Another delayed round up of recent events.
Hopes were high on Sunday for all sorts of reason, but were dashed mercilessly in both games I was privy to seeing. Having battled through illness during the week, I pushed through and made it to AAMI Park for the women's grand final. I arrived at the ground early, intending to catch the promotion-relegation playoff between Green Gully and Moreland City. Green Gully, who hadn't won a game in about four months, were facing their first relegation since being demoted from the NSL in 1986, and their first ever relegation in the history of their state league participation which could have seen them in the Victorian secnd tier for the first time since 1976.
Meanwhile Moreland City were trying tio make their own history. The result of an elongated merger of three clubs - Moreland and Park Rangers, and later Coburg - the merged entity has never been in the Victorian top flight, basically battling around two or three levels below that for most of its post-merger history. The last time any of the constituent clubs was in the Victorian top-tier was Moreland all the way back in 1962, making this the most important in the pre and post Moreland merger history since Moreland won the Dockerty Cup in 1957.
Now I may be blind, but one thing that was obvious upon entering the - in my case, via the media entry in Gate 5 - was that there were more than a few purportedly neutral onlookers from other clubs in attendance, to my mind hoping for a Gully loss in order to pick apart the choicer elements of that carcass. I mean, some of them may have been there to watch a game, see a bit of history, but isn't it better to be pragmatic about these things? The crowd for the first game of the day was mostly Moreland City people, a very small amount of Green Gully people, the odd curious onlooker, and the rest was filled with vultures and hyenas.
These aren't always the best games to watch from the point of view of a good standard of play, even if there is usually the obvious effect of tension due to there being so much at stake. Moreland City had the better of the first half - and not just because they took a 1-0 lead into halftime - but Gully were far from out of it, and probably should have had a goal of their own had they been a bit more willing to pull the trigger with both shots and crosses.
The second half between minute 45 and about minute 91 was all Moreland. A lot of that was not because Moreland were really any good, but rather because Gully were worse than bad, like they were barely there, like their players didn't even care. There was no urgency, no feeling that there was even pride on the line, whether that was the club's or the players' own. Under such circumstances, Moreland scoring their second goal just before injury time was probably the worst thing that could've happened to the NPL 2 side. They celebrated like mad (as you would), and then seemingly promptly forgot that the game hadn't finished yet.
Gully got a goal back soon afterward, and then incredibly got a second before full time. I've seen a few hokey comebacks, but this one took the cake. In almost every other nonsense getting off the canvas kind of win I've seen, there's at least been a sign of life, no matter how fragile - something like a renewed desired, taking risks, someone getting fired up. There was nothing to suggest Gully even had half a goal in them for almost the entire second half, but we found ourselves heading to extra time, and if I must say so - and I did - Gully were now the more likely to win. And they did, scoring extra-time's only goal, with Moreland having no answers, in part because they'd made their time-wasting subs during regular time, but probably mostly it's just that Gully had better players who finally decided to pull their finger out.
Suffice to say that from my point of view, this is a result that we didn't want. While there's no guarantees that Gully will sort out all their problems from this season, you wouldn't think they'd have as much of a horror run as they did through the latter two thirds of 2018. With big spenders in Altona Magic and Dandendong City coming up into our division, and a revitalised Gully, 2019 is going to be a brutal year with no obvious candidates for relegation, except for someone like Kingston who wouldn't have the budget capacity of everyone else - and even they've been able to punch above their wight with some good coaching and recruiting.
Further proof if you needed any that finals systems do not work for soccer
Time eventually for the women's grand final. About a dozen or so Clarendon Corner and affiliated persons parked at the northern end of the ground, adjacent to a group of teens who seemed to be cheering for both sides, before they chose to support Bulleen. To be fair, that mostly the work of one very loose unit.
Not great news to start off with for South, with senior goalkeeper Beth Mason-Jones out of the game because of... well, I'm not sure. Thus the 19s keeper, who had played the day before, got a grand final starting berth, and while I was assured that she could do the job, hindsight would show that while she hardly cost us the game, the defensive reshuffle put in place to help her out unsettled our set up.
But that's getting ahead of ourselves. We had not lost to Bulleen in the NPLW era, and had looked good in beating them 3-2 - it could've been so many more - to win the premier's plate a couple of weeks ago. Yet on Sunday, the team looked a bit off, and even if Bulleen weren't exactly brilliant, they were the better organised and more in synch of the two teams.
Still, we made it to half time level, and to my mind had the chance to improve significantly on what we'd produce, and with some good subs we should've been able to improve our general build up play. No dice. We copped the opening goal from a very dubious penalty, were soon 2-0 down, and just about cooked then and there. I know that we had a habit of coming back from deficits in 2018 - and hadn't we just seen Green Gully play much worse and still get a result? - but it never looked likely.
One of our supporters made the comment during the course of the match that the South team looked like eleven good players who'd never played before, and there's some validity to that comment. Communication wasn't right almost from the start, and not even the appearance in the second half of Lisa De Vanna made much improvement on that front. There was no meaningful movement off the ball, few decent overlaps, and nothing going right for us anywhere.
Then we went 3-0 down late, and that was that. Sure, we finally put in a decent cross for Melina Ayers ti head home, and then hit the crossbar soon after that, but it would've been the greatest of highway robberies to win this game that we never really looked like winning even when we had the nominal upper hand.
That the Bulleen keeper won the player of the match award tells you a bit about how this game - we created enough chances but were held out by determined Bulleen defence led by their keeper. Take nothing away from Bulleen though, they were the better team, and certainly more clinical, while we struggled to produce our usual levels of quality both in terms of crossing and certainly in terms of finishing.
Meanwhile...
Despite what was reportedly mentioned by president Leo Athanasakis on radio some weeks back - that Con Tangalakis would be coaching us next year - no announcement has yet been made on this matter. Maybe the board reshuffling has delayed things? Maybe the club is waiting to see what all the available options are? Maybe there's a review being undertaken of what went wrong? Who knows. It's early days yet, so I'm not pressing any panic buttons
On the signings front, it looks like we've lost the race to sign former junior Peter Skapetis, who has signed at Dandenong Thunder. People seem very disappointed about this, for obvious reasons, and are wondering if we're already on the back-foot for regenerating the team for next season.
Showing posts with label Bubbledome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bubbledome. Show all posts
Thursday, 27 September 2018
Wednesday, 6 September 2017
A higher plane of existence - Australia 2 Thailand 1
When it comes down to it, people are fickle, short-sighted and prone to employing only the parts of their brains that produce willfully emotional and irrational responses to things. Yesterday, when trying to get on a train at platform 3 at Richmond Station after the game, I was concerned that the train would be packed because everyone seemed to be shoving themselves into increasingly confined spaces. Me though, being someone who doesn't only use public transport to get to and from sporting venues with limited car parking, wandered down an extra carriage length and found plenty of space. Good for me, you say sarcastically; good for everyone, I say with notably good cheer.
Afterwards, having had my chocolate milk and with still much time to go until my train to Sunshine, I started reading a book with some really out there academic theory. Not being good with theory at the best of times, concepts like non-postmodern and claustropolitanism kind of make me roll my eyes. But the latter term kind of makes sense, if one thinks about it, or at least pretends to - rather than the abstract whimsical promise of cosmopolitanism opening up one's horizons, leading one to become (or at least begin considering oneself) the literal 'citizen of the world', one instead finds oneself trapped on a big blue spinning ball, constricted by social media, the immediacy of world events, and the pressure to consume everything all at once alongside everyone else.
Steve Redhead seems to suggest that this crushing load of information and proximity to everyone all the time sets the scene for people quite understandably asking, politely or otherwise, if they could please be let off this giant blue marble, because this ride just isn't fun any more. Being at a soccer game, at least one with sufficient levels of interest (so not the NPL) may have some parallels, especially if you're in a situation in which the 26,300 odd other people in the stadium are attempting to enforce the worst kind of claustrophobic group think on each other, and the team.
Luckily for me, I have ascended beyond a portion of this mortal footballing plane. That is to say, I have achieved a higher level of soccer being. That is not to say I have moved beyond all soccer feeling, but so far as international football goes, it seems to me that I now sit above the whole mass of irrational human feeling on this specific matter. After many years of emotional subservience to the Socceroos, I am at peace. There was of course that phase, which most of the Australian soccer public still exists in, where all is angst about results and about style, the perpetual status of feeling joyous or doomed with nothing in between - except for that tedious Pim Verbeek period where we were winning so much that everyone got bored and then angry, because that limited but successful version of competence was not emotionally satisfying or legitimate.
People can talk up Thailand's performance all they like, and they did put in a solid shift effort wise, but they were barely in the game. Less than 30% possession, and looking dangerous only on the counter as you'd expect a team like that to be, and even then not really that often or that much. The result could so easily have been 7 or 8-1, and then what would people be saying? I'd be more forgiving of the crowd if I thought they'd just been overwhelmed by the tension and sense of occasion, and the need to put several goals past Thailand to make the Saudis work hard for their win. But instead I thought the crowd was just ignorant. There were moments where they were asking for shots where to my mind there was no shot on, where had a shot been taken, the Thai defenders would've easily stuck a foot out.
Equally there were other moments where the crowd got excited by shots coming in where to my mind there was little chance - maybe I should go so far as to say it was obvious there was no chance - that a goal would be registered. I was joking with Gains during the game that because we watch a lot of NPL, the reason I wasn't getting excited is because that league seems to provide a sort of heightened sense of when a shot is going in.
Being a tactical naïf at the best of times, plus not having the best view of things on that front from our low vantage point, I won't be so bold to make aspersions on Ange's selections or formation. Plenty of others doing that online, and good luck to everyone. If I had to pick anything out of last night that struck me as odd, it was the clear instruction to Mat Ryan to play the ball from the six yard box to a player not much further afield than that, rather than going long. While there's nothing wrong with expecting a goalkeeper at this level to be competent with his passing, it was all a bit Nunawading if I'm being frank. Less tenable as a criticism is that Ange is changing the way the team plays. This is at odds with the two previous coaches, and even with the reasoning for hiring Ange in the first place. Whether valid or not, Postecoglou's job application was explicit in its desire to change the way the Australian men's national team played football.
As for the discussions about managing legacies, both his own and that of Australian soccer more broadly, I might leave that to a time when I'll revisit the entirety of Ange's book. Suffice to say that all of a sudden, what everyone else that cared much more about these things than I seemed to like and admire about Ange's tenure in the job has become one of the things they despise. Familiarity breeds contempt I suppose. Without getting into a turgid metaphysical argument about whether the Socceroos as they are now and especially compared to some previous incarnations 'deserve' to be in a World Cup, all they have to do is qualify via the path set out for them. OK, it hasn't gone quite to plan this time around, but if they can't beat Syria and the fourth placed CONCACAF team, then there can be no argument.
Some other things worth commenting on... the Cricketers Arms is still a dump. I ended up there because one thing led to another in terms of meeting up with people. There were power failures there throughout the afternoon, which included all parts of the business except somehow the terrible music being played over the speakers. It's a venue that's never going to win any prizes for its gourmet offerings, especially from what comes out of the kitchen out the back, but charging $8.50 for a frozen pizza seems like highway robbery, though I suppose if you're stupid enough to pay for one that's your problem. Watching staff separating frozen pizzas from each other like they were sheets of paper.... yeah, nah.
The venue was also visited by Channel 7 news reporters looking to interview Socceroo fans. Sadly, some Socceroo fans decided that it was appropriate to talk to them. How times change. I also got to meet one of the key local subbuteo folks who's organising the subbuteo Asian Cup to be played at South Melbourne's social club in late January 2018. All in all, a pretty entertaining and educational day and night.
Afterwards, having had my chocolate milk and with still much time to go until my train to Sunshine, I started reading a book with some really out there academic theory. Not being good with theory at the best of times, concepts like non-postmodern and claustropolitanism kind of make me roll my eyes. But the latter term kind of makes sense, if one thinks about it, or at least pretends to - rather than the abstract whimsical promise of cosmopolitanism opening up one's horizons, leading one to become (or at least begin considering oneself) the literal 'citizen of the world', one instead finds oneself trapped on a big blue spinning ball, constricted by social media, the immediacy of world events, and the pressure to consume everything all at once alongside everyone else.
Steve Redhead seems to suggest that this crushing load of information and proximity to everyone all the time sets the scene for people quite understandably asking, politely or otherwise, if they could please be let off this giant blue marble, because this ride just isn't fun any more. Being at a soccer game, at least one with sufficient levels of interest (so not the NPL) may have some parallels, especially if you're in a situation in which the 26,300 odd other people in the stadium are attempting to enforce the worst kind of claustrophobic group think on each other, and the team.
Luckily for me, I have ascended beyond a portion of this mortal footballing plane. That is to say, I have achieved a higher level of soccer being. That is not to say I have moved beyond all soccer feeling, but so far as international football goes, it seems to me that I now sit above the whole mass of irrational human feeling on this specific matter. After many years of emotional subservience to the Socceroos, I am at peace. There was of course that phase, which most of the Australian soccer public still exists in, where all is angst about results and about style, the perpetual status of feeling joyous or doomed with nothing in between - except for that tedious Pim Verbeek period where we were winning so much that everyone got bored and then angry, because that limited but successful version of competence was not emotionally satisfying or legitimate.
There was that other phase for me, too, where I still wanted the Socceroos to win, but them doing so meant that the current regime's fiscal and cultural legitimacy would only ever be enhanced. It was problematic only on a really selfish level, but problematic nevertheless. But I never reached that point where I wanted the Socceroos to lose, as some South fans have, out of spite for the last decade or so and everything that entails. Discomfort with any and all attitudes around the matter is par for the course, but I've gradually lost touch with the angst attached to it. Doing the Heavy Sleeper for Shoot Farken helped, in part because that tournament is so great, but also getting to every Asian Cup game held in Melbourne, a tournament which was just a lot of fun to watch, a fact which had nothing to do with Australia winning.
Then there is the fact that soon enough the World Cup itself will be not worth giving a damn for. Next year those without the simoleons or the nerve to pay for Optus' service miss out on most of the tournament anyway, thank you very much Sellouts, Bloody Sellouts. After the hooligan bloodbath that will be Russia 2018 we head to Qatar, and after that to a 48 team tournament. So my attendance at Socceroos matches now is based on what I think is a fairly solid premise; avoid meaningless friendlies, and hope for an entertaining match in those games which count for something, and which provide a pleasant break from state league drudgery.
