But I digress - Altona Magic 0 South Melbourne 0

It's gotten so bad that now we're being overrun by teams nearer to the bottom of the table than even we are, and that's with them being down to ten men. At least we somehow kept a clean sheet for the first time in a couple of months.

Next game

Home against the Bergers tomorrow (Sunday) evening. Curtain raiser is the senior women against Brunswick Juventus. 

Yoink?!

?

So, Gustav Moller is gone, and more than fittingly going by the last twenty years, his exit is actually the most South thing that I can think of - like 99% of our now former fans, rather than stick around Lakeside being miserable, Moller realised he wasn't having any fun, and just walked away. Honestly, I'm a little jealous. Granted, Moller didn't have the same level of emotional attachment that most South fans have (or at least claim to have had) to the club, but the gesture was achingly familiar:

This sucks, why do I have to be here? Wait, I don't? OK, bye.

It was a strange situation from beginning to end. Since our game plan over the past five years was based around two pillars - outrageously over-competent goalkeeping, and a big guy banging in goals up top just by being big, the departure of Harrison Sawyer late last season threatened to bring down the entire Esteban Quintas edifice one and for all, as was the case when Sawyer got injured in 2021 and we were barely able to win a game after that - thank goodness (sort of) that COVID destroyed most of the rest of that season. Enter Gustav Moller from the sixth division of Danish football who, from the scant online evidence available, was basically nobody, had played for no one of note, and was being signed because whoever's in charge of this stuff at the club these days could apparently find not one person better anywhere else.

(There's some talk that he was recommended to us by Thomas Sorenson which, if true, would make a kind of awful sense - what with Gustav Moller being the son of Danish pundit and former international forward Peter Moller. But who wants to think that we signed someone based on someone at the club being starstruck, and that the famous person making the recommendation was just trying to do a mate a favour?) 

Still, whatever Moller's credentials or lack thereof, and whoever recommended him to us, the club did get to see something of him in the pre-season, and ultimately made the decision to sign him either as cover for Nahuel Bonada, or with the intention that Moller would at some point become the main guy. The latter, were it to actually happen, would have taken awhile. Gustav Moller was clearly not match fit. I don't know if he'd been in Carl Piergianni-style holiday mode - and we saw that once big Carl did get fit on returning to England, that he was actually decent - but whatever the case, Moller wasn't able to last more than fifteen minutes without becoming completely gassed. 

And whatever his skillset may have entailed - he was probably OK in the air, and he seemed to at least have some semblance of touch - he was utterly the wrong player, for the wrong system, for the wrong coach, at the wrongest club possible. It was a hopeless situation for all concerned; but while Moller can walk away with perhaps only his ego and dignity bruised, the club is now down to one forward for the next few months until the transfer window opens. 

Neos Kosmos digital archives, free to access
Now, I was aware that Neos Kosmos had digitised its archive going back to 1957, Initially I think they were charging for access to it, but I've been informed that the archive is actually free to access. The user interface is a bit of a pain to use, and nowhere near as good as what you would get with Trove - and I have no idea why Neos Kosmos didn't go with Trove - but it's still good that it's available. Search works a lot better when you have exact phrases at hand, and also in later years where the quality of the scans is better.

The club's official historian John Kyrou sent me an email alerting me to the fact that the archive was free to use, as well as some notes on the 1960 season after he went through the archives, a frustrating season from a historical perspective both for broader coverage as well just plain statistical stuff. At first, Neos Kosmos shows indifference to the club. Indeed, sport is not a big part of the paper in 1960, which accords with my memory of the last time I went through the 1960s papers on microfiche. What sport coverage exist is initially centred on the Greek league and local pro-wrestling, mostly Alex Iakovidis. When Hellas establishes its on-field bona fides, it gets not just more coverage, but also more detailed coverage. Eventually reporter Nikos Kyriakopoulos' column becomes a fixture of the paper, to the point where you begin getting not just full lineups for most games by the end of the season, but also ratings of each player. 

Kyriakopoulos is particularly savage in his criticisms of players he considers lazy, unsporting, or not team-oriented. The senior squad is large and hard to manage. Some players do the right thing, but others have poor attitudes to training, and the team is prone to arguing amongst itself. They're a cut above their league, but arrogant. Kyriakopoulos is effusive in his praise of Terry Budgen, one of the few non-Greeks in the squad, as well as goalkeeper George Karpouzas, but has it in for Antonis Karagiannis (lazy, arrogant), Stefanos Fortomanos (unsporting, greedy on the ball), and captain-coach Chris Georgoussis (listless, heavy).

He also really hammers home the angle of the club's role as representative of the Greek community in Melbourne. That's not just limited to the players, but also the supporters, whose behaviour he's often critical of - except perhaps when it counts most, after the ugly scenes in the Dockerty Cup semi against Hakoah, where he blames the referee for the riot by the Greek fans. Kyriakopoulos also places much emphasis on the Laidlaw Cup - a local mini-world cup tournament, where Team Greece was effectively South Melbourne Hellas rebadged. He also promotes the club's and the Greek community's wider effort to build a stand at Middle Park. Little mention is made of Yarra Park or Hellenic, none of Alexander or South Melbourne United, and nothing of Hakoah in the context of being a co-tenant at Middle Park.

The crowds fluctuate between the very large (10,000 at games at Olympic Park, far and away the best venue in Victorian soccer) and a few hundred at games at Middle Park and elsewhere, where shelter is extremely limited. Indeed, wet weather sees games postponed, and one game at Coburg was played "in an ocean".

One bonus of running through and double-checking the club historian's reading of this material, is apart from confirming several lineups and a few scorers, we can now confirm one previously elusive club record detail, that of most goals in a league game. For ages the provisional club record for most goals in a league game was four, held by ten different players. Hellas racked up some big scores in 1960, but confirmation of the scorer details proved elusive for whatever reason. Thus, Antonis Karagiannis' six goals against Moonee Ponds stands alone.

Final thought

Well, seven years too late for my thesis, and five years after the old man passed away, I finally found it. Silly bugger insisted it was from the 1980s or early 1990s, but it was from February 1995. It's probably not even the complete poem - whatever drafting page that was on is long gone - but it's more complete than the couple of stanzas I had access to for my thesis, and which sent me searching in vain for the published version on several trips to the State Library. 

Like the rest of his poetry, it's doggerel, but that's beside the point. As I wrote in an appendix to my thesis:

My father, Athanasios Mavroudis, despite his limited formal education – only up to grade six in rural 1950s Greece – fancied himself as somewhat of a poet. He wrote  several poems in his scrapbooks, and even had some published in the letter and editorial pages of Neos Kosmos, the Greek-language paper of record in Melbourne. 

His style is plain and straightforward, and if we are being fair, not far removed from doggerel. His themes were broad, and usually related to the issues of the day – the political and cultural concerns as they related to the Greek community of Melbourne, and the Greek diaspora as a whole. This was in keeping with one strand of poetry submitted to Neos Kosmos, the other, more common one being poetry on important dates, festivals, the seasons, the sanctity of mothers, and the pain of living in a foreign land. 

I have included my father’s two extant and complete soccer poems here for a couple of reasons. First, as a way to preserve them in some fashion on the public record. Second, because whatever their literary merits, they are outstanding examples of what this thesis is about – the search for the most obscure portrayals of a marginal game, written by a member of a marginal community, preserving moments and points of view otherwise destined for utter oblivion. Also, they have a naff charm which appeals to 

me.

