Another week, another game

Are we going to beat Hume this week? I don't know. Gut feel says no.

Also welcome back Manny, who's back from an overseas sojourn. Bit weird saying welcome back to a person you've never met, but what the hell.

Who owes who?
There's been a continuation of the age old discussion about who owes who anything when it comes to South. Does the club owe the fans? Do the fans owe the club? Are such sentiments entirely pointless? Are people just looking for more scapegoats and/or more reasons to jump off? Can anyone be blamed if they decide not to turn up anymore? Is it appropriate to make a big scene as you exit or threaten to exit? Is it OK to just sit there and take it, whatever 'it' is?

I don't know. I'm sure there's a limit for me, but I haven't found it yet. I even mentioned in a research paper for one my classes (trying to justify my line of study) that I probably owe the club and the game something for it being the major player in turning my life around. But I get too sentimental about such things, perhaps because I'm a sentimental bloke.

NPLV : Day 384267
So, we're off to court apparently. The media release even boasts about our the legal team's record against the FFV.

Cup semi-final fixture set


Our cup semi-final against Green Gully has been scheduled for Wednesday 21st August, 7:30 PM, at Port Melbourne. Will be tougher now that Vlahos and Dimi Harz have walked. Fernando still there though. Someone mentioned to me a couple of days ago that if we make the final all the cup tied players will be allowed to play? Hilarious if true, but let's worry about making it out of the semi first.

What You Missed Last Night At Beachcomber

Miss the members info sesh last night at Beachcomber? Here's the gist.

NPL
Pretty much sticking to the line that we're all united and that we shall overcome. But this issue is so volatile, it's hard to know what will happen.

Social Club and the Lease
Apparently, hopefully ,'1-2 months' away from finalising the deals so we can get on with this. Government and the Trust tried to make the deal better for themselves; we had to 'peel back the layers' of the additional stuff they had added, in order to try and get it back to what we want. One of the issues is the requirement of signing all four agreements simultaneously before anything gets done.

We think the Memorandum Of Understanding we signed and agreed to is a foundational/binding document of sorts, and that it has legal weight. Our counterparts on the other side of that ledger don't seem to think that. Court action seems unlikely. Pavilion issue out at Middle Park seems to have been sorted out. Football exclusivity apparently maintained.

My thoughts went back to January when we were told that we were close to signing off on everything back then. The ox is slow but the earth is patient and all that.

A-League
Offered $7 million for the Heart licence. Heart rejected that offer. Offer now withdrawn by South. Assertion made that we had been asked by the FFA to discuss bid takeovers with the Mariners and Heart. No comment made on who or where the money would come from.

Football
More or less club sticking to its story with regards to Tsolakis, Matthews and Byles. Confirmation that Andy Vlahos and Dimi Hatzimouratis have walked out. The rumour that Fernando had also left was categorically denied.

From me
Much rolling of eyes, raised eyebrows, cynical expressions, snide remarks. Some occasional laughter. Bemusement at prices. The odd question asked.

Ephemera
Very civil meeting, until there was some passionate 'debate' at the end. I expected a lot worse. This club continues to confound me.

I'm entranced by the fascinating collision course of the melding of oldskool members and new junior parent types. Like two galaxies running into each other, it's unknown whether we'll end up tearing each other apart or if we'll create a new super galaxy. Please be super galaxy!

That S.M. Hellas constitution probably needs some updating. Who's up for making some amendments?

Never did find out if that curtain was soundproof.

Further to this

Just saw @smfc's very own @LAthanasakis on @C31Melbourne answering a high school vox pop on why kids are fat these days
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) August 1, 2013

Leo informed me that it was done over a year ago.

Under 21s
Lost to 3-1 Pascoe Vale last night in a catch up game.

Final Thought

A child is a mass of cells and tissues and muscle that will grow up and will become Jack the Ripper or the president of the world. Maybe. More likely it will grow up and become a dole statistic. Worse, it will grow up and become an accountant.

from Loaded, by Christos Tsiolkas.

