South's winning streak continues - South Melbourne 5 Dandenong Thunder 0

After a month of mostly flat, grinding performances, including a draining 120 minute skin of our teeth win against Thunder midweek, it was going to be interesting to see how we would front up in this game - let alone which version of Thunder would turn up tonight.

Slaven Vranesevic made way for Matthew Theodore, who came back into the side after missing the midweek cup match - apparently due to attending his university graduation ceremony - while Michael Eagar was once again partnered in central defence by Andrew Mullet, with James Musa on the bench following his stint at international duty.

To my relief, it was a more assertive South in this game, so even as Thunder pressed forward and moved the ball well out wide, we weren't without our chances at the other end. We had to withstand some dangerous balls into the area, and even conceded some headers from set pieces, but more often than not we kept doing enough to make the Thunder play the extra pass which saw them come undone, extinguishing the space that they momentarily had but could not make the most of.

Without warning, a flock of seagulls decided to take
 flight early during the first half. Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

At the other end, Jamie Reed had the best of our early chances, but he could only send his shot across the face of goal - he also hit a freekick on to the top of the crossbar. Nevertheless, up front we kept the ball well, and moved it quickly, more often than not making the right decisions even if the execution sometimes left a little to be desired.

The one-two combo which knocked Thunder onto the ropes came late in the first half. Milos Lujic opened the scoring, running on to a through ball and then quickly making space and shooting out of Zaim Zeneli's reach. Then just three minutes later a cross to the back post saw Nick Epifano's header saved by Zeneli, only for Theodore to finish it off.

The referee keeps a close eye on the push and shove.
Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

Thus South went into the break 2-0 up, a score which we deserved for being clinical rather than dominating a match which had been quite even, as well as very entertaining. The only concern was the lack of discipline which saw a push and shove fest erupt on the halfway line between the benches.

The second half started with a chance to each side, but soon devolved into a 15 minute mess of slow and mistake riddled football. Thunder had one shot hit straight at Jason Saldaris, but thereafter could muster little of note, as tiredness took over and the enormity of the task ahead of them kept getting bigger.

James Musa salutes the crowd after scoring his goal.
Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

Jamie Reed's free kick was saved by Zeneli, but Tyson Holmes was on hand to mop up the scraps, netting his first goal of 2014. The game was as good as over - everything else after that was a bonus as James Musa, who came off the bench late in the game, netted his first goal in a South shirt for 4-0. Reed, too, managed to get on the score sheet for the first time since scrambling a goal over the line at Ballarat a month ago, after being fouled in the penalty area and taking the resulting penalty, which he smashed into the back of the net.

As happens with big scores at Lakeside, the scoreboard ran out of room for the names, and the chant went up noting this fact. It seems almost trite to say this of a team that's won 14 games from 14 starts, but it's been a lot of fun watching this team so far this year. The gallows humour of so many barren and inconsistent seasons has taken a backseat to joy and enthusiasm - and it's not in the context of a frenzied run to sneak into the finals either.

But there's still a long way to go, of course. Today's win keeps us nine points ahead of Oakleigh, who beat Werribee 2-0 on Saturday. Heidelberg, who had been level with Oakleigh, fell to eleven points behind us after drawing 1-1 with Northcote.

Next week
Oakleigh away on Friday night, in what is probably the most anticipated match of the season so far. A win is most desirable, but even a draw would be do us little harm in the greater context.

If you can't make it to the game, Teo Pellizzeri has popped up on various social media sites to post this, so have a gander and listen in:

I normally don't promote the broadcast game on here but given its importance to the season no harm in hyping it up.

8.25pm Friday Night - Oakleigh Cannons v South Melbourne www.livecast.com.au & Live Cast channel on TuneIn Radio app

Dockerty Cup news
We've been drawn to play against the winner of Tuesday's match between Melbourne Knights and Green Gully. For the first time in this year's competition, we'll be hosting a tie - which apart from progression to the semi-finals, also counts as the final stage of FFA Cup qualification.

James Musa makes All Whites debut
James Musa made his debut for the All Whites the other day against South Africa. He came on as a substitute, and ended up both saving a goal bound shot with his arse, and getting an elbow in the face.

SMFCMike on SoundCloud
I think I probably should have mentioned this earlier. SMFCMike, who some Twitter folk will know from his rather, how should I put this... 'partisan' persona on there, has been doing his own thing on SoundCloud. Frankly, I'm too afraid to listen in to any of Mike's antics, but in the interests of 'promoting independent South Melbourne Hellas perspectives', a link to his channel has been added to the links on the right hand side.

Chris Taylor interviewed by Craig MacKenzie
Quite an interesting little interview with the current South manager. He says some outrageous things about South, mostly about our bigness, that cynics like me are always wary of when they come from people who have arrived here recently and might soon be gone again - taking all the players they brought with them, naturally.

