Dead of Winter - South Melbourne 1 Bulleen Lions 0

After the abject horror of Tuesday, it would be foolish to expect miracles on Sunday. Indeed, were those miracles to occur, they would almost certainly manage to enrage the South Melbourne Hellas public far more than the wayward performance that was actually produced today. Had we come out all guns blazing and slaughtering an at best mediocre Bulleen, people would have wondered - and not without some justification - where that kind of competence was just days before. Instead, we got to see roughly where the team is located at this point in time - and not just within the context of this season, but in the context of the past three years since our revival under Chris Taylor.

It's worth noting that Taylor provided what we believed was needed at that time - an extreme back to basics approach, a team and style designed for the VPL as it was then, able to grind out results against all the other grinding, fighting, scrapping teams and the awful, potato patch fields they called their home grounds. But the old adage of 'be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it', reminds us that the peculiar mess we're in at the moment - still top of the table, but hardly feeling like we deserve it - is in part due to us, the fans. After so many incoherent and chaotic seasons following our 2006 championship, where we were occasionally brilliant but mostly just not good enough, the call went out for an experienced and no-nonsense coach, and a team that would play to win, and do whatever it took to do so - even if that 'sacred' South Melbourne Hellas trope of needing to win while also being entertaining got shown the door.

And to be fair, that approach has broadly been successful. The revival in the second half 2013 got us to within one game of a grand final. In 2014 we came storming out of the blocks and won the league with two games to spare. In 2015, despite struggles with injury, we managed to rally from behind to finish top of the table again, recovering well after the FFA Cup loss to Palm Beach to put together a stunning run that included the Dockerty Cup win. The grand final loss hurt, but the feeling was that perhaps Bentleigh deserved it. We'd had an amazing two and half season run, and we'd come back next year determined to redeem ourselves, especially after the catastrophic performance against Hobart Olympia.

But if that grand final loss, and the two losses against Bentleigh this year (and even our win) have shown us anything, is that the desirable attributes required now to succeed in this league have changed. No longer are the grinding, ugly teams, personified by the Green Gully sides of 1999-2011, the ones that do well. The game has changed. Irrespective of the relative competencies of the current leading teams (or at least those teams making up the top six at the moment), the emphasis has changed to teams trying to play better football.

And on that front, we have been found wanting. There are games where we have mauled teams this year, but there have also been games when we have been mauled, and rather than being considered an off day, those losses have mounted up - and we are now looking at something far more serious. And rather than see it as something which we can turnaround, the navel gazing mood at the present time is such that it's not just this year's losses, but all the 'big game' losses of the past three years, that have snowballed into an avalanche of despair.

In part due to suspensions, players traveling overseas, and apparently even some unverified sooking in the background, the team that took the field against Bulleen was not the one which played against Bentleigh. The bench even included a couple of under 20s players! But the set up was much the same, The inclusion of Andy Kecojevic showed a measure of attacking intent, as did the necessary inclusion of Amadu Koroma because Tim Mala was playing at centre-back, but the structure and ideology were the same.

Stand in captain Brad Norton competes for the ball against a Bulleen opponent,
with Andy Kecojevic in the background. Photo. Kevin Juggins.

In that regard we were fortunate to have two things in our favour: first, that our initial burst of 'we mean business after Tuesday's embarrassment' efforts saw us a score a goal, scrappy as it was. Second, Bulleen, either because they're in their own rut, or because they've lost important players, or because they weren't playing on their own synthetic turf, were poor. Getting that early goal made one hope, perhaps even expect, that we would run over the top of Bulleen. And it's not like we didn't have our chances to do so, and promising patches of play, but it just didn't happen. The longer that anticipated storming of Bulleen's barricades didn't happen, the more muddled and less inspiring things started to become. On several occasions today we arguably reached the point that no team wants to reach - the point in which one can identify players not wishing to take responsibility when they're in possession, preferring to pass it off to someone else.

