This week, last week, whatever

Halfway to the real thing

We get an early chance to add to the silverware collection this Friday, with the inaugural Community Shield game to be played against Melbourne Knights this Friday at Knights Stadium. Of course if we win the game, who knows where the trophy will end up, but that's a better problem to have than its opposite.

I did consider asking the people that went over to Adelaide last week to bring back a social club if there was a spare one hanging about, but that would have been a stupid thing to do. The penalty for the extra baggage would have been murder.

Pie floaters, Farmers' Union Iced Coffee, and lazing by the hotel pool.

Praise be to Tiamat the Destroyer that I didn't end up in Adelaide after all. That whole Adelaide thing seemed to just pass by without much fanfare, didn't it? Yes, it's 'only' pre-season, but compared to the usually more thorough media service we've all become accustomed to, not much seemed to make it to those who didn't cross the border. For the record, we lost the first game against West Adelaide 2-1, with the last kick of the game, and lost the second game against Adelaide Blue Eagles 1-0, after being down to 10 men for a large portion of the game due to Brad Norton being sent off.

Ian Syson offered the rather biased (self-admission) observation that new attacking acquisition Andy Brennan didn't look at all out of place; another fan mentioned that Nikola Roganovic played 90 minutes against Blue Eagles; and that in he first game, we spurned quite a few chances. You can read the club's report of the trip here.

Comings and goings
Speaking of Roganovic, the word on the street is that Peter Gavalas has been confirmed as first choice keeper. As unpalatable as that may to some people out there (and in here), the point is now ti remember the following things:

• That we've shown a lot of faith in Chris Taylor to make the right calls, and so far the results suggest he's usually on the money.
• That Taylor is willing to make the change if he feels his keeper is not playing up to scratch (though opinions on whether the likely backup, Chris Maynard, is better are open to debate)
• Gavalas did win the 2013 goalkeeper if the award, and regardless of the mistakes he made, was a lot better in that year than in 2012. 

It's also my understanding that James Musa is gone, though the club has yet to make any official announcement on that matter. Does that leave us a bit thin depth wise in defence? Probably, but we'll see how the club responds to that situation as the year goes on, I think it's fair to say that we had a pretty blessed run with injuries last year, especially when team needed to be rotated through the crowded mid-season schedule.

Another signing is midfielder Jake Barker-Daish, a former Gold Coast United anbd Adelaide United player, as well as an Olyroo. Apart from still being young, I know next to nothing about this player other than what's been put out in the official press. A couple of people seemed quite enthusiastic about this signing, so I'm interested to see how he goes.

South and Syson off to Adelaide. I'm not going. Not sure about Musa.

Tomorrow, as part of its somewhat peripatetic pre-season, South Melbourne Hellas will travel to Adelaide for the first time in 11 years. While over there, the team will play a game on Friday night against West Adelaide Hellas as a curtain raiser to what seems to be the SA version of the Super Cup, and will follow that up with a game against Adelaide Blue Eagles on Sunday.

As noted earlier, it's unfortunate that I won't be in Adelaide this week, but Ian Syson of the Neos Osmos blog will be there, and he may live blog one or both matches depending on his mood and other vagaries of the universe. If any body else ends up over there, or is even by random chance a local who just wants to do a quick (or lengthy) report, send us a note.

But what about James Musa?
Someone else apart from myself that may not be in Adelaide is James Musa. There are reports that the defender has left (or will leave) to pursue an offer in the United States, I'm guessing in the second tier. As Musa seems to rarely update his Facebook status, and nor has there been any news that I've been able to find on the rest of the relevant parts of the net (ie, Yellow Fever forums), so there's very little to go on, apart from:

• an Smfcboard post from a source close to the team.
• the fact that Musa didn't play at all during the friendly against Bulleen Lions last week, though our scout says there was nothing preventing him from doing so,
• and one fan letting me know beforehand that 'we lost a key player to america - don't know who'.

 No news from the official South channels either, so I'm assuming this was not a planned move from anyone within the club.

Some news from recentish times

AGM on tomorrow
Just a reminder that the 2014 (not a typo) AGM will be held tomorrow at Lakeside, in the Presidents Room, 7:00PM. Lot of interesting discussion to be had, and what's more, since the surgeon and I agreed to hold off on laser surgery for a couple of months or so, even I might be able to make an appearance.

SMFC TV one step closer to being a gated community
As some of you have already noted, SMFC TV has moved to the Aurora Channel on Foxtel. While Channel 31's free to air future seems to be doomed, it's still disappointing to me that we couldn't see out the rest of Channel 31's tenure on free to air television. Aurora is basically pay television's community station, and while those who have Foxtel will be able to automatically record each episode, those of us without pay television (either because of cost, not enough interest in their programming, or because Fox own those chemical plants in Syria) will have to make do the with the internet and youtube product.

