Now what? - South Melbourne 0 Heidelberg United 3

Well, that was one of the more dispiriting things that I've seen as a South fan. Apart from a 15 minute period in the first half where we at least got the ball up field and won a few set pieces, last Sunday was disastrous. For the vast majority of the match, we could not get the ball; in the second half, we could barely get over the half way line. Heidelberg were able to zip from one end of the field to the other with ease. Quite how it was 0-0 at halftime is anyone's guess. We were clapping the team just for winning a corner; meanwhile the Berger fans were disappointed that they weren't putting away clear one-on-one chances. That's where it's at now - looking like a team one or two divisions below where we actually are.

Once the first goal went in - via a deflection, but that piece of luck for the Bergers only made up for the lack of it earlier on - the team capitulated. Most worryingly, it capitulated psychologically. Those players on the field lost all hope and desire, becoming training cones, mere cannon fodder. Those who were benched were furious - at themselves, at the coach, at the entire situation. The star recruit was brought on, but he must be living hell on earth. The only real striker we have left was brought on, but he's hurt, and what's he supposed to do in a one against five situation anyway?

And at the end of it all, there was the coach making the call that his time was up. All that we could infer watching on from the stand, as Esteban Quintas gathered the players around him for a brief chat, and then acknowledging the crowd on his way out, was that he had made the call himself to step down. Somehow, for those of us who have wanted to see the back of him for some time, it was the final indignity - that Quintas had more sense that his time was up and was willing to fall on his own sword, than those at the club who had decided to keep Quintas on seemingly indefinitely.

It was such a soul-sucking experience that you wonder what the plan was for this year? Go cheap as hell for the NPL, and bank it all on the Australian Championship being a success? I've never been a fan of Esteban Quintas, but how did we end up making our off-season recruiting the equivalent of a high school reunion, and some random nepo-baby Dane who was probably here on holiday anyway? That's something those in charge of the football department might want to cover at the next AGM, assuming that we ever have a next AGM. Maybe that will happen after the new coach is announced, whoever that is. Lots of names being thrown around, but none seemingly of much recent reputation. That's assuming anyone of note actually wants to coach us.

Remarkably, considering the nature of the loss, a lot of people stayed back in the social club after the game. Usually people are desperate to get out of there, regardless of the timeslot and the result, and this was a particularly disastrous result and performance. Yet, people hung back. 

So ends this extended period of strangeness
The hiring of Esteban Quintas as coach of South Melbourne Hellas was the culmination of a series of decisions. First, there was the decision to give Chris Taylor a five year contract, with the addition of job titles and responsibilities that he never really wanted. Then, for whatever reason, he was sacked on the eve of season 2018, after all the players had been signed up for the year. Whatever the merits of that decision to sack Taylor, the way the players were deceived into signing up for 2018 created a black hole of trust in management, which essentially required most of those players to be let go at some point, because they sure as hell wouldn't want to stay. The Sasa Kolman era started with a bang, and then quickly collapsed. Con Tangalakis was brought in, but that didn't work either. And then we hired a coach with almost zero senior football coaching experience, who was connected to the Genova International School of Soccer academy, not my idea of a reputable soccer entity. He was also an outlier in that he was not Greek, nor was he an ex-player of ours. 

Quintas got us to survive 2019, just. 2020 didn't look promising, but COVID soon sorted that out. Apart from a sputtering FFA Cup/Dockerty Cup run, 2021 wasn't great either, but COVID sorted that out, too. 2022, 2023, and 2024 all ended up with grand final appearances, but through a mixture of outrageous misfortune (key strikers missing for 2022 and 2023, as well as injured players), and poor tactics and management (not taking off your one consistent line breaker in Andy Brennan before he got sent off in the 2024 semi), we ended up with no league titles in that three year span, and a for and against tally of 0-10. There were celebratory moments though - finally in 2024, we picked up a trophy under Esteban through a grinding, fortunate penalty shootout win in the Dockerty Cup. We also had a great run in the Australia Cup, albeit once more the final game of our season was marred by not having our main striker up front. Maybe things could have gone differently against Macarthur if Harrison Sawyer was there. Wouldn't that have been something? And Esteban was voted by his peers as coach of the year in 2024.