I'd bought tickets for myself and four others, but out of respect for them I won't talk about their specific reactions to the game. What I will say is that the value was excellent. Of course the Bubbledome is a terrific venue (with the niggling irritant that I wish the pitch had been lowered compared to the seating), but $18 for a concession ticket in the cheap seats to an international fixture is tremendous value (only $27 for an adult), and puts the fact that South and other NPL clubs were charging $20 for adults and in our case $15 for children twelve and up into an even worse light. Even though the weather was wet at times, we still had what I would consider good seats, behind the goals at the Swan Street end, about five rows back, and far enough away from the most active part of the home end that their half-arsed chanting and attempts at atmosphere. Much more irritating were those in our area who wanted to stand up not just at crucial moments of the game, but also at utterly non-crucial moments.
Now I get the desire to stand, because at most games that I attend, standing is the norm for me too. But the fact is that we weren't in a standing area, and notwithstanding the problems with ticket sales to the Australian active support area, the area we were seated in should've been treated as a seated area. As etiquette writer John Bridges noted is his rather silly book How to be a Gentleman:
I'd bought tickets for myself and four others, but out of respect for them I won't talk about their specific reactions to the game. What I will say is that the value was excellent. Of course the Bubbledome is a terrific venue (with the niggling irritant that I wish the pitch had been lowered compared to the seating), but $18 for a concession ticket in the cheap seats to an international fixture is tremendous value (only $27 for an adult), and puts the fact that South and other NPL clubs were charging $20 for adults and in our case $15 for children twelve and up into an even worse light. Even though the weather was wet at times, we still had what I would consider good seats, behind the goals at the Swan Street end, about five rows back, and far enough away from the most active part of the home end that their half-arsed chanting and attempts at atmosphere. Much more irritating were those in our area who wanted to stand up not just at crucial moments of the game, but also at utterly non-crucial moments.
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| Includes instructions for how to conduct yourself in the event that you meet the Pope. |
At sporting events, a gentleman feels free to stand up and shout during exciting moments. Otherwise, he keeps his seat. He does not begrudge the other team its victory. If his own team is the victor, he does not taunt the opposition.
When one person stands, then the people behind them have to stand, and so forth. That's all well and good for genuinely exciting moments, but once that passage of play is over, it's time to sit down again, not wait until the ball is up at the other end of the field. Apart from anything, it's discourteous towards those who are elderly, have bad knees, or who otherwise find it difficult to stand for long periods of time let alone repeatedly stand up and sit down. That's the lack of modern manners for you though.
A famous now former Australian soccer journalist has said to me of this time in our soccer nation's life that there is too much complacency, and that it would probably do Australia some good to miss out on a World Cup. I don't have strong opinions on this issue, but I can certainly see his point. Repeated qualifications have made a lot of people complacent, perhaps even indignant that might Australia should have to force its way through rather than cruise through. There were elements of the crowd who reverted to more primitive forms of behaviour, taking the crass form of a soccer junior parent. I can tolerate to a degree people being upset with some of the referee's decisions, even if that dissension is mostly the result of a cultural point of difference. The referee was on the more finicky side of things, but he kept things consistent, and really after the first few calls it was up to the Socceroos to adjust, which they mostly didn't, barging in not maliciously but nevertheless clumsily.
A famous now former Australian soccer journalist has said to me of this time in our soccer nation's life that there is too much complacency, and that it would probably do Australia some good to miss out on a World Cup. I don't have strong opinions on this issue, but I can certainly see his point. Repeated qualifications have made a lot of people complacent, perhaps even indignant that might Australia should have to force its way through rather than cruise through. There were elements of the crowd who reverted to more primitive forms of behaviour, taking the crass form of a soccer junior parent. I can tolerate to a degree people being upset with some of the referee's decisions, even if that dissension is mostly the result of a cultural point of difference. The referee was on the more finicky side of things, but he kept things consistent, and really after the first few calls it was up to the Socceroos to adjust, which they mostly didn't, barging in not maliciously but nevertheless clumsily.
Worse were the increasingly incessant shouts of 'shoot!' and even the primitive Aussie rules demand to 'kick it!'. These 'instructions' had not only the feel of a desperate nation willing its team on to victory, but also the sense of an illiterate soccer public which thought they were pointing out the obvious even though in truth they were showing their ignorance. After all, the Socceroos were shooting. They shot a lot, 39 or 45 shots according to various versions of the stats. Granted, many of those shots were of a poor quality, or after one touch too many, but there were so many shots I lost count very early on. Now maybe the Socceroos don't really have the cattle to shoot well, or at the most opportune moment, but when you get so many shots the quality will vary. And the Thai goalkeeper made several great saves, the Thai defence threw their bodies on the line, and of course the woodwork intervened at least three times, including once when everyone on our side of the ground thought the ball had surely gone in.
People can talk up Thailand's performance all they like, and they did put in a solid shift effort wise, but they were barely in the game. Less than 30% possession, and looking dangerous only on the counter as you'd expect a team like that to be, and even then not really that often or that much. The result could so easily have been 7 or 8-1, and then what would people be saying? I'd be more forgiving of the crowd if I thought they'd just been overwhelmed by the tension and sense of occasion, and the need to put several goals past Thailand to make the Saudis work hard for their win. But instead I thought the crowd was just ignorant. There were moments where they were asking for shots where to my mind there was no shot on, where had a shot been taken, the Thai defenders would've easily stuck a foot out.
Equally there were other moments where the crowd got excited by shots coming in where to my mind there was little chance - maybe I should go so far as to say it was obvious there was no chance - that a goal would be registered. I was joking with Gains during the game that because we watch a lot of NPL, the reason I wasn't getting excited is because that league seems to provide a sort of heightened sense of when a shot is going in.
Being a tactical naïf at the best of times, plus not having the best view of things on that front from our low vantage point, I won't be so bold to make aspersions on Ange's selections or formation. Plenty of others doing that online, and good luck to everyone. If I had to pick anything out of last night that struck me as odd, it was the clear instruction to Mat Ryan to play the ball from the six yard box to a player not much further afield than that, rather than going long. While there's nothing wrong with expecting a goalkeeper at this level to be competent with his passing, it was all a bit Nunawading if I'm being frank. Less tenable as a criticism is that Ange is changing the way the team plays. This is at odds with the two previous coaches, and even with the reasoning for hiring Ange in the first place. Whether valid or not, Postecoglou's job application was explicit in its desire to change the way the Australian men's national team played football.
As for the discussions about managing legacies, both his own and that of Australian soccer more broadly, I might leave that to a time when I'll revisit the entirety of Ange's book. Suffice to say that all of a sudden, what everyone else that cared much more about these things than I seemed to like and admire about Ange's tenure in the job has become one of the things they despise. Familiarity breeds contempt I suppose. Without getting into a turgid metaphysical argument about whether the Socceroos as they are now and especially compared to some previous incarnations 'deserve' to be in a World Cup, all they have to do is qualify via the path set out for them. OK, it hasn't gone quite to plan this time around, but if they can't beat Syria and the fourth placed CONCACAF team, then there can be no argument.
Some other things worth commenting on... the Cricketers Arms is still a dump. I ended up there because one thing led to another in terms of meeting up with people. There were power failures there throughout the afternoon, which included all parts of the business except somehow the terrible music being played over the speakers. It's a venue that's never going to win any prizes for its gourmet offerings, especially from what comes out of the kitchen out the back, but charging $8.50 for a frozen pizza seems like highway robbery, though I suppose if you're stupid enough to pay for one that's your problem. Watching staff separating frozen pizzas from each other like they were sheets of paper.... yeah, nah.
Monday, 12 June 2017
A rare treat - South Melbourne 3 Heidelberg United 0
The Setting
Every now and again, when a good crowd turns up for what might be considered by a neutral as a meaningful affair of a South match, I like to note in these pages that the occasion 'felt like a real game'. Of course, for South fans, every game is important and meaningful, no?
So, because Brazil wanted to use Lakeside exclusively for training preparations, we found ourselves at the Bubbledome. No complaints from me as a one off, and I think most South fans, whether regular Bubbledome visitors or first timers, enjoyed the novelty of the experience. Those first ten minutes especially felt surreal, some strange mishmash of past and future that shouldn't have been, but was. Then the game eventually did its bit to overcome the uncanniness of the setting, and attention was then mostly on the players.
I don't like to predict crowds or count them, but I was expecting no more than 1,200 or so. The public holiday long weekend, the relatively lake kickoff, the lack of media attention, and all the usual banes of this state league existence. Some of that would be offset by the novelty value, the odd neutral making the trip in, the fact that it was South vs Heidelberg in a near top of the table clash, but those expecting miracles of several thousand to turn up were to my mind misguided.
The fact that close to 2,500 (officially 2,365) turned up was a good result. It was not earth shattering, but neither was it embarrassing. The club had promoted the game through its social media channels, the FFV did their bit, and the Berger fans came out in good numbers. One fan noted afterwards that a crowd like that at Lakeside would have been electric - and I won't argue with that - but it was hardly a disaster. It helped that, so far as I could tell, South itself did not put a number out into the public sphere that would be considered as a pass mark. Sure, it's true that you miss all of the shots you don't take, but by avoiding setting a definitive target, the crowd number did not become the be all and end all of the day.
I was surprised that rather than just opening the entirety of the western stand and leaving the rest of the ground closed off to the general public, that the folks in charge went for a bit more of a customer focused approach, opening the lower deck on the western side, but also each of the goal ends. South of the Border and associates got to the ground well before kick-off for the men's game, and had little issue with quickly getting our tickets and getting in. I'm not sure if lines closer to start time were more problematic. Security outside the ground was a bit intense for an NPL match, being standard major events stadium practice of bag searches and empty pocket metal scans, but inside the ground everything seemed fairly casual.
(the food and drink prices I'm told were ridiculous; it makes you appreciate the relative pleasures of local grounds, and for me at least, what we have with our social club)
As you'd expect there was no segregation of fans, though there was a certain amount of natural selection; South fans tending to take up areas of the southern side of the available space, including the behind the goals, while the Bergers took up northern areas. Security inside the venue seemed non-intrusive, the only interference in our area being to tell people to not stand on seats, which seems like a reasonable enough request. I don't understand why people stand on seats anyway when they don't need to do so in order to see the game. Clarendon Corner's minimal banner and confetti display received no hassle. Clarendon Corner's numbers were fine, and the chanting more frequent and committed than usual. The most memorable chant? Off the top of my head, 'shit ground, no fans'. Oh, and anything primary school level in order to outdo some Berger juniors on the wing.
Then there were the seagulls. The seagulls are infamous, of course, and Lakeside is not immune to their appearance - we are not so far from the ocean, after all. But the seagull problem at Bubbledome is something else. The kookaburra noise intermittently played over the speakers to disperse them was also almost as irritating as the seagulls to some. I was later told that the same sound is also played at the MCG, but I can't say I've ever heard it, maybe because I was too busy abusing Travis Cloke at the time. Anyway, I can't say with any authority whether the sound affects worked,
The stadium music was too loud, and its musical selections - with the exception of a bit of Pulp's 'Commin People' - not much better than Lakeside's offerings. The benches from the 2015 Asian Cup didn't make an appearance, and thus we had the famous Bunnings chairs instead. The scoreboard was in full operation, simulcasting the live stream. Most importantly, the grass and line markings all seemed up to scratch, which was a relief after the Wallabies had played on the field the day before.
The Match Itself
As we were making our way to the ground from the pub on Swan Street, I noted to one of the fans along for the walk that I no longer felt confident about any South game. So different to the NSL days in that regard, and so out of synch with the fact that in the Chris Taylor era we've been able to amass several long undefeated streaks. And as much as I hate to say it, the novelty of having an open doors match at Bubbledome also left one wondering about the contrived social media reaction would be if we lost this game. But that's just me being unnecessarily sensitive, as per usual.
For all Heidelberg's complaints about having to field a sort of makeshift defense - which seemed to me to centre mostly around Steven Pace being out injured - it's not like we didn't have our own issue. Milos Lujic had injured a hamstring during the week, or so they said, so I wasn't expecting him to be out there yesterday, but there he was, metaphorically on one leg, Seeing him out there didn't fill me with confidence - it was certainly a gamble, but I guess the powers that be felt that the situation warranted the risk. I had felt, and still feel, that we've been very fortunate to not have Milos miss many games, and that while what do no doubt works most of the time, it would be interesting - from a strictly scientific point of view, of course - to see how the team would play without him. I'd expect that properly set up, it would be probably be less clinical, but it would also be much more flexible and unpredictable.
But that's getting ahead of ourselves a bit. Our defense also had a notable absence, in that Tim Mala was missing because of the red card he got in our game two weeks ago against Port. So what was the plan going to be for this time around without a known right back? Would Taylor play defensive mid Luke Pavlou there for a third time, having copped eight goals in the two games he was slotted in there? Thankfully not! Matthew Foschini was put there, and he played rather well. The big threat for Heidelberg around the final third is of course Kenny Athiu. It's not just his size, but also his mobility which causes opposition defenses problems. And in the first fifteen minutes or so, we were on the back foot, scrambling around a bit. But after that, we seemed to control the game. As one unfairly maligned supporter noted, apart from playing in his natural position, Foschini was also able to play those passes down the line better than Mala usually does.
Our wide play - our best feature when we play well under Taylor - was at its best last night. On the other hand, the Bergers would get to wide areas, or into the corners, and get stuck; snookered if you will. Our counter-attacks, so often a weak point of ours, have become a bit more a reliable outlet for us. Going two goals up before half-time - a slightly fortunate goal for Nick Epifano, and well taken one on one by Lujic - made things much easier to sort out for the second half. Lujic was subbed for Leigh Minopoulos, and while we played a bit more conservatively in the second half - we always controlled the nature of the game. As an aside, it will be interesting to see how Lujic's hamstring issue is managed over this next little bit - provided that he didn't aggravate the matter in his 45 minute stint yesterday.
We should have added to our lead well before the Peoples' Champ tapped in Jesse Daley's pass with about ten or so to play, but that's to nitpick unnecessarily. Our desperation for the contest across the board was excellent. Our organisation was usually pretty good. Even at our most vulnerable Nikola Roganovic only had to make sparing saves, the most spectacular of which was when the game was well over. If I was to pick out something which annoyed me, it was our continuing tendency this season to collect yellow cards from unnecessarily aggressive fouls or assorted inessential nonsense. Yellow cards get collected out of custom anyway, and the more games you play the more you'll get. Coming up to a crowded bit of the schedule though, it will be a problem when we have to shuffle things around more so than you would like. But that's where the much vaunted depth comes into play.
The ladder as it stands is a complicated situation, what with the teams at the top, including ourselves, having various numbers of games in hand, sometimes against each other. The important thing is that we've kept in touch with the ladder leaders, especially Heidelberg, who could've skipped away with a win yesterday. We also extend what is an absurdly long unbeaten run. It's a long way from the dire start to the season.