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.

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.

Never get high on your own supply - South Melbourne 2 Altona Magic 0

Just a short one this week because I'm back in what by my standards would be considered gainful employment, and time is no longer my friend. Well, that's my excuse this week, and there's always an excuse.

Welcome back to the blog for South fans who love to metaphorically slash wrists. Welcome back to normal diabolical crowds, but still continuing on with the same results, with much the same method, with one frustrating exception. What was it with all the short corners? It's not just having Harry Sawyer, Marco Jankovic, and Jake Marshall to aim at, but also little Pat Langlois - remember him that scored those headers from corners early in the season? But also, apart from having all those perfectly cromulent targets to aim at, we also have Andy Brennan who has mostly been providing rather excellent service from corners.

Let's put it down to feeling so comfortable with our position and our opponent, that we decided to use this situation as an opportunity not to showboat - because we would never, ever do something like that - but rather to attempt some in game variations which may become useful in the finals. Now I don't believe that for a second, what with my pathological hatred of short corners (at this level), but it might help other people rationalise what they were watching, assuming anyone else loses sleep about these the way I do. It felt like a targeted hate-crime against me, and in this fishbowl that is South Melbourne Hellas post-NSL, every time we take a short corner attention is brought to me.

Well, I painted that target on myself I suppose, and it's not like one can un-paint that now. Speaking of paint and other brilliant chemicals, how good was the smell of paints, sealants, and whatever other alchemic concoctions are being piled into, under, and on top of our grandstand? It was like being in the back of the old Capricorn Floors van - there's an inside joke for like, three people, tops. I suppose since we're not not allowed to take booze outside the social club (except for trace amounts of alcohol in a lemon, lime & bitters), and the outside beer tent went back into hibernation, why not substitute liquor for fumes? What could possibly go wrong?

Apart from the awful second half, where we lost all shape, the only really bad thing to happen was Ben Djiba's red card, which felt contentious live, and much less contentious once we saw the replay of someone with way too much adrenaline after dribbling past three or four opponents, like your correspondent back in a CC White vs Blue match many, many moons ago. At least I had the good sense to finish my poor run with a mere crappy pass, and not trying to knee-cap someone. 

Anyway, Djiba will be out this week and probably for at one game after, but what a great chance for someone else to do something. I give Esteban credit for this - pretty much everyone gets a go of some sort, sometimes more than I think they should, and sometimes less, and sometimes not in a role I think they're suited to; but it's not like you die wondering most weeks over whether we'll make a sub. It is easier to do now that we can make five a subs a game, but that doesn't mean that the sub will always get made. Look at Chris Taylor for example - still stuck to his more rigid method of well, it's 1984, we've got a squad of 14 players, and you have to fight tooth and nail to somehowbreak your way into the starting XI.

Whatever works for you I suppose, and like I always maintain, there's more than one way to get to your destination in this game. There's pretty and ugly, there's big spenders and slightly less big spenders, and there's even apparently playing with no meaningful sense of a central midfield and not even bothering to make a mid-season transfer to at least pretend to fix this. If we win this title - and I hope that we do - it just may be the first time South (or any club) has won a title mostly through sheer spite. The throw-ins, the set pieces, the playing 15-20 minutes of comparatively good football a game - all while knowing (or some of us fans believing) that we could be doing even better. 

Now you may ask what's better than being three games clear at the top with three matches to go, but that's what the easily placated like to say. I just hope we're not getting complacent. I saw Max Mikkola sit on the main subs bench instead of by himself after he got subbed off last week, and I'm worried we're going soft.

Next game

Port Melbourne away this Saturday. Thanks to Oakleigh's loss on Monday, we are now just one win from claiming the minor premiership and the chance to play in the NPL national playoffs... wait, I'm being passed a note which says that no one seems to know whether the NPL national playoffs will actually take place this year. It seems like there's no mention of them on either the Football Australia or Football Victoria competition calendars. Well, I'm sure everything will turn out fine. 

I hope that if it's not going ahead that the thing was cancelled due to COVID or a failure to attract a sponsor for it, and not because people were planning to fill in the space with a National Second Division. 

Final thought

Whatever stupid thing happens in the rest of this season, let us all bask in the quiet relief that Avondale did not win its stupid 2021 Bespoke Cup. They might still win the 2022 title - and good luck to them if they do - but their failure to take out the title they felt they so deserved, and which they spent so much money on lawyers on, and which they thought was a right laugh until their seven point lead got chipped away to nothing, and then they stopped posting about it on their socials, and then started blocking people on their socials who brought it up... where was I going with this? Oh yes: the Bespoke Cup is over. Let's never speak of it again. 

In case of emergency, break "set piece" glass - Altona Magic 0 South Melbourne 1

Used to be a time that South playing at Paisley Park meant an almost certain loss, no matter how well we played. Nowadays it's kinda the opposite, though of course one must take into account the relative merits of the Victorian Premier League era Altona Magic, and the one from the National Premier Leagues Victoria era.

Then again, there used to be a time that volunteers ran canteens at this level, and service was relatively speedy, even if the food options were rather basic. Nowadays either nobody wants to sit inside a hot canteen booth for several hours while others enjoy the game, or there's actually no one left to take up the role. So private operators step in, service tends to be slower, but if you're willing to wait (possibly forever) you can get 12 hour slow cooked brisket, or an overpriced chevapi roll. 

Another thing which has changed, or is at least something I've never seen before, is a coach passing notes to his players during the game. Not vocally relaying instructions to a player who then informs teammates further away from the coaching staff. Actual instructions written on actual paper and passed along from player to player. I would say that I've never seen anything quite so strange, except that the change it wrought seemed to be even stranger, in that the team that was already copping a bath on both wings and had no midfield, reset its formation into a doughnut scheme that was even worse than what had preceded it.

Not that whatever preceded it was going well, but I'm not sure that moving Patrick Langlois to right back was quite the masterstroke that the brains trust thought it was, because the doughnut remained, and Magic waltzed through non-existent resistance. Thank goodness their finishing was absolute rubbish, and that they failed to convert even one of the four very, very good opportunities presented to them in the first half.

But it wasn't just the doughnut shaped formation that was the problem. Our passing from the back line into said doughnut midfield was also dire. Even in situations where the players recognised - at least theoretically - that we were all over the shop and needed to reset was only useful in theory. To wit: stand Marcus Schroen, standing is as captain for the injured Brad Norton, exhorting his teammates late in the half to stay focused, keep a clean sheet with a minute to go in the first half and reset in the second, soon afterwards finding himself in possession in midfield, making a blind pass square across the field, which was easily intercepted.

He wasn't alone in producing this kind of garbage, but it was the most egregious example. The only way to overcome the problem was to long balls to Harrison Sawyer, who was once again employed in the largely thankless task of having to fight for and chase long balls, which were the only way we were reliably getting forward. Of course when it's one against three or four, there's only so much any player can do. Even worse when the selected line up had no one willing or able to win a ball in the midfield, so we ceded possession and territory on a terrifyingly frequent basis. Very good way to expose an inexperienced left-back as well.