On towards 2013 - South Melbourne 1 Richmond 3

A note on match reports following Sunday matches
These will probably not come out until Monday evening for the rest of the season. This is because I'm usually having dinner out with folks, and don't get back early enough to put in a completely half arsed effort, and also because I will commence teaching a Monday tutorial class which I need to prepare for.

And yes I realise that this match report is also heinously late for reasons completely irrelevant. But it had nothing to do with watching SBSPopAsia while eating my corn flakes.

Anyway, refereeing issues aside - and we'll get to those later - it was a disappointing, almost limp effort for about 75 minutes. Neither side shone, but some of the errors we were making, especially defensively went beyond the pale. Marinos Gasparis in particular had a nightmarish performance, so bad you have to wonder if he'll ever get back to the kind of player we all know he can be, or whether he hit his peak years ago and is no longer worth persisting with.

Steve O'Dor, despite what I consider as the valid criticisms I made of him last week, will be missed if the injury he sustained in the first half keeps him out for a few weeks. Turns out Rhodri Payne is still around, but with Shaun 'slide tackle' Kelly getting himself sent off in his debut game (though some swear the penalty was an incorrect decision) it looks like we'll be thin on the ground defensively for a few weeks, what with Tom Matthews still to serve three more games suspended. Time to drop Brad Norton and get Matko Budimir and Anthony Giannopoulos into the senior squad?

Up forward, Steve Burton looked a little lost without Rixon next to him. Is it a case of not playing to his strengths? Why do we focus so much on trying to attack with our backs to goal? Rixon looked good when he came on - and he scored for the first time since the last time we played Richmond - but then got sent off before the restart, after an altercation with Richmond's Milardovic. The basic facts seem to be this - they fought over the ball in the goal net, as Rixon sought to get the game restarted as quickly as possible. After Milardovic tried to tackle Rixon, Rixon retaliated (how I'm not sure), and Milardovic ended up in the ground for five minutes, apparently with a fractured cheekbone.

Who knows what the video will show, and whether it will exonerate Rixon, Kelly (there are also inferences that there was a Richmond handball prior to his foul), and perhaps even shed light as to whether an earlier South chance crossed the line (I didn't think it did, but others insist that Gal scooped the ball out from behind his goal line). It'll also be interesting to see if Richmond's final goal was offside.

The officiating was so poor in the last 15 minutes, that South fans went from booing their own teams to clapping them off the field, turning their hostility towards the officials. No serious person would go even close to claiming the the officials were tge main reason we lost - only that their performance at the end was so farcical, and that the referee in question has a habit of making the game all about himself.

Andy Vlahos
Incredibly sad, in a way, that Andy was our best performer for most of the match. I made the (obvious) comment at the game, an idea which has now spread to the rest of the interwebz, that you could tell he had played at a  much higher level than most of those on the park (for both sides) could ever aspire to.
Fernando De Moraes
On the flip side of that, was the disappointing performance of Fernando. After being used as a substitute for most of the season, the absence of the Trifiro brothers from the starting eleven (for missing training because of trialling with the Western Sydney Wanderers, perhaps?), gave Nando a chance to shine, and yet he came up short. Is the great man's outdoor career at it's natural end? Are his futsal commitments, now that they've gone professional and with Nando himself looking at the futsal world cup, taking their toll?

Financial Problems?
Someone hit this blog after doing a google search for 'South Melbourne Hellas financial problems' and 'South Melbourne Soccer Club financial position'. Someone know something we don't? Some opposition supporter of a club hard on their luck? perhaps looking for proof of us emulating their downward spiral? Someone doing their research going into business with us? No idea to be honest, but it's not a pleasant sight seeing that stuff come up.

Liquor License
No booze available at the ground, thanks to the State Sports Centres Trust letting their temporary liquor license expire without getting a permanent replacement. I don't drink booze at sports events, so I'm not really that fussed. But some people were annoyed enough about it that they started singing about it.

Next Week
Southern Stars away at Kingston Heath next Saturday. By Belenos, I hate that place. Undermanned, under siege, understand if we manage to lose again.

