Friendly against Brunswick City tomorrow night

Kickoff at 7pm at an inexplicably open doors Lakeside.

And for the record, Brunswick City is an NPL2 team.

Friendly on Saturday against Brunswick City

Our next friendly is on Saturday evening against Brunswick City, at Dunstan Reserve in West Brunswick at 6:30.

Could this be the first South game I attend since March 2020? I think it could well be.

Friendly result - Brunswick City 2 South Melbourne 5

I trundled out to Brunswick West today. Bloody hot. Not sure of the sensibleness of playing matches in the middle of the day with such heat. Anyway, defensively very messy again, but going forward we were a lot better. Brunswick City missed a ton of very gettable chances throughout the game.

I suspect that the teams being out on Wednesday nights are a little stronger than the ones on Saturday afternoons, if for no other reason than the fact that Nikola Roganovic is in goals in the midweek games. There's not a lot of time left for Con Tangalakis to sort out his preferred starting eleven and formation.

I was asked a few times today to put forward what my starting eleven would be, and I don't know if it's fair to do so based on me seeing so few games during this pre-season... but I'm thinking some variant of 

Roganovic / Norton - Adams - Marshall - Djiba / Gage, Schroen, Sylaidos / Pep Marafioti, Krousoratis, Gio Marafioti

might be we close to what we end up with. Minopoulos will be off the bench, and that's fine. Konstantindis hasn't been fully involved with this pre-season, I'm not sold on Lambropoulos, and who knows what the coaches will decide in terms of how they'll use Bereveskos and Stratomitros, let alone George Howard who played in central defence today.

Members night this Wednesday
This coming Wednesday it looks like there will be a members/membership night in the social club, where our supporters have been invited to come down to the club to purchase and collect memberships. Not sure if there will be any merch available, but here's hoping. 

Apart from coming down and collecting a membership before our first home game, it's also a good chance to road test the food on offer in the social club as well - I had a burger the other night, and while no world beater, it was more than passable, and a definite step up from last year's offering.

Keep an eye on the club's social media for more on this.

Everyone is off to Adelaide
Or so it seems - senior men, senior women, and all of our NPL junior teams are apparently travelling to Adelaide to play against various opponents as part of pre-season. The senior men will be taking on West Adelaide, the senior women I think Adelaide City and another team. This seems like a very interesting enterprise to send basically the whole club interstate, in some ways echoing the intent of AAFC's interstate junior tournament proposal from last year.

2019 SMFC senior squad roster as of 2/02/2019
Thank you to my Twitter friends for letting me know where Christos Intzidis ended up. I've seen Iqi Jawadi's name attached to Dandy City in some form. Whoever the English striker was who trialled with us in late 2018, he's almost certainly gone.

So what we have then, barring some massive surprise in the next two weeks, is basically what you see below. with most if not all of the players listed under the "seen hanging around pre-season training" list likely to be made senior South players.

It is also possible that the injured Alastair Bray could be ready by round one based on stuff I heard today, but we'll have to see on that.

As to why the club hasn't announced official signings with a bit more frequency... I'm not too sure. Apparently we'll be well under our player points-cap, even without using points from Matthew Millar's move to Central Coast, so there's room to move if we do decide on a surprise late notice marquee type signing. 

Signed

• Dean Bereveskos (Bonnyrigg White Eagles) 
• Ethan Gage (Bentleigh Greens)
• Kristian Konstantinidis (signed until end of 2019) 
• Nick Krousoratis (Green Gully)
• Perry Lambropoulos (Port Melbourne) 
• Brad Norton (signed until end of 2019) 
• Kostas Stratomitros (Oakleigh Cannons)
• Gerrie Sylaidos (Northcote) 

Seen hanging around pre-season training

• Luke Adams 
• Manny Aguek 
• Ben Djiba
• George Howard 
• Amir Jashari
• Giordano Marafioti 
• Giuseppe Marafioti 
• Jake Marshall
• Andrew Mesorouni
• Leigh Minopoulos 
• Will Orford
• Nikola Roganovic
• Marcus Schroen 
• Melbourne Heart Ball Hog
• Zack/ch Bates?
• "Calvin"

Injured

• Alastair Bray 

Out

• Rory Brian (Preston) 
• Matthew Foschini (Oakleigh) 
• Josh Hodes (Oakleigh?) 
• Christos Intzidis (FK Palanka, Lithuania) 
• Milos Lujic (Oakleigh) 
• Oliver Minatel (Canada) 
• Ndumba Makeche (Penang FA) 
• Tim Mala (North Sunshine)

Unknown / MIA / Assumed dead from 2018

• Giorgi Zarbos

Friendly vs Brunswick City tomorrow

At Brunswick City's Dunstan Reserve, under 20s kickoff at 11am, seniors at 1pm. Make sure to wear sunscreen.

Nothing to write home about - South Melbourne 2 North Geelong 1

After the joys of experiencing the social club, and then watching the women's team steal a win (5-4 over Bulleen) right at the death thanks to Lisa De Vanna, the only thing which could have ruined Sunday would been the men's team finding a way not to pick up all three points. Credit to them though, they gave it a good shake.

No Nikola Roganovic, who missed through injury, replaced by Zaim Zeneli for a rare league start. Carl Piergianni maybe called out as a scapegoat for the defensive implosion last week, replaced by Michael Eagar. Jesse Daley was out also after a hard week trialling in Perth, and coming back with the flu. Thank you very much Kenny Lowe.

We started off pretty well, even took the lead, and then did what we do best and that's let the other team back into the contest. Now after being mauled 8-0 the week before against ten men no less, one guessed that North Geelong might come in with a bit more desire and discipline, and that's what they did, but they also moved the ball around better than you might expect a team on its knees to do so. I'm not saying it was great, but it did threaten to be effective, and some of our shenanigans around the back line wouldn't have discouraged them.

For our part, at times like these we are often our worst enemy. It was rainy and windy and all of that made things harder, but you'd think the way we played the conditions that it was the first time we'd eve seen conditions like that. Not one low hard shot at the keeper, or low hard skidding cross, which would have spilled loose or been bundled in for an own goal. Of course North Geelong scored in more or less that manner - a low hard shot parried back into play by Zeneli (even taking into account the conditions, a continuing weakness of his), and tapped in for the equaliser.

After that the team snapped out of their lethargy, but it took what looked like a controversial penalty at the time - not for the foul itself, but on the question of whether it was in the box - to get us over the line. Not many around where I was standing thought or realised it was in the box except for Gains, and he only thought it was in the box because he actually pays attention to the game. Certainly the North Geelong cohort towards that end of the ground were very disappointed in the decision, but the video proves the referee was right. as I noted yesterday in the aftermath.

@a_jukic @smfc @NGWFC Thinnest of margins, most unnecessary of tackles. It's a cruel game, but sometimes we create our own miseries.

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) April 9, 2017

Milos Lujic tucked away his fourth goal of the league campaign - all from penalties - and we managed to withstand North's attempts at getting an equaliser, even though it wasn't always pretty. Chris Taylor's refusal to make a sub also confounded many in the ground. The wittiest suggestion as to why that might be was made by Griff of all people, who suggested that perhaps Taylor was under the impression that substitutes were like annual leave, and that he was hoping to roll over unused subs to the next game. Whereas, as Griff pointed out, unused subs are actually more like sick days - if you don't use them, you lose them!

Overall, it was a pretty lousy performance, but we got the job done, and since avoiding relegation is our main this year, it was an important win in that context.

