Four more points 'til safety - South Melbourne 1 Pascoe Vale 0

I will say these things about this game.

First, if there are people still at South who are finding themselves unable to cope with the let's call it garbage football on display, then you should probably stay home. I don't mean that as an insult - I'm serious. The loss against Kingston was clearly too much for some people to take, to the point where it's hurting their mental well-being. Anyone still here watching South in 2019 has more than proven their loyalty (and their stupidity), so if you need a week's break or more, by all means, take it. If you can't deal with the club until such point that it mathematically avoids relegation, by all means, stay away.

In those kinds of cases, I wouldn't even recommend watching the game on the live stream. What good could that possibly do? Putting my Dr Phil hat and noting that "opinions expressed during the show are educational and informational in nature and are directed only at the individual show guests based on their specific and unique circumstances", if you've found yourself in an unhealthy situation, the best thing to do is to change your environment.

Look, if you're sticking around because you want to prove your worthiness in terms of loyalty, there's nothing left to prove. And even if there were something to prove, who's left that's both paying attention and actually cares about your vain and frankly stupid notions of dedication to this cause. It's like those idiotic competitions where people lay their hand on a car, and the last person still in contact with the vehicle wins the car; except there's about 250 people with their hand on the potential prize, and the prize actually doesn't exist.

All of this neglects the fact that there was a game on, and we won it! Remarkable stuff and completely deserved, if by completely deserved one means being the only team which managed to score a goal, which is the usual way of judging these things. The game was not great, but compared to the previous week's game, at least it was entertaining. It even passably resembled football, which is more than can be said for whatever the Kingston game was.

As has been our usual habit this season, we started off brightly enough, and then after about half an hour decided to withdraw into our shells and begin falling apart. In a wonderful act of mercy, Pascoe Vale started neither their talismanic striker Davey Van 't Schip - who had moved to Essendon Royals as part of Paco's week-long act of seppuku - and also had long-time South Melbourne aerial bane Joey Youssef on the bench.

When the deadlock was broken by this year's club golden-boot-in-waiting Giuseppe Marafioti, I did not celebrate with the fullest of gusto. Not because I was not happy or because I was caught off-guard, but because like others in Row H (the most sensible row, last bastion of sanity) I thought it was offside, and was frantically waiting for the linesman's flag. Thankfully it never came up, and then all we had to deal with was the saga of the last 40 odd minutes and Pascoe Vale having to throw everything they had at us and certainly equalising and then I suppose it was a 50/50 shot at them winning the game.

And yet despite South blowing several unbelievably good counter-attacking chances, Pascoe Vale could not find the back of the net. In the second half in particular, they got the first part of the attacking sequence down pat, beginning long sweeping two/three pass movements which cut through our near non-existent forward press and our doughnut shaped midfield.

Which when writing it like that, makes one perhaps realise that it's not so much Marcus Schroen's or any other player's fault that the central midfield is ineffective, but rather the blame should go on whoever thought it was wise to sign a team made up of a million wingers.

Anyway, despite attacking us for a good deal of the second half, they could not quite find a way through, not through the early season whipping boy Perry Lambropoulos (replacing an injured Brad Norton), not through the young Ben Djiba, not through whatever central defensive pairing we fielded on the day, not through Kristian Konstantinidis who came on as a sub for the re-injured Kosta Stratomitros, and not through the flying header, diving puncher, long thrower excitement machine that is Josh Dorron in goals, whom it seems we have put in as a permanent temporary solution until the end of the year.

OK, some of that is a lie. Paco did get through on one very real occasion, where they scrambled the ball across the goal line and probably onto the outside of the right-hand goal post, but that's as close as they got, and you really couldn't get much closer, and that's including the goal line clearance we had to effect in the first half after a timid shot over a semi-stranded Dorron was headed away by someone in a blue shirt.

At the end of the game with three more points in the bag, it didn't seem like too many of the South players were over the moon with the result, which could be a good thing in that they perhaps think that the job of avoiding relegation is not done, or that they thought they should've done better; or maybe bad because morale is so cooked that not even an arsey win can rejuvenate the side. For their part quite a few of Paco's players looked devastated, and if they do go down I suppose they might be missed, but not as much as when they had a wood-fired pizza van at the ground, which was some time ago now.

Next game
Green Gully away on Saturday afternoon. If the quality of the game between Avondale and Gully last week is anything to go by, we're screwed. Hope to see you there.