Nevertheless, that we managed to go into the break not 4-0 down was a victory itself, even if it was hardly a moral one. Second half, Lirim Elmazi was introduced into the middle, and things changed. I was critical of Elmazi's game against Oakleigh, but here his mere presence changed things for the better. All of a sudden there was a ball-winning midfielder playing in midfield, and the mere sense of there being an anchor set things right. Then it became a case of waiting for our goal, though it took its sweet time getting there.

When it did arrive, it came via... you guessed it, another set piece. And not even the first really good set piece opportunity, which was a penalty saved by Chris Oldfield. 

But first, a necessary digression.

From my viewing angle, I'm not even sure it was a penalty. But that's beside the point. Oldfield was penalised for his foul with a yellow card, which then led to several South fans asking for a red because Oldfield was "the last man".

So I tried to set the record straight at the ground (with some success!) and I'm doing it here again. In the first part, there is no "last man" rule. The rule is about denying "a clear goal scoring opportunity". But more importantly, under rule changes designed to rule out "double jeopardy" punishments - where a penalty is awarded and a player sent off - Oldfield s "accidental" foul now only warrants a yellow card at most.

People at the ground were asking me when did this rule come in, and I said at least 2-3 years ago. Well, even I was way off, because it was actually back in 2016.

So what counts as a "deliberate" foul then? According to the rules, a deliberate foul is:

Those include holding, pulling or pushing, not playing the ball, serious foul play, violent conduct or deliberate handball in order to deny a goalscoring opportunity.

None of which Oldfield got near to achieving. So, when you hear more guff at a ground about "last man" and why someone isn't being sent off for a foul in the box, educate them! The worst thing that could happen is a punch in the face. 

Anyway

Saved penalty and follow up gone, 0-0 looked the most likely outcome. Until, well, you know the rest. Someone swung in a corner, Sawyer timed his run well, and we scored another set piece goal. For keeping tabs at home, this is the 2022 set piece goal tally so far:

• corner vs Heidelberg
• corner vs Bentleigh
• penalty vs Bentleigh
• long throw vs Knights
• corner vs St Albans
• penalty vs St Albans
• long throw vs Hume
• penalty vs Gully
• long throw vs Gully
• free kick into box vs Thunder
• corner vs Magic

11 goals from set pieces. We only scored 19 goals total in 18 league games last year.

How long we can keep that run up, I don't know. Should be fun finding out.

Next game

Port Melbourne at home on Saturday night. Women playing against the Bergers in the curtain raiser.

Living in the past is the best kind of living

You wanted it, and now you've got it. The boffins at Football Victoria's competitions department have managed to find a way to get the 2021 Bespoke Solution ladder up and running, and it is a thing of beauty. 

Well, almost.

Unlike Avondale's recent attempt to keep track of this nonsense, FV has included Port Melbourne's pointless 18 point penalty. Yet the Bespoke Table says South have three "2021" games left, when we should have four - I reckon FV has mistakenly counted our game away against Oakleigh as part of our tally, when only our home game against Oakleigh should count. Under this format South should still games against Avondale (Round 13 at home), Eastern Lions (Round 15 away), Oakleigh (Round 22 at home), and Dandenong City (Round 25 at home).

Hopefully someone sorts out the inconsistencies and mistakes by the end of the 2022 season.

Final thought

Credit to the Altona Magic physio, who spent more time upright on the field than most of Magic's players in the second half.

Calamitous - South Melbourne 1 Altona Magic 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next game

This Saturday night away to Dandenong Thunder.

FFA Cup draw news

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

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

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

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

Women's chat

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

Merch chat

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

Food chat

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

Final thought

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

Not unacceptable - Altona Magic 1 South Melbourne 4

You'll miss this backdrop when it's gone.
Photo: Luke Radziminksi.

To begin this blog post, a quick question: when was the last time you attended a game where South Melbourne was both dominating a game, and leading by a margin big enough to make you feel comfortable in paying less attention to the game than you otherwise would?

It's almost a trick question, because the answer is probably our 5-2 win over Eastern Lions last year, but I tell you what, it did feel like it's been a lot longer than that. When we were 3-1 up midway through the second half, and looking like we were cruising, our local chat turned to reminiscing about Neighbours, late night television hosts, and my flailing attempts to talk about how the best band of the '90s was the one that seemingly cared the least. 

Before we got to that point though, we saw what was the most complete performance by a South team for quite some time. Notwithstanding the poor luck which saw us fall behind - seriously, that "shit" was headed for corner flag before it deflected off Lirim Elmazi - almost everything either side of that goal was remarkably not displeasing. Unlike much of this team's timid temperament thus far under Esteban Quintas, on Saturday night the team was assertive in attack to such a degree that it was almost unrecognisable from the previous four rounds.

Marco Jankovic's shot finds itself just out of
 reach of Altona Magic keeper Chris Oldfield.
Photo: Luke Radziminski.

Instead of relying on longballs to Harry Sawyer, the team was getting - as a collective - in and around the box, and looked threatening. A bit better shooting, and a bit more luck with the ball landed after a ricochet or clearance, and we wouldn't have even needed to come from behind to win this game. 

Incidentally, that's the first time that we've come from behind since  we beat Bentleigh Greens in round 14, 2019. And think of how many times we've fallen behind since that time!

To be fair, the opposition was coach-less, having reputedly sacked John Markovski during the week, which took away some of the potential fun of a game against Magic. They were also missing some good players, or so I'm told; but to be fair to us, Altona still also had some pricey players out there, even if they were of a vintage that was frightening for the fact that one of those geriatrics - namely, Vince Lia - was so old, that he had played for us back in 2004, after having made his debut for us in 2001!

Like, what year is this even?

The performance was everything I thought that the capable albeit unremarkable squad that we had at our disposal should be able to achieve. Conditional competence, with occasional bursts of dominance, and some excellence. It was never too much to ask for, and on Saturday we saw what this team could do by selecting its best (or at least better) personnel and adopt an assertive, confident approach.

We're also becoming a strong, bullying team. Because of the mediocre results and performances, and the way we've gone into a our shell far too often, it's gone largely unremarked that we have some tough players who are willing to put in some hard tackles. Of course that approach comes with collecting yellow cards, and that will become a problem across the season - but if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

The win leaves the team as still the only undefeated side in the competition, as well as in second place on the ladder behind Melbourne Knights. That little factoid has left people wondering when the last time South and Knights occupied the top two places on the table at the end of a round, with most people's guesses being some point in the mid-1990s; either that, or early 2015. But who's going to put the effort to find out? Not me, that's for sure.

So after several less than inspiring performances and results, everything's good now, right? Well, not quite. A couple of days after the fact, the shine is taken off the win just a smidge because five rounds in, it turns out we've played three of the current bottom four sides. It may well be that 2021 will be one of those very even, perhaps even mediocre years of Victorian soccer. Are we set up for a season ala 2011, where some opportunist team will claim a title because they were the best of a meandering bunch? That could play right into our hands.

Of course, we could just as easily put in a mediocre performance midweek, in which case I'll take back everything good I said about the team here.

Next game

Dandenong Thunder at home on Wednesday night. Keep in mind that this match is scheduled to kick off at 7:30PM, and that there will be no reserves curtain raiser. 

FFA Cup fixturing news

While no one seems to have come out yet and made an "official" announcement, it appears as if our round 4 FFA Cup match against Werribee City is going to be held this Saturday afternoon at 2:00pm at Grange Reserve, Hoppers Crossing - not at Werribee's normal home ground of Galvin Park.