Next game
At home on Easter Monday against Melbourne Knights. When it comes to the fixturing of big events, the mainstream Christian churches give FFV and FFA a run for their money, but everyone's lucked out this year because everything seems to have lined up nicely, as it does every few years for (literally) God knows what reason. Though of course there's a blockbuster footy clash on the Monday, for people who are easily distracted. Speaking of which...

The most Melbourne thing ever happened
During I believe what was the second half, all of a sudden over the stadium's PA system there was a stream of the television commentary for the Carlton-Essendon slogfest at the MCG. Good friend of the blog, one Mr Cuddles, who works in the control room working the scoreboard and (ergh) music, often has the footy on another laptop if his beloved (ergh, again) Carlton are playing. Something went wrong at one stage and I believe the whole grandstand then heard Bryce Gibbs going for goal or something like that. As one wit noted, 'there goes our A-League bid', which is for the best anyway.

Let there be banter
North Geelong brought along a decent (and seemingly youngish) chanting group, even if they seemed to be singing a lot of their chants to tunes that Clarendon Corner use, and somewhat less tastefully, one of which used the tune from Mousse T's 'Horny'. They didn't limit themselves to supporting their team however, also throwing in banter our way. 'You're not singing any more' was replied to with 'We weren't singing anyway'; 'Your social club is shit' was replied to with 'Our social club, is better than yours'; their sarcastic calls of 'penalty' were responded to with our own sarcastic calls for penalties. It did get a bit less fun when members of that crew stormed down to the players tunnel/race in order to berate the officials with much wild finger pointing. At least it wasn't us for once.

First impressions of Earth/Social Club discussion in multiple parts
2017 Jersey Night
The 2017 Jersey Presentation Night was the first one to be held in our social club since its (still incomplete, but good enough to start using it) redevelopment. Was it held there also in 2010? I can't remember - I think that was the year I missed the event (and Faith No More at Soundwave) because I was having my wisdom teeth pulled out.

My first impression of the social club space was, like many of you would have found, that it was small. The futsal court utterly dominates the senses. But over the course of the night (and much more so on Sunday) I found that the space instead of being small, was instead intimate, social even.

It was a good night overall, and people there seemed pleased with the social club in general, even with the tight squeeze of the tables to accommodate the (I'm guessing) 200 or so guests. A couple of technical hitches with the audio aside, the presentation of the event was pretty good, and if anything when it went drastically wrong or over time, it was because the audience had to constantly be shushed during the player auctions.

On that front, the real bolters were the Queensland pair (and many of these lots were done in pairs) of Luke Pavlou and Jesse Daley. The women's team as a collective fetched a good price as well, but I've stopped being able to keep track of the amounts raised on the night let alone across the years. I'm not even sure if every player was auctioned off. I can't recall if Liam McCormack for instance was called up or even present. The People's Champ, as is the case every year with this event, was not there.

The food was a bit all over the shop. The delays in getting the main meal out were a bit crap, but I think like of lot of things with the new social club we're all happy to be tolerant while everything settles down. The salads were fine, calamari dull, the roasted pulled meats OK, and the desserts - baklava and galaktobouriko which I invited to scoff from another table - warm and rather good.

What's-his-name was at the jersey night on Friday.  Photo : FourFourTwo.

The panel session was Bill Papastergiadis going on about the A-League bid; Lisa De Vanna - new signing for the women's team - discussing her career and drive to succeed; and that bloke off that Nunawading mural (not him, not the other one either, yeah, that guy) talking about how he has very few friends and how most of those few friends he has were made at South. Hey, wait, that sounds like a lot of people left at South right now! Or maybe I'm just projecting.

Anyway, after complaining last week about never winning raffles, I still bought ten dollars worth of tickets, and when the draw was being re-done for the small label boutique handbag prize (because no one had claimed to have the original winning ticket) I pointed to a particular green ticket in my possession, told the rest of the table that I was on that I was going to win it, and lo and behold I won the damn handbag.

Now while many of those in the room who know me had a good chuckle, I was not ashamed to collect my prize (though I'd rather have won the tyre voucher), because it's just a handbag of indeterminate monetary value, and I would have found someone to gift it to later on. As it was, I didn't even get to leave with the prize, as I was made a very generous cash offer for the bag, which I accepted. The buyer's daughter is apparently quite happy with my her new handbag, I was happy with the price offered, and I sought to plough that money back into the club coffers as quickly as I could on Sunday, with three-quarters of it already donated to a better cause; namely a rather nice new home shirt - one in which the badges and sponsors are not ironed on or sewed on, but are like, actually part of the shirt.

Anyway, the highlight of the night for me - apart from watching the last two minutes of the Swans-Pies game on someone's tablet - was being seated near the players (who arrived after completing a training session), who at one point were watching themselves on one of the many screens on the 2016 montage being played on said screens, and partook in some playful taking the piss of themselves and each other. Overall, an enjoyable evening which I wouldn't have missed for the world, and yet that's not all that happened that night.

Farewell, old friend (He's bad - but he'll die - so I like it.)
I can't remember when I first put the clock up. It must have been some time around 2013 or 2014, but who can say for sure without trawling through the archives (actually October 2013, thank you very much to Twitter's searchable archive download service). It was not exactly the most accurate or honest of things. I had as its starting point the end of our last home game at the old Lakeside. That decision was at best only theoretically accurate; after all, people hung around the old social club on that day for a few hours, being either appalled or attempting to justify the carnage of the pitch invasion.

But that wasn't the end either. The social club still got some use from the average South Melbourne Hellas punter. There was a casino night, and there was an 80s themed birthday party for board member Tony Margaritis, which included music by 80s tribute band Powerstryde.

[I didn't wear any stereotypically 80s gear to that party. Collingwood had just won the flag in a replay, and so I was wearing a Pies guernsey, having decided to commit to a friend's celebration and instead of hanging out with the teeming boganity listening to Lionel Ritchie.]

I'd started the clock as a quiet lark, and as a silent protest. People who read the blog - whoever they were - would hopefully have a laugh at the grim situation. As for protest, really, who that was against was less well defined. Was it against the government and their bureaucracy? They probably didn't visit too often. Was it against the board? Probably a bit, but if they could have satisfactorily resolved the issue sooner I'm certain they would have done so. More likely, and typically, it was a protest against the cosmic injustice of the whole thing, and an acknowledgement of the absurdity of it as well.

It took a few attempts to find the right kind of extension, and then to figure out how to fit it in within the blog. Of course, in keeping with South of the Border's design aesthetic of looking like a dog's breakfast, it only added to that overall effect.

After the lark honeymoon period was over, the social club counter gained its own notoriety - first among readers of South of the Border, and later out in the digital realm. Opposition club fans were huge fans, but there was also interest from far flung quarters of what is called #sokkahtwitter, the loose gaggle that could barely be considered a collective that makes up the people who talk about Australian soccer on Twitter. Without going over the top and saying that it was some sort of transcendent Australian soccer phenomenon, among those people who care about such things people knew about it, and kept an eye on it. This is one of the last tweets on the subject of the clock before its demise, which summed up people's feelings on the matter

after tonight one of my favourite things in Australian soccer will be gone @PaulMavroudis pic.twitter.com/KRWt0d7Pf0

— Joe Gorman (@JoeGorman_89) April 7, 2017

That notoriety was both fascinating and dispiriting. Yes, all of our fans wanted the issue of the social club resolved. For the pleb fan, this was because we just wanted our social club space back. For the board members, it was because so much of the future prosperity of the club that they were and are responsible for was still attached to it. But for me, there was the added condition of 'I just want to get rid of this damn albatross'. I hated it. When one day late last year I think it was, it mysteriously broke and showed the (all things considered) wrong time, I had to go back and manually fix it.