We're going to Adelaide!
Well, not me, I have other already established commitments. But the team is. They'll be playing West Adelaide Hellas on Friday 6th February, 6:15PM, at Adelaide Shores Football Centre in West Beach, as the first match of an double header, I think South Australia's version of the super cup. Then on Sunday we'll be playing Adelaide Blue Eagles at 2:00PM, at the Marden Sports Complex. Safe travels to all those making the trip over there, and hopefully someone can send in some colourful reports.

Community Shield
We've also been fixtured to play in the inaugural FFV Community Shield game, against last year's Dockerty Cup winner Melbourne Knights. The game will be at Knights Stadium on Friday February 13th.

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!
Some wonderfully sensationalist anti-sockah writing in the Hun recently. Basically, Little Athletics had the venue booked well in advance for their annual carnival, but the decision of the State Sports Centres Trust to resurface the grass on the arena and thus put out the Little Athletics people has not gone unnoticed by our citizen journalist, who's managed to rustle up a bunch of surly looking youngsters staring down the barrel of the camera with their arms folded at the injustice of it all.

Now I certainly feel for these kids, because they've obviously been put out by this decision, but the tone of the article which seeks to either directly or indirectly blame it on soccer (and therefore us) is so stupid it's mind boggling; unless of course, the article wasn't written by someone with an anti-soccer agenda. Did South get asked for comment? It doesn't seem like it. So no mention of the club's long tenure at the ground, no mention of the damage caused by the shotput, hammer and javelin on the turf during our winter season, and of course no mention of the fact that we have to share with athletics while Collingwood and Eddie McGuire get whatever they want.

The return of Sir Peter, of the Order of the Knights of the Raised Middle Finger
We're apparently considering re-signing Peter Gavalas out of his premature retirement as our first choice keeper. It seemed to be out of him and Nikola Roganovic, and Slippery Pete's may well have done enough to get Taylor's approval. This decision has caused some consternation not only for Gavalas' on field capabilities - is he a great keeper for this level, who managed to be keeper of the year in 2013, or is he actually a bum on the verge of another costly blunder? - but there's also his demonstrated lack of respect for the supporters and the club. Now of course this has set in train discussions about whether one should trust an experienced and championship winning coach to make the right kind of personnel decisions, or demanding the board intervene and overrule the decision. This could be a fun season.

Technical director signed
One step closer to meeting the NPL criteria by hiring a standalone technical director, one Sean Gale.

Some in-season fixtures changed
Among the changes

• The away game against North Geelong has been moved back a couple of hours.
• The games against Bentleigh Greens have been switched. We'll now be travelling to Kingston Heath first, and hosting them second.
• The home game against the Knights, originally scheduled for the Greek Orthodox Good Friday, has been moved to the Saturday afternoon of that week.
• The Pascoe Vale away game has been moved to Saturday evening.
• Minor kickoff time changes to other home games.

The word is that there could be more changes, with the club looking to move some games to Sundays at 5pm. The club claims that during their online survey, Friday night games were the preferred timeslot of respondents, with Sunday evenings also being in demand. For my part, I'm in the Sunday afternoon camp, but it'll be interesting to see what happens, and whether the pro-Friday night crowd are proven right with improved attendances.

Then: 2008 seems so long ago. I wasn't even using
a clipboard as a makeshift mouse pad back then.

And now: In 2015, I have a lot of books packed away
due to a pending move to Sunshine, but books
somehow keep proliferating on my work space.

Deathbed
Disappointing news here, folks. My Benq laptop is nearly dead: it was bought by my littlest brother for some ridiculous over the top price nearly ten years ago, probably Centrecom in Sunshine; discarded by him within about 18 months; used by me for much plainer duties than his planned extravagant multimedia pursuits; converted from a dreadful Vista machine into first an Ubuntu, then a steadfast and reliable Linux Mint unit; and now finally, after many years of long service to the causes of education, Hattrick and especially South of the Border, it's time for it to retire to the great recharge outlet in the sky. Unfortunately, like all good players, it's had a noticeable slowdown in recent times; it's not as sharp as it used to be;, it finds itself dawdling where it used to sprint; and even its once sure touch has begun to desert it. And let's not forget the lack of an 'escape' key, after I dropped a book on it and broke it. While of course I've used other computers to write up items for the blog - various machines at Victoria University's St Albans, Footscray Park, Flinders Street and maybe even Queens Street campuses for example - the vast majority of this blog's outpourings of overbearing grief and negativity have been done on this machine. There was a trip to Hobart back in 2011, as well as non-South related trips to Canberra in 2013 and Sydney last year. So fare thee well, Benq Joybook A52. At least you got to go out on a high, with a championship under your belt. A pity that even though you lasted so long, you never managed to see South get back into the top flight. Here's hoping your successor can achieve even half your longevity and service. In the mean time, dear readers, please bear with me as I try to get used to the smaller keys on my new machine (named Charlene. Why? It just is, OK?),