Relegation battle (status: ongoing, survival nominally within unconvincing grasp)
The method by which we got our win aside, this was a pretty good week. In addition to our beating Pascoe Vale, Kingston also lost, which gives us a twelve point gap to the automatic relegation positions - a four match gap, with just seven games to play. Dandenong Thunder however managed to beat Bentleigh courtesy of several screamers, so while the gap between ourselves and the playoff spot is ten points - three and a bit games - Thunder are capable of scoring enough goals to win games, and we still have to play them towards the end of the season.

You'd like to think we'll at least crawl over the line a bit more convincingly than we did last year, but last year's near death experience will have everyone nervous until safety is actually secured, and filled with impotent rage after that.

One other thing
When it comes to how many touches of the ball or how long you should hold on to it before you pass or shoot it, there is no right answer except to say whatever looks good in hindsight to the average mug punter is usually the best way to go. especially in this godforsaken competition. Still, I had to have an awful, unnatural, and unbecoming spiteful chuckle at one moment in the first half, where Pep Marafioti was forced on to his right foot and he took about three baby elephant stumbling touches trying to get set up to hit a cross on his wrong foot, a cross which didn't come off. Now I have neither a right nor a left foot, but it's interesting (and I'm going to sound like a hopelessly old geezer footy radio commentator now) to see how one-sided so many players are in this comp which is just one step below the 'elite'.

Our other teams
Got to Lakeside's operations room early enough to watch the first half of the under 20s in their top of the table clash, which they ended up winning 3-1. That's about eighteen games undefeated now, but don't ask me which players should be brought into the seniors.

Photo: Luke Radziminksi

The senior women had an important 4-4 draw against Alamein. Important, because Alamein are one of three sides in this competition who are clearly better than everyone else, including us, and yet we managed to take a point off them despite fielding what looked on the highlights like a team that was about half the size of their opponents.

Credit for the draw must go in part to goalkeeper Erin Hudson (pictured right), who pulled off a cracker of a penalty save in the final moments of the game. It could well be a handy point in the race for the last finals spot.

Did not see that coming
A few weeks ago I noted that I expected nothing to happen to Melbourne Knights for some appalling fan behaviour during (and as it turns out, immediately after) our recent cup loss against them.

Well, as it turns out, something did happen, and the net result is a fine and a three point deduction for Knights, and a $500 fine for us for being in the vicinity of nonsense which apparently occurred in the tunnel after full time.

I'm trying to figure out what's prompted this action by Football Victoria. Is the fact that it happened on the prominent stage of an FFA Cup qualifier instead of the black hole of normal league play? Is it because it happened right in front of them and they couldn't ignore it? Or is it symbolic of a turn towards the more punitive tribunal regimes of older days, when massive fines and point deductions were handed out freely by the federation.

Because while Knights got done over for racist chants, flares, and an incident in the players race, Football Victoria's press release also noted that other clubs also received hefty punishment for serious incidents. If that's the case, it may be worth keeping an eye out (as we all should) in case some of our fans are getting close to the edge in terms of what's acceptable fan behaviour. It's not like we haven't been docked points for our own fan transgressions.

Anyway, the three point deduction sees Knights drop down several spots, including below us. It's doubtful that Knights will get dragged into a relegation battle - as opposed to some recent seasons, they're too good on field this year to really worry about that - but it might cause some classic comedy capers when it comes time to sort out the bottom slots of the top six. Funniest of all of course would be if we somehow jagged a bullshit goal late against Heidelberg to secure that sixth spot by a point over Knights (because our goal difference is garbage), but that assumes the fanciful idea that we're even going to get one more win for the season.

Match programs
Thanks to one of the blokes who hosts Preston's show on FNR (I forget his name, how embarrassment), I've added three South vs Preston match programs ranging from 1989-1991 to South of the Border's match program collection.

Thanks also to the Jakarta Casual who helped us add a home program against George Cross from 1989, and Todd Giles for the home program against Newcastle KB United from 1979.

All of these can be found in the usual place.

Me and George Cotsanis at the Goals and Glory
  exhibition at Deakin's Waterfront campus, with a
 couple of the display panels behind us.
Photo: Roy Hay

Goals and Glory exhibit
Last Friday I went to the Goals and Glory exhibition at Deakin University's Waterfront campus in Geelong. Accompanied by local amateur soccer historian George Cotsanis, it was an interesting trip, which included bumping into Roy Hay, who was of course involved with setting up the exhibition.

Made up of photo collage style display panels along with artefacts placed within glass cabinets, the exhibition performs two core functions: displaying the breadth of the Australian soccer experience, and also acting as a means of raising awareness of the Schwab and Shorrock Collections hosted at Deakin University.