Final thought

Some serious issues have emerged with NPL Victoria's livestream service. Poor filming angles due to no elevated camera positions, and light-towers obstructing views are old problems, added to this year by Gardiners Creek Reserve having a whole damn tree in the way. But the real issue is the service cutting out or stalling repeatedly. This seems to a be a weekly occurence now. Plenty of issues emerged with our game last week, as well as in the curtain raiser. Even while I was sitting in the carpark at Sunshine station waiting for a mate, just trying to watch the last ten minutes of Avondale vs Knights, and the whole thing just froze around the 81 minute mark. 

Whatever one's opinion on the merits of the livestream, if they're going to have it the least they could do is make sure it works. 

Press Pause - Altona Magic 1 South Melbourne 1

Late, late, late, not that anyone cares, least of all me. There are bigger things to worry about these days, but nevertheless, to the game itself. Oh, dear. A late flurry of activity doesn't make up for the fact that before that it was slop central from both teams. That would've been fine, well not fine but bearable, well maybe not even that, had we not gifted Magic with the opening goal of the game.

Picture this: Daniel Clarke down and injured in the other half of the field for some time, the referee not stopping the game, it's his prerogative I suppose. You assume that the South players are aware that Clark is down, and should at least kill the play, after all, there's only a short time left before halftime, and who'd want to concede at that particular moment?

But Jake Marshall clears up the line instead of out, the ball comes back our way, and if Moses faced a Red Sea made up of South defenders he wouldn't have needed his magic rod or God's help to get through to the other side.

Turns out the only way to get back any sort of dignity is for two unlikely things to happen, most of which involve a short corner. The corner is played short to Melvin Becket, who doesn't trip over the ball, doesn't sky it, and doesn't shank it. Instead he chips the ball expertly to Brad Norton, who the Magic defense treated with due social distancing respect by being nowhere near him. Norton headed it, it went in, and we got a point we were probably due, but geez it felt crap getting it anyway.

And as I realised a little later than I would have liked, here was Brad Norton scoring from a short corner, five a half years after I'd admonished him for taking a short corner in Shepparton.

There must have been some latent belief among some of the players that they were better than a side like the battling Altona Magic, but where was the proof of that on the day? Nowhere to be found, of course, and whatever positive vibes the squad may have brought into the season must've be near gone. So we've only lost one game, gone unbeaten for four games in a row, but damn if we don't make scoring look like an absolute chore, among our sundry other deficiencies.

But that's all by the by now. The real question last Saturday, the one that went more or less unspoken, was should anyone have even been at the game? Was the presence of the two teams and the smattering of supporters who turned up just being selfish, merely kidding themselves that the COVID-19 social distancing recommendations didn't apply to them, or just following orders in the vacuum of decision making created by the slow moving state and national federations?

I admit to feeling selfish being there, as if actually, being at a South game is an optional experience, not a mandatory unless absolutely unavoidable one. Would I have gone tomorrow to Dandenong tomorrow if the game was on? I'd like to think at this stage probably not, but also: maybe? What would people think if I coughed or sneezed. What would I think about myself? It's not a flattering thing to think about oneself, but at least this matter has been taken out of our hands.

Now there's the matter of what happens now, and what happens next. Who's paying the bills, who's due bills, and once we get through the other side of the pandemic, will anyone or at least enough still care?

Next game
Not until at least after April 14.

Final thought
So what do we do now?

Drama Queens - South Melbourne 2 Altona Magic 0

The scene was set for an all-time classic snooze-fest. Two teams winding down into the close of the season, nothing to aim for either up or down. It was raining, and no-one had bothered to put up the sponsor boards, which would have annoyed the sponsors if we had any that weren't board members. And the crowd was muted in interest, given the whole thing had a bit of a pre-season feeling, albeit with a bit less passion.

During this game (or after it) you may have seen an overly dramatic tweet describing the utter destitution of Clarendon Corner on Sunday afternoon:

@PaulMavroudis The sole person in Row H today #FightTillTheEnd #HooliganBlood #SMFCvAMFC pic.twitter.com/5BC8Mtv70j

— Foti Stavrakis (@FotiStavrakis) August 18, 2019

Let me assure everyone that it was not all quite like that. There were other Clarendon Corner people within the general vicinity of that photo - they were just sitting a few rows further back, in the dry areas covered by the roof.

Photo: Luke Radziminski.

When it stopped raining, a few people gradually moved down towards the famous Row H, which for those not in the know, is the row claimed by those of us in Clarendon Corner who do not wish to associate with the nonce brigade which tends to gather in the rows immediately in front of Row H.

And while it's not like no-one turned up, the low turnout overall, and especially in the areas quasi-traditionally inhabited (since 2012) by Clarendon Corner, created the perfect opportunity for me to enact a performance of despondent human misery.

Photo: Luke Radziminski.

But don't be concerned for me - it wasn't raining that hard, when it was raining. And don't be sad for those that were there and treated this game like the dead rubber it most surely was - there was nothing to play for, and nothing to get particularly excited about, even though the game did produce a number of chances for both teams. And don't even blame those that didn't turn up, because people do have other and/or better things to do; and besides which, didn't I tell people not to come to games if it no longer made them happy, and especially if attending games actually made them seriously unhappy?

Performative, self-preservationist, and self-conscious proto-martyr creating misery works for me, but it's not for everyone. And it's not like there's still not plenty of other naturally miserable looking people at South if you're into that kind of thing.

Some of the players didn't even bother turning up. Peter Skapetis was not present, as he's apparently in Greece. Who knows how long he'd had that planned, but it's a good thing we're not in a relegation scrap.

Having said that, some of our injured players did make appearances in and around the ground. Luke Adams was on the South bench, not on the team sheet, but still present to offer support. Brad Norton was apparently seen trying to calm down the very upset Pep Marafioti in the tunnel outside the change rooms. And injured keeper Josh Dorron was seen tucking into a burger in the grandstand, helping put some coin back into the club and advertising the food on offer in the social club.

And can I just say, the quality of the burgers has been steadily improving week by week, even if last week's patty was almost too big to comfortably fit within the bun provided. Now let's have a round of applause for the players that did turn up, and in general put in a solid shift.

Sadly there was also a moment of too much pride and passion, which has likely seen the end of one player's time at South. Having created several good opportunities early in the game and not taken them, the team won a penalty, its second of those in two games. Hey, when it rains, it pours. Credit to Perry "the Pez Dispenser" Lambropoulos for winning the spot kick with some nifty play; I have been one of the people who was less than enthused about his being signed at all, and after that unimpressed with what he offered in the first half of the season; but I am willing to admit that I was perhaps hasty to judge his capabilities, as in general he has been one of our better players in the second half of the season (even getting forward on occasion), and I would not be completely averse to him being at the club next season.

Photo: Luke Radziminski.

Now back to the penalty. One would have assumed that some people's probably nonsense generic superstitious bias against left footers taking penalties aside, having the person who scored our only penalty for the season just a couple of weeks ago take this one as well would just be (and I am loathe to use this term) common sense. Pep Marafioti however, for who knows what reason, did not see it that way, and attempted to take the ball off acting-skipper Marcus Schroen, which almost saw the two come to blows right there in front of everyone.

(and when I say "everyone" here, I mean the small crowd in attendance, as well as the audience watching either from home or from some decrepit gambling den in the Caucasus, Indochina, or Arabian Peninsula.)