But then, as its demise came nearer, I also felt sort of strange about that pending end. It had become an essential part of the blog, the most obvious thing, and the only moving thing on here, its metronomic persistence - except in the one case noted above - was soothing. And the hatred I had for it was revealed, as it sometimes was wont to do, to be tempered with a strange appreciation for its toxic attempt at humour.

Actually, I don't care about the social club any more; I prefer having the counter instead http://t.co/og2YmAy6wx

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) October 16, 2015

On the day of the jersey night, I had mostly overcome my ten day bout with illness. The plan on the day had been settled. I'd go to a free lunch in Fitzroy and the Jersey Night after that, with hopefully two hours in between to get to a computer at uni in the city in order to quietly remove the social club count-up clock. (Blogger's back-end management processes work very badly in my phone's browser). But I got waylaid for several hours in the late afternoon by drinks in Brunswick Street with an assortment of characters known and unknown. By the time I managed to extricate myself from the situation, I was overdue at Lakeside, and the clock was still running.

So, while getting playfully heckled online and at jersey night was fun for about two minutes, I really wanted to just get the damn thing off the blog. So after asking the evening's media operator whether I could borrow his computer to just dump it quietly, discreetly, the situation was engineered - admittedly with my agreement - that at a suitable point in the evening, we would film the process. And thus at some point late in evening, around 11:30 or so, the farce of an amateur blogger deleting a bit of html off a website was filmed and uploaded to the world.

Aaaaaaand it's gone! @PaulMavroudis @smfc #socialclubcountdownclock pic.twitter.com/6vGrlltMQQ

— Tony Margaritis (@sthmel) April 7, 2017

Several years ago when people were discussing how we should inaugurate the opening of the social club, I'd mentioned this as a possibility, but there was no planning for it until the night itself. Usually South of the Border likes to steer clear of anything resembling an official connection to the club, but late in the evening, with the room half emptied, and with the wife of a South of the Border reader (you can hear her in the video's background) heckling her partner, everything seemed to fall into place. Thanks to MC David Henning for his kind words and nimble speech.

That wasn't the end of course, as the witty but topical banter kept rolling on.

@sthmel @PaulMavroudis @smfc Reminiscent of the scenes in Berlin when the wall came down.

— Name cannot be blank (@jgrb) April 8, 2017

But it was finally done - the social club was in, and the clock had to go. Your correspondent typically couldn't help however put forward what was at least a faintly mournful post.

It's gone. Just like that.

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) April 7, 2017

On Saturday morning, looking at the blog, I decided to change the look for the first time in years. A bit neater, and a bit of distance between that bloody gadget and the blog. I thought it looked better, but one of our readers suggested something a bit more appropriate for those sneaking in a read of South of the Border during paid office hours. Not having ever had a proper job of any description, I just did what he suggested and changed the text box a bit. If I had the skills I'd convert the whole thing to look like a spreadsheet, but since I can't even manage even a crappy banner for the top, that might be a bit of a pipe dream.

Museum
I thought the museum was well done. The mix of the wall insets with trophies and photo montages, as well the video screens adjacent, looked very professional, but also appropriately reverential. It is a project that is, like many other elements of the social and office spaces, still incomplete, and I hope that it will improve on that front. There were several glass cabinets insets, with trophies, mementos and photo collages. I am glad that the coloured red vee heritage strip photo from the 1960s got prominent positioning, as well as a very good working of the women's cabinet. There are also still things which are in storage, including trophies, the club honour board, etc, which will be incorporated into the final design.

To give a bit of background on production of the museum, so far as my limited involvement was concerned. At some point during the development of the social club project, I had gone on a trip with two members of the South office/media inner circle out to various AFL club HQs to see what they had done with their museums. Some were very good (Hawthorn's - if you have any interest in these things, go see it, seriously), and some were not so good. I wrote up a sort of summary/discussion paper, wondered ever after if anyone had read it, and waited thereafter to see what those in the club tasked with that area would come up with.

Whoever they relied upon - whether their own gleanings from their own research, or from referencing my internal write-up, it's clear that those behind the museum learned the lessons from that sojourn across Melbourne. They've made good use of the limited space available (Hawthorn, for example, has an entire second floor for its museum), and everything looks fantastic. At the very least, it was good to see some of the old trophies in their proper form, having been given a nice clean and polish; they were almost unrecognisable from those I had packed away several years ago.

Those of you who remember the old social club museum may be disappointed with what's on offer, and asking why isn't everything on show. The truth of the matter is, while we had a lot of trophies, many were from one off matches and minor cups. It looked, in its own shabby way, viscerally impressive, but it told no story. That the club has run with the idea of a at least a basic narrative - state league, national league, women's, intercontinental - means that there is a focus on the biggest things we have achieved.

I would hope that what currently exists as a blank wall between the entrance from the futsal court and the museum can be turned into an extension of the museum idea, incorporating at least something about the three predecessor clubs, and perhaps also something about Middle Park as well. It may be a good chance to use even some cursory written history as part of that. We'll wait and see, but so far I am happy with what has been achieved on this front.

On Sunday
I missed the family day on the Saturday, having procrastinated too long at home playing video games, and so I didn't get to experience the social club under the full force of too many people with too many children. Apparently the wait for food was very long.

On Sunday this did not appear to be an issue. I was there pretty early, and while food was not served instantly, it was prepared in a timely fashion for those looking to eat inside. I was less than happy with the meal deal option - with either souvlaki (pork, chicken, or lamb), burger or kransky - because it seemed to be the only way you could order a main meal, in that you couldn't buy a souv, burger or kranksy just on its own. I'm lead to believe that this, and the very concise menu, were only temporary as bistro finds its feet.

The food - I had a pork souvlaki - was of a very good standard, and judging from what other people said about their meals, I did not hear a bad word about the quality of what was on offer. The pricing on the other hand was a bit steep, as it was for booze. And while a drink was included in the cost of the meal, it was for a soft drink. I hope that in future something can be arranged for alcoholic drinks to be included in meal deals, as is often done at pubs.

It is impossible to extrapolate anything from day one (or day three), but the venue seemed to be doing good trade. After the game came its first real big PR test, when the club's social club member priority scheme was put in place for the first time - or at least general member priority. Those without memberships - including one notably young and loud-voiced terrace character - had to wait until those with memberships got in first, and then whatever capacity was left over could accommodate them. Maybe some signage making that fact could be placed outside the social club, instead of having the president stand outside personally vetting people. (though if I recall correctly,

It would also be good in future to know in advance when the social club will be open from, and I have made that known to people at the club - even on their electronic flyers, it'd be a welcome addition. I'm not sure of the scope of the venue to attract people from the local community, but hopefully it is at least able to attract people who attend events held at Lakeside on non-South match days, especially people from outside those who will use the futsal court. Speaking of which, the futsal court itself is apparently already doing quite well during these school holidays in terms of exploiting leveraging our location in an upper middle class part of Melbourne which full of people with high levels of disposable income.