The display panels give an overview of a wide variety of topics, among them: youth, women's, and Indigenous soccer; Australia at the World Cup; notable players; the role of local clubs, in this case clubs from and its surrounds; Laurie Schwab and Les Shorrock; as well as the potential to use the resources in the collection for genealogical histories. The display panels also had QR codes adjacent to them, allowing for more in-depth analysis of the displays for those tech savvy enough to use them.

Within the glass cabinets there were more objectively precious and/or fragile artefacts, such as Victorian Soccer Federation (and predecessor group) minutes, but also items loaned for the exhibit such as World Cup match balls, jerseys and so forth - predominantly it seems from the Didulica family. There is a timeline of Australian soccer on a television screen, and the audio component of commentary from Australian national team games piped in through the exhibit.

I can't say for you whether it's worth the drive down to Geelong to see the exhibit - you may spend 20 minutes in there, or you may end up spending an hour there like George and I did, in part because we bumped into Roy, but also because we were happy enough to look at several of the display panels several times and discuss their importance or value to the exhibition. For example, George was able to point out the different people he interviewed on The Pioneers show he hosted on FNR. I was able to discuss the photogenic properties of Oscar Crino, especially in a medium - soccer photography - which doesn't necessarily have the same aesthetic qualities of other sports, because soccer is about the simultaneous movement of the ball and player - maybe gifs are the natural artistic form for soccer aesthetics?

Feedback I've seen from more historically minded soccer followers seemed to be impressed with the exhibit. For me, having some experience of seeing university exhibits, this was one of the better ones I've come across. The exhibition is free, and is open on weekdays until July 29th. There is scope for groups from outside Geelong to have the exhibition displayed in their own space, as it is equipped to be a travelling exhibition; though how it would be localised for your own region would need to be discussed with the exhibition's organisers, as would shipping.

And Roy, sorry about not signing the guest book, but there wasn't a pen anywhere near the guest book!

Final thought
Peter Griffin was right: The Godfather does insist upon itself.

33% - Melbourne Knights 0 South Melbourne 1

There are members of the South Melbourne family who view '30' as the magic number this year. It's the magic number because, barring some bizarre turn of events where teams at the bottom end of the table collect an inordinate amount of points, even greater than last season - 30 points will be enough to see you survive. We're now a third of the way there, having endured a coaching change, erratic form, an unfortunate suspension, and an absence of home games, with two thirds of the season to go.

Er, not quite. Photo: Luke Radziminski

For some reason all during the week there was this sense of anticipation about this game. Granted it was mostly coming from Knights fans, who were promoting the bejesus out of the game (as is their right), and getting ready to bask in the glory of victory, but still, it all felt a bit confected to me. That's probably due to us sucking and them not sucking, and expecting to get beaten, even though I personally haven't thought that highly of Knights' performances this season despite their better than expected results.

There was also plenty of inane banter in the lead-up, which I had nothing to do with because I carry myself with the utmost internet decorum , but you people... boy, you just can't resist. How dare you even remotely question the Knights' poster campaign? Aren't you scared that the singing man on the Knight Train radio show or one of his acolytes is going to come after you and teach you Greek words?

Anyway, the (apparent) great tragedy about this rivalry - apart from these two once mighty clubs being stuck in the state leagues - is that for the last 25 odd years there have been few moments when both clubs have been at the top of their leagues at the same time. There have been blips - like the 2013 semi-final - but even that was dependent on us making an outrageous run in the second-half of the season and benefiting from the Southern Stars fiasco to even make the finals.

So after several years of us being quite good, and Knights being garbage, this year it is the Knights who have been good and South who has been middling. A large crowd was in attendance, but the atmosphere was muted. There was some some chanting from Knights fans, but they were close to inaudible in the second half. The flatness of the crowd was matched by a flatness to the game as well. Knights had the better of it, especially towards the end of the first half - and only heroics by Nikola Roganovic (in league game 100 for us), and a clearance off the line keeping it level.

The second half from us was better and Knights seemed to lose the ability to do some of their more intricate passing. At any rate, their falling behind played into the hands of a team that will prefer sitting back and hitting on the counter until such time as we get a proper striker and attacking midfield set-up.

This game was decided by a goal to us, and a very fine and enjoyable and comical goal it was too. A crappy turnover in midfield, four passes, and Brad Norton with the finish after a gut-busting 80 metre run. It was Brad Norton's first goal for the club in two seasons, and just our sixth goal this season.

Putting all that to one side for the moment, I love everything about this goal. Its straightforwardness is of course a major appeal. The Knights fan yelling out 'chase!' even though Norton is already flying past the defender. Leigh Minopoulos leaning over to his left looking around a corner to make sure the ball goes in. The fact that Norton actually scores, of course. The laughter you can hear on the video is also a treat. All that, and the way it fulfils every Knights fans' fantasy, that they lose so many games to us that they have dominated.