As with Tuesday's performance, our players began playing balls without even looking where they may be kicking said balls. This is not entirely unreasonable - if you're a midfielder or a forward who's developed a rapport with your teammates of such a high level that a 'sight unseen' pass reaches its target in part due to cosmic understanding, great. When your defenders start pulling those moves, leading to turnovers in dangerous areas, not great. The whole experience eventually reached the stage where people were beginning to expect Bulleen to eventually equalise. This expected equaliser, had it actually happened, would have been scored by a team some in the crowd judged to be the least capable side we have played in the league this year.

Unlike some people, I think Chris Taylor is a good coach, one capable of reforming the team. But to do that he will also require a measure of self-reflection, and the acknowledgement that the task he was brought in to perform has been completed. He's got us back to being consistently competitive and among the leading pack. But the style and ethos that got us there needs to be, if not discarded, then adapted for a new reality - one where our nearest rivals have adapted, and begun to outperform us. This may mean the end of the line for some players. But the other problem is, because Taylor is a conservative and risk averse coach, whose recent success has been based on those attributes, it will be difficult to change those habits. Even today, it took until the 88th minute for Chris Irwin to get a run. Yes it's twice the game time he would have received had he come on during 91st minute, as has been the custom, but I'm not sure anyone's getting the best out of that situation.

¡Machismo!
The desire to witness within our team even the evidence of that intangible combination of the qualities of skill, ambition, desire, hunger, tenacity, was perhaps partly sated by the second half appearance of Manuel 'Manolo' Padilla Herero. While he was disappointingly placed in a wide position instead of closer to Milos Lujic - such is life at the moment - he did manage to show glimpses not only of his talent but also of (as one punter put it) testicular fortitude. Putting aside the PC abstractions inherent in that description, one wonders how one measures 'testicular fortitude', and how frighteningly literal such tests may be. Less literally, I can see where our punter was coming from, because even though Manolo has thus far played in less than ideal situations (one under 20s match, a lost cause, and a bit against Bulleen), there were signs that Manolo could be something worthwhile - provided that he can prove his worth against 'good' teams, and that his loan period lasts the entire rest of the season, instead of until whenever Leganes want him back.

Next game
Richmond at home on Friday night.

Censorship on SMFCBoard, again
Some of my more anally retentive readers will recall that I commented last year on the increasingly arbitrary censorship that was occurring on our beloved SMFCBoard. That comment lead in part to a more relaxed and tolerant approach to letting people post what they felt, and what I perceived to be a less secretive and arbitrary approach to forum moderation.

Well I'm sad to say that that period of gentler moderation has once again lapsed, and is unfortunately now worse than what had occurred before. I won't trawl over my own reasoning again for a more lax approach to moderation and censorship - anyone who visits this blog regularly enough knows where I stand. But I will say this - when one deletes an entire thread because one does not like the comments of a few within that thread, you take away not only that person's right to have their say, but also the right of others to read those comments, to engage with them, and to approve of, disregard, ignore, argue against, or even just plain old skim over those comments. The same goes for banning people because their view of the club doesn't fit your own ideas of what that should be - and I say that as someone who often disagrees with what the poster known an Buffalo Cup has to say.

It's not the only form of censorship on SMFCBoard - the lack of open registrations is one such other example - but as it is another step towards turning the forum into an echo chamber, I'm boycotting the forum until the people in charge of moderation as a whole come back to their senses.

Though it's possible I'll cave in before then.

Victory tribunal decision pending - coming soon?
Over the past two entries, I'd forgotten to mention the ongoing saga of this particular situation. Victory's tribunal session was held a little while back, with the details of the adjudication held back for 10 to 30 days, depending on which source you believe. If it is ten days, then tomorrow we should get news of what Victory's punishment is. Meanwhile, we also wait to see what the FFV tribunal have to say on our part in the affair.