In conclusion
A good win, and most people seemed to enjoy the event. It was also nice to be able to share the experience with everyone else, as opposed to what happened last year.
Next game
Sunday at Lakeside against St Albans.
Coming and goings
Liam McCormick has departed the club, joining Dandenong City. Meanwhile, we've signed young midfielder Bardhi Hysolli from Bulleen. I have no idea who he is, which doesn't mean he's no good. We've also gone for a Spanish forward, David Barca Moreno, from Getafe B. I feel like I've seen this move played before, but I can't put my finger on it. His international clearance reportedly came through this week, but not his local clearance, There is talk that Andy Kecojevic has gone overseas, but nothing official at the time of print.
Intergalactic Space Hussy department
For Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, caught two-timing us with the Dandenong A-League bid.
Half arsed
Among even the most sartorially oblivious of men can be found a certain niche for fashion trends - the soccer jersey. And thus I spent part of a Friday night at Somers Street observing a conversation about colours, shades, cuts and fabric; about makers, years, taste, and at times an unapologetic preference for unpopular styles. As for the game itself, it was rubbish. Knights are barely keeping their head above water, being at the start of a very long rebuild. Bentleigh meanwhile went about their business completely half-arsed. While else would they play Andy Brennan when he is clearly battling with injury? The game seemed set to take its expected course, when Bentleigh took the lead in the first half via Lambros Honos. Knights were bound to get one chance which they would need to make the most of - and Tom Cahill blasted his penalty into the back of the net. Then Bentleigh had a player sent off, and you wondered how Knights would manage to stuff this one up. The answer? By conceding a woefully soft goal with the last kick of the game, And I never got to find out for sure if Knights ever had an Umbro kit in their history.
The proverbial, dare I say, quintessential six-point game
Westgate, the home team, were on three points. Altona East, the away side, were of four. South of the Border's correspondent, having not had lunch, was hungry. Westgate scored, early in the second half, and won the game. Altona East had their chance, saw it saved, and lost the game. I had a cevapi, was satisfied, and walked home for dinner after the match. Where everyone involved lost: when someone decided to have this game kickoff after 6:00PM. It was cold when the game began, and it was bloody cold when the game ended. Dead set, this bloke rocked up to watch the game early in the second half wearing shorts and thongs and I was *this close* to getting his mates to stage an intervention. As you can see, it was not the most thrilling of affairs.
Making hay while the sun shines
Approaching the gates, I pull out my media pass. One bloke at the gate is OK with it, another guy demands a more rigorous examination. That's no surprise - who from the media would bother to cover this game? So after I explain that I'm a freelancer, I eventually go through. The old blokes in front of the social club - some of whom I know from other grounds - are comparing their ages. I buy a souv - and you know it's a big game when they have a separate booth for buying tickets away from the food outlet - and wander through the social club. The picture frames tell the story. Of humble origins, in photo and in print. Of volunteers who built the social club building in the late 1980s. Of being proud of playing South, and beating us. Western Suburbs had a brief bit of limelight in 2007 and 2008, when they reached the lofty heights of the Victorian Premier League. They got a new grandstand and media box out of the stint, and good luck to them for that. Nowadays things are a bit more grim, down in State League 1. Myself, it's moment like these, sitting in the stand during the tail end of the reserves, wondering how I got here. Yarraville had the better of the first half, and should have capitalised on their chances. They didn't, and during the second half, five or so minutes of napping undid the visitors. The first goal was a chip over the keeper from angle; the second goal a lofted ball from a midfield free kick which sailed over the Yarraville keeper, and which almost no one expected let alone saw. Yarraville only managed to wake up late, and score in the dying seconds.
Final thought
The staff at the Richmond Club Hotel really should have given me a pen so I could get the out of date map on one of the walls up to speed.
Every now and again, when a good crowd turns up for what might be considered by a neutral as a meaningful affair of a South match, I like to note in these pages that the occasion 'felt like a real game'. Of course, for South fans, every game is important and meaningful, no?
And let's not forget no social club either!It feels a bit alien, impersonal and lacks a spectacular city backdrop but as a replacement venue not bad.— John Patitsas (@johnpatitsas) June 11, 2017
Go South! pic.twitter.com/xsn9ZK1tYF
So, because Brazil wanted to use Lakeside exclusively for training preparations, we found ourselves at the Bubbledome. No complaints from me as a one off, and I think most South fans, whether regular Bubbledome visitors or first timers, enjoyed the novelty of the experience. Those first ten minutes especially felt surreal, some strange mishmash of past and future that shouldn't have been, but was. Then the game eventually did its bit to overcome the uncanniness of the setting, and attention was then mostly on the players.
I don't like to predict crowds or count them, but I was expecting no more than 1,200 or so. The public holiday long weekend, the relatively lake kickoff, the lack of media attention, and all the usual banes of this state league existence. Some of that would be offset by the novelty value, the odd neutral making the trip in, the fact that it was South vs Heidelberg in a near top of the table clash, but those expecting miracles of several thousand to turn up were to my mind misguided.
The fact that close to 2,500 (officially 2,365) turned up was a good result. It was not earth shattering, but neither was it embarrassing. The club had promoted the game through its social media channels, the FFV did their bit, and the Berger fans came out in good numbers. One fan noted afterwards that a crowd like that at Lakeside would have been electric - and I won't argue with that - but it was hardly a disaster. It helped that, so far as I could tell, South itself did not put a number out into the public sphere that would be considered as a pass mark. Sure, it's true that you miss all of the shots you don't take, but by avoiding setting a definitive target, the crowd number did not become the be all and end all of the day.
 |
| Catch her if you can: Melina Ayres celebrates as South's WNPL side keep pace with the ladder leaders after beating Alamein 3-1. Photo: Mark Avellino. |
(the food and drink prices I'm told were ridiculous; it makes you appreciate the relative pleasures of local grounds, and for me at least, what we have with our social club)
As you'd expect there was no segregation of fans, though there was a certain amount of natural selection; South fans tending to take up areas of the southern side of the available space, including the behind the goals, while the Bergers took up northern areas. Security inside the venue seemed non-intrusive, the only interference in our area being to tell people to not stand on seats, which seems like a reasonable enough request. I don't understand why people stand on seats anyway when they don't need to do so in order to see the game. Clarendon Corner's minimal banner and confetti display received no hassle. Clarendon Corner's numbers were fine, and the chanting more frequent and committed than usual. The most memorable chant? Off the top of my head, 'shit ground, no fans'. Oh, and anything primary school level in order to outdo some Berger juniors on the wing.
Then there were the seagulls. The seagulls are infamous, of course, and Lakeside is not immune to their appearance - we are not so far from the ocean, after all. But the seagull problem at Bubbledome is something else. The kookaburra noise intermittently played over the speakers to disperse them was also almost as irritating as the seagulls to some. I was later told that the same sound is also played at the MCG, but I can't say I've ever heard it, maybe because I was too busy abusing Travis Cloke at the time. Anyway, I can't say with any authority whether the sound affects worked,
The stadium music was too loud, and its musical selections - with the exception of a bit of Pulp's 'Commin People' - not much better than Lakeside's offerings. The benches from the 2015 Asian Cup didn't make an appearance, and thus we had the famous Bunnings chairs instead. The scoreboard was in full operation, simulcasting the live stream. Most importantly, the grass and line markings all seemed up to scratch, which was a relief after the Wallabies had played on the field the day before.
The Match Itself
As we were making our way to the ground from the pub on Swan Street, I noted to one of the fans along for the walk that I no longer felt confident about any South game. So different to the NSL days in that regard, and so out of synch with the fact that in the Chris Taylor era we've been able to amass several long undefeated streaks. And as much as I hate to say it, the novelty of having an open doors match at Bubbledome also left one wondering about the contrived social media reaction would be if we lost this game. But that's just me being unnecessarily sensitive, as per usual.
For all Heidelberg's complaints about having to field a sort of makeshift defense - which seemed to me to centre mostly around Steven Pace being out injured - it's not like we didn't have our own issue. Milos Lujic had injured a hamstring during the week, or so they said, so I wasn't expecting him to be out there yesterday, but there he was, metaphorically on one leg, Seeing him out there didn't fill me with confidence - it was certainly a gamble, but I guess the powers that be felt that the situation warranted the risk. I had felt, and still feel, that we've been very fortunate to not have Milos miss many games, and that while what do no doubt works most of the time, it would be interesting - from a strictly scientific point of view, of course - to see how the team would play without him. I'd expect that properly set up, it would be probably be less clinical, but it would also be much more flexible and unpredictable.
But that's getting ahead of ourselves a bit. Our defense also had a notable absence, in that Tim Mala was missing because of the red card he got in our game two weeks ago against Port. So what was the plan going to be for this time around without a known right back? Would Taylor play defensive mid Luke Pavlou there for a third time, having copped eight goals in the two games he was slotted in there? Thankfully not! Matthew Foschini was put there, and he played rather well. The big threat for Heidelberg around the final third is of course Kenny Athiu. It's not just his size, but also his mobility which causes opposition defenses problems. And in the first fifteen minutes or so, we were on the back foot, scrambling around a bit. But after that, we seemed to control the game. As one unfairly maligned supporter noted, apart from playing in his natural position, Foschini was also able to play those passes down the line better than Mala usually does.
 |
| Nick Epifano's shot on its way for 3-0. Photo: Mark Avellino |
We should have added to our lead well before the Peoples' Champ tapped in Jesse Daley's pass with about ten or so to play, but that's to nitpick unnecessarily. Our desperation for the contest across the board was excellent. Our organisation was usually pretty good. Even at our most vulnerable Nikola Roganovic only had to make sparing saves, the most spectacular of which was when the game was well over. If I was to pick out something which annoyed me, it was our continuing tendency this season to collect yellow cards from unnecessarily aggressive fouls or assorted inessential nonsense. Yellow cards get collected out of custom anyway, and the more games you play the more you'll get. Coming up to a crowded bit of the schedule though, it will be a problem when we have to shuffle things around more so than you would like. But that's where the much vaunted depth comes into play.
 |
| Unfamiliar venue, familiar routine: Nikola Roganovic, as he usually does after a game, celebrating with South Melbourne fans. Photo: Mark Avellino. |
In conclusion
A good win, and most people seemed to enjoy the event. It was also nice to be able to share the experience with everyone else, as opposed to what happened last year.
Next game
Sunday at Lakeside against St Albans.
Coming and goings
Liam McCormick has departed the club, joining Dandenong City. Meanwhile, we've signed young midfielder Bardhi Hysolli from Bulleen. I have no idea who he is, which doesn't mean he's no good. We've also gone for a Spanish forward, David Barca Moreno, from Getafe B. I feel like I've seen this move played before, but I can't put my finger on it. His international clearance reportedly came through this week, but not his local clearance, There is talk that Andy Kecojevic has gone overseas, but nothing official at the time of print.
Intergalactic Space Hussy department
For Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, caught two-timing us with the Dandenong A-League bid.
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) June 2, 2017Around the grounds
Half arsed
Among even the most sartorially oblivious of men can be found a certain niche for fashion trends - the soccer jersey. And thus I spent part of a Friday night at Somers Street observing a conversation about colours, shades, cuts and fabric; about makers, years, taste, and at times an unapologetic preference for unpopular styles. As for the game itself, it was rubbish. Knights are barely keeping their head above water, being at the start of a very long rebuild. Bentleigh meanwhile went about their business completely half-arsed. While else would they play Andy Brennan when he is clearly battling with injury? The game seemed set to take its expected course, when Bentleigh took the lead in the first half via Lambros Honos. Knights were bound to get one chance which they would need to make the most of - and Tom Cahill blasted his penalty into the back of the net. Then Bentleigh had a player sent off, and you wondered how Knights would manage to stuff this one up. The answer? By conceding a woefully soft goal with the last kick of the game, And I never got to find out for sure if Knights ever had an Umbro kit in their history.
The proverbial, dare I say, quintessential six-point game
Westgate, the home team, were on three points. Altona East, the away side, were of four. South of the Border's correspondent, having not had lunch, was hungry. Westgate scored, early in the second half, and won the game. Altona East had their chance, saw it saved, and lost the game. I had a cevapi, was satisfied, and walked home for dinner after the match. Where everyone involved lost: when someone decided to have this game kickoff after 6:00PM. It was cold when the game began, and it was bloody cold when the game ended. Dead set, this bloke rocked up to watch the game early in the second half wearing shorts and thongs and I was *this close* to getting his mates to stage an intervention. As you can see, it was not the most thrilling of affairs.
Making hay while the sun shines
Approaching the gates, I pull out my media pass. One bloke at the gate is OK with it, another guy demands a more rigorous examination. That's no surprise - who from the media would bother to cover this game? So after I explain that I'm a freelancer, I eventually go through. The old blokes in front of the social club - some of whom I know from other grounds - are comparing their ages. I buy a souv - and you know it's a big game when they have a separate booth for buying tickets away from the food outlet - and wander through the social club. The picture frames tell the story. Of humble origins, in photo and in print. Of volunteers who built the social club building in the late 1980s. Of being proud of playing South, and beating us. Western Suburbs had a brief bit of limelight in 2007 and 2008, when they reached the lofty heights of the Victorian Premier League. They got a new grandstand and media box out of the stint, and good luck to them for that. Nowadays things are a bit more grim, down in State League 1. Myself, it's moment like these, sitting in the stand during the tail end of the reserves, wondering how I got here. Yarraville had the better of the first half, and should have capitalised on their chances. They didn't, and during the second half, five or so minutes of napping undid the visitors. The first goal was a chip over the keeper from angle; the second goal a lofted ball from a midfield free kick which sailed over the Yarraville keeper, and which almost no one expected let alone saw. Yarraville only managed to wake up late, and score in the dying seconds.
Final thought
The staff at the Richmond Club Hotel really should have given me a pen so I could get the out of date map on one of the walls up to speed.
Thursday, 15 January 2015
2015 Asian Cup adventure - Day 3 - Kill the Buddha
Prologue
I woke up in a foul mood yesterday, which may go some way towards explaining the following post.
Going out for a patented Sideshow Bob 'vigorous constitutional' only made things worse
After finding myself actually enjoying last Sunday's Iran vs Bahrain match, and thus looking forward to the rest of the tournament (at least those parts that I could attend), I decided to look up just for the sake of it who'd be hosting the next tournament in 2019. It turns out that hasn't been decided yet, but one of the bidders happens to be Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia: a nation that does not allow unaccompanied women to do pretty much anything (and of course bans them from attending football matches); a nation that does not allow expressions of any faith other than Islam, and a nation that censors all of its media to the nth degree. And yet how much more advanced are we? Let's use this as an opportunity to blow something minor completely out of proportion. During Tuesday's win by the Socceroos - which I quit watching after we went 3-0 up, because the streams I tried watching the game on became unusable - Tom Juric scored the team's fourth goal, and proceeded to lift his shirt to reveal a message in Croatian/Split dialect/Shtokavian/Serbo-Croatian/Vukovian, which said 'Mama, Tata, Braco' (Mother/Mum, Father/Dad, Brother/Bro - as a believer in the importance of the reader as symbiotic participant in the writing process, I'm letting you take your pick on the formality of the message).