And in the end, that's what it comes down to. I can understand the concerns of those who wanted something bigger and more expansive, but it is not designed for the 13 odd days where we play at home - it is designed for the other 352 days when we are not playing games there. That most of us will be there on one of those 13 days however means our judgements will be based around that experience, even as the financial security and hopefully prosperity that the other 352 days will bring to the club will be the main focus of the social club. It will take some getting used to. Some may never get used to it. I understand that. I'm going to try and make the best of the situation.

In all seriousness
My warmest regards to any board member past or present who had to work on this project at any time. So far as I can remember, neither the clock nor any of my comments were ever intended as a personal attack on any of you - I get it though if you were annoyed or hurt by either of those however. At least now I can start hammering you for the social club as it is, and not about when we'd actually get it.

Hidden benefits of the social club
The game outside was streamed live into the social club's screens. Apart from being convenient in terms of not missing much of the action if you decide to stay indoors because of the weather or want to beat the half-time rush for food, if you happen to be one of our more combustible supporters, you can use it as a time-out space - as it may have appeared to occur during the game on Sunday.

Subscription feature
Succumbing to further audience requests, I've added a gadget which allows you to subscribe to alerts for new posts via email. It's a little thing on the right hand side of the site.

SMFCBOARD IS DEAD
The owner of the forum finally had enough. Full obituary Thursday or Friday or something like that.

Around the grounds

Restricted view ticket
I had intended to to go Lakeside for 'family day', but procrastination caught up with me. Thus we (me and three other blokes) agreed to attend Moreland City vs Brunswick City. After an energetic first half there was no score, because neither team could shoot properly. Moreland took the lead through old mate Trent Rixon, but then Brunswick, who had done nothing in the second half, got level via a penalty and then took the lead with ten to play. Almost all the second half was watched from a a ridiculous vantage point (see right) because of the weather. Campbell Reserve's sight lines are bad enough on a good day; when it starts pouring down, there's nowhere to hide, and fewer vantage points to watch a game from. At least we got to see Moreland's equaliser for 2-2 because the player scoring the goal happened to be in that one part of the field where we could see him score a goal. In the 92nd minute, the home side pinched an equaliser. One felt bad for Brunswick, even though they had not really done enough to earn their lead despite scoring two goals. One felt uneasy about Moreland winning the game, even though on the balance of play they deserved it. But maybe that's the complimentary plastic cup of scotch talking - a complimentary plastic cup of scotch I suspect was earned because of only half playful hostile questioning of a member of the Victoria Patriots A-League bid team. And I don't even really like scotch.

Final thought

@a_jukic @PaulMavroudis @smfc @NGWFC Speaking of replays, anyone get me threading the needle through the shot put net? Best kick I have done all year.

— Marko Stevanja (@Mstevanja) April 10, 2017

Last hitout for 2016 - Brunswick City 1 South Melbourne 1

Yesterday we had our final pre-season session before everyone goes off to undo all their good work over the Christmas/New year break.

2017 @smfc #ps4nplvic preseason continues at Clifton Park, vs Brunswick City. Skate punks playing that New Order record from a decade ago. pic.twitter.com/E7i5tQ1LCb

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) December 17, 2016

Clifton Park was the venue. It was very windy. We fielded a reasonably strong series of lineups. Three by thirty minute periods. We scored first, they scored second, their goal being a lovely long ranged curled effort out of reach of Zaim Zeneli.

Some things to note. I'm led to believe that one of our Queensland signings, defender Ajdin Fetahagić, did his ACL during a training session. Also Francesco Stella was at this friendly yesterday. There are more signings yet to come. I don't know if that will include anyone that can hit a free kick properly.

Top of the league! - Richmond 6 South Melbourne 3

As has been noted by several bright sparks, unlike our 2-2 draw on the Veneto Club's synthetic field in our last league outing, this time we couldn't even blame the state of the field, which was in pristine biological grass condition.

After this game I tweeted that I had no words for what had happened, and three days later I still don't really have much to add - though some of that may be down to emptying the word well with that AGM summary. Nevertheless, one moment I was discussing surrealist hardcore screamo (bulimic rainbows vomit what?) and the greatest forgotten animated series of all time, happy to have what looked to me like a comfortable lead; the next moment we've copped five and barely threatened the opposition goal.

There are many degrees of humiliation to be suffered in the NPL (and before that, VPL) for a South Melbourne Hellas fan. Just being here, for example, is horrible. Being mistaken for a North Melbourne fan when traveling on public transport, that's more at the minor end of the scale. Somewhere at the extreme of the humiliation scale though, is the moment when opposition supporters who have no history of chanting, start chanting. On Thursday night, that's how low we fell.

Maybe we didn't deserve to be 3-1 up at half time. Maybe we did. Nevertheless, that's where we found ourselves, and even if we hadn't quite deserved to be there, seeing as how we were there, shouldn't we at least have managed to come out of this with a point? Instead five second half goals later, we all walked out wondering what had happened, and trying to remember the last time we copped six goals - which of course was that nightmare loss to Sydney Olympic after we returned from Brazil.

But back to humiliation. There were so many ex-South players and personnel involved with the Richmond squad which slaughtered us on Thursday night. Most painful was Jake Barker-Daish scoring a double, after he had done stuff all for us last year, and Nick Niagoran who also bagged a double. Niagoran was a former junior for us, who I remember clinching the 2011 under 21s title for us with a belter of a goal in the last round. He and many from that squad departed for Malvern with then 21s coach Gus Caminos, and Niagoran joined Richmond during this off-season. Of course that doesn't mean Niagoran will do anything for the rest of the year, and he did get sent off, too. But if the classic and often correct assertion to young players or former players is to prove their former club wrong, well on Thursday night he at least did that.

In the wake of the loss, ascendancy has been given to those who doubt the team and the coach. That's to be expected, and goodness knows they shouldn't be immune to criticism after putting in a performance like that. Still, some of that material did come across at least as a little bit pre-prepared. While some of the arguments about the game style and tactics have merit - we probably do rely too much on a counter attacking style, and on Thursday especially we did gift Richmond far too much time on the ball because of our refusal to press - but some of the rhetoric almost seemed to take a kind of glee in being 'proven right'.

Some of the criticisms of the personnel involved will almost inevitably miss the point that for the past two and a half years - including the earliest parts of this league season - the players have actually done quite well. We're actually still top of the league (on goal difference), and while you can make all sorts of quite sensible points that we've played two of the three promoted sides and the already doomed Northcote in those five games, I'd still rather be where we are than every other team in this league.

Of course if we get tonked in the next game, I will join the bandwagon of negativity so I can be with all the cool kids.

An alternative theory as to why we lost

@PaulMavroudis I'm putting it down to karma for me being banned on smscboard and blocked on twitter #CurseOfTheBoombino

— Mark Boric (@MarkBoric) March 24, 2016

Next game
Hume City away on Saturday night.

Flares. in the plural sense
After one was lit by someone in the vicinity at Clarendon Corner against Bulleen, another was lit in the dark corners of Kevin Bartlett Reserve after we went 3-1 up. It was hard to tell if it was lit inside our outside the ground. Either way, the potential return of this trend is not something I want to see.

Just quietly, I've written a piece on flares which has been accepted by Thin White Line magazine for their next print edition, which will won't solve any of the problems.

International year of the fence

Now that is a fence. #rscvsm #PS4NPLVIC #fencebitters #fencegate #internationalyearofthefence pic.twitter.com/VoqPH2Qw2w

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) March 24, 2016

Not quite what is used to be though - apparently the gate that used to lead onto the freeway, in order that stray balls could be retrieved, has been removed. - See correction in the comments section.