Brandon Sanderson's Elantris, in case you were wondering

Reading a high fantasy novel during pre-match, because it's not like you can have a conversation with this loud music #smvbl #PS4NPLVIC

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) June 19, 2016

Around the Grounds
Disappointment
After Tuesday's calamitous performance, I had no real desire to watch any non-South soccer. Still, a friend's son - a goalkeeper - had been called up from the youth ranks at Clifton Hill to play in the reserves. and having known the young man for a number of years I felt it was my duty to go and watch. Also, something about vitamin D. Sadly, the young man was first relegated to the bench, and then to not even being on the team sheet, but we stayed on and watched anyway, as a swift and clever Clifton Hill edged an older Mornington 2-1. Not bothering to stay to watch the seniors, the young goalkeeper was dropped off home, and then his father and I went to see what was on offer around the burbs. Ending up at an open park with a pitch black cricket square somewhere in Flemington, with a deep slope towards one end adjacent to the establishment bowls club, we saw a green team playing a maroon and orange team. The greens were quickly identified as being Maribyrnong Greens of State League 4 West, with their opponents being Newmarket Phoenix. But after watching about five minutes, I dropped any pretense at interest in the proceedings, and we left.

Final thought
Lest we forget that today the fourth official finally became useful for something other than holding up a blackboard and playing babysitter to the competing coaches.

South eases to the finish line - Goulburn Valley Suns 1 South Melbourne 4

What's the point of Sunday trading, and how can you really call yourselves the world's most liveable city, when one can't even organise to have regular trams running before 10am? Never mind, I got to the Lakeside car park on time anyway, so good on me. Mind you, the bus did not leave at 10:30 am sharp as advertised, not that I'm complaining. Bloody Greeks and their sense of punctuality.

Apart from fielding text messages from one nincompoop who asked that we stop by the Hume Highway near his house - which I fobbed off as brusquely as possible - the trip up was uneventful apart from pulling the curtains open and shut fifteen million times because of the sun. Also we stopped in Nagambie for lunch, and got to the ground in Shepparton in time to watch the second half of the under 20s (including one unfamiliar spindly Bambi-esque specimen playing for us).

Being 160 kilometres closer to the equator and/or hell, Shepparton was a lot warmer than what Melbourne was when I left, and thus rather uncomfortable but that's also my fault because I should have known that'd be the case following my one and only other trip up there back in 1999, a short stopover while on a bus to the Gold Coast for a school trip, where I had lunch at Maccas while our bus drivers perved on my female classmates, back in the days when a term like jailbait had yet to cross over from internet geek lexicon into daily real world usage.

The senior game itself had all the intensity of a pre-season friendly, and what's more I barely even saw the first goal go in after just a couple of minutes because I was still trying to figure out where the best place to stand or sit was - note to everyone who visits John McEwan Reserve, there are no really good spots - before Matthew Theodore's terrific effort in just the second minute (never mind folks, I saw the video while it was being edited on the bus on the way home) made it 1-0 and we could have gone home right there. Nick Epifano made it 2-0 not that long after, a detail I'm adding for the sake of that I actually saw that one go in.

When Brad Norton took an early corner and proceeded to play it short (and badly), an entire year's (and then some) frustration came out and I threatened to jump the fence if they ever took a short corner again, to which he replied 'why don't you take it then' to which I said no problem, or words to that effect. Now whether I would actually take the corner with any sort of competency, let alone managing to avoid pulling a hammy is not the point - the point is that my intention would be to actually put in a decent corner, something nice and deep (giggity). Norton's subsequent corner was sent nice and deep, causing all sorts of chaos in the Suns' penalty area, thus more than proving my point, but in the hours since the incident I've wavered between cocksure defiance and abject shame about my actions yesterday, before finally settling on defiance because SHORT CORNERS SUCK, THEY DON'T WORK FOR US AND WE ALMOST NEVER SCORE FROM THEM APART FROM BY COMPLETE ACCIDENT AND EVEN THEN STILL LOSE GAMES WHEN WE DO SCORE FROM THEM and LEST WE FORGET THE ATTEMPT TO GO FOR A SHORT CORNER LAST YEAR AGAINST GULLY WHEN WE WERE 1-0 DOWN IN THE DOCKERTY CUP SEMI, PURE FUCKING GENIUS THAT WAS. SO HOW ABOUT JUST STICKING TO TRYING TO SCORE GOALS DELIBERATELY, BY SENDING IN CORNERS WHICH GET THE DEFENCE SCRAMBLING AND THE GOALKEEPER FLAPPING, INSTEAD OF FUCKING AROUND TRYING TO BE TOO CLEVER BY HALF, ORRIGHT? ORRIGHT.