Sack Gus
This is what I love about this place. Everyone wanted stability. Everyone was sick of coaches and players being turned over after just a season. Gus was signed to a two year contract, which was commended by fans prior to the season because it meant that we had committed, in principle at least, to restoring some sort of stability to the club's on field.

But then we lost a whole bunch of games and now it's 'sack Gus' time. Stability? Meh. I'm just as guilty of being fickle as the rest of the supporter base. But when I really knuckle down and think about it, the conclusion that I keep coming back to is this - that we're by and large a good team that's playing badly.

Sack The Board
I'm not sure the board can go out there and play for the team. They splashed out the cash, got the players the coaches wanted, and yet here we are. There's a ton of other things you could have a go at them for, but the team's performance is really one of them.

Social Club
Speaking of which, a few months ago, I was sort of put in charge of inventorying the social club's artifacts, on the premise that very soon the remodeling crew was going to go in and start work. Months later, the Valkanis' are still cooking in there and we're using it as storage for the toblerone sponsor cushions. Now I'm all for taking our time to do things right, but this is getting concerning. You'd hope there's a solid idea at the base of this approach. Would be very disappointing and damaging if we weren't close to re-opening the social club space to the supporter base by the start of next season.

Survival
Finals, we pretty much all agree now, are out the window. It's all about survival, the one thing - aside perhaps from blooding some youth team players - that we can salvage from this wreck of a season. We're seven points ahead of Moreland Zebras, with seven games to go. One more slip up from us, combined with a win by the Zebras, and the battle to avoid relegation could be on.

Zenith
Thai Deli on Clarendon Street (a couple of doors up from the dreadful Pizza Hut). Great Thai food, lovely service, good serving size, and cheap! Get around it, as they say.

Digging a hole to 1974, and proud of it

Two Englishmen and a chain smoking, hard gambling senior citizen with manboobs walked into a bar... sounds like a decent set up for a joke, except the punchline is that the bar is South Melbourne Hellas, and the three blokes are our new signings. Good grief.

Stick a 'Soccer Action' masthead onto the article, maybe a Laurie Schwab or Fred Villiers byline onto it, and it would probably pass as a legitimate 1970s or 80s article.

So, Steve Burton (not the Green Gully one, but some schmo from England via Perth), Shaun Kelly (England via Shepparton) and Andy Vlahos (deep breath, ex-Heidelberg United, Collingwood Warriors, Carlton, Panathinaikos,  AO Agios Nikolaos, South Melbourne [who?], Football Kingz, Cercle Brugge, Melbourne Victory [apparently they don't exist according to our official site, which is an incredible, if slightly mystifying relief], Heidelberg United, Hume City, Heidelberg United) are our mid-season signings.

Also, out the door are Gianni De Nittis (again, maybe to Port), and Kyle Joryeff (unlucky, allegedly to Knights, but now probably Richmond). And what of Rhodri Payne? Who knows.

The only thing I can say, being one of those critics who has never kicked a ball and can't even lift a leg (then again, I heard the latter criticism made last night at the Port vs Gully cup match of Vlahos from a 1970s Polonia player), well, everything else has failed since 2006, so why not? This will be a second half of the season to remember.

And seriously, do click on the link above, and check out the attached videos - especially Kelly's, where he looks like a slide tackling machine even above and beyond Ramazan Tavsancioglu's efforts of the days of yore.

Same old, same old - Bentleigh Greens 1 South Melbourne 0

Another loss, another kick in the teeth. Play this while you read on.

ACMI Knights Supporter
Wild scenes before the game. Met Steve from Broady at Flinders Street, and to kill some time, we went across the road to ACMI so I could buy some tickets for MIAF. One of the blokes at the ticket booth recognised our South gear, and started chatting with us about the glory days... of 2005/06.

Contender for almost goal of the year
One of the Trifiros went up half the field, took on and beat about half of the Bentleigh team, slid his shot across the face of goal, only to see it hit the inside post and roll agonisingly along the line or some such.

Did our heads drop after that? That might be a retrospective opinion to take. Suffice to say that, apart from a Trent Rixon header which he should have scored (cue the 'he would have scored that against us last year' comment), we didn't really look like scoring

Gains
Back in the country, and yet our fortunes didn't change. Even microwaved murtabak couldn't make a difference.