But overall, despite the high ladder positions of the 2022-2024 span, the experience was an incredibly demoralising one, at least for me. We were defensive on default. We often had no central midfield, at least not an attacking one. As most teams grew out of the physical, second-ball style of play that was a feature of Victorian soccer for so long, we became bogged down in it. Going to matches became tedious, an experience in religious self-flagellation. Instead of going to experience joy, we went to experience the pain of devotion, with little tangible earthly reward. Somehow, for myself and others around me, winning under Quintas often felt like losing. And losing, of course, felt even worse. 

Though I was never a fan, I will give Quintas his dues. He often had to do more with less compared to many of his predecessors. He gave more youth team players meaningful opportunities than pretty much every South coach in the last twenty years, with the exception perhaps of the by necessity early John Anastasiadis years. Some of those young players worked out better than others, but at least they got a chance.

Quintas was a hard worker. He studied opponents in depth, thought deeply about the game, and created complex plans for the players. A recently departed player, who played under both Taylor and Quintas, has related the difference between the two. Taylor would give minimal instruction during the week, and got by on generally putting the right players in the right position and let them go for it. On the other hand, Quintas would fill his whiteboards with ink, and would provide endless instruction. 

Yet somehow on game day, the game plan always looked the same. For the last half decade, everyone in Victorian soccer knew what to expect when playing against South Melbourne. For all the preparation and planning, somehow it always came back to long balls, and goals from set pieces, including the now infamous long throws. Despite playing on one of the best fields in Melbourne, South's style more resembled the territorial rugby union play of a mid-2000s George Cross team playing on the ankle rolling minefield that was Chaplin Reserve.

Quintas put a priority on defence. If the team didn't concede, then at the very least, the team couldn't lose. But the defensive strength of the side looked much better on the raw data of the "for and against" column of the competition table, than it did when you actually looked at the deeper numbers, let alone when watching the games themselves. For those of us who have watched our club since Quintas became head coach in 2019, we have seen the following. 

First, an overreliance on overwhelming numbers in defence to crowd out the opposition, so that even while being on top of the table, players like Jake Marshall were leading the league in blocked shots. This year, with a more forward stance than usual, the players have become exposed all over the backline. Second, there was the outrageously good fortune of having certainly one of the greatest goalkeepers to ever grace Victorian state league soccer, in the form of Javi Diaz Lopez, who was pulling out incredible save after incredible save for years on end. South has had some good goalkeepers during the 20 years post-NSL, but to get to the stage where your goalkeeper is the face of the club, winning league awards because of how many saves he makes when he should be making far fewer saves than most of his league contemporaries, is emblematic of what we have been about for the past five years.

Quintas loved South Melbourne Hellas. He was genuinely passionate about the club. Yet he never understood some of the core principles underpinning the club. That the club's supporters have, in the main, always wanted attacking football. Not necessarily pretty, possession football, but certainly attacking, front-foot football. It's an entertainment thing - we work during the week, we pay our money, we want to be entertained. Match day should be an occasion. We want to enjoy ourselves. Yet so much of what his teams provided was tedious, watching us bludgeon and grind our way to wins. Opposition supporters, and those missing fans of ours who only paid attention to the results and ladders, also didn't understand. "You're on top of the ladder, and you're still complaining?". It makes you sound ungrateful for being successful, but so many of us who actually watched the side were always wondering how we kept getting away with it, and how long it would be until it fell apart.

It's also an ego thing - no matter how much the fantasy deviates from reality, we still like to believe that we're a big club, one which expects to win every game that it plays, and one where a good number of teams whether coming to Lakeside or hosting us in their own ground, will gladly take a draw playing against us. Quintas repeatedly referred to South being a big club, yet his tactics and approach to the game often made us look and feel small. The greatest irony of all this came towards the end. While Ange Postecoglou was winning hearts and minds overseas for his rhetoric and monomania on playing a style of football centred on bringing joy to the fans watching, and then the Ferenc Puskas in Australia documentary Ange and the Boss making the argument that what made that South Melbourne Hellas team special was the devotion to joy, and letting players express themselves, and that there was an expectation among South fans that you would see the team attack; that attacking was its natural state.

How hard must it have been for people at the club to try and market the current team under those conditions? Already hamstrung by our irrelevance, our being in a backwater competition, of having no way out, and then when your most famous name, and all the video evidence of the past shows a desire to take the game on, to be forward on approach whenever possible, to be assertive; and all you could possibly cobble together in a highlights package showcasing the now, was goals from corners and long throws. The match day experience of the past five years, insofar as what was presented on the field, only reinforced in the mind of the people no longer going to our games that the current South Melbourne bears little resemblance to the former one. Whatever misfortune we've had under Quintas, and it has been there, and whatever winning record we had, and we did have a good one overall, the loss of the assertive, front-footed South Melbourne was a heavy price to pay.