Apparently a minority (or a statistically significant number, depending on who you believe) of people on Facebook and Twitter had a whinge about this - specifically on the fact that the message was not in English - and thus discussion of this filled my Twitter timeline, leading to me making a dick of myself by singling out one person in isolation for semi-confected outrage when it was utterly unfair of me to do so. That person is merely an agent of the problem, not its cause and really, I would have been much wiser parlaying my hard won wisdom into the alternative discussion about ice cream, and how cool was it when you tried to reach for ice creams at the bottom of the fridge at your local milk bar, because they would definitely be the coldest and by definition the best.
The issue remains however, that those who support the National Club Identity Policy (here we go again, boooooooooorrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing) provide a sense of legitimacy to those people in Australian soccer (and by extension Australian society) who use that policy to further their assimilationist ends. Pointing out the fact that messages on shirts other than those things allowed to be put on playing jerseys (whatever that means under our current nightmarish regime) aren't allowed anyway (and liable to be punished by a yellow card and/or disqualification from Australian competitions) is beside the point; neither are offside goals allowed, yet the Socceroos' third goal clearly benefited from a cock up from the officials on that front, and it still counted. Unless you're the editor of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspaper, what has been seen cannot be unseen.
Now while 'the few, the proud, the geeky' among us may have the power of furious and righteous indignity on our side, the great mass of the Australian soccer public could not give a fat rat's clacker. Our 'cause', such as it is, is doomed, due to the combination of both a jackbooted bureaucracy acting on behalf of Dear Leader (and a big 'hi' to all my North Korean readers, yes we do have our own 'Dear Leader' who will soon be replaced by his son) and vast consumerist indifference (and here's a question to consider - is apathy better or worse than indifference? Yes, it could very well be a trick question, but Buddhism needs new koans, so here I am offering something for them at least to mull over).
Ideologues are comparatively easy to deal with, if not in the actual reasoning part, then at least the part where you know where they stand. They put forward their beliefs, you put forward yours, and the age old dance of liberal vs conservative gets played out once more. With those whose main goal is a perverse search for a relaxed and comfortable middle ground, for whom the ends justify the means as long as they're not personally adversely affected, there's little you can do. This makes those comments that more or less state 'well, I think people have voted with their feet, and thus this regime must be doing something right' downright infuriating. I can't think of a way in which one would begin to approach this problem, one which is at the heart of Lowy's 'success'.
So now that it's clear that our movement is indeed doomed - and if you think it isn't that's great (really, that's not sarcasm), you won't get much value out of the rest of this section, so you can leave now, because this would otherwise be a waste of your time - what do 'I/we/me/us' do? Now Yukio Mishima may have been a right-wing crackpot alongside being a brilliant writer, but at least he believed in something, even if what he believed in was a fanciful version of the past while fully (probably?) understanding that the values he purportedly wanted Japan to re-adopt were never truly realised anyway, and never could be realised. But who among us would re-create Mishima's end - and I stress here for those familiar with Mishima's end, that this analogy is purely metaphorical, and not just because I don't have a kaishakunin - and at least be able to go out in a dignified (albeit in Mishima's and also Seneca's case, very messy), blaze of glory?
The famous Buddhist koan - at least within the East, not necessarily here in the West where we tend to obsess about the sounds of trees falling and one hand clapping - asks us that if we see the Buddha on the road, to kill him, and that goes for Nansen's kitten as well I presume. What then must we as 'bitters' destroy in order to get out of our cycle of romanticism, self-righteousness and self-pity, all while those whom have contributed to our relative destitution continue as they please? Can I even go to my local manoush joint any more, now that they're putting up posters for Salafist speakers? Do any of us have the stomach to transform this movement of five or six people on the internet to become something transcendent and therefore meaningful beyond our little circle? Can our beloved anger become useful, or is our fury, however justified by the circumstances, a hindrance? Is this sense of irrevocable apartness that I feel from the great mass of soccer's support in country a terminal condition? Am I destined to become another one of 'those people', the kind whose support of the national team - which I hitherto held if not as sacred, then at least as separate from the poisonous atmosphere of the current political situation - is reduced either to apathy or bilious hatred?
Saudi Arabia vs North Korea
Approaching the Bubbledome on Wednesday evening I was filled with intense moral quandaries, because both of these nations are evil, and therefore one could not possibly support either of them; and yet there would be people supporting them. Now in the case of the much maligned (sometimes fairly, sometimes not) Iran, this problem could conceivably be ameliorated via the perspective of ethnicity and the affection the diaspora has for the homeland, without necessarily having the tacit approval of any of the policies of said nation state.
For Saudi Arabia and North Korea, this is complicated by all sorts of things. In Saudi Arabia's case, because it's not even a real country as we know it today, just the parts of the Arabian Peninsula ruled by the Saudi family since the 1930s. There were quite a lot of Saudi fans at the game yesterday, but not many women as far as I could tell. Still, the Saudi fans managed to hand out quite a few flags to a lot of people who would probably be revolted with the way that country is run. For the North Koreans, run by an equally hideous regime, there were as far I could tell (or reasonably expect), no actual North Korean fans from North Korea in the stadium. Instead their supporters end at the northern end of the ground was taken up by various members of the Melbourne Victory's active groups.
A good clue towards establishing that they weren't real North Koreans, even from my spot in the good seats, is that the chants (all in English, and all largely taking the piss, eg. North Korea is best Korea, or some such), is that they kept referring to North Korea, which the real North Korea would never do, since they (like the South) consider themselves the real Korea. Speaking of real Koreans, that is people from the Korean Peninsula, there were apparently some in the crowd, I'm guessing sitting well away from the 'North Koreans'.
Now friends, there was also a match being played, and it was pretty damn fun and frustrating to watch in equal measure, as both teams pinged the ball back and forth as quickly as possible. The North Koreans looked the more likely to score in the beginning and they did, but surprisingly perhaps the Saudis didn't collapse in a heap, and actually ran over the top of their totalitarian counterparts, while looking quite stylish at the same, though their finishing could do with some work.
The most bizarre thing about the North Koreans though, apart from their coach apparently being on a direct line to Pyongyang, was the overly physical approach they brought to the contest. They copped a yellow card within the first couple of minutes for a pretty savage tackle, and after a few more bad tackles interspersed throughout the game, they finished it off with a brilliant shirtfront which somehow managed to avoid receiving any sort of card. Of course, if you did that in the AFL these days you'd get suspended.
Epilogue mode stolen from Gillian Rubenstein's Beyond the Labyrinth
If you rolled six or under:
Not that it matters anymore, but where is the social club? Since the only acceptable way to socialise in Australia is with booze, and goodness knows no one can possibly have fun without it, it'd be nice if we had some place of our own to have 'fun'.
If you threw over six:
A week or two before Christmas, someone at Victoria University did a bit of a ring around to all the relevant people (except me, and possibly others who I am not aware of) looking for ways to contribute to finding connections to the Asian Cup so Victoria University's academics could be at the forefront of writing on the tournament, thus reinforcing our reputation as the 'sports university'.
After being included (eventually) via being CCed into an email, I did get a phone call asking me what my expertise was exactly, and how would that fit into what the project was about. Well I tried to put forward what my angle is, difficult as it was considering I don't really conduct interviews, and nor does my research have an utterly direct and completely obvious connection to the Asian Cup, and neither did this person really explain what it was that they wanted, but could I at least email him some examples of my work for him to see.
I did so, and never heard back from him. After looking back at this post, it was probably for the best.
I woke up in a foul mood yesterday, which may go some way towards explaining the following post.
Going out for a patented Sideshow Bob 'vigorous constitutional' only made things worse
After finding myself actually enjoying last Sunday's Iran vs Bahrain match, and thus looking forward to the rest of the tournament (at least those parts that I could attend), I decided to look up just for the sake of it who'd be hosting the next tournament in 2019. It turns out that hasn't been decided yet, but one of the bidders happens to be Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia: a nation that does not allow unaccompanied women to do pretty much anything (and of course bans them from attending football matches); a nation that does not allow expressions of any faith other than Islam, and a nation that censors all of its media to the nth degree. And yet how much more advanced are we? Let's use this as an opportunity to blow something minor completely out of proportion. During Tuesday's win by the Socceroos - which I quit watching after we went 3-0 up, because the streams I tried watching the game on became unusable - Tom Juric scored the team's fourth goal, and proceeded to lift his shirt to reveal a message in Croatian/Split dialect/Shtokavian/Serbo-Croatian/Vukovian, which said 'Mama, Tata, Braco' (Mother/Mum, Father/Dad, Brother/Bro - as a believer in the importance of the reader as symbiotic participant in the writing process, I'm letting you take your pick on the formality of the message).
Apparently a minority (or a statistically significant number, depending on who you believe) of people on Facebook and Twitter had a whinge about this - specifically on the fact that the message was not in English - and thus discussion of this filled my Twitter timeline, leading to me making a dick of myself by singling out one person in isolation for semi-confected outrage when it was utterly unfair of me to do so. That person is merely an agent of the problem, not its cause and really, I would have been much wiser parlaying my hard won wisdom into the alternative discussion about ice cream, and how cool was it when you tried to reach for ice creams at the bottom of the fridge at your local milk bar, because they would definitely be the coldest and by definition the best.
The issue remains however, that those who support the National Club Identity Policy (here we go again, boooooooooorrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing) provide a sense of legitimacy to those people in Australian soccer (and by extension Australian society) who use that policy to further their assimilationist ends. Pointing out the fact that messages on shirts other than those things allowed to be put on playing jerseys (whatever that means under our current nightmarish regime) aren't allowed anyway (and liable to be punished by a yellow card and/or disqualification from Australian competitions) is beside the point; neither are offside goals allowed, yet the Socceroos' third goal clearly benefited from a cock up from the officials on that front, and it still counted. Unless you're the editor of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspaper, what has been seen cannot be unseen.
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| The creator of this images wishes to remain anonymous. I guess I owe them a frap or beverage of their choosing. |
Ideologues are comparatively easy to deal with, if not in the actual reasoning part, then at least the part where you know where they stand. They put forward their beliefs, you put forward yours, and the age old dance of liberal vs conservative gets played out once more. With those whose main goal is a perverse search for a relaxed and comfortable middle ground, for whom the ends justify the means as long as they're not personally adversely affected, there's little you can do. This makes those comments that more or less state 'well, I think people have voted with their feet, and thus this regime must be doing something right' downright infuriating. I can't think of a way in which one would begin to approach this problem, one which is at the heart of Lowy's 'success'.
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| In a neat coincidence, one of the right wing people I'm friends with on Facebook put this up on his timeline yesterday. Being unashamed (proud?) of my physical inferiority I find myself disagreeing with the notion put forward in this picture, but as a vivid portrayal of Mishima's ideology, it looks pretty sweet. |
The famous Buddhist koan - at least within the East, not necessarily here in the West where we tend to obsess about the sounds of trees falling and one hand clapping - asks us that if we see the Buddha on the road, to kill him, and that goes for Nansen's kitten as well I presume. What then must we as 'bitters' destroy in order to get out of our cycle of romanticism, self-righteousness and self-pity, all while those whom have contributed to our relative destitution continue as they please? Can I even go to my local manoush joint any more, now that they're putting up posters for Salafist speakers? Do any of us have the stomach to transform this movement of five or six people on the internet to become something transcendent and therefore meaningful beyond our little circle? Can our beloved anger become useful, or is our fury, however justified by the circumstances, a hindrance? Is this sense of irrevocable apartness that I feel from the great mass of soccer's support in country a terminal condition? Am I destined to become another one of 'those people', the kind whose support of the national team - which I hitherto held if not as sacred, then at least as separate from the poisonous atmosphere of the current political situation - is reduced either to apathy or bilious hatred?
Saudi Arabia vs North Korea
Approaching the Bubbledome on Wednesday evening I was filled with intense moral quandaries, because both of these nations are evil, and therefore one could not possibly support either of them; and yet there would be people supporting them. Now in the case of the much maligned (sometimes fairly, sometimes not) Iran, this problem could conceivably be ameliorated via the perspective of ethnicity and the affection the diaspora has for the homeland, without necessarily having the tacit approval of any of the policies of said nation state.
For Saudi Arabia and North Korea, this is complicated by all sorts of things. In Saudi Arabia's case, because it's not even a real country as we know it today, just the parts of the Arabian Peninsula ruled by the Saudi family since the 1930s. There were quite a lot of Saudi fans at the game yesterday, but not many women as far as I could tell. Still, the Saudi fans managed to hand out quite a few flags to a lot of people who would probably be revolted with the way that country is run. For the North Koreans, run by an equally hideous regime, there were as far I could tell (or reasonably expect), no actual North Korean fans from North Korea in the stadium. Instead their supporters end at the northern end of the ground was taken up by various members of the Melbourne Victory's active groups.
A good clue towards establishing that they weren't real North Koreans, even from my spot in the good seats, is that the chants (all in English, and all largely taking the piss, eg. North Korea is best Korea, or some such), is that they kept referring to North Korea, which the real North Korea would never do, since they (like the South) consider themselves the real Korea. Speaking of real Koreans, that is people from the Korean Peninsula, there were apparently some in the crowd, I'm guessing sitting well away from the 'North Koreans'.
Told the South Koreans have had their reunification flags confiscated by security. They're here to support North Korea. #PRKvKSA #AC2015
— Joe Gorman (@JoeGorman_89) January 14, 2015
There were also apparently people wearing Kim Jong-Un masks in the northern end, and when security went in to confiscate them, they were jeered by those North Korean sympathisers, who didn't seem to appreciate the gesture made by stadium management towards creating a genuine North Korean experience.
Security moving into the north end for some reason. You'd think the N. Korea supporting hipsters would appreciate the irony #PRKvKSA #ac2015
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) January 14, 2015
Closer to home in Aisle 4, Row D, we were more concerned with not getting crushed to death by the ceremonial flags hanging off the rafters.
