Just enjoy the fact that we're still on top - South Melbourne 2 Port Melbourne 1

It was cold. It was wet. The ground was muddy. The crowd was small. And then we copped the opening goal.

Ten minutes in Zois Galanopoulos - was he on our books at one stage? Maybe just a youth player or prospective recruit - took advantage of a counter attack opportunity from yet another defensive cock up and scored past the hesitant Jason Saldaris. Perhaps out of embarrassment (OK, more likely a technical malfunction), we did not put his name up on the scoreboard.

Speaking of the scoreboard, it looked like it had some dead pixels. Either that, or some water had managed to seep in through part of the protective layering. I don't know, I'm not au fait with these things.

Anyway,  it looked like it was going to be another one of those days, but we managed to get the equaliser within a couple of minutes, with excellent lead up play leading to a Milos Lujic goal. Then the game descended into a slow and methodical slog, with Port sitting back trying hit us on the counter and us trying to not get done on the counter. Late on in the first half Iqi Jawadi got fouled, apparently inside the box but there's at least one Hellas person who says that it wasn't, and we got the penalty and then came the jitters as Jamie Reed stepped up to take it, with memories of his squandered spot kick from a couple of weeks ago against Goulburn Valley Suns still fresh in the mind.

Thankfully he actually scored the goal, and we went into halftime leading the game. The most remarkable thing of the match then happened, and we started turning it on a little bit, and truly, we should have absolutely buried them. The fact that we didn't, and instead being forced into having to endure a seemingly never ending half hour of not being able to get the ball, but also Port not being able to do anything with all that possession (but maybe all it would take would be one stupid moment) will really stump the armchair football psychologists out there. Is this win reflective of a hard fought, grinding back to business kind of mentality, which would either set us in good stead for a tough game against Green Gully, or was it just more evidence of a team which has lost its way, forgetting how to move in for the kill? Had we won by 4-1 instead, would that have seen as us getting our mojo back with the Knights game being an unfortunate albeit costly statistical outlier, or would it see us get cocky and get likely to be smashed to pieces by a mentally tougher Gully side?

I suppose that's for the retrospective analysts out there to figure out, once any one of those things actually happens. In the meantime new signing Shaun Timmins made his South debut - he had been due to play against the Knights in the midweek cup clash, but his transfer was reputedly held up for purportedly stupid reasons - replacing Brad Norton. I didn't think Timmins put in a better show than what Norton would have, but it's only been one game. Stephen Hatzikostas also started, in place of Tyson Holmes. For some reason I now expect this to be a regular occurrence, as Norton and Holmes were the two remaining players who were with South at the start of the 2013 season, and Chris Taylor is probably keen to move on from the horror of that era, even though there were some good times oif people care to remember them.

While of course the response of the fans to any change in our style of play will cross into the absurd - even if it's only because we care so much, while mostly understanding so little - there is serious confusion as to what's going on out there at the moment. It looks like we're halfway through the process of transforming ourselves into something new - not necessarily better or worse, but different nonetheless, as we begin to play a short passing game, spreading it around the back, including noticeably giving Saldaris plenty of touches of the ball, instead of doing what we did on Friday and keeping it away from him as if he had girl germs, eeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww - and looking for gaps in the opposition defence rather than trying to take them on and get them on the back foot.

The fact that very likely the same people who were bemoaning the more direct and supposed long ball game are now criticising this new fangled trend of shorter passes is probably not lost on too many people, even those right in the thick of this apparent double standard. Maybe it's a vaguely direct game plan filled with mid-range distance passing that will make peace reign in the stands? Me, I just think it's a bit late to jump on the tiki-taka bandwagon now, especially since we've just seen it apparently roll out of the world cup station with 'NOT IN SERVICE' blaring back at us in neon lettering. Let's be honest - the only thing that will get close to making South fans happy at this point in 2014 will be taking out the NPL title, and even then we'll be complaining about how we should've won it earlier, how we should have made the FFA Cup, and where's the damn social club already?

It was the first time in three attempts that we had beaten Port at Lakeside, following the 2012 and 2013 disasters. It was also the first time - last year's Dockerty Cup quarter final against Preston excepted - that we had come back to win a game after conceding the first goal since we beat Richmond 3-2 at Lakeside last year. In addition to that, Heidelberg managed to hold Oakleigh to a 1-1 draw despite being down to ten men for 65 minutes. So now we're back out to a six point lead at the top of the table. Don't ask me how long that will last, but right at this moment I'd sure as hell rather be where we are rather than where Oakleigh is.

