September 2015 digest

Maybe posting this a bit early in the day, but if something interesting happens between now and midnight, let's just all agree to look the other way while I sneak an edit in somewhere.

Social club and Lakeside lease saga
Unresolved.

Presentation night
A combination senior/junior event, this will be held on Friday October 16th at Grand Star Receptions in Altona North. $70 adults, $30 children. I won't be there, as I have another event that I have already agreed to attend.

Player movements and contract statuses
It looks like the peripatetic career path of midfielder Dane Milovanovic is set to continue. Milovanovic, who missed much of the season with a knee injury sustained against Oakleigh away mid-season, has joined Hong Kong Premier League side Hong Kong Pegasus.

Pegasus sign Aussie MF Dane Milovanovic, who spent a season with Sun Hei and won the Senior Shield https://t.co/PExGPX6BZM #hkfootball

— Jeff Walker Lee (@celticshk) September 25, 2015 

With Pegasus' season finishing in May, one would think that Milovanovic's time with South is at an end, unless he decided to come back to Australia during the 2016 mid-season transfer window. Meanwhile forward Andy Bevin has joined Team Wellington, and I assume this means he will no longer be at South Melbourne. As reported earlier, Nick Epifano has signed on for 2016, and although he has been rumoured to be trialling with Perth Glory, a transfer away from South looks uncertain. The (known/reported) contract statuses of some our other players and coaches are:

• Iqi Jawadi is contracted until the end of 2016.
• Michael Eagar is contracted until the end of 2016.
• Milos Lujic is contracted until the end of 2016.
• Leigh Minopoulos is contracted until the end of 2016.
• Tim Mala is contracted until the end of 2016.
• Chris Irwin has a two year contract with the club; it is unclear whether that contract finishes at the end of 2016, or 2017.
• Stephen Hatzikostas is contracted until the end of 2017.
• Brad Norton is contracted until the end of 2017.
• Luke Eyles, who played against us last week for Hobart Olympia, had already been signed until the end of the 2017 season.
• Chris Taylor has a long term contract with the club, believed to be five years.

Players signed until the end of the 2015 season.

• Matty Theodore
• Nikola Roganovic
• Andy Kecojevic

Players with unknown contract statuses

• David Stirton (rumoured to be heading to Port Melbourne)
• Fraser MacLaren
• Kristian Konstantinidis (possibly until end of 2016)
• Luke Adams
• Thomas Lakic
• Cody Martindale (assume until end 2015)
• Jake Barker-Daish
• Nick Morton

Considering that players have left before their contracts have finished - such as Tyson Holmes and James Musa - it's hard to know how are contracts work. In addition if people are aware of the contract statuses of any other players (many of whom I assume are only contracted on a season by season basis, such as Nick Morton), please add them into the comments.

There is also the issue of the player points cap being reduced from 225 to 200. Not that it's ever been policed properly, but you know, it's something to consider briefly.

What is the crowd capacity of Lakeside Stadium? (an ongoing project)
Over the years there has been much debate about the what the exact capacity of Lakeside Stadium is, whether that was the old Bob Jane Stadium (both when it was all open terracing and then had wooden seats installed) and once Lakeside was redeveloped with the athletics track.

Some of the debate has been motivated around our reputation of providing dodgy crowd figures, the seating capacity in the event that we somehow got into the A-League (snicker), or persistent dick measuring contests about who has a better stadium with Melbourne Knights supporters.

So as a beginning to figuring out what the seated capacity is of the stadium, a few weeks back
while back I was watching a South video on Youtube, I decided to do a count of the seats on the other side of the ground, and posted about it on smfcboard.

Not taking into account the empty spaces set aside for disabled seating, the 'new' stand's approximate seating capacity is 2420. This is made up of:

• 10 bays of 14 rows with 14 seats each (1960) 

• 2 bays at the ends with 7 rows with 14 seats each (196) 

• 2 truncated bays with 6 full rows of 14 seats (168), and 8 rows of 6 seats (96), for a total of 264. 

Of course, since we very rarely use that stand, it's not at the heart of the capacity discussions surrounding Lakeside Stadium. At some point someone will have to do a detailed count of the stand that we use, though even then it will not quell all the controversy (such as it is) as the club never releases official crowd figures, and you also have people standing along the fence, at the back of the stand, and of course in the corporate boxes. But a little bit more certainty about certain inalienable facts couldn't hurt.