They tell me that team morale is good, despite everything that has gone on this year, and certainly light years ahead of last year's mess. And yet only Nick Krousoratis bothered or had the good sense to intervene and try and defuse the situation between his teammates which was threatening to get even further out of hand. He's had a rough season has Nick, but that's the kind of level-headed person I'd want on my team. And for whatever it's worth, I still think he's a very talented player who could still do a lot of damage for our club (rather than against, like some others have done) next season.

Photo: Luke Radziminski.

As for why Pep thought he ought to have taken the penalty, I do not know. Someone on a thankfully very dusty and forgotten corner of the internet suggested that there was an extant arrangement - possibly originating from preseason - to alternate penalty takers. If this is the case, that is the dumbest thing I've heard for quite some time, especially when for almost the entire season we'd earned just one penalty before last Sunday's. Now since Pep was nowhere near the league golden-boot running, and considering that Marcus had scored the only other penalty we'd earned this season, and considering that Marcus was wearing the captain's armband, I don't know what Pep was trying to achieve.

Marcus probably could have handled the situation better, but I suppose he was caught off-guard not having a taser or can of pepper spray on hand to incapacitate the man trying to accost him. Maybe he was just as shocked and surprised at the rest of us at the playground antics taking place out on the hallowed turf of Lakeside Stadium. Or maybe this is an argument to go to the practice of netball or basketball, and have whoever was fouled in the penalty area take the penalty?

(at some point around here while typing up this post, whose segments were not compiled in order anyway, I got up to go to a local bakery to get some lunch)

The worst thing that could have happened after all that was for Schroen to miss the penalty, so thankfully he did manage to score the goal and put us up 1-0. I shudder to think what would have happened had he missed or had his shot saved.

As awful as that part of Sunday's spectacle was, I suppose it did at least offer the live-stream commentary team something to talk about in this dead rubber, though I'm slightly miffed now that I wasn't on special commentary for the day, the number of my guest commentary appearances having stalled at "two". Slightly more problematic was the task of the South Melbourne highlights editor, who had to try and edit out as much as possible of the nonsense between Schroen and Marafioti, an impossible task to complete to 100% levels of erasure of important moments of South Melbourne history.

It may have been unprofessional to do it the way I'm about to suggest, but I feel like my video editor friend missed an opportunity to augment the experience with the addition of an obvious yet also classic Simpsons gag.

Anyway, as expected Pep was not out on the field for the second half (replaced by Billy Konstantinidis), and I fancy that's the last time we've seen him in a South shirt. It's a pity that it's ended up this way - for all his character and playing foibles, he was one of our better players this year (though some cruel persons might say that was a problem in itself). But two brothers gone in the one season, what are the odds? And both of them ex-South juniors, which will make the board's aim of a title with 60% of our squad being South juniors a bit of a harder task.

Photo: Luke Radziminski.

The game continued being a free-flowing affair, with both sides squandering chances. Magic - who have apparently just had a major backer of theirs announce his resignation from the presidency, though who knows how it will affect them next year - had a goal ruled out for offside. Eventually Konstantinidis tapped home a late goal to finish this game off as a contest.

Next week
Heidelberg at home on Sunday afternoon. This will be the final game of the season for the men's team, and I don't think it could come any sooner. Unfortunately, the game also doubles up as an important fixture for what I'm still calling the minor premiership, which Heidelberg are in best place to secure.

After largely going unnoticed in 2019, apparently the club is going to make the final game a bit of a showcase of sorts for the club's 60th anniversary celebrations, so there's that to look forward to I suppose.

Cripes, it'll be the last time some of us will see each other for months! And it'll be the last time we see some or many of these players in a South shirt. I'm getting all misty-eyed. If only we knew who we were planning to turf now, we could have the Streisand backed montage ready to go.

Women stumbling in quest for finals
I was going to go to the senior women's game against Box Hill at Lakeside last Saturday, but got roped into another game instead - see the "around the grounds" section for that story. Anyway, the women lost 3-1 to Box Hill, and made things more difficult for themselves in terms of trying to secure the final spot in the finals. Again, not that any of the three teams (ourselves, the Bergers, or Box Hill) vying for fourth are likely to do any damage in the finals - especially as they'll have to play Calder first up - but it would be nice to at least make it. So the loss against Box Hill was a pretty important one, but not quite the season-ending game it could've been

That probably came yesterday, with the side playing out a 1-1 draw vs the NTC at Knox. I didn't get out there, of course, but I manage to watch the game (or at least most of it) on the stream. It was not one of our better performances, something I could tell from the stream despite it being filmed at ground level, having no commentary or graphics, and with the placement of portable goals all around the perimeter giving poor depth perception having me even bigger problems than usual trying to figure out what was going on.

Skip Fulton graciously let us know that at half time we were 1-0 up, thanks to a Nat Martineau goal, scored before confusion about the stream - which was originally tagged as Southern vs Heidelberg - was cleared up. I did see our late-season replacement keeper save a penalty during the first half, adding to her short-term reputation as being something more than a short-term fix.

The second half was just as confusing to me as the first (not least in part because I was switching back and forth between the stream and another project), because I thought we'd scored a goal from a Leia Varley free kick but then a comment online asked why it was disallowed. When NTC scored, I wasn't sure then if it was an equaliser or just a goal clawed back, and the initial social media response from the club at the conclusion of the game was that we'd won the game 2-1.

That was later corrected (with an apology) to 1-1, with Varley's goal being disallowed at it came from an indirect free kick; a result which sees us sit a point behind Heidelberg, who have a game in hand against Southern United. We play the Bergers in the last round, and the Bergers also have a game against Box Hill whee they could drop points, but at this stage it appears that even if we beat Bayside this Saturday afternoon at Lakeside and the Bergers in the last round at home, it's the Bergers with the best shot of making finals. It's been that kind of year.

More videos uploaded
I've uploaded a couple more hour long compilations of South Melbourne highlights from circa 1988-1992. These come from Banger's collection, and you can check them out on my channel here, along with other South videos. I've tagged/timestamped the individual games in the description sections, but there's often little snippets of other stuff which I haven't bothered to tag - consider them bonus material.

Puskas film update
A few months ago, some readers showed some concern about whether this film was actually still being made. I did not have a definitive answer then. I can say now that 'yes', the film is still in production. Work related and other commitments slowed down the process, but it is still going. I don't have much directly to do with the film's production, but I will do what I can to keep the ball rolling. I'd give you an estimated time of completion, but it's really up to the guys making the film to get the film to a stage where it can be finished and shown to the public.

Around the grounds
Please make this season end
Trundled out to Quarries Park or whatever it's called for Clifton Hill vs Yarraville. You want a game that meant nothing? Here it was. Two teams so bad they deserved to be relegated, but thanks to a mass restructure of the league system coming soon, they've been left to spin their wheels for most of the season, like so many clubs in a similar position. It's half the reason I've barely been to an Altona East game this year. Maybe because it meant nothing, there was hardly anybody there. I was there to watch a friend's son make his senior starting debut as goalkeeper for Clifton Hill. He did OK, but his team still lost 2-1.

Operation Italian White Whale
I've started the idiotic process of trying to update the infamous Victorian Italian club merger chart. It will take a very long time, will probably kill me, and end up being heinously incorrect if I ever do finish it. That being said, if you or someone you know actually knows the dates of Italian club mergers hitherto unrepresented in the current flowchart, please get in contact with me.