So, I thank Esteban Quintas for his service to the club often under difficult circumstances, I acknowledge the good that he did, and I am well aware that he and I have very different opinions on how the game should be played, at least at this club. But I'm not sorry that he's gone. Now the club has to find someone to help us survive this season, and then someone to at least bring back the mentality of the famous Danny Blanchflower quote:

“The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It’s nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It is about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”

Next game
Away to Eastern Lions today in the Dockerty Cup. We'll be coached by Leigh Minopoulos, who'll be assisted by Tyson Holmes.

Final thought
They tell me that the 2006 championship team meets up annually for a reunion. That they don't it with  and/or at the club tells me we have a very sorry cultural problem.

Rubbish - South Melbourne 0 Heidelberg United 2

Nothing much more to say other then that the performance in the first half was absolute rubbish. Against probably the most mediocre Heidelberg team in a decade, we looked beyond inept. Without Ajak Riak, all we could muster was a series on pointless passing on our the line of our own six yard box, before booting it long up the field to Alun Webb or Max Mikkola. There was no midfield. We've seen this before at the worst times under Esteban Quintas; a giant "central midfield is lava" situation which all but begs the opposition to take up that space and press us to 2013 tanking Southern Stars levels. And who better to do that than Heidelberg under George Katsakis, who anachronistically still play with two up front?

The second half was better, in that at least we stated knocking the ball around, but the crossing and finishing were so poor, that it was far more likely that Heidelberg would score again before we would, and that's what happened. We had nearly 20 corners, two thirds of them in the second half, but without our two best corner takers, everything that came just floated harmlessly into the box. And the short corners? They were so numerous and so poor, that the usual suspects who are desperate for a short corner goal out of spite against me, didn't even bother getting excited about them.

The two best chances we had were the header that was cleared off the line (these things happen), and Alun Webb scuffing his one on one chance went put through clear on goal. Someone quipped on the forum hat he must've been in shock that a ball played was actually played at his feet, and that just might be the call of the year so far. Still, there were signs there abut how the team should play, which is lots of shorter passes, and always forward to the next person at the expense of going sideways. NPL defenses hate going backwards, they are almost uniformly terrible at it, so  why wouldn't that be the way to attack them, especially if you have ball playing mids at your disposal?

What's extra funny (apart from Esteban resorting to his old trick of a million halftime subs, like he was playing FIFA) is that other teams have started doing the long throw shtick as well. I mean, putting aside the fact that it worked at all, let alone to the extent that it did, surely it shouldn't be plan A, right? Anyway, all I can hope for is that last week was a blip, and not some sort of justified comeuppance for playing backfoot football and somehow coming out with maximum points most weeks.

Of more concern - and it's still early days, so let's not too get too emotionally wrought - is that it's hard to see just yet which of the new players has made us better. Sulemani looks a shadow of the attacking demon he was at Thunder. Painter-Andrews is in and out. Danny Kim is hardly there, and even if he started, would he fit our style? And while Riak has done good things, it's more of a sideways step so far than a forward, given that we still end up relying on guy up front, and the previous guy bagged twenty goals.

Next game
The annual grand prix enforced trek around the suburbs begins this Sunday, as we are away at St Albans.

Congratulations to Ajak Riak (also, we are doomed)
On one really obvious level, it's clearly fantastic for Ajak Riak to have made his international debut for South Sudan, playing most of the match in a 2-1 win against Republic of the Congo in African Cup of Nations qualifying. In what's a rare occurrence these days, Riak is probably the first South player since Luke Adams (who played for the All Whites in 2016) to play national team football while in the service of our club. 

But prestige aside, it means one of our more valuable players is possibly going to be missing at several key points of the season. South Sudan play against Republic of the Congo again on Monday, and then has two more qualifying matches during international fixture breaks in June and September. I suppose the only thing we can say is that we're not the only NPL Victoria team with this problem - two of Riak's South Sudan teammates are NPL Victoria players at other clubs.

Fixture news
First, our upcoming league fixture away against Oakleigh has been moved from the Friday to the Saturday, and the kickoff time from 8:30 to 7:30 PM. Good news for everyone who wants to go to the real Greek derby on March 31st, that of course being Collingwood vs Richmond at the MCG.

