the first half. We then proceeded to play that corner short, for who knows what reason. Even taking into account my long-running hatred of short corners, it was an unfathomably cowardly sequence of play. It was very late in the first half. There was no chance that were Hume to gain possession, that they would be allowed by the ref to take the ball up the field. More than that, one of our only two shots on goals from the previous week - which went in! - was from a corner. It's like we're trying to fix the game, which makes me sound like one of our angry gambling friends who pollutes NPL social media. It's utterly baffling, unless you somehow come to the conclusion based on, I don't know, reams of evidence, that this is how our players are being told to play the game.

Speaking of that game, it was Javi Lopez keeping us in the contest, and let no one tell you anyone else out there for us did anything to lessen some of his burden. Remember that FFA Cup game against Melbourne City in 2021, where we were camped on our own 18 yard box for much of the game, and hanging on for dear life for most of the 90 minutes? Well, it was disappointing, disheartening even, but also you could sort of rationalise it. We were, realistically, a mediocre team from one of eight or nine second tiers, playing against the best team in the country, made up of full-time pros. Also COVID made things worse for us. And yet even in that game, we had a five or so minute patch where we managed to take it up the field, get a legitimate shot on target, and win a couple of corners. We made whatshisname make an actual save. Meanwhile an actual whatshisname, Rory Brian - a former South youth team keeper who's bounced around a few teams in this league - had nothing to do from an actual goalkeeping point of view, except take the occasional goal kick, and look a bit out of place as a mock-sweeper on a slippery field.

Result aside, last week's performance against Oakleigh could be judged as being not good. By comparison, Saturday's performance could only be described as pretty bad. We once again sat so, so deep; 2013 Southern Stars deep. We once again had no plan other than bombing it long, very long. Or playing it short across the backline, and then bombing it long. Poor Alun Webb being made to sprint up and down the wing like a dog chasing a tennis ball. Poor Danny Kim, watching the ball sail back and forth over his head. Poor Ajak Riak, expecting balls at his feet, and instead getting high balls sent to him while he's being double teamed, with no support; he got maybe one pass to his feet that I can remember, with his back to goal on the halfway line and an opponent on his hammer, and still managed to get a nice touch into George Tsitsinaris into space. 

And poor central mids who are effectively third and fourth centre-backs. Even having an overloaded defense is doing nothing to stop Javi being the main guy. Any opponent with enough patience to keep the ball and knock it around in a simple pass and move fashion, is able to pick us apart. We gift the opposition the ball, and we gift them territory. By all means, give them more of the ball if you think they're going to turn it over somewhere in midfield. But expecting effective counter-attacks from your own 18 yard box - or worse, six yard box - seems self-defeating at best. People keep taking the piss about Esteban Quintas' shouted refrain of "press, press", but where's the press? 

And yet we're second on the ladder. Shame on every other team below us for letting us get away with it. A pox on all your houses.

That game against Melbourne City, coincidentally, was Javi Lopez's first game for South, and through no fault of his own, he has been the team's most important player since, because he's ubiquitous. Arguably Pierce Clark was that guy before that. Lopez won the club's best and fairest award in 2022, in a season in which we finished top, and had a player score over 20 goals. So it's not like it's a secret. Everyone knows what we're about. If you happened to be watching this game at home, you would have noticed the commentary duo of Lachie Flannigan and Ed Gooden being very... careful in their observations. Maybe South Melbourne should try a different formation? Maybe send someone to help Ajak Riak? Danny Kim doesn't seem quite suited to what South's trying to do. Pat Langlois, normally a midfielder, was seen moonlighting as a right-back, yet is also the squad's leading scorer. Jake Marshall has the most block and clearances in the league. South's last three wins have all been by one goal to nil.

So, in short. I see it. You see it. Non-South people see it. But what's to be done about it? 

Next game
Kingston City at home on Tuesday in the Australia Cup. Kingston is currently near the top of NPL 2, has ex-South coaches Con Tangalakis and Gus Tsolakis as their co-coaches, and also has its share of ex-South players. What could possibly go wrong.

Is there a curtain raiser?
No.

Final thought
Forget for a moment nostalgia and the guff about "South DNA". You know what's really funny? For reasons of fealty to family (fair enough), clinging to relevance, and generating social media traffic, we are obliged to celebrate the ongoing success of Ange Postecoglou. That's fine, it is what it is, and I have no gripe with it. But even considering the particulars of his situation - managing the best funded team in a strictly two-horse league - we South fans on social media are constantly reminded of his coaching ethic, to entertain as well as get results. And while no one expects the same from our players or coaching staff, let alone for an equivalent kind of funding that Ange gets to be dumped into our senior men's team, we as remnant South fans can do little but cringe, as Ange gets to talk about his football ethic and where it came from - our club - while those of us still here have to watch highlight clips of our goalkeeper making saves, because there isn't anything else to show. We're a rump state off the field, and we're a rump state on it, defending what little territory we have left within our besieged walls.