I've already had several good leads and prompts, with Anstey Roma's 1970 merger with Triestina, the Cobram split and re-merger, and the Mildura split in 1979/80.

Final thought
Το καλό πράγμα αργή να γίνει as my old man likes to say.

P.S.

Forgive the lateness of my reply.

Saltiness - Altona Magic 1 South Melbourne 2

Another example of the blog's steep decline in quality and timeliness.

Drove to Paisley Park from Sunshine with the last quarter of the Blues-Pies game on the radio, and dreading arriving at the ground with the Pies having lost... thankfully no nonsense hundred metre penalty could prevent a Collingwood victory. Thankfully also that I had to stop at just about every red light on the way, which allowed me to refocus on the road.

After arriving at Paisley Park (and waiting out the last couple of minutes of the footy while parked), I managed to catch most of the under 20s game. We dominated proceedings, but failed to get the win. That's less important than the performances of the players of course, because it is a development team in a development league that's a subsidiary to another development in a development league. Of most interest of course was the ongoing form/status of Manny Aguek, who played well but could not manage to convert any of his many chances on the weekend.

There's safe standing, and then there's this; people standing on old flimsy
 chairs, on soft, muddy ground. Photo: Luke Radziminski.

Then time for the seniors. I don't think many of us had high expectations of this game (and the two after it), especially given the σαπίλα of the second half of the Oakleigh game. There were two useful ins from that league game (I am conveniently ignoring the midweek cup game), with Gerrie Sylaidos and Zac Bates in the side. Gerrie was good, and Bates was fast. Kristian Konstantinidis didn't start the game, because he arrived at the game due to car troubles. Luke Adams was sick. Ethan Gage is/was absent due to differing reasons depending on who you ask.

The first half performance wasn't too bad. A bit dull, to the point where a idle chat about certain non-NCIP compliant flags at the venue turned into a full-blown vexillology discussion, and whether or not flags from JRR Tolkien's universe would pass the test, seeing as how they are often explicitly linked to particular races.

Anyway, apart from a near own goal (well-saved by Roganovic), Magic didn't really create anything resembling a threatening chance. The game was a messy one, which I thought would suit us, in the sense that if Magic got up and about and started playing in the way they're capable of, we'd struggle to keep up. But then towards the end of the first half, we started to eke some nice moves, and I suppose we felt good that we were still in this game.

The second half could not have started off much worse, with KK giving away a goal. Magic had struggled to make attacking inroads, but instead of clearing the ball up the field, KK had one of his brain-fades and turned the ball over while dribbling in circles on his own byline. Another day, another goal coughed up cheaply. If teams were scoring 30 metre rockets or goals from 25 pass moves, I could cope a little easier with that, but most weeks so many of the goals are self-inflicted.

Look, that's not such a surprise. That's what happens to teams like ours, regardless of the opposition. If one were to use a cricket analogy, one is as likely (perhaps even more likely) to get out from a single bad delivery than several good ones.

And we finally managed to get a bit of luck going our own way. I am glad that Marcus Schroen's free kick (I am not calling it a shot) went in, but there is no way that Marcus meant for the ball to end up in the back of the net. But they all count the same, right? And I suppose the delivery was good enough in the sense that KK was there at the back-post anyway, after faking(?) despondency on the edge of the 18 yard box before the free kick was taken. Say what you will about KK, but he is actually quite adept at making some nice runs into the box from set piece situations.

The other goal, the one that put us into the lead, was a bit more orthodox, but in some ways no less accidental. A decent Schroen pass from deep released Pep Marafioti into space (thanks in part also to the Magic defender who was too high upfield - a common theme on the night, as the home side played a very high line), who after making his run, bobbled the ball at his feet, managed to squeeze the ball under the Magic keeper. Maybe one could be generous and say that the surface contributed to the bobbling, but the net effect was that the stumbling effort to control the ball actually sucked the keeper out  further than he may have otherwise committed.

At any rate, Pep's penchant for hitting shots straight at the keeper went his way this time, and he moved into outright leader for our golden boot, with the still miserly total of three goals. Say what you will about Pep though, chances do tend to fall his way, even if he hasn't managed to convert as many as he should've.

And accidental or fortunate goals are still worth more than orthodox no-goals, as could be seen by the normal chances we created we which failed to score from - most notably a Bates one-on-one and a Billy Konstantinidis header. Credit to the opposition goalkeeper on that one, who would've probably walked away with the man-of-the-match plaudits had his team walked away from this game with a point.

I am a bit worried though by our players celebrating by jumping on the fence at Paisley Park - I only say this because I know from unpleasant personal experience that several parts of the field's perimeter fencing has bits of unclipped metal sticking up. Anyway, the only damage done was getting soaked in beer from someone launching their cup in the air during the goal celebrations. And there's me with an umbrella for the rain which never came, sitting closed at my side. At least the guy next to me complaining about being soaked had a waterproof jacket.

The game was interrupted during the second-half by a low flying drone, which stopped the game for a little bit, and led to this reworking of the 'hooligan blood' chant:

Hooligan drone
Flying through the air
Hope it doesn't crash
Hope it doesn't crash
Hope it doesn't crash

Along with the three goals, the substitutions and stops in play for injuries, the appearance of the drone saw the officials add six minutes of injury time, which ended up being closer to eight. Naturally this upset quite a few South fans, but one has to remember that the added time as displayed on the fourth official's board is only the minimum amount of time to be added on.

Still, one can understand the frustration with the game not ending, because there was the feeling that a very good performance - probably our best of the season, if we limit it to the second half - could've been undone by late moment of misfortune. But at least we didn't have our official Twitter account sooking about the officiating.

FT SCORE|

Was not our night as our seniors go down to South 2-1 as some decisions did not go our way.
Our 20’s played a 1-1 draw with a great performance.

📸 @Avellino_Photo… https://t.co/S23HiLpmyT

— Altona Magic S.C (@AltonaMagic) May 11, 2019

I'm a fan of official media streams going off the rails (even if it's just ever so slightly), but what was the Magic Twitter account complaining about here? The late 50/50 contest between Jake Marshall and Dusan Bosnjak in the dying moments of the game? That's a bit of a stretch and to extrapolate that into numerous other decisions is mind-boggling, especially as they tended to get the rub of the green, especially in the first half.

The thing is that even with their player outs, Magic have a much a stronger (and more expensive) squad than we do, and with a couple of notable exceptions, there'd be few of the players we fielded on Saturday night that they'd swap into their side at the expense of the players they had themselves.

But the story of the night is that against an undermanned but still heavy favourite Magic side, we created many good chances and restricted our opponents to almost nothing of value. They can try and play the underdog, but the international gambling community knows who let them down on Saturday night.

Apart from being worthwhile in its own right, the win was also useful in the ongoing struggle to avoid relegation, especially as Oakleigh took beat Pascoe Vale the day after. The other relevant results tended to go our way this week, but our failure to beat any of the six sides below us at this point of the year (with the exception of Dandy City and Port) is beginning to bite. We're just three points above the playoff spot, and it's that fact which makes you wish we could have scraped more than a combined one point against Oakleigh, Thunder, Kingston, and Pascoe Vale.

Next game
The Bergers away on Saturday night.