SMWFC win grand final
While I had intended on going to see the VFL grand final - go 'Towners! - I was offered a lift to the Veneto Club for this final match in the Women's Victorian Premier League, before the competition is replaced by the Women's NPL project. Neither of the two grand final contestants - the defending champions South Melbourne, and 2015's leading team Boroondara Eagles - had been accepted into the WNPL for 2016, so this was always going to be the end of an era as well as the end of the season. Now South Women may or may not appeal their exclusion - who knows for sure? - but in a situation where past or even recent on field performance is not the main criteria for the successful acquisition of a licence, it all comes down to the specifics of the licence application. And if that's not good enough, what can you do? Anyway, about 400-600 people were in attendance for this game, that was of a high standard for about 25 minutes then deteriorated significantly, but at least there were lots of goals, eh? South kept playing these delightful through balls to their forwards, but couldn't make the chances count. Eagles opened the scoring with a shot over the keeper, South equalised in the second half. Extra time saw Eagles take the lead with another long range shot, hit the crossbar twice and concede an own goal. The penalty shoot out saw South reach the stage, only to to have their goalkeeper take the decisive penalty shot and shoot it straight at the Eagles goalkeeper. Luckily Boroondara's next shot sailed over the crossbar and into the next suburb. South won the grand final with its next shot, farewelling the local top flight with its third championship.

Going up, going down
Well, we already knew that Dandenong Thunder and Werribee had been relegated. Now we know that North Geelong are also gone, having lost 2-0 to Melbourne Victory's NPL side in a playoff last week. Joining us therefore in NPL next season will be Richmond, Bulleen and, Melbourne Victory's NPL team. My immediate thoughts are that Friday nights at Richmond despite the limited cover ain't so bad; that the good food and atmosphere under the shed at the Veneto Club doesn't make up for abysmal public transport connections and likely Monday night games; and Victory's promotion to NPL may cause a dilemma for some of our younger friends from a certain supporting sub-faction and their potential allegiances.

Some quick thoughts on four hours spent at the MCC Library looking through the Soccer Action collection
After my first time using the research facilities there, I can say that the MCC Library is a very quiet, and very comfortable place to do research, and I highly recommend soccer researchers make use of the soccer collections housed there. As usual though, to avoid having an aimless session there, make sure you already know what it is you want to research, and avoid making digressions unless its related to your immediate research interest. I spent some time there looking at Soccer Action to the point where my head started hurting, but I did notice a few tropes.

• The ethnic names vs mainstream names debate will end at some point, but like the iconoclasts vs the iconodules in the Byzantine Empire, it will take several generations to resolve itself.
• The ethnic language segments - in Greek, Spanish and Serbo-Croatian - are interesting, although they can't possibly have been understood by everyone. The Spanish language stuff is interesting, as with its focus on West Melbourne, West Brunswick and Burnley, it provides a peek into Hispanic soccer before Laverton Park and Melbourne City.
• Because the paper shut down every year between early November and late January, so much stuff has not been covered - transfer rumours, tours from overseas, etc.
• The level of detail in match reports can vary wildly between editions and between years.
• Minor soccer events, like a schools final, would sometimes get promotion but then no follow up match report.
• While mergers were not an infrequent occurrence, I lost track of the amount of articles dealing with mergers involving Albion and Sunshine City.
• Always a rumour about some team set to tour. Usually never happened.
• Women's soccer got extremely short shrift. While the odd (usually earlier) years will include match results, in most years you're lucky if you can get the end of season table and a cup final result.

I went in there mostly with a plan to check up a couple of details, and look at the wider paper in a more scatter shot fashion. Next time I go, it will be with a focus on taking better notes and focusing on one year at a time. I'll have to find a way of getting Roy Hay or the MCC library to make a compile list of everything in the Hay-Desira collection.