Next week
Green Gully at home, who are in an oldschool Green Gully frame of mind at the moment.

Maybe you can explain it to me, part 1
So, we have Jamie Reed, James Musa, and now Shaun Timmins as potential visa players. Which one isn't and what excuse have we used to work our way around this problem?

Maybe you can explain it to me, part 2
Each NPL squad is meant to have a maximum of twenty players in its senior squad. So far we've signed Steven Hatzikostas, Shaun Timmins and Dion Kirk. We've let go Graham Hockless and Slaven Vramesevic. That doesn't add up. Unless weve got Kirk solely in the under 20s squad, and planning to play him only the allowed a maximum of five times in the league, without the n ebing forced to add him to the senior list.

Beanies!
Back in stock. I bought one.

Cool story, bro! department
While I was getting a haircut the other day, 1984 NSL championship winner, South Melbourne Hellas legend and current Doxa Yarraville coach Charlie Egan stopped in for chat. My barber (and also the current/former first aid dude at Yarravile), who I've been seeing for over 25 yeas and knows I'm a Hellas fan had the nerve to ask me if I knew who Egan was. True story.

What's going on back there?
The function centre was booked out for a Jewish wedding(?), and a smattering of that event's patrons wandered out onto the balcony to watch our game. Too bad there wasn't a bigger crowd on our part - we could have had a better chance of getting some more noise into their wedding video.

More Shoot Farken write ups
Continuing off where we left last week, here are some more of these

• Germany vs Ghana, Nigeria vs Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Korea vs Algeria, USA vs Portugal
• Australia vs Spain, Croatia vs Mexico
• Italy vs Uruguay, Greece vs Cote d'Ivoire, France vs Ecuador, Russia vs Algeria

Around the grounds
Welcome to the future
The day was windy and cold, the teams mid-table and mediocre, the reserves match borderline unwatchable. But at least there was this:

At @AEPAOK vs Western Suburbs, where the main point of interest today is the installation of a new big screen TV. pic.twitter.com/ZIaxk6AVk8
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) June 28, 2014

It's been a long time since I've seen so many people in that social club. Suburbs won the seniors match 3-2.

Final thought
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today. Why isn’t anything happening in the senate? Why do the senators sit there without legislating?             Because the barbarians are coming today.             What laws can the senators make now?             Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating. Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?             Because the barbarians are coming today             and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.             He has even prepared a scroll to give him,             replete with titles, with imposing names. Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold?             Because the barbarians are coming today             and things like that dazzle the barbarians. Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usual to make their speeches, say what they have to say?             Because the barbarians are coming today             and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking. Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion? (How serious people’s faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home so lost in thought?             Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.             And some who have just returned from the border say             there are no barbarians any longer. And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution.

Waiting for the Barbarians, by CP Cavafy

And God said... I'll get back to you on Monday

Considering how fractured and unwieldy this post has become over the course of the day, it's worthwhile I think to begin with the clarity provided by CP Cavafy:

Our efforts are those of men prone to disaster;
our efforts are like those of the Trojans.
We just begin to get somewhere,
gain a little confidence,
grow almost bold and hopeful,

when something always comes up to stop us:
Achilles leaps out of the trench in front of us
and terrifies us with his violent shouting.

Our efforts are like those of the Trojans.
We think we’ll change our luck
by being resolute and daring,
so we move outside ready to fight.

But when the great crisis comes,
our boldness and resolution vanish;
our spirit falters, paralyzed,
and we scurry around the walls
trying to save ourselves by running away.

Yet we’re sure to fail. Up there,
high on the walls, the dirge has already begun.
They’re mourning the memory, the aura of our days.
Priam and Hecuba mourn for us bitterly.

CP Cavafy, Trojans, translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

Relax - can't you see how eerily calm it is?
So, it appears as if the lull in proceedings following last year's FFA intervention, and the subsequent dropping of the court proceedings by the Coalition of the Non-Willing, was truly just the eye of the storm.

As the silence surrounding the NPL extended into February - with the exception of a few recalcitrants who were either warning of the doom yet to come or calling the coalition figureheads and their clubs sell outs - the only certain thing was uncertainty.