Flag lowering ceremony. #PRKvKSA #AC2015 pic.twitter.com/ZnCmL9N2P7
— Les Street (@official_lesdog) January 14, 2015
As the patrons in the relevant area were moved across into the neighbouring bays without too much fuss, one had to wonder though: what was the cause of the problem? While the half filled stadium (attendance at a touch under 13k) allowed patrons to be moved to adjacent bays, what would have happened had the stadium been filled up, say, for a Socceroos match? And who's going to be held responsible for this debacle?
I think @nutmeg_2015 needs to kick a few arses over this flag debacle #PRKvKSA #AC2015
— Mark Boric (@MarkBoric) January 14, 2015
Of course, because no one was killed or injured, there was also a lighter side to the flag situation.
The flags falling down disruption was North Korea's Peter Hore moment #PRKvKSA
— Mark Boric (@MarkBoric) January 14, 2015
Can you believe that lighthearted comment spiralled out of control into a Bitter vs New Dawn argument? Of course you can, it's the internet. Now friends, there was also a match being played, and it was pretty damn fun and frustrating to watch in equal measure, as both teams pinged the ball back and forth as quickly as possible. The North Koreans looked the more likely to score in the beginning and they did, but surprisingly perhaps the Saudis didn't collapse in a heap, and actually ran over the top of their totalitarian counterparts, while looking quite stylish at the same, though their finishing could do with some work.
The most bizarre thing about the North Koreans though, apart from their coach apparently being on a direct line to Pyongyang, was the overly physical approach they brought to the contest. They copped a yellow card within the first couple of minutes for a pretty savage tackle, and after a few more bad tackles interspersed throughout the game, they finished it off with a brilliant shirtfront which somehow managed to avoid receiving any sort of card. Of course, if you did that in the AFL these days you'd get suspended.
Epilogue mode stolen from Gillian Rubenstein's Beyond the Labyrinth
If you rolled six or under:
Not that it matters anymore, but where is the social club? Since the only acceptable way to socialise in Australia is with booze, and goodness knows no one can possibly have fun without it, it'd be nice if we had some place of our own to have 'fun'.
If you threw over six:
A week or two before Christmas, someone at Victoria University did a bit of a ring around to all the relevant people (except me, and possibly others who I am not aware of) looking for ways to contribute to finding connections to the Asian Cup so Victoria University's academics could be at the forefront of writing on the tournament, thus reinforcing our reputation as the 'sports university'.
After being included (eventually) via being CCed into an email, I did get a phone call asking me what my expertise was exactly, and how would that fit into what the project was about. Well I tried to put forward what my angle is, difficult as it was considering I don't really conduct interviews, and nor does my research have an utterly direct and completely obvious connection to the Asian Cup, and neither did this person really explain what it was that they wanted, but could I at least email him some examples of my work for him to see.
I did so, and never heard back from him. After looking back at this post, it was probably for the best.
Monday, 12 January 2015
2015 Asian Cup adventure - Day 2 - A Greek in the Persian Empire
Breakfast TV (we've got a long way to go; or conversely, the mainstream media doesn't know what's news and what isn't)
Having said that however, the reason I was channel surfing across the spectrum in the first place is because I had not seen any of the goals or action from the previous day's matches. Now of course I could have stayed up late to watch the highlights on the ABC, or could have used an illegal stream (not an option with my internet screwing up, whatever the dubious legalities), and I was also interested in seeing if, or how the local broadbased television services would cover the matter as opposed to just taking the relatively easy way out and looking for highlights online - because the issue is not whether someone already interested in the tournament could find information online themselves, but whether those with at best a passing interest could end up in the position of being unable to avoid it.
'They take hundreds of magazines, filter out the crap, and leave you with something that fits right in your front pocket.'
Then again, highlights packages, whether of a solitary goal in a news round up or in a dedicated program can only go so far. I recall many years ago, back when SBS still had the EPL highlights show and I still had some sort of allegiance to Liverpool. Come Monday evening I would be watching the show, getting high on a sugared up dose of all the good bits minus all the fluff, until one realises that (in my case at least) that there's actually something to be said for the live in the flesh experience itself, as well as all the attendant bits - travel, meet, greet, bad/good food, lining up, atmosphere - that one just doesn't get from watching something on TV.
I say this because I saw some old woman on the train from Flinders Street to Richmond with a copy of Readers Digest, and aside from the horror that they've nabbed another unsuspecting old person to a subscription via their sweepstakes scam, I could not believe that there are people still reading that junk. And it served as a reminder of what the live in the flesh (or whole game) experience of a football match entails; the fact you won't only be served the cherry picked highlights, but also a fair bit of slop. But that slop is what makes the cherry even sweeter when it does come, and provides a more complete experience.
Neutral venue is not neutral
Both around the stadium and at the Corner Hotel (avoid the fish), where several people (me, Steve from Broady, Joe Gorman and Shoot Farken's Athas Zafiris) were spending pre-game, there was already evidence of a very strong Iranian contingent. Not necessarily a lot of football jerseys in evidence, but certainly a lot of colour and excitement, and a fairly even split between the current Iranian flag and variations which were certainly not the current Iranian flag.
Once at the ground and on Level 3 on the eastern side (with the requisite setting sun in the eyes), we (me, Gains and his housemate) found ourselves in the middle of a huge Iranian contingent, who basically dominated that side, as they did the Olympic Park Boulevard end of the ground. Not many, if any, Bahraini fans visible.
Being amid this huge group, I was neither Xenophon on the run to the sea, nor Alexander set to conquer, nor Memnon of Rhodes giving advice that would be ignored until too late, but just a bloke enjoying both the tension on the field and off it. Neither were the Iranian fans hostile in any way, ala the Fearless Iranians From Hell. If anything (and not that I should sound surprised), the vibe was super friendly and reminiscent for me of the following:
I'm not sure any other team's fans will create as good a vibe at a Melbourne game, but the Asian Cup, whether for the on field stuff or off field, has been fantastic so far, and I'm really looking to the remaining five games here. If you do end up at a game though with what's likely to be decent crowd, try and pre-purchase your tickets, as that will save you a lot of hassle on the day.
Some boys take a beautiful girl/And hide her away from the rest of the world
The Iranian theocracy could learn a thing or two from both Cyndi Lauper and the Iranian diaspora.
The actual game itself, because there are no prizes awarded for best atmosphere
When Iran eventually did get going, they weren't helped by having Iranian Archie Thompson - and even if it was actually several different players, it's easier and more edifying for the narrative to combine them into one personage for the sake of the joke - constantly being caught offside. When the opening goal did come, it was worth it, because whether or not it was mis-hit it was a peach of a goal, and that's all that matters in the end.
What was most disappointing was that once they fell behind, Bahrain actually did very little to rectify the situation. This was further emphasised when they went 2-0 down - and really, if this tournament has taught us nothing else, it's that there is genuine value in having someone at the near and far posts while defending set pieces - they remained stagnant, committing few players forward. My hope that the Bahrainis would score two late goals - not out of some desire for vengeance for 1997, because nothing will ever make up for that, but more so for the calamitous emotional distress it would have caused.
To further illustrate the point made earlier
This morning on Sunrise: Federer's 1000th win, Michael Clarke injury concern, Packers beat the Cowboys in the playoffs.
Yes random person on Swan Street who apparently saw my hat, South Melbourne Hellas still exists
- Ζει ο βασιλιάς Αλέξανδρος;
- Ζει και βασιλεύει.
Sports round up this morning on Sunrise: Brisbane tennis, Hopman Cup final, Sam Stosur, drawn test match, BBL/Kevin Pietersen, darts riot.
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) January 10, 2015
Nine's Today: Steve Smith, BBL, Brisbane tennis, Hopman Cup, Jedinak's fitness, EPL.
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) January 10, 2015
ABC Breakfast: Steve Smith, BBL, Brisbane tennis, Hopman Cup, Jedinak, yesterday's Asian Cup goals, short piece on Iraqi fans.
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) January 10, 2015
Now the ever so slightly churlish point about this is that the Asian Cup seems either to have made little to no impact among Australia's sporting public - which the crowds at thus far at least show not to be the case - or that the mainstream press still doesn't get it, and perhaps never will. Having said that however, the reason I was channel surfing across the spectrum in the first place is because I had not seen any of the goals or action from the previous day's matches. Now of course I could have stayed up late to watch the highlights on the ABC, or could have used an illegal stream (not an option with my internet screwing up, whatever the dubious legalities), and I was also interested in seeing if, or how the local broadbased television services would cover the matter as opposed to just taking the relatively easy way out and looking for highlights online - because the issue is not whether someone already interested in the tournament could find information online themselves, but whether those with at best a passing interest could end up in the position of being unable to avoid it.
'They take hundreds of magazines, filter out the crap, and leave you with something that fits right in your front pocket.'
Then again, highlights packages, whether of a solitary goal in a news round up or in a dedicated program can only go so far. I recall many years ago, back when SBS still had the EPL highlights show and I still had some sort of allegiance to Liverpool. Come Monday evening I would be watching the show, getting high on a sugared up dose of all the good bits minus all the fluff, until one realises that (in my case at least) that there's actually something to be said for the live in the flesh experience itself, as well as all the attendant bits - travel, meet, greet, bad/good food, lining up, atmosphere - that one just doesn't get from watching something on TV.
I say this because I saw some old woman on the train from Flinders Street to Richmond with a copy of Readers Digest, and aside from the horror that they've nabbed another unsuspecting old person to a subscription via their sweepstakes scam, I could not believe that there are people still reading that junk. And it served as a reminder of what the live in the flesh (or whole game) experience of a football match entails; the fact you won't only be served the cherry picked highlights, but also a fair bit of slop. But that slop is what makes the cherry even sweeter when it does come, and provides a more complete experience.
Neutral venue is not neutral
Both around the stadium and at the Corner Hotel (avoid the fish), where several people (me, Steve from Broady, Joe Gorman and Shoot Farken's Athas Zafiris) were spending pre-game, there was already evidence of a very strong Iranian contingent. Not necessarily a lot of football jerseys in evidence, but certainly a lot of colour and excitement, and a fairly even split between the current Iranian flag and variations which were certainly not the current Iranian flag.
Once at the ground and on Level 3 on the eastern side (with the requisite setting sun in the eyes), we (me, Gains and his housemate) found ourselves in the middle of a huge Iranian contingent, who basically dominated that side, as they did the Olympic Park Boulevard end of the ground. Not many, if any, Bahraini fans visible.
Being amid this huge group, I was neither Xenophon on the run to the sea, nor Alexander set to conquer, nor Memnon of Rhodes giving advice that would be ignored until too late, but just a bloke enjoying both the tension on the field and off it. Neither were the Iranian fans hostile in any way, ala the Fearless Iranians From Hell. If anything (and not that I should sound surprised), the vibe was super friendly and reminiscent for me of the following:
Might be an odd observation, but being with the Iranians on level 3 is like being with SM Hellas fans in the Olympic Park east stand #AC2015
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) January 11, 2015
Now of course as was pointed out in a reply to this statement on Twitter, the Iranian fans did not have their own Lefteri, and the airhorn they had soon got confiscated, but the family vibe and the passion on display sent me instinctually back to the old NSL finals days. Now whether many of the Iranian fans actually had much awareness of what was going on is another matter entirely, as they cheered the several clearly offside goals and went nuts every time their keeper made a regulation save, is a moot point. They were loud, they were passionate, and they were a lot of fun to be around. I'm not sure any other team's fans will create as good a vibe at a Melbourne game, but the Asian Cup, whether for the on field stuff or off field, has been fantastic so far, and I'm really looking to the remaining five games here. If you do end up at a game though with what's likely to be decent crowd, try and pre-purchase your tickets, as that will save you a lot of hassle on the day.
Some boys take a beautiful girl/And hide her away from the rest of the world
The Iranian theocracy could learn a thing or two from both Cyndi Lauper and the Iranian diaspora.
The actual game itself, because there are no prizes awarded for best atmosphere
Great atmosphere here, but can't wait until #nplvic starts so I can see a better standard of football. #ac2015 #IRNvBHR
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) January 11, 2015
And while that's certainly a cutting remark to make, the standard for large portions of the game, especially earlier on, was poor. The decision making and first touch of the Iranians in particular was particularly bad (though I liked both wingers for Iran, they had a bit of skill and like to take players on, always good to see wingers have a go). Bahrain seemed to have the better of it initially, and probably should have scored the first goal, but eventually the Iranians came to boss this game.When Iran eventually did get going, they weren't helped by having Iranian Archie Thompson - and even if it was actually several different players, it's easier and more edifying for the narrative to combine them into one personage for the sake of the joke - constantly being caught offside. When the opening goal did come, it was worth it, because whether or not it was mis-hit it was a peach of a goal, and that's all that matters in the end.
What was most disappointing was that once they fell behind, Bahrain actually did very little to rectify the situation. This was further emphasised when they went 2-0 down - and really, if this tournament has taught us nothing else, it's that there is genuine value in having someone at the near and far posts while defending set pieces - they remained stagnant, committing few players forward. My hope that the Bahrainis would score two late goals - not out of some desire for vengeance for 1997, because nothing will ever make up for that, but more so for the calamitous emotional distress it would have caused.
To further illustrate the point made earlier
This morning on Sunrise: Federer's 1000th win, Michael Clarke injury concern, Packers beat the Cowboys in the playoffs.
Yes random person on Swan Street who apparently saw my hat, South Melbourne Hellas still exists
- Ζει ο βασιλιάς Αλέξανδρος;
- Ζει και βασιλεύει.
Saturday, 10 January 2015
2015 Asian Cup adventure - Day 1 - Self-Perpetuating Nostalgia Blues
Seeing as I have tickets to seven matches of the 2015 Asian Cup (along with Gains and his housemate), all in Melbourne. I really wanted to write something that was akin to the greatness of my World Cup pieces for Shoot Farken, but that's not going to happen. In part this is because if you don't have pay TV, as I don't, the tournament may as well as not exist, but also inspiration just hasn't struck. So instead please enjoy or disregard the following, the usual dose of moroseness.
First stop was the Precinct Hotel to catch up with Steve from Broady, because he reckoned that the Cricketers Arms, where the Green and Gold Army was planning to set up, was a hole. Let's be honest though, the Precinct is also a dump. Eventually we did wander over to the Cricketers Arms - but not before bumping into now former South player Shaun Timmins on the way there - in order to meet up with a South supporter who is not completely disillusioned and/or cynical with whatever it is that the Green and Gold Army is meant to be these days.
Aside from inexplicably watching Australia vs India during the 2011 Asian Cup at the Celtic Club - an event which somehow did not make it to this blog in any form - my one and only other close up experience with the Green and Gold Army was back in 2009, which I wrote up in a hyper jaded manner on this blog. The ensuing years have made it harder to hate the Green and Gold Army though. Stripped of relevance by pretty much everyone, replaced by the one game wonder of Terrace Australia [sic], but still kicking on, who am I to kick a dog while it's down?