Life after Brennan - Dandenong Thunder 0 South Melbourne 1

'You have to listen to the notes she's not playing' someone once said, that someone being fond of the kind of obtuse jazz misdirection that only the dedicated and most initiated claim to understand. Me, I like my footballers to be more straightforward. In other words, I miss Andy Brennan, and I'm not sure the team will be able to adjust and cope to life without him, which is a horribly over the top kind of observation to make about a bloke who played just a handful of games for us. But I should probably stop before this becomes a full blown love letter, and talk a little bit about the game,

Someone made the point about last night's fixture that we never win easy at Dandenong, and that's true enough; but that doesn't mean we couldn't start doing so. Instead what we got was not so much a grind, but a hanging on for dear life experience. Having said that, our first half was better than our second, and we sort of managed to wrest the game back a little in the last ten minutes or so, so it's not like it was one monotonous onslaught. Still, quite how we managed to get the win is one of the great mysteries of life (except for the fact that good teams around the world win ugly every week and no one really bats an eyelid except the most hopeless chinstrokers).

Fraser MacLaren, fresh from his 90 seconds of cup action the week before, started his first South game for the suspended Nikola Roganovic. He was also our best player, as an increasingly overwhelmed midfield struggled in preventing Thunder from dominating possession and territory. forcing MacLaren into making many, many saves. Being at the other end of the field in both halves meant that it was sometimes very difficult to tell what was going in our defensive third, but it all looked very concerning nonetheless.

The other notable inclusion was at the other end of the field. Kiwi Andy Bevin made his debut for the club, playing about an hour's worth of the game. While he looked comfortable on the ball, let it be quite clear that he is not even remotely a like for like replacement for Andy Brennan. Where Brennan's primary weapons were speed, strength and a willingness to have a go, Bevin looks slower, smaller and more likely to use on the ball trickery to achieve his ends. To that end, he'll likely end up playing a more Jamie Reed style of game dragging defenders away from Milos Lujic, while also hopefully becoming a handy six yard poacher sort of forward.

This means that Leigh Minopoulos will likely get more first team starting opportunities, as he did in this game playing out wide on the right. It also means that we should be prepared for at least some short term pain as the forward half of the field learns to adjust to the the new post-Brennan style of play that will be required from the team. Milos Lujic spent a good deal of the night being visibly frustrated at the sketchy service and lack of synchronisation.

Because Brennan played along the wing as well as up front, the midfield will also have to adjust to life without its biggest body, after already having lost Eagar from the short lived defensive midfield position that he occupied at the start of the year, and which he had to give up to return to centre back after Kristian Konstantinidis' injury. For his part, Eagar, back this week after missing a couple of games because of his botched attempt at collecting a yellow card against Oakleigh, managed to get a yellow card for time wasting in this game, which will see him miss the midweek cup match but also belatedly wipe clean his yellow card slate.

When we weren't struggling to regain and retain possession, there was space for the wingers to move in, even if they lacked Brennan's decisiveness and too many attacking moves became undone because of it. As ineffective as we were for much of the game, Iqi Jawadi's decisive goal into the top corner and well out of the reach of Zaim Zeneli was something worthwhile to take out of the game, not just for it being the winning goal, but because it's another notch on Iqi's belt as far as goal scoring is concerned. While no one really wants or expects to shoot at will, the fact that he's put away a few goals this season means that the monkey that he carried on his back last year of not scoring goals is now done with.

Anyway, we got the win, I saw a (Brisbane) Easts Rugby Union bumper sticker on a car, and I avoided food poisoning. On exiting the ground, one of the locals scoffed at our being top of the table, and he maybe had a point, but we had three more to add to the 36 we took into the game, so he can stick that in his pipe and smoke it. Geez, that's a little harsh and unsporting. A more circumspect way of summarising it would be to say that, from our point of view, it was a pretty forgettable game apart from the goal, and that we move on to the next game.

Dockerty Cup news/Next game
We have drawn Frankston Pines in the quarter finals of the Dockerty Cup, which also doubles as the last stage of the FFA Cup state based qualifiers. Without meaning any disrespect to Pines, this is the best result we could have hoped for. The game has been scheduled for this Wednesday at Lakeside, kickoff at 7:30.

You still say hello!

There was a faithful dog that was eagerly awaiting a greeting and a pat on the head from its master, but which became sullen in the way that poorly treated dogs do when it didn't get one; the aforementioned dog then got upset at me for making a minor major and hilarious deal out of it, even after had I opened his can of Solo, because that's the kind of guy I am, always doing nice things for people.