Then, backed by a smattering of facts, the rumours started flowing in. The facts were that 37 entities had applied. Though not everyone showed their hand, they ranged from the usual VPL and previously already committed suspects to smaller and, on the face of it at least, more dubious entities.

Me, I'm not ashamed to admit that I scoffed when I saw Avondale Heights (among others) noting their intention to apply. That's not a slur on that club, because doubtless they've done good things there in recent times. But all the usual questions of grounds and money and everything else made it hard for me to take their fast-forwarded ambitions seriously.

And besides, even though the criteria is not as stringent as it was under the FFV's original plan, surely it would still be too high for most of the entities putting their name forward? And isn't that what the independent selection panel is there for? And surely the FFV would want to limit the amount of teams to make it a truly 'elite' competition? We'll come back to those points later.

There is nothing more to buy and no monthly fees of any kind. Call now, seats are limited!
And then yesterday, as the FFV starting informing teams of the success (or otherwise - there was no word from the latter) of their application ahead of today's major announcement, it seemed like nearly everyone who applied managed to get in.

Rather than the 'elite' league this was supposed to become - whatever 'elite' means to you, and whether you take that concept as it exists here even half seriously - the kinds and numbers of teams claiming that they are in is sending this process to even greater depths of incompetence.

Rather than a select group of fully funded, venue compliant organisations making the grade, the FFV has shown its process to be akin to a property investment seminar or, even worse, some sort of timeshare company peddling an exaggerated offer of a lifetime, and I'm starting to wonder, did most of the applicants only rock up because they thought they were getting a free lunch?

Intermission

The FFV website earlier today. Picture stolen from the Football Chaos twitter feed.

During the silence, speculation grew and mutated accordingly, ramping up in the last couple of days to fever pitch. These guys are in. These guys are out. These guys didn't bid. This is how it's going to be. Thirty clubs in one division where everyone plays each other once, like an apertura with no clausura. Two divisions split into south/east and north/west. No Melbourne Knights, but every other Croatian club worth its salt, in. Clubs turning on each other. Furious text messages coming through, including one where the FFV are portrayed as the limbless Black Knight from Monty Python's Quest For the Holy Grail, incapacitated but fighting on regardless.

And like the infamous Garcin, Inès and Estelle of No Exit, we followers of Victorian soccer surrendered to the panic of this Second Empire furniture filled hell, by torturing each other with manipulative remarks, while assuming that the real torture is yet to come. L'enfer c'est les autres and all that, and while I'm not saying Sartre doesn't make a good point, but his vision of hell is limited compared to the Tartarus we live in.

Anyway, as for me today, I talked about lunch (Lebanese pizza with shanklish and tomato), and pleaded with the FFV that if they hurried up, I wouldn't post something so hysterical (then reminds himself that lying makes baby Jesus cry). I also picked up a smattering of new Twitter follows, which is nice. Welcome aboard fellow travellers. Even the Federation Starship USS Voyager had more of an idea of where it was and where it was going.

What we've actually ended up with - for now
Well, after waiting all day, the FFV managed to sneak in their NPL announcement a minute earlier than their usual time. So, let's be grateful they got it in at 4:58 instead of 4:59. I think they can cancel that efficiency review now.

However because of internal and behind the scenes wrangling - which we can't go into too much detail about, seeing a lot of it is very speculative, but it apparently involves even more FFA headkicking - today's announcement is at best, half an announcement of what's happening this season.

So what's the actual deal? Well, as mentioned earlier, we did have several clubs yesterday trumpeting the fact that they were in, and a huge amount of rumour and innuendo.

The FFV has, at the close of business today, announced those teams who will be granted NPL licences if they wish to take up that offer, without announcing a league strcuture.

How they quite go about creating a league structure - to be announced next week - when they still won't know for sure whether everyone who has been offered a licence will take it up until a fortnight's time, nor whether the constituents of most of these clubs have approved their clubs ambitions, is anyone's guess. We won't even see the fixtures for three more weeks,a dn the actual NPL rules for more four weeks.

The FFV"s media release is below. We're in, if that's all that matters to you.

