Pale Blue Dot

Seriously, I'd take a point from this game - Round 7, Green Gully vs South Melbourne

Last Time They Met

Green Gully 1

South Melbourne 0

Green Gully scored off a Tommi Tommich dropped ball... pretty much his only mistake in the eight games he played for us last year. At the other end, the ball as per usual didn't want to go into the net for us. I vaguely remember having a conversation with someone about Carl Sagan.


Preview

Haven't won a league match there in 23 years... of course we didn't play them in the league from 1987-2004, but still, we haven't even scored a goal there since our drop to the VPL. Rama's 100th South league game and Horsey on the verge of his South league goal ton aside, I'd be happy even scoring there. We don't have the best record against Gully in general. We've only beaten them twice since the VPL days, both in 2006. So yeah, draw would be good.

Fanatic of the Week - Paul Mavroudis

So we've exhausted our stash of genuine vintage Fanatics of the Week. And I'm bored and dismayed - and just because I'm typing this up on a rainy Saturday afternoon for release on a Wednesday, it doesn't mean that I won't be bored and dismayed at the moment it's published or when you read it.


FANATIC OF THE WEEK

Saturday, 14th March, 2009

This week’s fanatic is Paul Mavroudis who likes the club because, to paraphrase Lift To Experience "we have to, not because we want to".

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NAME: Paul Mavroudis

AGE: 25.

SUBURB: In the Darkness On The Edge Of Town

INTERESTS: 'Football'; the other football; books; alternative 'music'; Wikipedia; collating statistics; blogging; providing highly educational but seldom understood pearls of wisdom on Internet forums; stopping myself from writing cliched serial killer fiction where I annihilate everyone that shits me and handing it in as part of my coursework; public transport; retro gaming; providing constructive criticism of classmates' mostly pisspoor attempts at short fiction; stickers; Fred Negro's 'Pub' strip when it isn't just St Kilda in jokes; a fair few crazy animated television shows; dessert.

FAVOURITE SOCCER CLUBS: South Melbourne.

ARE YOU A MEMBER OF SOUTH MELBOURNE?
Yes. Until the Hellas Fan Club comes in and sets everything right again, back to the way it used to be, in the Beforetime, the Long Long Ago. Soon I hope. Put us all out of our misery.

WHAT AGE DID YOU EXPERIENCE YOUR FIRST MATCH?
Probably around 9 years old, the home game against West Adelaide in season 1992/93 where we won won 4-2. They were introduced as our cousins from South Australia or something like that, hmm.

WHITE COLLARS OR BLUE?
Seriously, should it really matter?

FAVOURITE SOUTH MELBOURNE MEMORY?
The day everyone realised Acropolis Now was actually farken shithouse. Which is technically not a memory since it hasn't happened yet, as can be seen from this review of Stephen Hawking's 'Brief History of Time', which I did end up reading the entirety of, and not just get bored by page 3, thank you very much John Safran. Not that I understood all or even most of it, but I got something out of it I think, and Carl Sagan's question in the introduction to that book about why we can remember the past but not the future struck a quixotic physical and philosophical chord.

Our ability to remember past but not future also coincides with the arrow of entropy. The reason, Hawking says, is that whenever a memory is made, in either a brain or a computer, the smidgen of energy required to light up a neutron or move an electron is released as heat. Heat ---roiling, chaotic heat--- increases entropy. Memories, then, because they release heat, increases disorder, too. Entropy increases from yesterday to tomorrow. That`s why memories are made in the past --- to Hawking a more convincing explanation than the pedestrian statement that one can remember only what has already occurred." (Newsweek, January 4, 1993.)

MOST MEMORABLE GAME WATCHED?
The 2006 VPL Grand Final, because within a few seconds a whole bunch of people forgot we'd just won a championship and were more interested in throwing rocks at other people who were piggy backing for a day on the fat woman's current club in order to pursue some sort of justice for issues of blood, land, culture and history located mostly in the Balkans and who were also throwing rocks. Halcyon days.

FAVOURITE DEGRASSI MOMENT
The scene where Wheels is for some inexplicable reason wearing a Footscray guernsey.

FAVOURITE CURRENT PLAYER?
James Spanos. Doesn't even have to do anything to be part of the senior team. Doesn't make mistakes. Known by people who don't even know of the actual players.

FAVOURITE BISCUIT
Arnott's Kingston, the grownups chocolate biscuit.

BEST SOUTH MELBOURNE PLAYER EVER?
Paul Trimboli. Stupid question.

ASTERIX OR TINTIN?
Asterix, but they're both pretty cool.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT SOUTH MELBOURNE?
Oh wow, where do you begin? For starters, I like the lies. The little ones, like why we didn't wear the South Melbourne United heritage strip, to the medium ones, to the big ones, with the claims of 10,000 strong crowds at pretty much every game in the 1980s, because the people making those claims either have dementia or only went to the games with 10,000 people, and not to the games with 800 people against teams such as Brisbane Lions.

I also love the fact that we've never played in South Melbourne.

I love the hypocrisy which pours fourth constantly out of every orifice, especially with regards to the A-League and the AFL.

I love people living off past glories and thinking it's enough to last a lifetime.

I love the fans who see only what they want to see and never what's actually in front of them.

That's just the stuff off the top of my head.

WHAT DO YOU DISLIKE ABOUT SOUTH MELBOURNE?
The food could be better at times.

WOULD YOU EVER SUPPORT ANOTHER NSL TEAM?
No.

WHY?
Well, the league doesn't exist anymore, so I guess it's impossible to support another NSL team.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME PAUL!
My pleasure.