Contractual obligation segment
It came to my attention this week that the one or more of the Enosi 59 crew have created their own web space of sorts, and it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge its existence at least on this one occasion; after all, I did even mention SMFC Mike's podcast that one time. I'm not a fan of the ultras scene or mentality, but for those who are more sympathetic to those kinds of angles, the link has been placed among the South links here.

But before I go, I will make one comment. Now I readily acknowledge that people are free to make their own choices in life, but a brotherhood with Sydney Olympic fans? Really? I don't know about that fellas. That's the generation gap for ya though.

Great missed opportunities in Nick Epifano-Simpsons gag crossovers

Around the grounds (guest spot by Manny)
Not sure if this is cheating or polygamy but it feels good.
I didn't plan to go anywhere on Saturday - exams supposedly had me locked into study this weekend, but as they often do, plans fell through and I found myself somewhere I wasn't planning to be. That place was Dunstan Reserve to watch Brunswick City take on Melbourne Victory.

Being a five year member of Melbourne Victory as well as the fact they were topping the ladder in their first NPL1 season made me feel obligated to check them out at the park around the corner. 'Park?' I hear you ask. 'This is an NPL venue... blah, blah, blah... FFV standards... blah, blah...'. Yeah well, for those who haven’t been there, Dunstan Reserve is a park. A great state league venue but a perfect example of the infrastructure shortage 'elite' state clubs suffer, or perhaps a perfect example of the FFV’s lax entry requirements. I’ll let you decide on that. Anyway, Dunstan Reserve is a park - but what a park. The club rooms are full of trophies and memorabilia and the limited terraces on the corner of the pitch outside the clubrooms scream a club that wants to be bigger. It’s a club I played for and despite my many, many issues surrounding club management/coaching/administration/culture it’s a club I support.

So there I am, chatting to my mate as he lazily officials the match, and surrounded by my small group of cousins and friends who also dropped by to watch our relative in the under 20s. I’m wearing my South scarf to a game against my junior club and the club I’m a member of... what a confusing mix for everyone.

Brunswick have had a tough year to put it lightly... (refer to above issues surrounding club management/coaching/administration/culture) and Victory take the game away, scoring four goals in the opening 15 minutes to put the result beyond doubt. Despite the embarrassing result for ‘Leonidas’ I look towards the Victory fans with disdain, to the modest club rooms proudly, and am there to support Brunswick. How could a member who has poured hundreds of dollars and invested hours of time into a club turn his back on them? Well, like just about everyone I support multiple clubs but unlike many people it just happens that this year those clubs are in the same league.

I'm not the only one. With the introduction of A-League teams in the NPL and the FFA Cup many fans are having their loyalties challenged and the results are surprising. More often than not I find people are choosing their local teams and that choosing an A-League team to support is partly just to be part of the fun of a national league.

Most fans have the luxury of not enduring the internal conflict that happens when their teams compete against each other. Often these loyalties cross international borders and occasionally sport codes so that these conflicts just about impossible. People live through sport. They use it to seek community and success and diversifying your investments mitigates the risk of going all in on one team, in one league, in one sport.

Next year however will be interesting and challenging for many. With Victory likely to be promoted, a match up against South Melbourne is inevitable. Although not as heated as a senior match up would be (in the FFA Cup for instance) there will be conflict nevertheless, especially given the all too complicated context such a much will be played against.

Can a South fan also be a Victory fan? I know I am, but unlike other supporters it was actually Victory that introduced me to soccer supporter culture and South that stole me away. I’ll be supporting South when we play Victory and that'll be for many reasons some of which I know, some of which I can't quite explain. What I can say for certain is that I can’t wait for that match to happen.

Final thought
Farewell drinking bird, long live grumpy at Richmond.

The recession we had to have - Oakleigh Cannons 2 South Melbourne 0

Here are the things you missed if you didn't turn up to the under 20s game:

• A failed rabona attempt (even I missed that one)
• Me eating a $4 tiropita containing cheese that was still at a molten temperature.
• New signing Nick Morton not doing very much of note.
• A chance to see Oakleigh's new synthetic pitch in action.

Paul, come quick! Kouts quit his tutoring job and joined a violence gang!