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Media Release

Friday 7 February 2014

FFV ANNOUNCES NPL LICENCES FOR 2014

Football Federation Victoria (FFV) today announces that 30 National Premier Leagues (NPL) licences will be offered to the following clubs/entities commencing this season:

• Avondale Heights
• Ballarat Red Devils
• Bendigo Amateur Soccer League
• Bentleigh Greens
• Box Hill United
• Brunswick City
• Dandenong City
• Dandenong Thunder
• Eastern Lions
• FC Bulleen Lions
• Goulburn Valley Suns
• Green Gully Cavaliers
• Heidelberg United
• Hume City
• Kingston City
• Melbourne Knights
• Moreland Zebras
• North Geelong Warriors
• Northcote City
• Oakleigh Cannons
• Pascoe Vale
• Port Melbourne Sharks
• Richmond
• South Melbourne
• Springvale White Eagles
• St Albans Saints
• Sunshine George Cross
• Surf Coast
• Werribee City
• Whittlesea Ranges

All of these clubs/entities will be required to confirm their participation by returning a signed licence agreement to FFV by 5pm on Wednesday 19 February.

In addition to the licences listed above that will be offered, FFV will offer a licence to Eastern Jets and Border FC to start in the 2015 season.

“FFV recognises the tremendous level of effort and resources required to produce an NPL submission,” FFV President Nick Monteleone said.

“All applicants should be congratulated for their dedication in submitting an application. I would like to also thank the Assessment Panel for its hard work reviewing all 37 applications.

“The NPL will have a positive impact on players, coaches and club development across all of Victoria.”

The competition structure of the NPL will be announced next week, with fixtures to be released on Wednesday 26 February and NPL Rules of Competition on Tuesday 4 March.

FFV has appointed Liam Bentley, its former Competitions Manager, as the Head of NPL Victoria.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So where to now?
Well, we're still waiting. How an organisation like this keeps surviving, I'm not sure. Every time they make it to the end of a week they must be doing cartwheels. They're the best argument for legalising euthanasia Kevorkian could have asked for.

This isn't only an issue for prospective NPL teams. Every club in the FFV system has no idea - in early February - about what league they will be in, and who they'll be playing. How are teams supposed to recruit? How are they supposed to conduct proper trials for juniors? How can they set up a proper budget for the coming year?

And how will the FFV, an organisation which has enough issues managing the leagues in an ordinary year, manage to get all its fixturing and registrations done by the time the leagues would nominally start in late March? Or when the Dockerty Cup is supposed to start perhaps in mid-March, which is now just five weeks away.

Then there is the other issue - compliance. While I have perhaps unfairly singled out one club from those above, each of my readers, by themselves, without even being aware of the NPLV criteria in any meaningful depth, would be able to point to several of them and make strong cases as to why they wouldn't, shouldn't even get close to making the grade.

But the FFV has said that if they can catch up to wherever the criteria says they need to be next year, they can stay. How about, no. How about they actually get there first, and then apply? Will the FFV actually have the guts to throw clubs out that have promised to get up the necessary standards, but then failed to do so? Especially if they were clubs who have supporting the FFV no matter what crazy scheme they put forward?

And what happened to the concept of an elite system? Instead of restricting it to 24 teams - remember that the NSW NPL limits it to that, and their player catchment easily outstrips ours, let alone taking into account finances and venues - 30 teams, with the prospect of even more teams joining up next year - remembering that new metro entities (such as Eastern Jets) can only join from 2015 - and soon there'll be more elite teams than community clubs.

History lesson
Whether they split the divisions into north/west and south/east divisions, or pile 30 odd teams into the one competition, either way it will be an on field disaster. The people nominally in charge of this competition should look to the 1947 Victorian Division One season to see the kind of disaster that awaits them and all of us - unless we take into consideration two possibilities.

Firstly, that the FFV and the people it has hired to make these decisions have bought into the trendy 'results don't matter' (except when we win) mantra so completely that they honestly couldn't conceive of this as a problem.

Or secondly, that having become filled with an overdose of poisonous rage due to their humiliating backdown at the end of 2013, they've decided to hijack the whole process before driving it into the nearest chasm, taking us all with them.

Third to last thought
So, to paraphrase Tony Martin's depressing BBC correspondent guy, as the constituents of soccer in Victoria awaken to the devastation caused by this disaster, they begin the slow process of rebuilding under a nightmarish regime of terror.

Second to last thought
Well, at least they're calling the cup competition the Dockerty Cup again. I'll happily take most of the credit for that, but thanks to everyone who chipped in at some point. As Mark Boric noted however, time to get the Armstrong Cup up and going now.

Final thought
If you pitched this whole NPL saga to Oliver Stone, even he'd tell you that it was too far-fetched and implausible. Through the looking glass? We crossed that threshold years ago.