Shedding excess baggage
The mid-season transfer window has opened, and our first move has been to part ways with forward midfielder winger defender utility p;layer George Howard. He seems to have landed at Hume City.

Final thought
Wishing ex-South man Andy Brennan all the joy and happiness in the world.

“I tried to hide my sexuality a lot and tried to push it aside. Not admitting the truth even to myself, just because of the way I thought it would be perceived."

Former @ALeague player and @GreenGullySC forward @AndyBrennan36 has made the courageous decision to come out publicly pic.twitter.com/1UEH8s76pQ

— The PFA (@thepfa) May 14, 2019

Gerrie! Gerrie! Gerrie! - South Melbourne 1 Dandenong City 0

Someone not familiar with soccer might think it strange how one goal can make all the difference between throwing the club into the emotional abyss or writing off a match with the cliché "not a great performance, but it was good to grind out a win and on to the next game".

Such people may also find it strange how creating three or four clearcut chances and failing to take any of them means less when someone scores off a half chance, slotting a ball through traffic from the edge of the box.

Before that, most of what we had was increasing frustration and the fear that we would cop a goal on the counter. Dandy City came to Lakeside with a plan, and that plan was to sit back and try and hit us on the break.

It was in stark contrast to last week's game against Bentleigh, where the Greens sought to take the game on, and we were able to attack promisingly on the counter in the spaces left behind by the Greens' aggression. In contrast, last Friday we were thrust into the role of the more active team, and the evidence was that we still have some work to do on that front.

On the one hand, I suppose we should be flattered that an opponent thought enough of our potential to try and curtail our attacking threat in this way. On the other hand, you wonder if other teams will also employ this tactic, hoping - possibly correctly - that we aren't as effective when we're asked to dictate play with the ball.

Most of what we were able to produce in the first half came through the work of Gerrie Sylaidos, who in lieu of adequate connections in midfield, worked cross-field passes to the right-hand side where Nick Krousouratis was operating. This combination - although not the precise tactic - led to our best chance of the game, with a Sylaidos pass opening up the City defence for Krousouratis' shot which somehow hit the post and come straight back out. I thought it had gone in, and so did a good chunk of the home crowd, but it was not so.

When added to makeshift centre-forward George Howard's shot straight at the opposition goalkeeper (who was not Chris Maynard, as some in the crowd believed) early in the game, there was palpable frustration in the crowd, mixed with wanting to show patience with the young squad. The red card to City's James Kelly for an off-the-ball attack on Dean Bereveskos only served to solidify the tactical trajectory of the game.

Outside Gate 2 at Lakeside Stadium/ Photo: Luke Radziminski

And as the game wore on, it seemed to be heading for one of two outcomes; a tepid 0-0 draw, or a loss to us courtesy of a goal pinched by the visitors. They sent in some dangerous balls across the box, but their only real chance came from a Dean Piemonte strike from the edge of the area - the kind of sucker-punch that Piemonte specialises in, not least against us - which sailed high and wide.

Otherwise our defence held up reasonably well, and much praise has been sent in the direction of Luke Adams and Jake Marshall, who did enough good work to see that Nikola Roganovic didn't have to make a save all night. But further up the field things were less cohesive, and the end result perhaps meant that what looked like a team afraid or unsure of how to take the game on against a conservative opponent, can be construed as - for now - a team playing patiently and to instruction.

For example, I'm not sure what George Howard's natural position is, but it ain't centre-forward. Pep Marafioti struggled against Steven Topalovic out wide, but I would have preferred Pep at centre-forward rather than Howard, because at least Pep has a striker's instincts, as shown by his flick-on attempt on from a low Sylaidos cross - an attempt which would have broken the deadlock if not for a superb reflex save by Kennedy in the Dandy City goal.

We did eventually get the lead thanks to Sylaidos' shimmy and toe-poke from the edge of the box through a maze of bodies, and it was not an undeserved lead. The rest was about holding on, and seeing a glimpse of what prize recruit Billy Konstantinidis can do. Though helped by the fact that the now trailing Dandy City had to come out and get a goal, Konstantinidis' mere presence was that of an old-fashioned footy full-forward, someone who immediately straightens up a side and gives it a sense of directional clarity.

We played better the week before, and came away with nothing but a small replenishment of the pride and belief we threw away last year. We played not so well on Friday night, but came away with three points and the knowledge that we can win when playing less than thrilling or inspired football. Now what would you rather have?

Next game
Port Melbourne away on Saturday night, beginning our customary stretch of early season away matches. It's another one of hose theoretical must-win matches. Port are currently on one point from two games, haven't scored yet this season, and yet are also probably not quite as bad as that form-line suggests.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Saturday is set to be a scorcher - 38 degrees - so hopefully it gets a bit cooler by kickoff time. Pity for the under 20s though. Remember to be sun smart this week.

Observations on match day operations
There was no minute's silence for the passing of Brian Edgley last week. Granted, Edgley was only our coach for about two thirds of the 1976 season - and his legacy at other clubs like Mooroolbark, Preston, and Balgownie Rangers was much more substantial - but it seems remiss not to have at least paid some tribute to him.

The game started ten minutes late for who knows what reason, which is not a great thing when Friday night games already start so late. I suppose it worked in favour of the habitually late.

Food service in the social club was slow. Since we have seen it happen with every operator of the social club's kitchen since the social club re-opened in 2017, one must assume that the kitchen is ill-designed for match day operations as opposed to normal bistro operations. Here's hoping that it's just teething issues with the new operator, and that when the glut of home games arrives later in the year that these issues are ameliorated to a degree.

I can understand waiting for things like burgers and steak sandwiches, but having to wait for things like dim sims and potato cakes, which should in theory easily sit ready in a bain marie, is a worry.
The menu has been simplified for match days, and most things seem to be of reasonable value. The burger I had was not nearly as good as the one I had at the members' night a few weeks ago, but one reader wanted me to note for the record that his steak sandwich was excellent.

Away from the kitchen, there was new and old merch available, and the promise has been made of a variety of heritage themed merchandise becoming available during the year. People seemed to like the commemorative postcards which voting rights members received, though I almost can't bear to look at them because of the rampant superfluous apostrophes. One member who did like the postcards was moderately disappointed that the cards were double-sided, as that meant that he couldn't frame any of them without needing to get another set of cards.

There did still seem to be some problems with people not being on the database despite having paid for their memberships. On the plus side, the bloke who complimented the quality of the steak sandwich also wanted me to note that the sturdy reusable sealed plastic bags were a nice touch.

No cheesecake
It wasn't in the membership brochure, but I'm still shattered.

Pines' under 12s runners-up pennant from 1966, from the South Yarra
Junior Soccer Federation. Photo: Paul Mavroudis.  

Women
The South Melbourne women kicked off their 2019 campaign last week against Southern United at Monterey Reserve. Normally I wouldn't dare head out that far for anything other than a South senior men's game, but the senior women play away from Lakeside in the early part of the season for as long as the men do, and every time they play at Keilor - the only away NPLW venue close to me - there's always some damn clash with the men's team or some other event.

Besides, long public transport trips allow me to clear my head, and get into a faux-Zen state of mind, pondering koans like:

"where is the amenity in delivering all-day ten minute train frequencies if adjacent bus routes only operate at hourly intervals?"