During a meander around the outer of that pitch, the grandfather of a certain young man who has begun moonlighting during the A-League off-season as one of the organisers of Enosi 59, asked me if I knew the whereabouts of the relevant grandson. Now I answered truthfully, in the sense that I really didn't know the exact whereabouts of the grandson; but I also knew that they had planned on performing some kind of march to the ground and/or tutoring is guerilla warfare in Shelbyville Oakleigh. I don't know what shenanigans were had on the march, but the boys did manage to bring in a few new faces to Clarendon Corner. Overall for the numbers that were there, and taking into account chanting performances of previous years, this could have been better. Standing on the hill behind the goal we were attacking in the first half (and yes, in addition to the synthetic pitch, the seats in the stand and the terracing on the outer side, Jack Edwards now has a hill behind the goals), it didn't feel like there was as much noise and activity as there should have been. These things happen - new people take time to learn chants, hangers on prefer to hang on, and the team didn't manage to score a goal - and I make comment on this mostly because I was asked by two separate members of the young brigade during the evening about how I felt it all went - a fact which was both endearing in its sense of having some sort of respect allotted to my opinion, and frustrating because we were 2-0 down and I was more keen on focusing on the dramatic misfire that was our performance.

Oakleigh were clinical in spite of their more limited opportunities and possession. Both goals came from superb counter attacking play, and they could have had a couple of more goals from similar sequences of play. Even without the suspended Ben Clarke, and the injured Goran Zoric, Oakleigh looked the more likely to score from the chances created. Of course it's a tactic that has its own level of risk - had we gone ahead, the nature of the game may have changed - but it came off perfectly. Milos Lujic was tightly marked, and the other South players who had chances on goal never tested John Honos in the Oakleigh goal.

For the first time in many weeks, Andy Brennan was unable to have the decisive impact he has had in previous games. The Oakleigh left back was able to match him for speed and strength, and though Brennan did one have one good chance, he could only volley it high over the bar. Therefore with our two most productive attacking players in 2015 being tied up, it fell to other players to pick up the slack. New recruit Chris Irwin (who came on as a sub for Dane Milovanovic, who seemed to get a serious knee injury) was not poor, but he also seemed to find the stacked Oakleigh defence difficult to deal with, while also squandering an excellent first half chance

Disclaimer - the following paragraph is not influenced in any way by Nick Epifano's recent behaviour, and whether or not he should even be at the club. They are purely the usual misinformed opinions that I would give of any player who I considered to have a bit of a stinker.

That leaves Nick Epifano, who had a ton of possession in this game, but was unable to make any of it count. He got into a lot of good positions, but his crosses and shots almost always failed to make the most of his earlier hard work. Most frustrating was his decision making - he often took the lower percentage option, which was repeatedly his undoing. Most disheartening was that as the game went on, his passing game began to get lazy, which saw him hit through balls that had no hope whatsoever of achieving a positive outcome. I was surprised when Brennan was benched instead of Epifano, and that Leigh Minopoulos wasn't given a chance.

Just as disappointing was the outcome of the risky tactic of apparently deliberately trying to get yellow cards so as to gain suspensions for next week's match against North Geelong, but not for the Dockerty Cup match against Melbourne Knights the week after. To that end, Milos Lujic managed to do the business by getting a cheap a yellow card, his fifth of the season, though the manner in which he got it meant that he was unable to pressure defenders in a meaningful way for fear of picking up a second yellow and thus a red card.

Michael Eagar's attempt at getting himself rubbed out for a week failed in spectacular fashion. Late in the game, he is supposed to have retaliated in a such a way that instead of getting a yellow card and missing this week's game, he got a straight red, which could see him miss up to three games depending on the grading of the red card. There seems to be little hope he could avoid missing the Knights game. To rub salt into the wound, the four yellow cards that he has already earned this season will still be there on his return from suspension, and will see him miss another game this season at some point when he inevitably picks up another yellow card.

How much of a disaster this match was will only be known in the coming weeks. North Geelong may be bottom of the table, but without our leading scorer, the backbone of our defence, and the defensive midfield linchpin, we face a dangerous mid season period very much akin to that we faced at this point last season. With our defensive stocks running thin, expect Brad Norton to possibly fill in at centreback for Eagar, and perhaps Irwin to slot into left back. How desperate we are for defensive back up I don't know, especially considering our 2015 squad orientation - here's hoping that the suggestion that assistant coach Dimi Tsiaras pull on the boots again is just an example of gallows humour.