But who knows, maybe he actually means it? Just as interesting though is the discussion of his approach to coaching, and for someone who's been around the block a few times, who his biggest influence is - though one of the people on smfcboard wasn't particularly happy that Taylor has modeled his managerial approach on John Gardiner - if I was to guess, probably something to do with a dour British style footballer, as opposed to the traditional Hellas 'score lots of goals' approach. On the the other hand, it's refreshing to see someone taking aim at buzzword coaching.

Where's the food truck?
Though it had zero hipster credibility - no tacos, Thai food, bánh mì, or burgers on a brioche bun - the disappearance of the food truck/caravan at Lakeside was not pleasant news, as it still had better food than the kiosk opposite it. The main function of said food truck - to provide expensive but usually edible souvs, and sausages of varying and random degrees of spiciness - has been absorbed into the kiosk's menu. What this means is no more 'gourmet' sausages, and a very ordinary, yet still expensive souvlaki.

Still, the kiosk had chicken flavoured Twisties and instant cup noodles(!) which is a point of difference to most places - though unfortunately the noodle brand is Fantastic. Not that goalkeeping coach Bojo Jevdevic seemed to mind.

Hay and Murray's 'A History of Australian Football'
We mentioned this book last week, including its recommended retail price of $45 - but one of our readers has spotted it for $29 at Kmart, which is outstanding value for a hardback. Here's proof if you need it (photo taken at Kmart Altona Gate):

Hay and Murray's 'A History of Australian Football', just $29 at KMart, incredible bargain! pic.twitter.com/VBmlcWGYF4
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) May 28, 2014

St Albans return serve to departing FFV CEO Mitchell Murphy
Remember the bit we did about St Albans being docked three points for not fielding an under 13s team in some fixture or other? Well, they're not letting go of it, and what's more they're even digging themselves in for a bit of internet trench warfare with this frankly, amazing article on their website. For mine, there are two interesting aspects to this article:

1. The refrain that people working in soccer and for soccer people, should themselves be soccer people.
2. That since Murphy is going soon anyway, what's the end game of this approach?

The first point gets us back into the debate about who are the most ideal candidates to run an organisation like the FFV - those who have been born and bred within the game, or those from outside of it. For the former, the advantage is an understanding of the culture and operating environments clubs exist in. But that too, has its drawbacks, which have we have seen pop up repeatedly.

Victoria's soccer culture is not of a piece - it is made up of several still fragmented groups, such as those from strong men's teams, those from women's soccer, and especially those from junior soccer, each of whose involvement takes on a different shape, and does not necessarily lend itself to understanding the needs of the other groups.

We've also had soccer people running the game before before, and yet that always eventually seemed to end up at the point of self-interested cabals running the sport - and limiting the talent pool available to those who have spent their whole lives in the sport only makes these sorts of cabals easier to form.

So, let's get people from outside the game to run the sport, without fear of favour, for the best interests of everyone. But the problem then becomes that not only does the relevant FFV employee not understand or perhaps even care about the local soccer culture, but that they may well put the needs of the FFV - their employer - above those of its constituents when competing interests clash.

It's a problem compounded by the modern corporate trend of white collar workers frequently changing employers. And while that may not be as much of an issue for a lot of these companies, for an organisation like FFV, which has so many different constituencies, many of which have people with a lifetime attachment to the game and their particular roles within it, it causes massive disruption every time someone leaves FFV and a new start has to be created almost from scratch.

It's not a problem that will ever be solved, because one way or another, anyone who works for an organisation like FFV will be compromised in some way - which makes the second point I mentioned earlier all the more interesting. The previous CEOs, long termer Mark Rendell and interim replacement Peter Gome, were both castigated by elements of the local soccer community for not being football people - and to be fair, that perception was probably a fair one.

For his part, Mitchell Murphy has tried to cultivate the perception that he is in his own way, a part of the soccer scene, even if he wasn't a local to begin with. But that attempt hasn't quite washed with some of the more conservative elements of the Victorian soccer public, who are wary of those whose interest seems mainly focused on junior soccer (though to be fair to St Albans, their approach to soccer has been much more holistic over the journey, in the way that leading Australian-Croatian clubs so often are.)

But the dig at Murphy's rugby league background only serves to highlight the difficulty of a non-soccer person coming in to run the game, and especially the struggle for credibility they have to face - and one could take that problem even further. As anyone who has attended a South Melbourne (or Westfield) AGM can tell you, even when you have what you think are the best interests of the game or club at heart, combined with reason, logic and facts, there's always going to be some grumpier, older and usually male person who will always tell you that you are too young, too new, too experienced to know what you're talking about.