Andy Brennan watch
Those hoping that there may be a chance of luring Andy Brennan back to South will be interested to note that he finally made his A-League debut yesterday for Newcastle Jets, coming off the bench in the second half.

Around the grounds
#findyourlevel
Headed out to Campbell Reserve for the Sydney Road derby between Moreland City and Brunswick City, and the game did not disappoint! The reserves game was very entertaining as well, so all round it was very worthwhile trip out to Coburg. Oh, and we managed to snare a spot in the premium seating section

Great spot to watch a game from. Good to see Wes Coles still going round as a keeper. #PS4NPLVIC #mrcvbc pic.twitter.com/x1SUdxMZyC

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) March 26, 2016

Brunswick deserved their 1-0 wins in both the curtain raiser and the feature game, though they both had some drama. Brunswick's under 20s needed a second penalty late on (after having an earlier one saved) to win 1-0, and their seniors despite being the better side also needed a bit of luck; this time a horrible mix up between Moreland's keeper Brandon Galgano and one of his defenders, as well as a double penalty save from state league veteran Wes Coles. Ian Syson and I also toyed with the idea that we should be more forgiving of players at this and similar levels, reminding ourselves that when these players screwed that it was almost a statistical certainty that they would do so. After all, if they were more competent, they almost certainly wouldn't be here in the first place. Now, the next step is to somehow work 'find your level' into a marketable slogan for the NPL as a whole.

RIP Barry Hines
British writer Barry Hines - mostly associated with writing on working class lives in England - died the other week. I wrote so-so review of his debut novel The Blinder, a couple of years back; in short, the novel has the hallmarks of a debut, but is still definitely worth a read.

Final thought

Windy - Pascoe Vale 0 South Melbourne 0

This game's only highlight as a South fan was watching the ordeal of some of the Pascoe Vale volunteers looking for a stray ball that had landed in the front yard of one of the houses behind the southern end of the ground. Being in the running for three competitions is great, but it puts a strain on your resources, and your priorities also go on walkabout somehwat. So whi;e Bentleigh scraped a draw against Port, meaning we had a great chance to make up some of the difference, instead of taking advantage of that opportunity we played lacklustre football inappropriate for the windy conditions, probably with more than one eye on not exhausting ourselves for the FFA Cup match on Wednesday.

We played conservatively in the first half, which I suppose is understandable considering the fact that we played against a very strong wind; but our second half performance was no better. David Stirton had the best chance for us in the game in the first half, when instead of heading home a cross he tried to nurse home a volley and missed it completely. Apart from collecting an over hit cross, the Pascoe Vale goalkeeper's only exertion was to make a witty and self-deprecating riposte to some banter he received from the South fans behind the goal. At the other end of the ground, Pascoe Vale had two or three shots cleared off the line, and a number of botched attempts which should have resulted in goals.

And really, apart from the pizza man no longer being at the ground, apparently due to ill health, there's not much else to report from this game.

Next game - FFA Cup, preparations, where to meet, etcetera
Our next match is in the FFA Cup against Palm Beach Sharks on the Gold Coast, at Robina Stadium on Wednesday night. The following is some general info for those who are going up and what's going on, as well as for those in Melbourne who may want to watch the game with other South fans.

For those heading up to the Gold Coast:
The local Greek-Australian soccer club Surfers Paradise Apollo has posted the following relatively vague details on their Facebook page about South holding a training session at their ground, along with lunch.

The training session will be held at 9:30AM. Apollo's ground is about ten kilometres from Robina Stadium. Public transport is a less than convenient option in this case, so carpooling with hire cars or organising a taxi will be better options should you choose to go to Apollo's clubrooms first. Some other South fans will be drinking at the Dog and Parrot in Robina from 4:30 onwards. It's about three kilometres from the ground, or about a half an hour's walk.

As for the game itself, it appears that under the circumstances a reasonably healthy contingent of South fans is heading up, The numbers will hopefully be bolstered by members of Surfers Paradise Apollo and Brisbane Olympic. While not a decree by any means, it has been suggested that South fans should congregate together rather then spreading themselves throughout the stadium.

For the record, this writer will not be making the trip up for this game, due to work commitments.

For those watching the game in Melbourne:
While many of you will no doubt prefer to watch this in the comfort of your lounge room in suburbia, a group of the usual pre-match pub crew will be congregating at the Limerick Arms Hotel in South Melbourne, which is located on the south west corner of the Clarendon Street and Park Street intersection. Don't ask me about parking, but both the no. 12 and no. 1 trams stop at that intersection, making it a pretty convenient location on that front.

Can't make it to CBUS on Wednesday? Watch us live in Melbourne at our official live site on Clarendon Street! pic.twitter.com/jx77Ffka54

— South Melbourne FC (@smfc) July 27, 2015

The Limerick also seems to be offering a free drink if you follow the instructions below.

Hope to see as many of those South fans not going up to Queensland, at the Limerick instead.

Around the grounds
Crawling
I took up an offer to watch Brunswick under 16s play Ballarat Red Devils up in Ballarat. That's what happens when your team's game gets postponed and you have nothing else to do. After my previous visit to watch this Brunswick team, I wasn't expecting much, but this time around the game resembled a soccer match. Neither side was particularly good, there were elementary errors aplenty, but at least it wasn't scrimmage ball. At the conclusion of the game, which I think Ballarat won 3-1 (but which is not important, because it's about development, not winning), I made note of the following things which troubled me and/or which I would like to see rectified.

• If Altona East's reserves know how to use their fullbacks for overlapping play, why was there not one overlapping play in this game? 
• Isn't part of the point of the 433 formation being made mandatory the fact that it's supposed to be the most flexible formation? Why then do so many NPL junior teams seem to use it so rigidly?
• Unless they're offering encouragement, I'd rather not hear what parents have to say during a game. I want to hear what the coach and players are saying to each other.
• Just because you're a bilingual parent, using Greek to express your bitchiness towards other players that aren't your son because you think that only you and the coach will understand, is not acceptable. It's actually deplorable.
• If you're the coach and you think you can gain an edge by giving an impromptu instruction to a player in a different language, by all means go for it. But don't single that player out for abuse in that language, especially in a way that you would dare not do in English to all the other players. You want to blow off some Greek cultural steam at the soccer? There's 30-40 Greek-Australian soccer clubs in Melbourne with senior men's teams that expect and can handle that kind of banter (just not South Melbourne, obviously).
• Skill level is one aspect of the curriculum that the NPL and its affiliated reforms will be judged on in the future, but right here, right now, surely we can teach defenders about the offside rule and how they can use it to their advantage. Soccer is not Australian rules football. You don't need to chase your direct opponent everywhere. If they want to be offside, let them.
• That when Margaret Thatcher said that 'there is no such thing as society', she could have well been talking about the NPL.

The cake I had was OK. Always finish on a positive. that's my motto.

I scowl, therefore I am
Why did I go to the Roma vs Manchester City game? The availability of free tickets alone couldn't have been the answer, though heading to Leo Athanasakis' Brunswick office provided an excuse to also go across to Brunswick Savers (I bought a coat). Was it just to go there and wear a trademark sneer or scowl? Perhaps, but I'd like to think that's not all I do. Nevertheless, I did pick up two tickets for this game, expecting little and getting about as much in return; though I did get to share the experience and have a good chat with Shoot Farken's Athas Zafiris, who was third in line for consideration for my spare ticket. The game either lived up or down to everyone's expectations. It was played at something between half and three quarter pace, there was too much space, and nothing at stake. At least there were goals, and a couple of them rather good ones. The penalty shoot out was completely unnecessary; but then again so was the countdown timer at the end of each half which was counted down with gusto by many in the crowd.