I must admit that on face value the Cricketers Arms is perhaps an odd choice for such a meet and greet. Apart from its close proximity to the ground, both the interior and the beer garden out the back were liberally decorated in VFL, AFL and cricket paraphernalia. Apart from re-telling unpublishable South gossip, the only other significant thing to do was to become complicit in someone's alcohol problem. But I suppose that's what going to a pub is all about anyway.
Steve from Broady wanted to head to the ground early for some unknown reasons. On the way there we spotted a suited up Alan Davidson talking to someone, before we crossed over into Gosch's Paddock (named after some long dead Melbourne City councilman) and tried to get a handle on what the pre-match festivities consisted of; as it turned out, it was mostly a handful of tent booths with skill games for the kids, and a merch stand.
Outside the Gate 2 entrance at the Bubbledome, there was ethnic dancing of a sort, though I didn't hang around long enough to notice if it was a generic (or specific) Levantine dabke, or something altogether more Kuwaiti. If it indeed was a Kuwaiti folk dance, one wonders if they'd have been allowed to do it in Kuwait proper, where dancing (among other 'fun' things) is prohibited. And of course, my thoughts turned to the NCIP and all that, before being distracted by the white line on the concourse with the attendant instruction 'no smoking beyond thus point', as if the cigarette smoke and the wind could read, much less care where they would end up. But back to the NCIP for just a moment, how good was it that Asian Cup organising committee managed to choose a meat pie as our national dish? It's one of those things that in reality is almost entirely inconsequential, but because of that in-consequentiality manages to rankle my feathers even more. For the record, I would have gone with stale bain marie dim sims.
Once inside, Steve and I did a lap around the inside of the ground to kill time. I bought a scarf in part because it was going to get colder and the threat of rain, and because my green with one gold star Hattrick t-shirt wasn't going to cut it on that front. We bumped into two fellow South fans as well, which just goes to prove that we're not all Socceroo hating, old soccer Nazis. It was my first Socceroos game for a year and a half, the last time being a forgettable (in that I'd forgotten about it entirely) World Cup qualifier against Jordan at Docklands. The last time I was at the Bubbledome was for a Rebels game. The last time I saw a soccer match at the Bubbledome was for another, earlier World Cup qualifying game against Saudi Arabia. It was interesting to see all the elements of the normal Bubbledome stripped back, by which I mean the sponorship boards, but there was also a very large expanded media space on the western side of the ground. Otherwise it was pretty much the same place.
Now it's true that unless you're shoved into some corner, there are not really any bad seats at the Bubbledome, but it was probably a bit dishonest to class the seats we had as 'category A' seats, considering that we were behind the line of the goal - surely that definition should have applied more strictly to areas including only more central bays. At least we could get a good look at the scoreboard from where we were, which became became more necessary in the second half as the bloke next to me was an unnecessary leaner, meaning that we, too, had to lean forward every time the ball went down toward the Olympic Boulevard end.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott made an appearance and was booed by large sections of the the crowd, unlike the time I saw him make an appearance at Brookvale Oval in 2014. Of course back then he was in his own electorate, and accompanied by a sick child as well. Frank Lowy got a much kinder reception though, except from me. If you're going to have a chip on your shoulder, you may as well be sincere about it.
The opening ceremony was all a bit ho hum, some strange inflatable set up, three artists I knew next to nothing about - one song I recognised from some ad campaign on television - and music played at an earth shakingly loud volume, which jarred with the tolerable volume of the pre-game entertainment before that. It probably didn't help that I was seated right behind some massive pitch side speakers, covered in plastic I assume to protect them from any possible deluge, but because of this also making a huge distorted rustling noise. If anyone can make head or tail of all the people running around and doing backflips and cartwheels, good to you. Opening ceremonies are for television audiences anyway, not for people in the stands with obstructed and only one view of the action.
Nevertheless, as was expected but not assured, we managed to run over the top of them. As we all rose up to celebrate the Socceroos two first half goals, I got accidentally elbowed in the side after each time by the Unnecessary Leaner in bis excitement, which took the edge off the celebrations for me. Further injury was avoided because for the third goal everyone was standing up in anticipation of the penalty, and the the fourth goal was a such a junk time effort there was no real point in celebrating it anyway.
At half time the sprinklers either turned themselves or were turned on by someone for the same reason (which escapes me at this moment) they were turned on before the match. Either way the photographers had to make a bit of run for it. The second half was entertaining at least as we peppered the goals, but the Kuwaitis were also able to break through the offside trap on a handful of occasions and barring some good work by Mat Ryan in goal, it might have been a tighter finish. Instead the crowd grew bored as the Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! chant started going through the crowds, and the pieces of cardboard used for the opening ceremony were crafted into paper planes. A handful were well crafted enough to make it onto the field; most seemed to make it as far as the space behind the ad boards, while a good few didn't even get that far, managing only to collide with the back of people's heads, reminding me of the time I got hit in the head with a coin at a Victory game.
At the end of the day, the man of the match was clearly the referee, who bucked the trend of all referees being rubbish all the time, what with having an excellent game all around, especially in not falling for pretty much any of the diving antics of the Socceroos. Remember the days when we were all self-righteous about the diving and feigning of injuries of Asian teams? Well judging from last night's match, that's gone completely out the window now, as we have now become the petulant equals of our region's finest in this matter. Welcome to modern Australian football.
First stop was the Precinct Hotel to catch up with Steve from Broady, because he reckoned that the Cricketers Arms, where the Green and Gold Army was planning to set up, was a hole. Let's be honest though, the Precinct is also a dump. Eventually we did wander over to the Cricketers Arms - but not before bumping into now former South player Shaun Timmins on the way there - in order to meet up with a South supporter who is not completely disillusioned and/or cynical with whatever it is that the Green and Gold Army is meant to be these days.
Aside from inexplicably watching Australia vs India during the 2011 Asian Cup at the Celtic Club - an event which somehow did not make it to this blog in any form - my one and only other close up experience with the Green and Gold Army was back in 2009, which I wrote up in a hyper jaded manner on this blog. The ensuing years have made it harder to hate the Green and Gold Army though. Stripped of relevance by pretty much everyone, replaced by the one game wonder of Terrace Australia [sic], but still kicking on, who am I to kick a dog while it's down?
I must admit that on face value the Cricketers Arms is perhaps an odd choice for such a meet and greet. Apart from its close proximity to the ground, both the interior and the beer garden out the back were liberally decorated in VFL, AFL and cricket paraphernalia. Apart from re-telling unpublishable South gossip, the only other significant thing to do was to become complicit in someone's alcohol problem. But I suppose that's what going to a pub is all about anyway.
Steve from Broady wanted to head to the ground early for some unknown reasons. On the way there we spotted a suited up Alan Davidson talking to someone, before we crossed over into Gosch's Paddock (named after some long dead Melbourne City councilman) and tried to get a handle on what the pre-match festivities consisted of; as it turned out, it was mostly a handful of tent booths with skill games for the kids, and a merch stand.
Outside the Gate 2 entrance at the Bubbledome, there was ethnic dancing of a sort, though I didn't hang around long enough to notice if it was a generic (or specific) Levantine dabke, or something altogether more Kuwaiti. If it indeed was a Kuwaiti folk dance, one wonders if they'd have been allowed to do it in Kuwait proper, where dancing (among other 'fun' things) is prohibited. And of course, my thoughts turned to the NCIP and all that, before being distracted by the white line on the concourse with the attendant instruction 'no smoking beyond thus point', as if the cigarette smoke and the wind could read, much less care where they would end up. But back to the NCIP for just a moment, how good was it that Asian Cup organising committee managed to choose a meat pie as our national dish? It's one of those things that in reality is almost entirely inconsequential, but because of that in-consequentiality manages to rankle my feathers even more. For the record, I would have gone with stale bain marie dim sims.
Once inside, Steve and I did a lap around the inside of the ground to kill time. I bought a scarf in part because it was going to get colder and the threat of rain, and because my green with one gold star Hattrick t-shirt wasn't going to cut it on that front. We bumped into two fellow South fans as well, which just goes to prove that we're not all Socceroo hating, old soccer Nazis. It was my first Socceroos game for a year and a half, the last time being a forgettable (in that I'd forgotten about it entirely) World Cup qualifier against Jordan at Docklands. The last time I was at the Bubbledome was for a Rebels game. The last time I saw a soccer match at the Bubbledome was for another, earlier World Cup qualifying game against Saudi Arabia. It was interesting to see all the elements of the normal Bubbledome stripped back, by which I mean the sponorship boards, but there was also a very large expanded media space on the western side of the ground. Otherwise it was pretty much the same place.
Now it's true that unless you're shoved into some corner, there are not really any bad seats at the Bubbledome, but it was probably a bit dishonest to class the seats we had as 'category A' seats, considering that we were behind the line of the goal - surely that definition should have applied more strictly to areas including only more central bays. At least we could get a good look at the scoreboard from where we were, which became became more necessary in the second half as the bloke next to me was an unnecessary leaner, meaning that we, too, had to lean forward every time the ball went down toward the Olympic Boulevard end.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott made an appearance and was booed by large sections of the the crowd, unlike the time I saw him make an appearance at Brookvale Oval in 2014. Of course back then he was in his own electorate, and accompanied by a sick child as well. Frank Lowy got a much kinder reception though, except from me. If you're going to have a chip on your shoulder, you may as well be sincere about it.
The opening ceremony was all a bit ho hum, some strange inflatable set up, three artists I knew next to nothing about - one song I recognised from some ad campaign on television - and music played at an earth shakingly loud volume, which jarred with the tolerable volume of the pre-game entertainment before that. It probably didn't help that I was seated right behind some massive pitch side speakers, covered in plastic I assume to protect them from any possible deluge, but because of this also making a huge distorted rustling noise. If anyone can make head or tail of all the people running around and doing backflips and cartwheels, good to you. Opening ceremonies are for television audiences anyway, not for people in the stands with obstructed and only one view of the action.
Would've been a much more authentic piece of Aussie culture if opening ceremony was people running through sprinklers pic.twitter.com/wm2Gn7haFx
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) January 9, 2015
Oh yes, as warned in an email before the match, there was also audience participation by way of what the organisers called a 'tifo' - which was really getting a coloured card out from the back of your seat and making sure you flipped it at the right moment. We even went through a taxing practice run; taxing in that we flipped the cards several times during that warm up, while it only required one flip during the opening ceremony itself. More on those pieces of cardboard later.
"TIFO" at the Asian Cup... lame! #AsianCup2015 #AC2015 pic.twitter.com/Q1Pc6uOzkz
— Cindy N (@cindyn) January 9, 2015
The first 30 odd minutes was pretty mediocre stuff from the Socceroos, the goal conceded from the corner being the highlight of said mediocrity. A close runner up however was the first corner we took which was played short RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME! Aside from whatever irrational hatred I have of short corners, we have this guy called Tim Cahill, who even though he's a self-aggrandising, right wing nut job associating shill, has a magical forehead onto which every lofted ball we can send into the area should be sent to.Nevertheless, as was expected but not assured, we managed to run over the top of them. As we all rose up to celebrate the Socceroos two first half goals, I got accidentally elbowed in the side after each time by the Unnecessary Leaner in bis excitement, which took the edge off the celebrations for me. Further injury was avoided because for the third goal everyone was standing up in anticipation of the penalty, and the the fourth goal was a such a junk time effort there was no real point in celebrating it anyway.
At half time the sprinklers either turned themselves or were turned on by someone for the same reason (which escapes me at this moment) they were turned on before the match. Either way the photographers had to make a bit of run for it. The second half was entertaining at least as we peppered the goals, but the Kuwaitis were also able to break through the offside trap on a handful of occasions and barring some good work by Mat Ryan in goal, it might have been a tighter finish. Instead the crowd grew bored as the Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! chant started going through the crowds, and the pieces of cardboard used for the opening ceremony were crafted into paper planes. A handful were well crafted enough to make it onto the field; most seemed to make it as far as the space behind the ad boards, while a good few didn't even get that far, managing only to collide with the back of people's heads, reminding me of the time I got hit in the head with a coin at a Victory game.
At the end of the day, the man of the match was clearly the referee, who bucked the trend of all referees being rubbish all the time, what with having an excellent game all around, especially in not falling for pretty much any of the diving antics of the Socceroos. Remember the days when we were all self-righteous about the diving and feigning of injuries of Asian teams? Well judging from last night's match, that's gone completely out the window now, as we have now become the petulant equals of our region's finest in this matter. Welcome to modern Australian football.
Thursday, 1 March 2012
Iraq! Iraq! Makedonia! More mingling with the mainstream
Trundled down to Swan Street yesterday for the Socceroos match against the Saudis. This post will likely have much the same content as this post last year, so if you're not keen on me repeating myself, you can skip this article.
Ah, the semi-dead rubber. That is, it was a dead rubber for the Socceroos, but for the visiting Saudis, there was everything at stake - they needed to win. I suppose there was some incentive for our side as well - apart from fringe players seeking to impress, it'd be fair to say that if there was one team that we'd rather not progress to the next stage, it'd be the Saudis, rather than Oman or Thailand.
Quite a decent crowd in attendance, about 25,000 people, quite good for such an occasion with a kickoff also pushed back an hour - on a school night! Plenty of kids in the crowd, too. If there was a rule about no club colours, it didn't get through to some. I had my South beanie on, and while most of the crowd were arrayed in some sort of green and/or gold merchandise, there were the usual suspects in their club tops, both A-League and overseas.
Credit to the bloke with the vintage Manchester City shirt with Danny Tiatto's name on the back. That was one bloke who'd obviously been following that team before City's Arab ship came in, when they were a team that went up and down several divisions and were just another side of no consequence. Speaking of Danny Tiatto, he was awarded some sort of accolade at half time, but the only club mentioned was his junior side Bulleen. A shame, as that Melbourne Knights side he was such a crucial leg chopping part of, was probably the best Aussie club team I've ever seen.
The Green and Gold Army may just as well have not been there for most of the match. I was in the corner about a bay across from them, and barely a peep was heard from their direction until Archie Thompson got some sort of whisper in his ear while he was warming up in the first half, and then nothing again really until we scored that barrage of goals at the end. They were put to shame by the Saudi away end (though really, it should be Saudi away corner, as they were shoved into the metaphorical crawl space on the Yarra side of the stadium). At least the Saudis had an excuse for eventually losing their voice - their team got done like a dinner.
