Mid-January 2023 digest

Friendlies you didn't know about
Last Saturday morning our senior men played against North Geelong in Shepparton, winning 2-1, Jankovic and Schroen the scorers. 

I can't believe it's not the Hellenic Cup
A new pre-season tournament, the Greek Community Cup, begins next week. It's not the Hellenic Cup, I guess because the rights to the Hellenic Cup belong to a separate organisation of the same name.

At any rate, we're in Group One, with Altona East PAOK and East Kew Olympiakos. Group games and the quarter finals are 70 minute matches. All matches are at Partridge Street Reserve, Lalor.

We play on Thursday (19/1, 7pm) against Altona East, and on Saturday (21/1, 1pm) against East Kew. 

I have no idea if the souvs at Lalor are any good, or if there even will be any souvs on offer.

Better than you remember, perhaps
Remember Carl Piergianni? He was a tall central defender type who was on holiday in Australia circa early 2017, when we picked him up. It didn't quite work out; he wasn't quite fit, which only made his lack of pace worse, and he headed home (without heading in any goals from corners, as promised by the YouTube montage) and resumed his career in England's lower reaches; first at Salford City, then Oldham Athletic, at the latter under the management (for a brief time) of Harry Kewell.

Old mate Carl is now captain of Stevenage (currently sitting second in League 2). And they're doing OK in the FA Cup, having just knocked off Premier League side Aston Villa 2-1 at Villa Park, with both Stevenage goals coming late in the game, including the winner from a bloody short corner. Our man is looking quite slim, too, Carl and Stevenage will face Championship straggler Stoke City in the fourth round, and South of the Border wishes them all the best. 

Not quite as good you remember, perhaps
But it's not all sunshine and smiles for ex-South people playing abroad. Harrison Sawyer, NPL Victoria's golden boot winner in 2022, hasn't been having the best time of it in the Indian Super League. After an OK start where he provided a couple of assists (read, headed the ball on from a cross or throw-in), Harry's Jamshedpur adventure hasn't gone quite to plan. He's been coming off the bench, and his team has barely won a game all season. Still, Sawyer came off the bench and scored in his team's 2-1 win over East Bengal, just Jamshedpur's second win of the season. It'll be interesting to see what Harry's next move is after this - the ISL season is short one - just 22 rounds - and it ends at the end of February.

Little bits of news from the first week of January 2022

Preparing for another season that, at best, might only partly be

The fixtures are out, but still we wait for news of memberships. Maybe next week or the week after. And as for the scheduling of the 2021 AGM, that's still largely a mystery to me. But I'm not panicking, because I've been assured that everything is above board, and that all the necessary things will happen in good time. There's a pandemic on, just in case you haven't heard.

Meanwhile the senior men's team - or at least some of that team, because it's hard to tell from the social media output exactly how many made the trip up - are in Shepparton for their now customary week long trip. The club's social media output - mostly vox pops with select players - is emphasising camaraderie, fitness, and even new tactical approaches. 

My expectations for many things South Melbourne Hellas are so laid back, they're horizontal; still, new tactical approaches, eh? I can't say I'm not mildly intrigued, while also anticipating disappointment. Can you believe the new season is just over a month or so away?

Still here

While you shouldn't trust anything you read on the internet, just because, it has been fun this week looking at a small subsection of the Indonesian football social media scene, and their speculating on who historic club PSM Makassar will be signing as a new forward option.

The speculating led to suggestions that PSM were looking at one Harrison Sawyer - our Harrison Sawyer - as a possible signing. Now I had to put all the relevant tweets and websites through the not altogether trustworthy filter of Google Translate, and it was a wild wide for the ten or so minutes it took to get through the commentary.

I can't vouch for the credibility of any of the sources, but it seemed to be a toss-up between Sawyer and A-League journeyman Golgol Mebrahtu. Debate centred around who PSM fans would prefer, about Sawyer's age, why another white guy, and most curiously, doubts about Sawyer because he played a second tier, semi-professional level with no promotion to the top league. 

Maybe someone should work on fixing at least that last item, but I digress.

Anyway, for those keeping track, the club signed Sawyer to a two-year contract at the tail end of 2021, which doesn't necessarily mean big transfer bikkies if he was to be signed by PSM. Are Indonesian clubs even accustomed to paying transfer fees, or are they a bit like us? 