The crowd was reported as being about 41,000, which seemed about right, though it was also hard to tell because as a Collingwood supporter, for that number I'm used to seeing a usually a two thirds full Ponsford Stand, which was mostly empty along with the neighbouring MCC Members' Stand (apparently the MCC members had to pay to attend). While I'm not sure why I expected every South person who accepted a free ticket to be located in the same part of the stadium, the cynical part of me wondered how some people ended up on Level 2, some on Level 1, and some on Level 4. Not that it's such a big deal - it's hard even for me to complain about free tickets to a game that I otherwise wouldn't have gone to and besides, I've willingly sat in similar positions at the MCG for soccer and footy matches - but you just wonder sometimes.

It could have been worse: the view from level 4 of the Great Southern Stand prior to kick off. Photo: Paul Mavroudis.

Maybe I watch too much local soccer and conversely not enough overseas stuff on the television, but my reading of the action seemed to be out of synch with much of the crowd. While most of the game saw a very muted reaction from the crowd - aside from the goals and some bizarre early hatred for Raheem Sterling - there were some passages of play which to me clearly seemed like they weren't anything special or that they would lead to a goal, which were anticipated with heartfelt oohs and aahs. For the most part though the crowd came across as politely bored, with the muted paper plane invasion coming only during the last ten minutes or so. There was also no Mexican wave of which to speak.

It was hard to tell who outnumbered who in terms of actual supporters of the two sides. The organised 'active' Roma fans seemed to outnumber their Manchester City equivalent, but neither group made much of an impact on the atmosphere of the game. The cheers for the goals seemed to be even handed, probably because most of the crowd were neutrals who just wanted to be entertained, and at about $70 a ticket for the cheap seats that's the least they were entitled to I suppose. On the matter of ticket prices, I myself couldn't see the value at that price, and anecdotally at least it seems that there were a lot of free tickets that got thrown about for this match.

In terms of entertainment, I'm going to echo Athas' point made on the night that there should have been more show-boating. If the two sides weren't going to go in full bore (and as already stated, there was no reason to do so), they could have at least pulled out a few more daring dribbling maneuvers, or taken a few more shots on goal from range. Too often the game was a slopfest caused in part by well drilled players not knowing how to play in a game with no meaning and little intensity. Too many times it seemed as if players would rather take an extra touch, avoid a volleyed shot, make an extra pass or even prefer to get fouled rather than do something even remotely daring.

Meanness for the sake of meanness can be entertaining on occasion, especially when it cuts through far too much unnecessary treacle, but in the long run it gets boring. Going down to Level 1 to get a better look at the penalty shoot out, it became clear that those clearly most thrilled with the experience were the children. Not all the children, as it was a dull game despite the goals, and children do get bored easily; but there were kids thrilled with the simple fact of Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart not only taking a penalty, but successfully smashing it into the back of the net; the comically missed penalties provided a moment of clownish levity; and on the way back to Richmond station, and the train back home to Sunshine, the kids seemed happy with what they saw.

The problem, if you want to call it that, is that as much as we as soccer people would like to believe that these games by touring sides will usher in some sort of soccer golden age, by inspiring the children to play the game, next week there will be a different circus in town, and the week after that another one, and so on. I can see the point in Real Madrid touring, in terms of spreading their global brand; I can sort of see why Manchester City would tour, for similar reasons as Real Madrid, albeit with delusions of grandeur as to their own importance; but the point of Roma being here is less tangible, since their scope for marketing themselves is rather restricted by the reality of them not being an especially popular club outside of Italy.

These games have said a lot about Melbourne, and for the most part not very good things. The city has an image of itself as the 'sporting capital of the world', but what does that actually mean in reality? What does it say that we would rather pay for overpriced tickets to glorified practice matches, but ignore the local variants (and I include the A-League in this)? As Australian soccer fans, we tend to scoff at Asian fans - in Singapore, in Malaysia, in Indonesia - of these European behemoths who gather in their national stadiums to pay to watch the same glorified practice matches we are now falling over ourselves to watch (at least those games involving true giants such as Real Madrid and Liverpool).

And yet the fans of Malaysian football have recently turned against these tours, noting the negative impact it has on their local football. Meanwhile in Melbourne, our insecurity which is dressed up as self-regard has seen us fall head over heels in love with a traveling circus. And considered on that level, I start to think that maybe it's not about sport at all, but about proximity to celebrity and the ego of the city that are at the forefront of these events. The Herald Sun, who are as responsible as anyone for the inferiority complex this city has, found itself torn in two this past week. On the one hand there was its usual reactionary and rank 'Aussie Rules is better than sockah' rhetoric, and on the other hand there was its 'how great is Melbourne that it can attract such big events' rhetoric. It was the very definition of cognitive dissonance.

Bigger cities get bigger and better circuses, and this is why Melbourne gets Cristiano Ronaldo and Yarrawonga gets Brendan Fevola. But at the end of the day, a circus is still a circus. The FFA picks up a cheque no matter how many people turned up, and believers in trickle down economics that they are, they believe that these games will create converts to the local scene. I suppose if someone's willing to cough up the cash, it's a case for all concerned of 'why wouldn't you take it?', but I also wonder: does a big crowd and a good show means people won't take the local scene seriously? Does a big crowd and a poor show mean the game won't be taken seriously? Was this mediocre affair (the Roma-Man City game), which was effectively the matinée or tight-arse Tuesday performance, worthwhile in any way in the long term?

Pardon our French
Did you happen to watch the footage of the win against Heidelberg in the Doockerty Cup semi final? Quite a bit of audible swearing in there. Not that I'm offended, but it does make you think.

The Cros make an emotional breakthrough after being banned from smfcboard

Mumbles: I guess I've always used trolling smfcboard as a way of getting attention.
11.Boo: Yes! Yes! Me too!

Final thought
When exactly did the club learn that they were going to get free tickets for the Roma - Man City game? How far back did they know that we wouldn't have access to Lakeside last week? What happens if the ICC series comes back again next year? Was Steve from Broady the only person in Melbourne who actually bought a ticket to the game? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind...

Role reversal - South Melbourne 3 Green Gully 2

The crowd of 350 (plus George Katsakis and his wife apparently, as well as George Donikian's documentary crew) were treated to an exciting, if unusual spectacle. Exciting because it was a five goal thriller; unusual because the Green Gully side that played last night resembled no Green Gully side I've watched over the past decade. They played fluent football that did not rely upon their trademark bull storming style. Indeed it was South that was repeatedly punished by the referee (himself a massive unit of a bloke who was also a particular stickler for having the throw ins performed at exactly the right spot) for numerous fouls, and once more we collected yellow cards that will hurt us in the long run.

Gully had the better play and the better chances, and it will be interesting to see the progress this team can make over the course of the rest of this season. As for us, there was good and bad. The bad was the sloppiness of much of our passing, bouts of indecisiveness, and a habit of having our midfield sit too deep. The good was almost entirely contained in two players continuing to make their way back from injuries. David Stirton's two goals were well taken, and showed again signs for why we signed him. The other player to shine was Stephen Hatzikostas, who was in the middle of everything, providing the kind of steel we've been missing in the middle since Dane Milovanovic.