Second, our Australia Cup match against Kingston City has been locked in for April 11th, a Tuesday, at Lakeside. Here's hoping the result gets sorted in regular time, because with kickoff scheduled for 8:15 PM, we might not get home until morning.

Finally, the round 9 league game against Bentleigh, originally scheduled for April 14th - which is Orthodox Good Friday - has been moved to the afternoon of April 15th. Quite how the original date made it past those running the show has got me stuffed. 

AGM news
I have been told that the financial reports are done, and that we'll be having an AGM as soon as possible once we get access to Lakeside again after the grand prix.

Women
Yes, there were some schedule conflicts on the South of the Border home front, but also something went awry with my attempts to stream the senior women's first game of the season. I'm going to say it was probably 83% my fault, and the remainder someone else's. What I did see wasn't particularly edifying, in that it was a lot a rushed long balls up front, with occasional inadequate finishing. Hopefully it was just rust.

On the streams
South lost, the footy's back, and the Osaka sumo basho is on the internet thanks to dodgy streamers, so who's watching other teams?

Final thought
As South fans, we have the right to expect to be entertained by our team. One could go further; that except in exceptional circumstances, the team should be obligated to attempt to entertain us. Even accounting for the effects of nostalgia and being in this league, this is one of the things which made our club great: it was predominantly a ball playing club, with its best teams being not just effective, but life affirming. 

International club (of the century) of mystery

So last Thursday in the Greek Community Cup we beat Altona East 3-0, and then on the Saturday we beat East Kew, also 3-0. Some highlights packages have been put up of other games in this tournament, but oddly enough, not ours. Our game against East Kew was streamed live on Facebook however; which would have been nice for those watching on delay, had one not stumbled upon the result before even getting close to pressing play.

At any rate, the South team playing in this tournament so far appears to have been made up of 20s players, which would explain why the team rocked up in a uniform without any numbers of the back of their shirts. Somehow they weren't even the first team to do that during this tournament; I'd excuse smaller teams by saying it's just the pre-season, but we're supposed to be... well, maybe not a big team anymore, but could we maybe be at least a less small team? 

Because Altona East had lost two matches (one of them to us), by the time we got around to playing East Kew, we'd already qualified for the tournament's qualifying stage. So the only thing left to do sort out was whether we'd finish first or second in a three team group. Well, we finished first, and our next task is a quarter final match against Heidelberg United, who somehow finished second in their group. That'll be on this Saturday at Lalor, at 1:00 PM. 

These things happen I suppose, but assuming that we care about this cup, you'd reckon we'd have rather faced someone else, thereby allowing us to play our 20s for one more match. The quarter-finals are still only 70 minutes long, which may or may not suit the preparation of the senior team for the season proper. Of course the seniors could just organise their own friendlies, as they did last week when they played a closed doors friendly against Pascoe Vale at Lakeside. The overseas gambling community (at least those not conscripted by Putin to to bolster numbers on the frontlines) must be apoplectic with rage that they're not able to bet on games no one knew were happening.

A small, petty man - Avondale 0 South Melbourne 1

Your reporter could have purchased a ticket to the big AFL game that day, but instead did what he almost always does in such situations, and decided to head to the South game, regardless of the circuitous public transport path chosen, and especially regardless of the (as it turned out) even worse than usual public amenities on offer at the football arena portion of the Reggio Calabria Club, which at least in previous times had a half decent/passable canteen. Good luck to the food truck offering prawn twists and other novelty items at outrageous prices for making Lakeside's food offerings seem almost sensible by comparison. It's never a good sign when you don't see almost anyone eating anything at a game.

The worst part of the whole thing is that I got there early enough to catch about 60 minutes of the under 21s curtain raiser, so it was a hell of a long day to spend without consuming other than a can of coke, and a bit of someone's novelty Snickers bar.

For us, this was a dead rubber. A chance to continue working out the immediate future without Harrison Sawyer, while avoiding serious injuries and unnecessary yellow cards. For Avondale, it was basically win or bust, with Heidelberg likely to smash Eastern Lions, and Bentleigh Greens favourites against the all-but-relegated Dandy City. Now there was that one observant person on Twitter who noted that we must really hate Avondale considering that we played a pretty strong starting line-up, and there might be something to that. But otherwise, I think we went in pretty much as expected, minus the odd player here or there that didn't absolutely need to be out there.