Anyway, 2-0 up the break we were on cruise control, but then the home team decided to make it 2-1 when some very slack defending from our end, letting those orange freaks pull one back. Thankfully we got it back to 3-1 pretty much straight away, with Milos Lujic equalising from the penalty spot to equal the Jimmy Armstrong and Dougie Brown record of 22 goals in a league season, though of course if Lujic would occasionally pull the trigger just a little earlier he may have had some more this season, but what do I know? I just thump these keys and scowl at the fact that I will never be able to run a lap of the ground without throwing up my lunch, let alone slot one on ones past fast approaching and maybe even competent goalkeepers.

But speaking of orange freaks, there was this one Suns player in the second half whose face almost turned the colour of his jersey. It was a bit warm out there, but it was nothing akin to the heat of the bake that referee Perry Mur gave to one of the home team's players after said Suns player went down a bit easy and Mur told him to stop whingeing or else he'd send him packing. Or words to that effect, which one would hope were captured by the camera microphones because it was about as close as one could reasonably get.

We gave Andy Kecojevic his debut yesterday, which I'm not against (if you're reading this, hi Andy, nice through ball you played yesterday), but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, because if we were still in a situation where we needed to win this game instead of just turning up because we've already had one forfeit too many in these past 54 years, he would not have played, nor would Dion Kirk have started the game. I suppose what I'm trying to say here is that I still miss Nicky Jacobs.

Aside from a Jamie Reed goal to make it 4-1, that was it. The game over, we sauntered over to the sheltered area where the folks from Shepparton South Soccer Club put on a free barbecue, which was a nice gesture since it wasn't their home game (even if it was their home ground), and was better than whatever efforts the Goulburn Valley people put forward to anyone that wasn't a visiting dignitary. We kept in touch with the results from the rest of the day's games, notably Port's 96th minute equaliser against Werribee to stave off relegation (whatever that means) and send Ballarat down in their place (also whatever that may means, and I don't care how much otherwise respected people say that Ballarat won't be coming back and nor will Goulburn Valley BECAUSE STRANGER THINGS HAVE HAPPENED and just try claiming otherwise, go on do it, I once saw Glen Trifiro play a ball forward instead of sideways, so there's your proof). The trip back was spent watching the NSW grand final and Dimi Hatzimouratis' Sydney Olympic go down 2-1 after extra time via someone's phone. A mandatory stop in Wallan was the only break on the way home through the increasingly impenetrable darkness before reaching the outskirts of civilisation.

Next game - National Premier League national playoff series
The Victorian season now done and dusted, we move on to the National Premier League national series, which is being sponsored by someone or other, but since I didn't get any free gifts from said sponsor, they ain't getting a plug on here. Of course for some time it's been known that the Victorian winner (which is of course us, just in case you missed the news) would be playing the Tasmanian winner, and wouldn't you know it it's South Hobart again from the Apple Isle, a team we are quite familiar with, even if we haven't come face to face to face with for a couple of years.

South Hobart were last year's runners up in this competition, going down 2-0 to a Trifiro (who cares which one, it was Glen by the way) led Sydney United on their home turf at D'Arcy or Darcy Street, whatever it's called. It's a great little ground with a massive slope of some sort, and that's where we'll be playing this week also, rather than  on the Federation's ground at KGV Park with the synthetic pitch.