Handball
I was at the complete opposite end of the ground, so I was in the absolute worst positio to see if it was a good call. If it wasn't, well that obviously blows, if it was, well, where have all these calls been during the rest of the season? Where was the handball for us late in the game?

That it was the only time that the Greens hit the target in the match made it hurt that little bit more.

Joe Montemurro
Now, I like the guy, he always has time for a chat. But I'm not convinced he should be anywhere near the senior team, if only for the facts that a) his senior record is actually rubbish and b) he has been one of the few common denominators in the last 2.5 seasons of bollocks performances.

Killing this club
These performances are killing the club. They are sucking the very air out of our lungs.

Semi-random people are coming up to me and asking just what the hell is going on. South fans and rival fans are equally bemused (and occasionally amused) by the goings on.

I can't give them a definitive answer. I wish I could provide something so erudite, that not only will it cut through the matter in one fell swoop, but that I could take it to the dressing rooms and write that sentence in giant letters onto their whiteboard.

But the problems are so diverse and now so deep, and the transfer window is still not open for another couple of weeks, that realistically, what could you say?

The Dandenong draw should have been a turning point, a hard fought result from which we could begin to relaunch our season. Instead we are going backwards at a rate of knots.

Kyle Joryeff is just about the door, and maybe three others, though I would be loathe to speculate as to who, though Marinos Gasparis is a frequent suspect.

Joryeff has been enthusiastic, but his time on the park has been limited. And when he has been given extra time he, like many others, has not put in the performances that have been required.

Gasparis seems unfit. He should be the player driving the team forward, bossing the midfield, but it's just not happening. It shows just how much we miss both Carl Recchia and Daniel Vasilevski.

This is not to romanticise the recent past. Vasilevski, apart from being injury prone, could often go missing in games. But there was a certain forward progress and directness, maybe even an 'x-factor' that they provided. Not having (an ageing) Fernando doesn't help matters either, nor does Joe Keenan's continued absences help - especially when Brad Norton is often the direct replacement.

Every man and his dog reckons Andy Vlahos is a done deal. Despite his age, if he could pull out his form of last year, where I had him as my player of the year, it would go some way to turning our fortunes around. But he has spent much of the season injured as well.

Thunder's McIlroy was touted as a target, seeing as how he'd been on the bench for much of the season. But he played yesterday and scored as well.

I think that the team is hurting, but it's not the right kind of hurt. It's mostly an introspective hurt, it's being turned inward. What we need is an outward expression of that hurt, preferably with increased effort on the field.

Mazenod United Dog Man
Poor bloke, wearing some flashy Mazenod United merch wasn't allowed into the ground with his dog. He did manage to get in somehow at one point, but that stay didn't last long.

Next Week
Bergers at home, in a relegation dogfight. Didn't think I'd be saying that at the start of the year. But that's where we are, and it sucks balls.

Tom Matthews, by Cindy Nitsos
Because we need at least a token photo of the night's proceedings.

Under 21s
Could only manage a 0-0 draw. They looked like they dominated the portion of the game that I saw (the last 20 minutes or so), and even converted a penalty, but they were forced to retake it due to supposed encroachment.

What was more interesting was a couple of the more disgraceful refereeing decisions seen in this or any other season. Firstly, with the ball heading out, but not yet over the line, the Bentleigh player decided to grab it prematurely so as to get quick thrown going. The ball was still clearly in play, the linesman a mere ten metres away refused to see it.

The second one was worse. South had a free kick about five to ten metres outside the box, and towards the left wing. One South player cheekily nudged the ball - and yes it did go a full revolution, which is a dumb rule anyway - and his teammate knocked it forward a little, then sent in a cross to an unmarked player in the box. The ref not only called the play back, thinking that there was no full revolution of the ball, but also awarded the freekick to Bentleigh from the same spot. Surely South have been asked to retake it? Can any of our referee readers help?

Zenith
At least Juniper Hill won in our opening game of the new Hattrick season. Yay.