Though just where we'll find soccer people with a lifelong enmeshment in the game across all sectors, yet with no enemies, with the business nous to run a fiscally responsible enterprise, all while keeping the game moving forward, is anyone's guess.

Final thought(s)
Ghost trams are awesome.

RIP dodgy carpark across the road from Spotswood Station.

Hibernating for the winter - where to now for Goal Weekly?

Disclaimer - while I have been both an occasional contributor to Goal Weekly, as well as a current member of the FFV's history committee, the following article does not claim to be representative of the views of either organisation.

Goal Weekly's decision to go on a print version hiatus during the winter season is a blow to the local soccer scene on several fronts. The FFV's decision to take away its portion of funding from Goal Weekly is, from this outsider's position, seemingly the straw that broke the camel's back.

No other publication focused so broadly on the local game, at all levels. Where the FFV struggles to even get results into the mainstream papers, Goal Weekly had not only those results, but also reportage from across the range of competitions.

Because of its marginalised status in the the Australian sporting landscape, soccer has perenially found itself with people willing to plug the gaps, by writing on the game and creating publishing avenues for the sport from their own good will and because of their passion for the sport.

As much as the internet revolution has accelerated and taken down more than a few specialist magazines down with it, the print medium is still the dominant news form. And frankly, Goal Weekly's website is atrocious.

And blogs and internet forums can only go so far. So many versions of the FFV website alone have risen and fallen, taking with them copious amounts of the game's history and data. Much the same has happened to the Goal Weekly site, several forums, and the array of online puiblications I've written for - 86th Minute, Half Time Heroes, etc. Yes, the OzFootball site is still kicking on in its ramshackle fashion, but that mostly provides the raw data of a given moment in time.

Goal Weekly was perhaps the focal point of this state's soccer discourse. It not only had the reports from across the leagues, and even other states, but it also published the humour and the grievances of the soccer public in its diverse forms. In short, it told the story of the game, a weekly snapshot. It was the most obvious place to find the continuing narrative of the local game.

There are people who depend on publications like Goal Weekly. Believe it or not, there are still people who do not have access to the internet on even a semi-regular basis. The famous South supporter and mad fan of women's football known as Josie is one such a person. She was relatively distraught at the prospect of Goal Weekly's print demise - someone had tried to point her towards this blog, but she has no access to the internet, and was unware that fixture dates and locations had been changed.

A whole slew of soccer writers and photographers - both those of a hobbyist persuasion and those who would make a career out of it - have now been denied a major avenue to practice their craft in the public sphere. If local papers don't want to cover local soccer, where do the writers and photographers go?

Michal Skrodzki was one such hobbyist. His job was to cover the happenings of the teams from state league 2 and under (which I filled in on occasionally). His writing was haphazard, prone to cliche and over-exuberant whimsy, but when put alongside the diversity of the other writings - Mark Boric's acerbic take on authority, Craig MacKenzie's coverage of the south-east, the up and coming Sacha Pisani, Niki Cook's coverage of the women's game, the delerium of Tsigan's Tsigar - it created a tapestry unlikely to be found anywhere else in Australian sports writing.

The FFV has claimed that their media budgets are tight, and that their contribution to Goal Weekly returned little value to the organisation. I was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt, waiting to see what thing they would come up with that was better than Goal Weekly.

So far, all I have seen has been a VPL media guide, glossy but vacuuous and out of date by the time it hit the presses, made up of incorrect and incomplete squad lists, and cursory glances at the possible prospects of the season's participants. Another wesbite revamp has been promised, but since articles on the womens and junior facets of the game have predominated for years - not that there's anything wrong with that, it's where the growth is - the VPL will still likely suffer in comparison.

The notion that the FFV got nothing out of their contribution to Goal Weekly except for a bit of flak is laughable - but the fact that they genuinely seem to believe that is the case must be taken seriously. It shows an organisation that is unwilling to take criticism on board, despite the mission statements plastered across its office walls.

The clubs are also not blameless in this area. The support of a good deal of the leading clubs in the state has often been described as poor by people who have contributed to the paper. Unfortunately, there are also clubs who would agree with the FFV's stance, that the organisation donating some of its money should be able to dictate terms - not even considering the possibility that something like Goal Weekly should be the exception to that rule, that it serves a greater good.

Some may point to this blog and accuse it of hypocrisy in this matter. 'Haven't you sought the end of the print medium on several occasions?'

That would be an incorrect assumption. I have only celebrated the declining circulations and tightened financial situations of publications which have either been superseded by something better, or whose downfall is of their own making, in their fervent race to the bottom. As yet, Goal Weekly has not been superseded by something better and its pluralism was something to be celebrated.

Even if there was no money involved, it's the principle of that matter that comes to the fore - that the FFV can not even find something positive to say about the  publication should be troubling everyone in Victorian soccer.