The best thing of all, of course, is that we won the game not because we were the better team, but in spite of it. The team kept fighting to the end, and Leigh Minopoulos' pass to Milos Lujic for the late winner was the measure of calmness. Last year Leigh would have taken the shot, and probably scored. This time, out of sorts this season in front of goal, he turned provider and Lujic, who had been treated worse than Travis Cloke by the officials, got on the scoring sheets for a second game running, putting paid to any theories of his 2015 self having an Andy Brennan dependency.

Next game
Knights away on Sunday.

It's a good thing we have a social media policy now to deal with these incidents

I suppose we were well overdue for more of this nonsense, so here we are again. Since nothing will be done about it, I do have one issue that I'd like to bring up in relation to this latest incident. Now I don't pretend to know enough about the Greek social and economic crisis to say whether or not Epifano is right about the level of debt or the root cause of the problem - and I somehow fancy that Nick himself has even less of an idea - but using the word 'peasant'? Now say what you like about South fans (and Epifano has, bless his white cotton socks), but peasant is probably one of the least accurate descriptions you could give. For starters, I'd categorise Dimitrios Jim George as an adjunct of the proletariat, seeing as how he works in manufacturing. Myself, I'm a semi-itinerant lay preacher and scholar. While we do have one groundskeeper that I'm aware of, most of the other people at the club are desk jockeys, entrepreneurs, bean counters, captains of industry, stonemasons, merchants, glorified babysitters, digital craftsmen, members of the caulking guild; you get the picture. I'm not even sure that we have any market gardeners, let alone members of an agrarian based class system whose job it is to till the land of the barons while struggling to find a spare moment to perform subsistence farming on their own meagre plot of land. If anything, the closest thing we have to peasants at South Melbourne are the players themselves, since they are in a sense bonded labourers (a situation which was worse for them pre-Bosman, since back then when their tenure was finished they still couldn't leave without a club's permission) working on the closest thing we have to agricultural conditions - mud, grass, etc - with the role of the reeve (the medieval term for the serfs' overseer, and the link man to the earls or barons) being undertaken to some extent by the coach (the home and away season is also arguably a sort of variation of medieval field rotation). Having put it like that, you can see that the root cause of the problem is giving peasants like Epifano, and Chris Taylor as the reeve, far too much respect, and letting them disrupt the social order. But since the black plague (the A-League) came in and wiped out most of our supporters, and FFV gave all the serfs more rights a few years back, I suppose we're in the process of evolving towards a market based economic and social system. Wake me up when we get to the anarcho-syndicalist commune stage.

Around the grounds
The wrong side of the bell curve
Take all of the following with an extra grain of salt. As a favour to a friend... no, favour is not the right word... I don't know what the right word is to be honest... I was finally able to make an appearance at said friend's son's under 16 match NPL West match. The contest was between Brunswick City, near bottom of the table, and Avondale Heights, somewhere near the middle, played on the back pitch at Dunstan Reserve, the one that used to be a footy oval. Now I don't watch junior soccer, and making sweeping judgements about the validity and effectiveness of the NPL based upon one game would be stupid. Certainly that's not my intention here. However, I will say a that I noticed a few things. The coaching seemed substandard. I can understand that at the size of the Victorian NPL - 32 clubs or whatever it is - that there will bad teams, and even poor players. What I did not expect was to see teams that were so robotic and one dimensional. The set up of the teams at the goal kicks - especially from Brunswick - resembled a set up a kick off. The skill level of most of the players was at best, mediocre - again understandable considering the obvious lack of depth of talent for this bloated NPL. Avondale had enough better players that they won the match something like 5-0.

More disturbing than the skill level was the style of game. There was very little fluency from either side, and while that was expected from the struggling Brunswick, even Avondale resorted to making the game into something resembling modern Australian Rules football, where the game had the appearance of being mostly one scrimmage to another. The field, while narrow, was in otherwise good condition, the conditions dry, and yet there were few moments where I felt that I was watching something resembling organised soccer. The toll of an already long and unsuccessful season was clearly visible on the faces of Brunswick team, but even the Avondale players didn't seem to be enjoying themselves. I've seen the bottom tier of women's soccer in this state, and I've followed a mostly struggling Altona East reserves team for years now, and even when they lose, there is still at some level an obvious enjoyment of the game and camaraderie.

That was in scant evidence at this fixture. There was little chatter from the players, and perhaps indicative of something, no usage of nicknames, no sense of familiarity with each other. It came across as if many of the players were lone rangers (someone else's term). There was also some mildly unsavoury business on the sidelines. At one point the Avondale coach abused his team's volunteer linesman for making a bad offside call, at which point the volunteer gave up being linesman. That this happened when his team was several goals up, and that the focus should have been on the development of his players rather than the scoreboard, is troubling. The parents on the sidelines for the most part were outwardly well behaved - a couple were more vocal and veered closer to the bad sports parent stereotype than they'd probably like to admit - but instead you had a sort of passive-aggressive vibe. Mutterings about coaches, about the inadequacies of players other than their own sons. The whole experience was very peculiar to an outsider, but it was just one game, and thus I'm reluctant to treat it as the norm for the competition. It has made me interested in seeing more though.

Every time a team plays South they treat it like a grand final
After watching the NPL junior game it was decided to go watch Melbourne Knights vs Werribee at Somers Street. At the very least I thought that the relegation threatened Bees would put in a spirited, grinding performance, but instead they got done 5-1, which only served to make me angry. Where was this crapness when they played us a few weeks back? Why they were put off by the terrible music being played over the Knights Stadium speakers in a way that they weren't when playing against us? It was a mediocre match, but at least a couple of the kids from the NPL junior game who came along for the ride learned something about soccer simply by watching one competent and one moderately competent (but on the day much less competent) teams do battle.

Final thought
A huge thank you to Cuddles for playing one of my song selections over the PA, that being Kitchens of Distinction's 'When In Heaven'.

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.

Moments of Madness - Melbourne Knights 2 South Melbourne 1

I feel gutted by this result.

The result and the manner it was achieved are not the reasons why this report is late - I spent most of today marking papers - but I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking otherwise.

A football match goes for 90 odd minutes. Maybe 30 of those are entirely inconsequential, with the ball out of play, or at rest. Most of the rest is build up, or recovery, no real danger of anything important happening.

So is it right or fair to say that this match was decided by maybe 10 seconds of action? Five seconds at one end, five at the other? How much of a game is viewed retrospectively? As what looked like an innocuous free kick floated towards Gavalas, is it right to say something felt wrong about halfway through that passage of play? Or is that hindsight taking over? Could a materialistic (in the philosophical sense) atheist such as myself start believing in premonitions because of high balls aimed at Peter Gavalas? Or has it become just muscle memory informed by at best semi-conscious statistical heart in mouth stuff?

Pete Gavalas made some good saves again. But that's not the problem. And even if the sun did get into his eyes, the horror of watching him deal with that high ball in the absolute worst possible manner - almost letting the free kick float into the net before palming into the path of a Knights player - was unbearable for this and other long suffering supporters. I can't even imagine what it's like for the goalkeeper himself, living every custodian's worst nightmare, and not for the first time this season.

The thing is though, we still went into halftime at 1-1 thanks to Tyson Holmes' first goal in ages, and looking to play the second half with the wind advantage. And we may have even gone into halftime with the lead. Where I was standing, I was in the absolute worst position to judge whether Trent Rixon's disallowed goal was offside. Trent's on the record as saying that it wasn't, but I guess we'll have to let the video hopefully decide again.