Southern United are a struggling outfit who were reputedly close to folding last year, but they've sorted themselves out enough for another go in 2019. Their existence and struggles do seem to suggest that the late Tony Dunkerley's dream of composite representative franchise teams from the south-eastern suburbs and Mornington Peninsula are not as straightforward as he would have liked.

Having smashed them 14-0 last season, it was no surprise that we ran out 11-0 winners here, even without several W-League players in the team, and notable absentees such as Tiff Eliadis who has retired. Southern struggled to even get the ball up the field; the only chance they had for the game was when a South defender hit a stray back pass to the keeper. So, no stress on this occasion, just a relaxed day out in Frankston North.

Families
Thanks to the Marafioti brothers, last week we got into a discussion in the comments section about player-family connections at South, and we came up with the following.

Brothers

• Anastasiadis (John and Dean)
• Goutzioulis (Ange and George)
• Tavsancioglou (Rama and Adem)
• Trifiro (Jason and Glen)
• Marafioti (Pep and Gio)

Father-son

• Tsolakis (Manny and Peter)
• Salapasidis (Savvas and Kosta)
• Maclaren (Bruce and Fraser)

Cousins

• Fraser Maclaren - Alastair Bray
• Steve Tasios - Steve Panopoulos

But there must be more. So hit us up in the comments section for the obvious (and not so obvious) ones we've missed.

Match programs
We put out the call for more South Melbourne Hellas match programs, and Luke Patitsas (of the Sour Grapes blog, a South blog with someone who pays attention to the games) answered the call.

Thanks to Luke's efforts, we've been able to add one program from 1985 (Brunswick away); five home programs from 1987; a home program from 1989; two from 1989-90; one from 1990-91, a really great George Cross program; one from the opening day of the 1991-92 season; and two from home games (rounds 18 +20) from 2005.

For these and every other program we've managed to source, check out our match programs section. And if you have something that South of the Border is missing - and I know that some of you do - please get in touch with me.

FFA Summit Series
FFA is doing a roadshow gathering people in cities across Australia to talk about the issues the game faces. They're in Melbourne on Thursday May 2nd, a training night, but if you'd like to go anyway, head to this link and register your interest.

Personally I think this is a really dumb idea, but that's never stopped any of you before
So this week FV announced it had entered into some sort of arrangement with some sort of group to broadcast - live - every NPL men's match, every NPL under 20s match, every NPL women's match, and a minimum of two NPL 2 games a week.

Now having seen this kind of thing happen before, albeit on a much smaller scale - I'm thinking of circa the 2010 or 2011 seasons when some Harvey Silver related company filmed one live game a week - I was not in favour of this at all. I'm happy for highlights packages to be produced, and I'm happy for the odd radio game and full-blown live stream for important games - but this is too much.

And surely the aim should be to get people to go to games? But then I remembered that whatever you do, no one's going to turn to up to any game after whenever someone decides summer's ended, so sure, why not stream every single game? And as Matthew Galea has noted, it will at least provide some sort of quantifiable data on the interest in NPL competitions for proponents (and opponents) of the second division and promotion-relegation debate to manipulate to their liking.

The NPL Victoria games are available on YouTube and Facebook, and the consensus seems to be that the video quality is better on the YouTube streams. The graphics are basic but mostly clean, and they're updated regularly with stats and promos for various Football Victoria events. There's no replays - yet - which means if you stop paying attention you have to scroll back on the video to see a goal again. They seem to occasionally have commentators, and occasionally not.

By the way, if you're interested in doing commentary, analysis, etc for this, hit up Teo Pellizzeri with an expression of interest.

I'm recruiting volunteers to broadcast games. Play by play commentators, analysis and experts (including current and ex players)

Send your EOI and demos if applicable to me: teo.pellizzeri@footballvictoria.com.au#DPRV #NPLVIC #WomenInFootball #NPLWVIC https://t.co/dIWDu1TGn7

— Teo Pellizzeri (@teopellizzeri) February 22, 2019

I'd put my name down but I don't know the players and I can't see good and I don't even know anything about soccer; and while that's part of this blog's charm, it probably wouldn't translate to something requiring a certain degree of competence. But you people, you know what's going on, you can see better than I, and you just might want to give amateur broadcasting a stab.

Personally, I'd rather be at a game, with the true fans, knee deep in mud, beer and blood. But that's not for everybody.

On the couch
Oh, what the heck; you only live once. Give me a white wine spritzer, spritzer, spritzer...
So I was coming home on the train from Frankston late Saturday afternoon, and while the waiting times on the Franga line might be lower these days - thank you Sky Rail - the actual train trip itself through suburbs where you wouldn't want to live and suburbs where you couldn't afford to live is just as long as it ever was. How to pass the time? Well, it just so happens that Football Victoria signed up some ridiculous deal to broadcast close to a bazillion of its NPL games probably mostly to indigent gamblers, and it's just my luck that there's one on right at the time I'm travelling. It's Manningham United Blues against Springvale White Eagles, from the Veneto Club for some reason. Manningham is up 1-0, there's half an hour left and no commentary. Springvale find a way to overturn the deficit and win the game, and thus begins my bender.

Even early in the season, the Somers Street pitch isn't in great shape.

Something done in and around watching Gerrie's goal about twenty to thirty times on YouTube
Knowing the score beforehand, but being impatient for someone to upload the condensed highlights, I settled in on the couch on Sunday morning to watch the replay of Knights vs Magic in its entirety, in whatever gap my brothers left open in between another Titan Quest campaign. And I have to say, I was a little disappointed. Granted, that may just be me - not someone who watches full-length soccer matches on television except during the World Cup, nor as someone who ever watches replays these days of matches where they already know the outcome. But this was a 4-3 game, with an implied shifting of momentum, a red card, and reputed great atmosphere. But it felt kind of... flat? Credit to Knights I suppose for not being so honking in the first two weeks of this season as they've been for the past few years, but I'm not quite sure how they scored four times; I do understand how they didn't cop six or seven, what with Magic being wasteful in a way they won't be whenever it is they're due to play us. You'd like to think these kinds of things even themselves out in the end, but they don't.

Scene missing
Sunday afternoon, too hot to go outside, so I park myself in an armchair with my dad taking the couch, and him belittling the quality of the players in the St Albans vs Moreland game, comparing it unfavourably to the players in his village team playing back in early 1960s Greece, back when villages like his still had children and young men. But that's my old man in a nutshell; like many people of his vintage who have fallen off the local soccer bandwagon, they live with misty eyed memories of Ulysses Kokkinos and his ψαράκι headers or Gary Cole cracking shots with enough power to kill someone. Me, I have to be subservient to my probably ill-considered and often downright inconvenient principles and take what I can get in this day and age, and not some fast-receding memory of a corrupt idyll of yesteryear. This is another not great game. St Albans have a halftime lead they probably don't deserve. The second half is ordinary if not quite dire - I cut the teams some slack because of the heat - and it is actually improved by the stream cutting out for a good ten minutes or so. The stream returns and the game is going nowhere, until everything gets turned on its head when Moreland score two goals in as many minutes. St Albans manage to level things up by the end, but since my old man has long since left to do something else, did it really matter that the two teams saved up the excitement until the end?

Final thought
They must only come out after midnight. Two weeks in a row at Sunshine station at about 12:30 in the morning, a random starts talking to me about South. This time, not very contemporary discussion, just a bloke who saw my beanie and went "South Melbourne Hellas, that's going way back, Trimmers" etc, etc.