At any rate, someone edited Golgol's Wikipedia page to add the "citation required" detail of him being signed by PSM. Meanwhile, Sawyer was verifiably in Shepparton at Camp Moray Agnew as recently as yesterday. Whether Sawyer did indeed follow PSM on Instagram - as mentioned in of the Indonesian reports or tweets - is something only someone who bothers with Instagram can know for sure. That's not me by the way.

 

Collector Graeme McGinty found this runners up
medal from the 1970 Dockerty Cup in the UK,
suggesting that one of South's British players returned
home, and either he or his family discarded
 his personal football collection at some point.

Piece by piece, bit by bit, one scrounged detail at a time

The next item is of little concern to anyone but the most obsessive, but the match details for the 1970 Dockerty Cup final have finally been completed. Previously both starting eleven's had a player missing, and as it turned out, one of Juventus' subs was also unknown. The missing Juve players were Keith Lackey and Alistair Sandison, while the missing player for Hellas was David High. 

1970 was a bit of a bust for South. Sure, we won the Ampol Cup, but coach Lou Brocic was gone by round 1 (despite a win), and the team muddled its way through the league campaign for a mediocre finish of fifth, four games behind champions Juventus. A league leading nine draws from 22 games probably didn't help.

The one remaining chance for silverware was the Dockerty Cup, which to that point we had not won. Reaching the final thanks to narrow wins over Polonia and Hakoah, and a 7-1 win over Alexander, here was the chance to salvage something from the year. Instead we put in what a very thorough Neos Kosmos match report described as a soulless performance. So it goes.

It was thanks to that article that we found the missing players, which just goes to show, that even sources that amateur researchers have likely gone over multiple times, can still yield useful details.

Speaking of which

One name missing from the South lineup in that final was Ulysses Kokkinos, who passed away seemingly suddenly on Monday. Kokkinos leaves behind a complicated footballing and personal legacy, which South of the Border may or may not muse on at some point, perhaps after the round 1 memorial planned by the club. I wouldn't hold your breath though.

Anyway, back to 1970. South were scratching around for form, but Kokkinos was in good touch, at least for the first half of the season - and then his name just disappears from the team lists and scorers sheets. What happened? Well, it looks like a serious leg injury suffered during South's fifth round Cup fixture against Polonia kept Kokkinos out for what seems like the rest of the season. 

Apparently Kokkinos wasn't the only star player to come out of the relevant cup weekend with a serious injury, with George Cross' Lou Kastner and Juve's Sandy Irvine also suffering heavy knocks. Kastner and Irvine ended up playing out the season, while Kokkinos unfortunately missed out. As with much to do with Kokkinos, it's another case of what have been had he been around more during the peak of his powers; but that's a story for another time. 

2021 South of the Border Awards

Player of the year: Henry Hore. He did some nice things. More impressively, he managed to escape this hellhole. 

Under 21 player of the year: The Cliff Hussey Memorial Trophy goes to no one. Not one young enough player got anywhere near enough senior game time for me to award a prize this year.

Goal of the year: Harrison Sawyer. That goal against the Bergers at Jack Edwards. It fell on his head/shoulders/neck/back, and barely made it across the line. It was shit. It was glorious.

Best performance: I think Gully away. We actually looked good. We actually went on the front foot.

Best away game: Oakleigh away. Every away game sucked, but they were our toughest opponents, and we didn't lose, so let's go with that.

Call of the year: Shouty Mike making the passionate claim after the penalty shootout win against Oakleigh that I should apologise to Esteban Quintas for my being appalled by Quintas' ultra-defensive style. Make of that what you will.

Chant of the year: "We're gonna win nil-nil." It's apt. Apt!

Best pre-match/after match dinner location: The days of comparatively exotic cheap eats are seemingly behind us. I blame covid, and other semi-affiliated lifestyle changes. So the default winner in another bastard of a year was the social club's calamari salad. Was it pricey? Yes. Was it worth the price? Probably not. Was it easily a few notches above being merely edible? Yes. That's good enough in times like these.

Friends we lost along the way: Griff. If you're out there buddy, I hope you're well.

Barely related to anything stupidity highlight of the year: Winning not one, but two penalty shootouts, on route to a glorified pre-season pseudo-testimonial game for players that weren't even here for that long really, that's going to keep the club afloat for at least a few more months.