As seems to happen far more often than it should, a bad loss in a land far, far away was capped off by missing the (probably delayed) first train back to Flinders Street by mere seconds, and having the second one arrive late to Huntingdale and then be further delayed by vandals. I eventually made it home around 12:30 in the morning. The wait at Huntingdale was made more tolerable by the chat Gains and I had with one of the protective services officers working on the platform, who on recognising our South gear, asked after the current status of Richmond Soccer Club; the relevant PSO having in the past worked as a bricklayer for former long serving Richmond president Helmut Kalitzki.

Next week
Back home on a Friday night, this time against a North Geelong side fast running out of time to sort out its relegation problems.

Andy Bevin, pictured here playing for his US college team.

Transfer news
We've obviously snared Chris Irwin from Avondale Heights (and before that Box Hill United), another midfielder but also a former junior player. He's very quick, but I'm not sure where he'll slot in - I did notice him during the Melbourne Knights - Avondale game from earlier this season. Leaving are Bonel Obradovic, who is going back to Northcote, the side he played for before we got him from Oakleigh. 'Bones' struggled to win a starting spot in midfield, and while serviceable as a right back during Tim Mala's absences, he never made the role his own. Peter Gavalas has also been let go, though there is no news of a back up keeper being signed.

'Where is South Melbourne?' asked Ibrahim the Mad.
'South Melbourne yok', replied the admirals.

Now there was some scuttlebutt going around last week that we'd signed some American striker from the MLS. Some of our readers have also noted that on Thursday FFV's transfers page, one Andy Bevin was listed as an 'in' at South Melbourne, but that on Friday he was not there. Where did he go? Further to that, where did the entire South Melbourne FC section on that transfers page (see image on right) go on Sunday while I was typing this? Anyway, it's been more or less confirmed by everyone that the mystery American former MLS striker is indeed Andy Bevin, who is actually not an American, but rather a Kiwi, and one who played college soccer in the United States and was drafted by the Seattle Sounders. Don't think he ever got a game in the MLS, but here's hoping that if he has indeed been signed by South that bangs in the goals.

Living in a de facto relationship
Further to my desire for a more formal relationship between SMFC and SMWFC (ie, reunification), I had a chat with our president, Leo Athanasakis, who seemed to suggest that the relationship as it stood now - closer than it has been for many years - was working well for both parties, and that there was no need for any sudden moves.

The bloke who won $5,000 for South
So Peter Saisanas, who won $5,000 for South during a PS4 FIFA tournament against other NPL representatives - well done Peter, and well done to everyone who tweeted like crazy to get him that chance - went on to play in a tournament against A-League fans a few weeks back. Now while Peter didn't win that tournament, he did let me in on one tidbit from the experience. As there was no Wellington Phoenix representative in the tournament, the organisers tried to get Peter to wear a Phoenix jersey instead of a South top. Peter refused to do so, and for that I commend him, while still contemplating why the organisers even thought that he would relent.

What the fuck, am I dying or something?

We are losing two of our best writers (@JoeGorman_89 and @PaulMavroudis) because soccer does not know how to look after them or itself.

— Ian Syson (@IanSyson) May 23, 2015

The background to this is, I guess, recent discussions I've had with Ian Syson, some of which I have briefly touched upon in recent posts. I can't speak for whatever it is that Ian thinks is in Joe Gorman's future, because it's not really my place to air those thoughts on a public forum, especially as it would come likely across as a massive leg hump.

To set the record straight for myself - and without getting all obscenely sentimental - I'm not going anywhere. As long as South Melbourne Hellas exists, and as long as my health holds up, and as long as I have access to an internet connection or at least someone who I can dictate my thoughts to, I will write on Aussie soccer. Goodness knows that I haven't done this for the past seven and a half years for fame or fortune.

It was good to finally meet...
Savvas Tzionis, recent contributor and frequent leaver of comments.

Final thought
Apparently I treat the A-League less fairly than I would the quality of lettuce - and why wouldn't I?