At least the Mexican wave and Aussie, Aussie, Aussie chants didn't come in until the very end. I felt also that the crowd couldn't read the game. Fair enough, they booed what they considered were soft fouls, the occasional milking of a foul and the obligatory rolling on the ground. But we've been in Asia for something like 5-6 years now? Time to just get used to it, maybe even play along with it. Me and Gains were just laughing at both the Saudi antics and the crowd's reaction. The WWE should look into marketing to this crowd, they fell for that heel routine like nobody's business. The absolute best moment was when the Saudi player felled himself on the verge of halftime, when they were 2-1 up. Out comes the stretcher, eventually - of course within ten seconds of being stretchered off, the bloke gets up. Crowd goes nuts. Classic stuff.
Rudimentary clearances and interceptions were being cheered like it was Simon Prestigiacomo making a last ditch spoil on Warren Treadrea in his prime after Presti's deceptive closing speed made up a five metre gap. Case in point - David Carney came on late, had the ball kicked into him in a failed attempt to dribble past him, and the bloke behind me burst out with 'classy stuff, Dave!'. Indeed every player was a champion to this bloke. No questioning of the need to play a bunch of 30 year olds, or why Mark Schwartzer flew halfway around the world for his match, or why we played with four centrebacks, why we couldn't figure out the Saudis' fairly obvious plan for most of the match, why we couldn't hit a five metre pass etc. That's not to say that the Socceroos didn't improve as the game wore on, and the stereotypically mentally fragile Saudis collapsed in tremendous fashion. And it was nice to be at an exciting and entertaining national team fixture - thanks for nothing, Pim.
Still, as entertaining as the game was, crowd watching was still just as good. There was the bloke with the A3 sheet of paper with Arabic text scrawled in permanent marker. Not sure if his message got on screen. There was the young woman with the dyed blonde hair and tight shorts, wearing a Saudi flag around her shoulders - good thing there were no mutaween there. And then there was was the bloke with the modern Iraqi flag, who seemed to enjoy the win more on two fronts. They may have got rid of the sectarianism that held the national league back, but its heartbeat is still kicking on at some level in the present. Which is more than can be said for Richmond station, which had no electricity in its station building before kickoff and was still pitch black at 11pm.
Ah, the semi-dead rubber. That is, it was a dead rubber for the Socceroos, but for the visiting Saudis, there was everything at stake - they needed to win. I suppose there was some incentive for our side as well - apart from fringe players seeking to impress, it'd be fair to say that if there was one team that we'd rather not progress to the next stage, it'd be the Saudis, rather than Oman or Thailand.
Quite a decent crowd in attendance, about 25,000 people, quite good for such an occasion with a kickoff also pushed back an hour - on a school night! Plenty of kids in the crowd, too. If there was a rule about no club colours, it didn't get through to some. I had my South beanie on, and while most of the crowd were arrayed in some sort of green and/or gold merchandise, there were the usual suspects in their club tops, both A-League and overseas.
Credit to the bloke with the vintage Manchester City shirt with Danny Tiatto's name on the back. That was one bloke who'd obviously been following that team before City's Arab ship came in, when they were a team that went up and down several divisions and were just another side of no consequence. Speaking of Danny Tiatto, he was awarded some sort of accolade at half time, but the only club mentioned was his junior side Bulleen. A shame, as that Melbourne Knights side he was such a crucial leg chopping part of, was probably the best Aussie club team I've ever seen.
The Green and Gold Army may just as well have not been there for most of the match. I was in the corner about a bay across from them, and barely a peep was heard from their direction until Archie Thompson got some sort of whisper in his ear while he was warming up in the first half, and then nothing again really until we scored that barrage of goals at the end. They were put to shame by the Saudi away end (though really, it should be Saudi away corner, as they were shoved into the metaphorical crawl space on the Yarra side of the stadium). At least the Saudis had an excuse for eventually losing their voice - their team got done like a dinner.
At least the Mexican wave and Aussie, Aussie, Aussie chants didn't come in until the very end. I felt also that the crowd couldn't read the game. Fair enough, they booed what they considered were soft fouls, the occasional milking of a foul and the obligatory rolling on the ground. But we've been in Asia for something like 5-6 years now? Time to just get used to it, maybe even play along with it. Me and Gains were just laughing at both the Saudi antics and the crowd's reaction. The WWE should look into marketing to this crowd, they fell for that heel routine like nobody's business. The absolute best moment was when the Saudi player felled himself on the verge of halftime, when they were 2-1 up. Out comes the stretcher, eventually - of course within ten seconds of being stretchered off, the bloke gets up. Crowd goes nuts. Classic stuff.
Rudimentary clearances and interceptions were being cheered like it was Simon Prestigiacomo making a last ditch spoil on Warren Treadrea in his prime after Presti's deceptive closing speed made up a five metre gap. Case in point - David Carney came on late, had the ball kicked into him in a failed attempt to dribble past him, and the bloke behind me burst out with 'classy stuff, Dave!'. Indeed every player was a champion to this bloke. No questioning of the need to play a bunch of 30 year olds, or why Mark Schwartzer flew halfway around the world for his match, or why we played with four centrebacks, why we couldn't figure out the Saudis' fairly obvious plan for most of the match, why we couldn't hit a five metre pass etc. That's not to say that the Socceroos didn't improve as the game wore on, and the stereotypically mentally fragile Saudis collapsed in tremendous fashion. And it was nice to be at an exciting and entertaining national team fixture - thanks for nothing, Pim.
Still, as entertaining as the game was, crowd watching was still just as good. There was the bloke with the A3 sheet of paper with Arabic text scrawled in permanent marker. Not sure if his message got on screen. There was the young woman with the dyed blonde hair and tight shorts, wearing a Saudi flag around her shoulders - good thing there were no mutaween there. And then there was was the bloke with the modern Iraqi flag, who seemed to enjoy the win more on two fronts. They may have got rid of the sectarianism that held the national league back, but its heartbeat is still kicking on at some level in the present. Which is more than can be said for Richmond station, which had no electricity in its station building before kickoff and was still pitch black at 11pm.
 |
| Iraq! Iraq! Ma-ke-do-ni-a! This fan got two wins for the price of one. Photo: Gains. |
Monday, 1 November 2010
Off-season digressions - international rugby league
This is a demographic/sociological/ephemeral digression from almost everything this blog has stood for over the past three years or so. It has naught to do with South, or soccer, so it's OK if you decide to skip this entry. If you still haven't dropped off, I warn you also that the following is all very convoluted, but I've tried to break it up into sections.
Preface - State of Confusion
Earlier this year, I took my buddy Gains to his first Australian Rules game, the Queens Birthday clash between Melbourne and Collingwood. It seemed a good choice. No soccer that weekend, big crowd expected (or average crowd by Collingwood standards), but not a terribly hyped game and neither side at that stage really turning it on. It was a pretty rubbish game in the end, though the fact that it was a close game (a draw), gave it a little bit of an edge. Still, the poor lad was utterly confused by what was going on.
Of course, I tried to explain what was happening. That came up a treat when a mass of players dived on a loose ball on the Southern Stand side of the ground, the umpire picked out a free kick (for us I think, and by us I mean the somehow 2010 premiership Pies), and I was only able to explain the decision by remarking that probably no one in the ground, umpire included, knew how he'd arrived at his decision. Enjoyment was certainly diminished by factors such as these. As I've maintained for a long time, it's a game with its own stupid rhythm, and if you ain't born into it, it's a very hard rhythm to become accustomed to.
Yesterday, it was my turn to feel all discombobulated.
My History With Rugby League
Until the recent introduction of One HD, unless you had a subscription television service, as an Australian sports fan you've been reliant on what the free to air networks deem commercially and culturally appropriate for you to see. Which means that, if for example you're a rugby league fan in Victoria, you only get to see midnight replays of NRL games, except for the grand final and possibly one other game during the season, and perhaps some live State of Origin fixtures.
It's not much. So unless you're already dedicated - and in a Melbourne rugby league context, it would be a fair assumption that you're less likely to be a convert as opposed to having been born into an ex-pat rugby league culture of some sort - it can be difficult to understand the culture underpinning the game, the tactics, and even the rules themselves.
Which is not to say that I don't understand the basic rules and the gist of the game. I have picked up something from Channel Nine's (at best) scatter-shot programming of the game into Victorian loungerooms. And I have a bit of an understanding of the history of the game and its development, even internationally. But like many Australian rules following Victorians, I still can't find an 'in' to the game - but unlike a fair few other commentators, I'm interested in trying to find reasons other than Victorian parochialism for why I think this game won't take off here.
So it was in that spirit that I took up an offer of attending my first rugby league match yesterday, which happened to be not a club game, but Australia vs England at Swan Street Stadium. Turns out our tickets were for third row seats at the Yarra end. Not that there's a bad seat in the house in this stadium, but we were close enough to have our eyebrows singed from the half-arsed flame oriented pyro show before the game. But despite the close proximity to the field, it did not make for a good initiation.
Lollies, Chocolates, Donuts and Chips
With kids, the general rule of thumb with them seems to be that you wean them to spectatorship slowly, and mostly with bribery - chips and lollies being the main currency. When attempting to initiate an adult into a new spectator sport, it's a different story. They already have all their preferences and allegiances. And thus the conversion gimmick of choice seems to be, the bigger the game, the higher the quality of the combatants, the more likely one is to succeed in gaining a new follower.
Once I would have followed that same kind of logic, but my thinking on the matter has shifted considerably over the years. If looked at dispassionately, most sporting contests are predictable affairs with mostly predetermined results, even if the methods may vary. It is allegiances to teams and fixations on the end result that blinds us to the massive letdown that these games are from a neutral's entertainment point of view. So if this is the case - and I believe it to be so - why not seek to initiate someone with a lesser fixture, especially as it will be the modus operandi for the rest of their spectator career?
International contests are not the pinnacle of rugby league. England is equivalent to a second tier side in a sport which internationally barely has one tier - the Australians with only New Zealand as a near competitor. And the visitors were fortunate that the Kangaroos were in cruise control for much of this game, otherwise the English would have struggled to score at all. And it rained as well, meaning the game contained several elementary handling errors. And the crowd was flat sounding, with even most of the tries having the celebratory sting taken out of them.
But this I felt, despite the protestations of the league folk I was with, was more true to the nature of the game as it exists week to week. Not every game is a blockbuster, tight contest, or high quality affair. Most aren't, and thus I feel that saw I'd witnessed something authentic, despite, or perhaps rather due to what I perceived to be its pedestrian quality.
Against Modern Everything
There are many things that bother me about modern sport. Right near the top of that list is the desire that the game itself no longer be the centrepiece. It wasn't just the music played after all the tries, drowning out any possible fan reaction, which is not unique to rugby league. And I can deal with the incessant advertising before the game and during the half time break, if only they'd turn the volume down just a little so I don't have to shout to the person next to me in order to be heard. For some reason, they thought it'd be a good idea to have Brian McFadden sing some songs off his new album, and have some woman sing at halftime. Little chance to even start a punch on with the English supporters in the ground.
Which brings me to the English. There were quite a few at the ground and the pubs around town - the most logical explanation being that they were cricket tourists who had arrived early for the upcoming Ashes series. There were flags dotted round here and there, and the odd English rugby league jersey as well, but seldom have I seen such a forlorn bunch of supporters, knowing they would get spanked even before the team got onto the plane. I wish I could say it endeared me to them but the effect of their fatalism was both disheartening and ludicrous.
Degrees of Altitude and Comprehension
Back to the game, it made a little more sense sitting near the top of the stand where the side to side movement was easier to see, but the game is missing something. I'd get rid of the ten metre rule for a start. The game needs more kicking, and for a supposedly territorial game, its rather more about maintaining possession while marching it up the field withing a certain amount of tackles while being given a fair amount of breathing space to do so. They should also get rid of the video referee, let him go with his gut and if it's wrong, it's wrong, and just tally those mistakes as part of the great narrative arc. The big tackles that I was promised also did not eventuate. Not that there wasn't big tackling, but there wasn't that sense of exhilaration that one was meant to feel.
Despite not understanding a great many things about the game, I did manage to have one minor breakthrough. Inevitably when watching a Channel Nine broadcast of the match, Ray 'Rabbits' Warren is the chief commentator. His style of getting excited at seemingly random, innocuous moments of play - innocuous in that the plays Rabbits gets excited about seem identical to each other, at least to a person uneducated in the game such as myself - finally made sense. The way I came to this conclusion was in the random outbursts of excitement from the crowd. Had they seen a gap, a movement, a tackle that I failed to comprehend? Possibly, but I was not able to pick up a particular pattern.
Conclusion
I've struggled since late yesterday (not helped by the Flinders Street Station chip wagon closing moments before I could gorge on deep fried starch and my choice of condiments) to pinpoint the thoughts and find the appropriate words to explain my very 'meh' and perplexed reaction to the game, and further to that, reasons beyond parochialism. I'm disappointed to find that I have failed, and not necessarily because I've failed to overcome mine or everyone else's parochialism. I still feel that there is a deeper answer beyond a cultural slant. I just haven't been able to isolate it from that factor entirely yet. Work into this problem may continue into the future.
Preface - State of Confusion
Earlier this year, I took my buddy Gains to his first Australian Rules game, the Queens Birthday clash between Melbourne and Collingwood. It seemed a good choice. No soccer that weekend, big crowd expected (or average crowd by Collingwood standards), but not a terribly hyped game and neither side at that stage really turning it on. It was a pretty rubbish game in the end, though the fact that it was a close game (a draw), gave it a little bit of an edge. Still, the poor lad was utterly confused by what was going on.
Of course, I tried to explain what was happening. That came up a treat when a mass of players dived on a loose ball on the Southern Stand side of the ground, the umpire picked out a free kick (for us I think, and by us I mean the somehow 2010 premiership Pies), and I was only able to explain the decision by remarking that probably no one in the ground, umpire included, knew how he'd arrived at his decision. Enjoyment was certainly diminished by factors such as these. As I've maintained for a long time, it's a game with its own stupid rhythm, and if you ain't born into it, it's a very hard rhythm to become accustomed to.
Yesterday, it was my turn to feel all discombobulated.
My History With Rugby League
Until the recent introduction of One HD, unless you had a subscription television service, as an Australian sports fan you've been reliant on what the free to air networks deem commercially and culturally appropriate for you to see. Which means that, if for example you're a rugby league fan in Victoria, you only get to see midnight replays of NRL games, except for the grand final and possibly one other game during the season, and perhaps some live State of Origin fixtures.
It's not much. So unless you're already dedicated - and in a Melbourne rugby league context, it would be a fair assumption that you're less likely to be a convert as opposed to having been born into an ex-pat rugby league culture of some sort - it can be difficult to understand the culture underpinning the game, the tactics, and even the rules themselves.