News from northern climes for southern slackers

Every now and again one sees little items about some of our players currently occupied with soccer matters in Queensland: Pierce Clark made some saves; Daniel Clark scored a goal of some sort in a game that was maybe important; Harrison Sawyer scored a ton of goals against what looked like on video to be a very flatfooted defence, but turned out to belong to the team sitting second on the ladder at the time.

If I were being paid to keep track of this stuff I'd have put in more effort - not just in terms of taking an interest in the form and status of our players currently in northern climes - but also maybe trying to figure out how Queensland soccer actually works, and in which league which players of ours are playing in. It'd be so much easier if they were playing in Tasmania.

Anyway, I think the top flight Queensland (that is NPLQ and BPL - is there still a BPL?) season(s) are over, which means that soon enough our on loan personnel will be returned to us, so they can go jogging on the grassy bit in the middle of Lakeside Stadium, and running on the sand of South Melbourne beach.

But then again... one does these routine searches for news in one's half-arsed way, and see that Harrrison Sawyer was selected for a Brisbane Roar pre-season friendly. That Roar outfit beat their opponents (according to one source, some sort of youth team) 7-1, with Sawyer not getting any of those goals. Nor was there any indication of how much game time Sawyer got to see.

So, I guess he'll be back in Melbourne soon?

Lucky guess

All hail the mighty oracle that is South of the Border.

Well, not really, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't deliberately seek to undercut my own moment of irrefutably minor online glory.

Yesterday morning the club's social media accounts put out the mystery-and-intrigue laden notice of the  "new striker and Australian marquee player" that was going to join us in 2020. That sent people rushing to speculate both honestly and mischievously. I guess some people thought it was going to be Avondale's Liam Boland, whose name has been thrown up during this off-season as a possible signing for us.

But me, I went with my hunch that the announcement was going to be Harrison Sawyer, a 22 year old Queenslander who has been on the books with a couple of A-League teams, but who has also played in the Philippines and Hong Kong. That hunch was proven correct at a touch after 6:00PM, and after which I went to claim my theoretical prize of internet kudos.

But it's easy to be right when the rumour of Sawyer's signing with us was posted on the South forum over a week ago. That must surely annoy the remnants of our once fabled media team, but the truth is that we're a long way of the Chris Taylor led no South Melbourne Hellas news leakage era.

As for those wondering about the language used in terms of "Australian marquee", one has to give credit to the South media team for that one, exploiting the designation given to a certain kind of player under the PPS system.

An Australian Marquee Player is an Australian Player (i.e. not a Visa Player) that was registered as a professional Player for a Hyundai A-League Club or an overseas Club immediately prior to registering with the NPL Club. 

The Australian Marquee Player will only incur a maximum of 10 points on a Player Roster and will not otherwise be subject to the Switching Player category. The Player can benefit from the other categories of the PPS (i.e. Homegrown Player).

Sawyer comes with big wraps from former South man Jesse Daley (I assume they were once Brisbane Roar youth/NPL teammates) and from Queensland soccer media type and football historian Garry McKenzie.

Also about a week before that centre-back Jake Marshall signed on again for another season, a bit of news which garnered a lot less interest.

2020 SMFC senior squad roster as of 21/10/2019
Signed

• Perry Lambropoulos
• Jake Marshall
• Brad Norton
• Harrison Sawyer
• Marcus Schroen
• Gerrie Sylaidos

Played for us in 2019 but now on the payroll in another guise

• Luke Adams

Played with us at the end of 2019 but who knows about next year

• Tom Aulton
• Keenan Gibson
• Peter Skapetis
• Nick Krousoratis 
• Manny Aguek
• Ben Djiba
• Amir Jashari
• Giuseppe Marafioti
• Will Orford
• Nikola Roganovic
• Zac Bates
• Josh Dorron
• Melvin Becket

'They' say that he's not coming back for whatever reason

• Kostas Stratimitros

Possibly already moved on to Kingston

• George Gerondaras

Has he even been in Australia since early in the 2019 season?

• Andrew Mesourouni

Last time anything was heard from him, he was exploring options in India

• Billy Konstantinidis

Out

• Kristian Konstantinidis (time to say goodbye)
• Leigh Minopoulos (retired)