The wind made this game messier than it might have been, and the Knights handled it better for the most part. Our second half wasn't as good as our first, and both sides missed chances, until the Knights took the lead again. I still can't quite believe how Luke Hopper blasted his shot over the bar, when all it needed was for it to be curled in at the back post, nor how whoever took that shot from inside the edge of the box missed everything, goals, defenders, the lot. Late on we finally settled down, and made a late charge, but it wasn't enough. Our defensive efforts were more no nonsense than most recent efforts. But we also played a very high line in the first half that saw a lot of close offside calls.

Late in the game, Gavalas' moment of madness was almost matched by Knights keeper Chris May. Out wide, May didn't get enough purchase onto his kick, and it ended up at the feet of Alan Kearney - who probably should have been subbed on a lot earlier - at the edge of the centre circle. Kearney's shot towards the empty net, possibly our only shot on target in the second half, was almost perfectly placed, but May managed to scramble across and palm it over for a corner.

So what does it all mean? The loss sees us fall outside the five, level with fifth placed Green Gully on 31 points - but Gully also have a game in hand. Two wins should get us in, and if things fall absolutely our way, maybe even still a possibility of the double chance. But that's asking for a bit much. Getting into the finals at this stage would be considered a minor miracle.

The problem is we'll have to beat a Northcote side which, while they've secured the double chance, will be wanting to also win the minor premiership with the moral victory that entails. Then we'll have to beat Port away. Hume is also a couple of points behind us, and not completely out of the running, though they face the top two sides in the last two weeks and have a woeful goal difference.

I don't know. I guess I'm just scratching around for something to look forward to. We're not out of it yet, but my goodness yesterday's loss things harder.

Steve From Broady's Under 21s Report

South Melbourne's under 21s played rivals Melbourne Knights at Knights Stadium on Sunday. South sitting fourth last were struggling to find form going almost two months without a win. The Knights kicked off on a sunny afternoon and they dominated early getting, into good positions and creating great chances to take the lead.

In the 20th minute the Knights early dominance paid off as their number 10 broke through the South defence and placed the ball beautifully in the bottom left corner to give the Knights a 1-0 lead. Four minutes later the Knights had another chance at goal, the ball was crossed in low, the South keeper made a soft effort to get to it, and the ball found its way to Knights' number 11 who toe-poked the ball into the back of the net to give the Knights a 2-0 lead.

Three minutes later a South defender brought down a Knights player in the box and the ref awarded a penalty to the Knights. The Knights' number 10 stepped up and put the ball nicely in the bottom left corner to give the knights a 3-0 lead. South got a goal back just before half time when Francis Solano pumped the ball long to Baggio Yousif. Baggio took one touch and knocked the ball past the keeper and then ran into an empty net and slotted home to make the score 3-1 to the Knights as the lads went in for the half time break.

South kicked off the second half and the boys had taken some confidence from their late goal in the first half into the second half dominating the first 30 minutes of the second half. In the 60th minute Baggio was brought down in the box by a Knights defender and the ref awarded South a penalty. Baggio stepped up to the spot and converted coolly down the middle to reduce the Knights' lead to just one goal. South pushed for an equalising goal but it never come. In the 79th minute the Knights' number 11 broke down the South defence and scored a simple goal to give the Knights the win. It finished 4-2 in the Knights favour. South now slip down to 11th on the table. South host already crowed champions Northcote City at Lakeside on Saturday week at 6:00PM, until then, get around it.

Steve From Broady's Canteen Report
I was at Knights Stadium on Sunday afternoon. I received an invitation to eat inside their social club. I got a mixed grill which was pretty decent. I then wandered over to their canteen try a cevapi roll - it was stuffed so much it was almost bursting at the seams - that shit was legendary. I give the Melbourne Knights canteen a 9.9 the surprise packet of the season, almost knocking Pascoe Vale off their perch. Back at the South food van in two weeks, can they finally crack the perfect 10? All will be revealed then, until then, keep on eating.

1. Pascoe Vale 10/10
2. Melbourne Knights 9.9/10
3. Oakleigh Cannons 9.5/10
4. Hume City 8/10
5. Bentleigh Greens 7/10
6. Richmond 6.5/10
7. Northcote City 3.5/10
8. Southern Stars 2/10
9. Green Gully 1/10
10. Dandenong DQ 

South food truck

•  Week 1 - 4.5/10
• Week 2 - 7/10
• Week 3 - 8.5/10
• Week 4 - 5/10
• Week 5 - 5.5/10
• Week 6 - 9/10
• Week 7 - 6/10
• Week 8 - 7.5/10
• Week 9 - 8/10
• Week 10 - 9/10

Next Week
Nada. Week off for catch up games and the cup final.

Our next game is on Saturday 14th September, our last home game of the season. It's against Northcote. It doesn't get any easier, does it?

Around the Grounds
Friday night was spent out as SS Anderson Reserve. Bentleigh beat the Sharks 2-0, a thoroughly deserved win. Two almost identical first half goals, and a few botched chances to the Greens were the scant highlights of this game. Port did nothing. Honestly, they are perhaps the most boring team to watch in the league. Green Gully might grind out results, but at least they seem to care, and provide their share of crunching thug tackles during a match. Boring, but at least they give you a reason to hate them, which means there's some emotion in the contest. Port were down 2-0 and could barely muster the will to get a shot on target. The second half in particular was quite a pointless exercise. The most interesting thing about said second half were the randoms (Knights fans?) giving stick to Port defender Peter Roberts for reasons unknown.

Saturday afternoon was spent out at Brunswick City, with home side entertaining Altona East. Entertaining is probably not the right word. This was a pretty ugly game, on an ugly pitch, with one team getting the job done in an ugly way, while the other team did fuck all for most of it. Brunswick City won this fixture 2-0, courtesy of two first half goals to Kyle Joryeff, who took advantage of two loose balls in the box. Also in the Brunswick City lineup were Rhodri Payne as a defensive mid, Andy Sfetcopoulos in goals (still wearing pants; not taking his own goal kicks) and Arthur Tsonis, who was taking those goal kicks, and wearing the absurd number of 96 on his jersey. Apparently there was also an ex-South 18s player out there as well. In terms of former South players, East could only muster Andy Bourakis - Lester Abalos having wrecked his Achilles tendon I think it was back in pre-season.

Ex-South defender Arthur Tsonis, about to take a freekick for Brunswick City against Altona East.
Photo: Paul Mavroudis.

The biggest news to come out of that fixture was Brunswick's canteen. Now I reckon the Altona East souv is the best souv in Victorian soccer, and while I don't think there's any home club bias there, it's easy to see how people may take that view. But for my money, the Brunswick souv used to be on par with the East souv. Sadly, like Richmond before them, a change in canteen management has seen their souv offering take a massive hit. Considering that was half the reason I trundled out there - and thanks to a police request at Flinders Street/Spencer Street stopping trains from moving through North Melbourne, it took forever to get there - I was very disappointed.

Kiss of Death, Found Alive!
The Kiss of Death has been missing action for most of this season. All of a sudden it appears on Twitter! You can follow them on @KODFootball.

Final Thought
I did not appreciate the attitude of the security person (Port official?) at the gate on Friday night, who complained about people getting in for free due to FFV passes and such. Not my problem buddy. Take it up with the FFV who hand out all these passes. Maybe get more Port Melbourne and Bentleigh people to turn up, instead of having half the (small) crowd made up of neutrals. It's sad when I turn up to a neutral ground and even I recognise half the people there.