Kiss of Death, Round 10, 2012

Friday 8:15 PM Bentleigh Greens (3rd) vs South Melbourne (7th)

I’ve kind of given up for this season. All the hoohah about who we signed at the start of the year, and how good we are on paper, is just that. On paper! I don’t know what else to say, other than I’m hurting. Hurting to the point that I’ve actually left games at half time out of disappointment. I don’t know if this pain is also felt by the players and staff down at Lakeside, but I hope it hurts their pockets. If I was ‘El Presidente’, I would start docking the pays. Just like in the real world when you don’t perform at your employment, management starts breathing down your neck. Rumour has it we have lost Trent Rixon for the game at Bentleigh. He hasn’t exactly started like a house on fire so I don’t think we will miss him. Rumour has it we have signed Andy Vlahos? A big WTF?! If this is true then we have bigger issues than I first thought. I remember when we signed Warren Spink in the Arok era. We did that about five years too late. Ah, fuck. How depressing when I can’t write anything positive. I’m not going to bother trying to motivate a bunch of players who can’t take it.

As Paul said in his review of the Port Melbourne loss in the Statewide knockout cup, “We attend out of a sort of religious duty, a fealty to the club that should go beyond results. But everyone has their limits - just how much damage this does to the club's already ravaged supporter base is anyone's guess.”

Tipping with my head on this one. Bentleigh Greens 2 – South Melbourne 0.

Friday 8:30 PM Hume City (4th) vs Southern Stars (8th)
First ever Turkish derby in the VPL. Hume City 3 – Southern Stars 1.

Saturday 3:00 PM Dandenong Thunder (1st) vs Green Gully Cavaliers (6th)
Dandy thumped the chetniks out at Springvale White Eagles 10-1 last weekend. (LOL) Apparently, it coulda, shoulda, woulda been more. That result means pretty much fuck all anyway. They have a real team visiting them this weekend. Dandenong Thunder 2 – Green Gully 2.

Sunday 3:00 PM Northcote City (5th) vs Oakleigh Cannons (2nd)
Oakleigh lost to struggling state 1 outfit Altona Magic last weekend. Shock result I reckon. Altona Magic is on the up since Jonesy took over, but their squad consisted of players mainly under 21. They had 2 freekicks and scored 2 LOL. Me thinks Northcote will do the job on them this weekend. Northcote City 2 – Oakleigh Cannons 1.

Sunday 3:00 PM Melbourne Knights (10th) vs Richmond (9th)
Would love to be at this game, but unfortunately have other commitments. I reckon it will be a cracker, a real humdinger of a match. Melbourne Knights 4 – Richmond 3.

Sunday 3:00 PM Heidelberg United (11th) vs Moreland Zebras (12th)
Relegation derby. A game which will interest South fans the most. The lower down the table these 2 stay, the least chance of relegation for South. That’s why I’m tipping an exciting draw. Heidelberg United 3 – Moreland Zebras 3.

Some admin stuff
A request to the FFV media department. Since I seem to be doing more work than you promoting the VPL, I believe under the rules and regulations and FFV statutes, I am entitled to a media pass. Please be kind enough to forward this to Paul Mavroudis. If you require a name for the pass, then ‘John Doe’ will suffice. Paul Mavroudis will then be given detailed instructions to forward this pass onto me. Thanks in advance.

Steve from Broady
I don’t know who you are, how old you are, and what gender you hail from, or even if your name is Steve.

You obviously haven’t heard of using fullstops, question marks and/or commas. If you want to have a blog off with none other than the Kiss Of Death, then maybe Paul can arrange this. Your positive spin was pretty shit. What have bread rolls being eaten at pre-drinks got to do with team performance?

Euro 2012 Tipping
As you would all be aware, I have challenged Arthur Papas to a Euro 2012 tipping comp. As of Friday I have 6 points while Arthur has 7 points. Will start getting juicy as our tips start to differ from each others around about now.

Possibly Andy Vlahos... hmm

Our sources (4Flares) indicate that it may have been Andy Vlahos... except that it had Viviennes Collection on the front as sponsor.