Won't someone please think of the gamblers

To be fair, they did have the better chances in this game, but it's not like we weren't threatening in our own way. Had we been able to hit a proper through pass in the first half, we may have created even more chances than we did. The bigger problem from our end is that even with three nominally defensive midfielders, there were stretches of the game where we struggled to gain possession. There were the standard moments of indecisiveness in defence, and too many times where we went back to the keeper, but for the most part we defended well enough; which is not the same thing as great, but a step forward nevertheless..

The three points aside, the most pleasing aspect of the game for mine was the polished and mostly poised game of Ben Djiba, who started at right-back instead of Perry Lambropoulos. Apart from a solid defensive performance, Djiba also managed to get up the field and provide an attacking option. Djiba came off injured in the second half - hopefully he's OK - and Knights immediately attacked his replacement Lambropoulos; but Perry held his own well enough, which was also a good sign. Just because one prefers one player to start over another, it doesn't mean you want the less appealing player to struggle when he's on the field.

Other results fell our way, too - Kingston lost, and Oakleigh and Dandy City drew. We won't be able to rely on their collective ineptitude to survive, and we won't be able to rely on anyone else keeping us up in this season but ourselves

Next game
Hume City at home - at Lakeside! - on Sunday. The curtain raiser will be the senior women taking on Heidelberg at 1:30.

At the footy
One thing the NPL live streams have come in handy for is for when you're at the MCG on a Friday, or Saturday or Sunday, and you need something to fill in some time while you're waiting for a game to start and try in vain to block out the noise of the stadium music and announcements and kisscams and dancecams. Caught twenty odd minutes of Altona Magic vs Bentleigh, and apart from Sami Nour scoring with a nice volley, this was a hard game to watch because every few minutes someone went down like they were shot.

On the couch
There being no curtain raiser on Friday night, one had to wait around for an hour at Knights Stadium doing not very much except wait for other people to show up, and then wonder about the squad choices made by Esteban Quintas. As is their way these days, Knights have standalone senior matches for their Friday night home games, with the under 20s punted to Sunday afternoons. It makes sense I suppose. Come Sunday, I could've gone to Somers Street again to watch the under 20s game, but I didn't want to. I preferred to stay home and watch it on a live stream, partly for the absurdity of watching an NPL under 20s game on a live stream. Who could possibly be interested in this? Don't answer that.

Our boys dominated the early proceedings, in part thanks to a strong breeze, and Manny Aguek could've had a hat-trick within the opening 15 minutes, but he didn't. The game deteriorated to the point where it was hard to keep attention. Knights seemed to steady the ship in the second and had a bit more of the play, but a player of theirs that had apparently gotten injured was laying out the back of the southern goal, and eventually an ambulance turned up which delayed the game for about 15 minutes. Hopefully the kid is OK.

In recent seasons these kinds of situations have seen games abandoned, but this one resumed at about 77 minutes or so. A miscalculation by the Knights keeper coming off his line made things easier for Gio Marafioti to score what would be the only goal of the game. Usual practice for under 20s/reserves games is for there to be no injury time, but here the game went to about the 102 minute mark.

Manchester United at Olympic Park in 1967.
Photo from Weinstein family collection

Home movies!
Great work by George Cotsanis of the My World Is Round Facebook page and of course The Pioneers show on FNR. Last year he bought some reels of film off eBay, and got them digitised. The footage includes a half-hour long film of Manchester United touring Australia in 1967, with games - in colour! - against Victoria and New South Wales - as well as some junior soccer. Mark Boric provides a run-down and some background information on his blog about that film.

As part of this haul, George Cotsanis has also managed to unearth footage of Torpedo Moscow vs Victoria from 1965. Mark Boric also has some background on this game on his blog. Lastly, there's a brief film of the touring Roma side watching Richmond and St Kilda at the MCG. I think I've seen that footage or footage like it before; certainly I've read about the Roma players at that game, probably in the VFL Record.

Please, please, please share these videos with your friends, especially among your Man United friends and family.

Final thought
One may ask what's the point of trying to create a buzz about a game and a club, and deploying tons of volunteers all over the place, and trying to build a family-friendly environment and putting up #eraseNCIP and pro-rel banners, if a minority of goons is still intent on trying to intimidate and attack opposition fans by stealing scarves. One may say it's a minority, but it seems to happen more regularly than it should, and it makes you wonder if some people at Knights actually condone that kind of behaviour. I suppose we should be glad that this time at least, the goon's mates (and fiance?) convinced him to back off.