South Hobart's strength is in its two forwards, Andy Brennan and Brayden Mann. Not only did they score a massive 57 goals between them this season (in 21 matches), they also finished in the top two of the league best and fairest (ex-South player Jake Vandermey finished third). If South Hobart has a weakness, it's in defense, because they do seem to cop at least one goal a game. And while Sam Kruijver is a good goalkeeper, goalkeepers in general don't enjoy a stellar reputation in Tasmania, it often being difficult to find a good one. (lame correction - Kruijver no longer plays for South Hobart - it's Kane Pierce in goals for them now, with thanks to Walter Pless).

As for the midfield, it'd be industrious and effective at the level they're playing at, but quite how it copes with a team of our calibre remains to be seen. When we were last down in Hobart back in 2011, with a team that was not as accomplished and battle hardened as this one is, South Hobart put up a good fight and probably should have score at least a goal or two, but nevertheless went down 5-0. That day they probably gave us too much time on the ball, and tried too  much to play their own passing oriented game instead of perhaps trying to press

Of course this is mostly from stuff gleaned from Walter Pless' blog and memories of the times I've seen South Hobart play both on their visits here (also here and here), and our one trip there. They still have players that played for them in that 2011 fixture, while we've probably gone through about two entirely different squads since then, including Carl Recchia about 15 times by himself. (some folk looking at that match programme will also notice the names of Cameron Williams, who was attached to our under 20 squad for a little bit this year, and Kosta Kanakaris who played for Heidelberg's seniors this year on and off the bench).

They say that the winner of this mini-tournament will end up securing a place in the FFA Cup next year, as well befuddlement about who would host a possible semi-final in this playoff series and against who (check here for something vaguely official) but I'm more concerned with taking it one week at a time. But as Steve from Broady said to me the other day, Paul Mavroudis and sensible got together like a souv and tzatziki; and though my thoughts on the matter are if that the gyros meat has enough flavour you shouldn't need to drench it in garlic and yoghurt, I still get the point he was trying to make, his ability to construct metaphors and similes far exceeding mine

If you haven't booked your flights yet, well, I don't know what to say. No one can make you go, and you certainly shouldn't be forced to go down there if you have work, not enough or other commitments. That's just the deal life hands you sometimes. As for myself, I fancy I'll be seeing a fair few South fans at the Jetstar terminal on Saturday morning.
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Just over a year left of Channel 31?
You may recall that not too long ago I mentioned that Channel 31 was in danger of not having its broadcasting license extended? Well, it turns out that Malcolm Turnbull, the Minister for Communications, has made the rather moronic decision to extend Channel 31's license to the end of 2015, before booting them off the spectrum so telecommunications companies can use that spectrum. According to Turnbull, community TV will end up on the internet, as if that's nearly the same thing as being part of what's available on broadcast television. So once again, I ask that you visit Commit to Community TV and add your name to the petition, or write to the minister personally.

Around the grounds
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best. (Dylan Thomas)

Paisley Park and its collection of old men and magpies on a Saturday afternoon; Altona East down but not quite out, playing Sydenham Park who have been neither quite here nor there in 2014, and are now stuck in the middle waiting until next season. I watched the game from the far side, trying to catch whatever warmth I could, as dust clouds sprouted from where the balls bounced and players fell, staring out into the open field and wondering whether I've snookered myself into a never ending cycle of decrepit spectatorship, and also whether this stray golf ball nestled in the grass in front of me could double as an egg from some long lost species of bird. The home side starts brightly enough but is 1-0 and then 2-0 down, and there is no way out. What's worse is that the bread rolls on this last home game of the season are halfway to being half stale, and if that doesn't indicate some sort of impending doom than I don't know what does. Sydenham add one more for good measure, and Altona East are one wrong result from their end or from Sunbury's from going down a division. Maybe it'd be a good thing, a chance to reassess priorities, to reorganise and maybe somehow come back stronger. Maybe it'll be another nail in the club's coffin. Lot of maybes in that.

Final thought
Sure, there were a lot of laughs. You probably couldn't hear them, the acoustics were so bad.