Which is not to say that I don't understand the basic rules and the gist of the game. I have picked up something from Channel Nine's (at best) scatter-shot programming of the game into Victorian loungerooms. And I have a bit of an understanding of the history of the game and its development, even internationally. But like many Australian rules following Victorians, I still can't find an 'in' to the game - but unlike a fair few other commentators, I'm interested in trying to find reasons other than Victorian parochialism for why I think this game won't take off here.
So it was in that spirit that I took up an offer of attending my first rugby league match yesterday, which happened to be not a club game, but Australia vs England at Swan Street Stadium. Turns out our tickets were for third row seats at the Yarra end. Not that there's a bad seat in the house in this stadium, but we were close enough to have our eyebrows singed from the half-arsed flame oriented pyro show before the game. But despite the close proximity to the field, it did not make for a good initiation.
Lollies, Chocolates, Donuts and Chips
With kids, the general rule of thumb with them seems to be that you wean them to spectatorship slowly, and mostly with bribery - chips and lollies being the main currency. When attempting to initiate an adult into a new spectator sport, it's a different story. They already have all their preferences and allegiances. And thus the conversion gimmick of choice seems to be, the bigger the game, the higher the quality of the combatants, the more likely one is to succeed in gaining a new follower.
Once I would have followed that same kind of logic, but my thinking on the matter has shifted considerably over the years. If looked at dispassionately, most sporting contests are predictable affairs with mostly predetermined results, even if the methods may vary. It is allegiances to teams and fixations on the end result that blinds us to the massive letdown that these games are from a neutral's entertainment point of view. So if this is the case - and I believe it to be so - why not seek to initiate someone with a lesser fixture, especially as it will be the modus operandi for the rest of their spectator career?
International contests are not the pinnacle of rugby league. England is equivalent to a second tier side in a sport which internationally barely has one tier - the Australians with only New Zealand as a near competitor. And the visitors were fortunate that the Kangaroos were in cruise control for much of this game, otherwise the English would have struggled to score at all. And it rained as well, meaning the game contained several elementary handling errors. And the crowd was flat sounding, with even most of the tries having the celebratory sting taken out of them.
But this I felt, despite the protestations of the league folk I was with, was more true to the nature of the game as it exists week to week. Not every game is a blockbuster, tight contest, or high quality affair. Most aren't, and thus I feel that saw I'd witnessed something authentic, despite, or perhaps rather due to what I perceived to be its pedestrian quality.
Against Modern Everything
There are many things that bother me about modern sport. Right near the top of that list is the desire that the game itself no longer be the centrepiece. It wasn't just the music played after all the tries, drowning out any possible fan reaction, which is not unique to rugby league. And I can deal with the incessant advertising before the game and during the half time break, if only they'd turn the volume down just a little so I don't have to shout to the person next to me in order to be heard. For some reason, they thought it'd be a good idea to have Brian McFadden sing some songs off his new album, and have some woman sing at halftime. Little chance to even start a punch on with the English supporters in the ground.
Which brings me to the English. There were quite a few at the ground and the pubs around town - the most logical explanation being that they were cricket tourists who had arrived early for the upcoming Ashes series. There were flags dotted round here and there, and the odd English rugby league jersey as well, but seldom have I seen such a forlorn bunch of supporters, knowing they would get spanked even before the team got onto the plane. I wish I could say it endeared me to them but the effect of their fatalism was both disheartening and ludicrous.
Degrees of Altitude and Comprehension
Back to the game, it made a little more sense sitting near the top of the stand where the side to side movement was easier to see, but the game is missing something. I'd get rid of the ten metre rule for a start. The game needs more kicking, and for a supposedly territorial game, its rather more about maintaining possession while marching it up the field withing a certain amount of tackles while being given a fair amount of breathing space to do so. They should also get rid of the video referee, let him go with his gut and if it's wrong, it's wrong, and just tally those mistakes as part of the great narrative arc. The big tackles that I was promised also did not eventuate. Not that there wasn't big tackling, but there wasn't that sense of exhilaration that one was meant to feel.
Despite not understanding a great many things about the game, I did manage to have one minor breakthrough. Inevitably when watching a Channel Nine broadcast of the match, Ray 'Rabbits' Warren is the chief commentator. His style of getting excited at seemingly random, innocuous moments of play - innocuous in that the plays Rabbits gets excited about seem identical to each other, at least to a person uneducated in the game such as myself - finally made sense. The way I came to this conclusion was in the random outbursts of excitement from the crowd. Had they seen a gap, a movement, a tackle that I failed to comprehend? Possibly, but I was not able to pick up a particular pattern.
Conclusion
I've struggled since late yesterday (not helped by the Flinders Street Station chip wagon closing moments before I could gorge on deep fried starch and my choice of condiments) to pinpoint the thoughts and find the appropriate words to explain my very 'meh' and perplexed reaction to the game, and further to that, reasons beyond parochialism. I'm disappointed to find that I have failed, and not necessarily because I've failed to overcome mine or everyone else's parochialism. I still feel that there is a deeper answer beyond a cultural slant. I just haven't been able to isolate it from that factor entirely yet. Work into this problem may continue into the future.
Sunday, 12 September 2010
Notes from the 2010 VPL grand final
In all honesty, I was most looking forward to attending this game because of the opportunity to see what all the fuss was about regarding the new Bubbledome Stadium. And unless I have a sudden change of heart regarding attendance of the A-League, this was set to be a very opportunity indeed.
Outside the ground, memories come flooding back, with one in particular standing out - it hasn't gotten any easier to find parking on that side of the precinct, with my crew ending up on the other side of the MCG. Walking past the food stalls around that ground, we were a little perplexed by one of the stalls selling something called Albanian marinated chicken rolls. We didn't bother sampling, with my reasoning being, if it's not cooked in a garage kitchen, it's not authentic Albanian food.
Anyway, outside the ground, it seemed like everyone that has ever been associated with Green Gully was bussed in, which meant mostly lots of juniors and their parents attending perhaps their first ever Gully game - there may have been a couple left over from their 2005 championship win, but I doubt it too much. I like the gimmick, and hopefully we can make it there next year so we can do the same, but the resulting atmosphere was dead for the entire match except for the goals. I doubt whether 90% of the Gully fans knew who any of the players were.
Speaking of random fan appearances, the Heyington Bridge Crew, or at least people resembling it, turned up to their first game in... I don't know how to count that far. Our once upon a time sorta kinda colleague and/or collaborator Neil Zimmerman was there, had a very brief chat with him. Seems in good health. Overall, seemingly very poor turnout by the Richmond faithful. Obviously they couldn't or didn't think to pull of the Green Gully juniors bus in stunt, and I know they have low numbers and there wasn't much to get excited about last night, but still a very low presence.
The game itself was pretty poor. Gully are a grinding team. Always have been when I've watched them. Yesterday they actually tried playing football, and it was somehow even more tedious to watch than their drudgery. Still, it was better than Richmond's virtual non-appearance at the game for about 70 of the alloted 93 minutes. There was no energy, no creativity, no nothing. The second goal they conceded was especially poor, with Graham Hockless dribbling a a terrible shot in from about the penalty spot - with our crew behind the goals thinking surely Richmond goalkeeper Stephen Gal (who had a terrible game in general) will at least dive to stop it going in, hell, even just walk across and pick it up, the ball rolled slowly past him after which he dived like he was going lie down on a couch.
Richmond were resorting to long balls, looked slow and uncoordinated, but the managed to pick themselves up a bit in the second half, to no avail. It seemed to me that they should have received some clear penalties, but the referees last night were clearly on Gully's side, especially the linesman on the crowd side, who kept giving thrown ins to Gully even when it seemed utterly clear they should have gone the other way. Eventually Gully got a terrible penalty awarded to them, and that was finally that. Richmond finally came up against a team that didn't waste chance after chance and didn't stick Kyle Joryeff on the right wing when what was needed was Sebastian Petrovic to shut down the game when you're 2-0 up. Ahem.
If I was to have a guess, and it would only be a guess, I reckon the crowd would have been around the 2000 mark. The figure wasn't announced unlike previous VPL grand finals that I've been to. The venue itself is fantastic, viewing quality is amazing pretty much wherever you sit, though I think elevating the stands a little more above the level of the playing field would have improved the viewing quality even further - the rows immediately behind the goals seem to suffer the most. It felt odd after so many years of traipsing around local grounds to be at a soccer match with a video scoreboard, this feeling coming despite watching Socceroos matches at Docklands and the MCG. Is this something we can look forward to at South at the new improved Lakeside? I sure hope so.
Security and amenities seemed quite all over the place though. The usual bag checks took place, but there were no cavity searches for flares. I suppose they deemed it unnecessary what with the two clubs that had reach the grand final having no hardcore ultras kulcha. There was, surprisingly, a little bit of argle bargle involving a Green Gully fan. Green Gully, the club that tells us they aren't really Maltese (or are they) had one bloke decked out in a full on Malta jacket. I'm not saying that's nor right, you can make of that what you will though. The choice of food was of course, poor. It's the VPL, but with no chevaps or souvs. I hope this isn't the future the FFV has planned for everyone, and yes I know they don't control the food outlets, but it's a pretty distressing picture of Australia's and soccer's multiculturalism when the most appealing and diverse food seems to be the usual cow(?) guts and hooves stuck in a roll or flaky pastry. The match program consisted of a single A4 sheet of paper with squad lists, and they couldn't even get that right, screwing up the number order of Green Gully's team. I'd put up a sample, but I threw mine away in disgust.
From a South watch point of view, apparently Rhodri Payne was there, but I don't remember seeing him. Fernando was there. Eddie Krncevic was there, obviously with his son playing it would be remiss of him not to attend. Jesse Krncevic did little to endear me to the possibility of taking him back to cure our striking problems. After the game and the presentations we tried getting into the MCG to watch the last quarter of the Bulldogs/Swans game, but apparently the free entry after three quarter time caper no longer exists. A pity, that. What we were left with on the night, was a lot of what could have been and what might possibly bes, and a stupid joke involving Heidelberg, Green Gully merchandise and FK Pelister. If that makes any sense whatsoever.
Outside the ground, memories come flooding back, with one in particular standing out - it hasn't gotten any easier to find parking on that side of the precinct, with my crew ending up on the other side of the MCG. Walking past the food stalls around that ground, we were a little perplexed by one of the stalls selling something called Albanian marinated chicken rolls. We didn't bother sampling, with my reasoning being, if it's not cooked in a garage kitchen, it's not authentic Albanian food.
Anyway, outside the ground, it seemed like everyone that has ever been associated with Green Gully was bussed in, which meant mostly lots of juniors and their parents attending perhaps their first ever Gully game - there may have been a couple left over from their 2005 championship win, but I doubt it too much. I like the gimmick, and hopefully we can make it there next year so we can do the same, but the resulting atmosphere was dead for the entire match except for the goals. I doubt whether 90% of the Gully fans knew who any of the players were.
Speaking of random fan appearances, the Heyington Bridge Crew, or at least people resembling it, turned up to their first game in... I don't know how to count that far. Our once upon a time sorta kinda colleague and/or collaborator Neil Zimmerman was there, had a very brief chat with him. Seems in good health. Overall, seemingly very poor turnout by the Richmond faithful. Obviously they couldn't or didn't think to pull of the Green Gully juniors bus in stunt, and I know they have low numbers and there wasn't much to get excited about last night, but still a very low presence.
The game itself was pretty poor. Gully are a grinding team. Always have been when I've watched them. Yesterday they actually tried playing football, and it was somehow even more tedious to watch than their drudgery. Still, it was better than Richmond's virtual non-appearance at the game for about 70 of the alloted 93 minutes. There was no energy, no creativity, no nothing. The second goal they conceded was especially poor, with Graham Hockless dribbling a a terrible shot in from about the penalty spot - with our crew behind the goals thinking surely Richmond goalkeeper Stephen Gal (who had a terrible game in general) will at least dive to stop it going in, hell, even just walk across and pick it up, the ball rolled slowly past him after which he dived like he was going lie down on a couch.
Richmond were resorting to long balls, looked slow and uncoordinated, but the managed to pick themselves up a bit in the second half, to no avail. It seemed to me that they should have received some clear penalties, but the referees last night were clearly on Gully's side, especially the linesman on the crowd side, who kept giving thrown ins to Gully even when it seemed utterly clear they should have gone the other way. Eventually Gully got a terrible penalty awarded to them, and that was finally that. Richmond finally came up against a team that didn't waste chance after chance and didn't stick Kyle Joryeff on the right wing when what was needed was Sebastian Petrovic to shut down the game when you're 2-0 up. Ahem.
If I was to have a guess, and it would only be a guess, I reckon the crowd would have been around the 2000 mark. The figure wasn't announced unlike previous VPL grand finals that I've been to. The venue itself is fantastic, viewing quality is amazing pretty much wherever you sit, though I think elevating the stands a little more above the level of the playing field would have improved the viewing quality even further - the rows immediately behind the goals seem to suffer the most. It felt odd after so many years of traipsing around local grounds to be at a soccer match with a video scoreboard, this feeling coming despite watching Socceroos matches at Docklands and the MCG. Is this something we can look forward to at South at the new improved Lakeside? I sure hope so.
Security and amenities seemed quite all over the place though. The usual bag checks took place, but there were no cavity searches for flares. I suppose they deemed it unnecessary what with the two clubs that had reach the grand final having no hardcore ultras kulcha. There was, surprisingly, a little bit of argle bargle involving a Green Gully fan. Green Gully, the club that tells us they aren't really Maltese (or are they) had one bloke decked out in a full on Malta jacket. I'm not saying that's nor right, you can make of that what you will though. The choice of food was of course, poor. It's the VPL, but with no chevaps or souvs. I hope this isn't the future the FFV has planned for everyone, and yes I know they don't control the food outlets, but it's a pretty distressing picture of Australia's and soccer's multiculturalism when the most appealing and diverse food seems to be the usual cow(?) guts and hooves stuck in a roll or flaky pastry. The match program consisted of a single A4 sheet of paper with squad lists, and they couldn't even get that right, screwing up the number order of Green Gully's team. I'd put up a sample, but I threw mine away in disgust.
From a South watch point of view, apparently Rhodri Payne was there, but I don't remember seeing him. Fernando was there. Eddie Krncevic was there, obviously with his son playing it would be remiss of him not to attend. Jesse Krncevic did little to endear me to the possibility of taking him back to cure our striking problems. After the game and the presentations we tried getting into the MCG to watch the last quarter of the Bulldogs/Swans game, but apparently the free entry after three quarter time caper no longer exists. A pity, that. What we were left with on the night, was a lot of what could have been and what might possibly bes, and a stupid joke involving Heidelberg, Green Gully merchandise and FK Pelister. If that makes any sense whatsoever.
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