And we got the job done. A 1-0 win thanks to an earlyish goal which highlighted a big part of Avondale's slip from preeminence this year; namely some pretty soft defending. I was disappointed that we couldn't add to the tally, especially as Avondale increasingly had to chase the game to give themselves some chance of making the finals; but I was otherwise happy that we seemed to be a bit more assertive overall, looking more like the side from the early parts of the season that pressed its opposition higher up the field. A good outing by Ben Djiba as well, after a few sketchy performances - when he was in the side. 

And, yes, it felt good to not only dispense with Avondale, who have given us a torrid time n recent seasons, but also to stick it up some pretty annoying characters at that club, who sought to target our supporters in prior visits to the Reggio Calabria Club. Yes, pity our poor feelings and all that, but good riddance (for the time being) of some pretty sore winners and now, also pretty sore losers judging by the antics of their coaching staff in the car park after the game. Not that I stuck around for such shenanigans, as I was hoofing it up Brunswick Road to catch a tram that would not properly sync up with the train arriving at Royal Park station.

Still, all the good feelings of the home and away season are now worth not much, as we head into the finals, which means we're either two wins from glory, or one loss from what will be deemed failure. But that's the Australian way I guess, even if New South Wales - the soccer state which loves finals systems more than anyone - is apparently dumping finals next year. Good luck to them for the principle of that move, but damned if I think they'll actually keep first past the post in the long run.

Back in Victoria, we're stuck with finals, which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't this particular finals system. In other respects, things remained much the same, as the top six was made up of five Greek teams, well earning the competition the title of NPL Greece. I mean, look at this for the most recent title winners:

• 2019 - Bentleigh Greens
• 2018 - Heidelberg United
• 2017 - Bentleigh Greens 
• 2016 - South Melbourne
• 2015 - Bentleigh Greens
• 2014 - South Melbourne
• 2013 - Northcote City

I know that it helps that the last two seasons being obliterated means that run wasn't interrupted by Avondale winning the title, but Greek teams have also frequently been the runner-up during those seasons, and have won five of the past seven Dockerty Cup finals.

Next match

Thanks to finishing in the top two, we have a week off this week, and are back again next week. We'll be playing the lowest ranked winner of the first week of the finals. As it turns out, that will be fourth placed Green Gully, who knocked out Bentleigh last night, and are the lowest ranked team remaining thanks to Oakleigh defeating Heidelberg.

The match will be on Sunday 4th September at 4pm. Apparently that's also Fathers Day, though I never took much notice of such things. It was a choice between going up against the AFL finals on the Friday night, the AFL finals on Saturday afternoon/evening, or Fathers Day. I think the club made the right choice. Port, the host of the other semi-final, are going up against the sold out Geelong vs Collingwood game on Saturday.  

The under 21s final will take place after the seniors' game.

Nag, nag, nag

People scoff, but gentle intermittent nagging can sometimes achieve serious results. My nagging is now on record as seeing the restoration of the Dockerty Cup, the production of pompom beanies at South, and perhaps my greatest accomplishment so far, the recent availability of South Melbourne Gunners merch. Does it matter that it's via a RedBubble style outlet with $10 postage? Does it matter that the Gunners gimmick was loathed back when it was introduced, and still remains largely unappreciated now? Not a damn bit. If you can't appreciate the magnificent irony of the early 1980s attempt by Rik Booth and friends to de-ethnicise the NSL and introduce ridiculous gimmick team nicknames, and yet somehow make the South Melbourne Hellas logo even more ethnic, then that's on you. Or you could just buy the re-make of the Hellas World Order shirts, which may be more to your liking.

My Everest

Some people are asking, now that I've accomplished this trifecta, what's next on the nag wishlist? And after thinking about it, I have to say: the abandonment of short corners, which I realise is outside the control of pretty much everyone that pays attention to what I say at South. However, I will note this: last week the team played a short corner. It failed, as most corners (short or otherwise) tend to do, and I didn't even entertain the idea that we would score from it. But it was at least a short corner taken in the right circumstances, with the opposition scrambling to organise itself and not exactly paying attention to what was going on. It's a start.

Absentee Golden Boot

Congratulations to Harrison Sawyer, who despite missing the final two matches of the home and away season due to signing with Indian side Jamshedpur, nevertheless managed to finish the season as the league's top scorer. Sawyer finished on 17 goals, two ahead of Oakleigh's Wade Dekker and Heidelberg's Kaine Sheppard.

On the streams

Hello, hello (and goodbye)
Saturday last I got home in time from the supermarket to watch most of the Moreland City vs North Geelong game. The sums were pretty straightforward, even if I cocked them up twice on the South forum. First-placed North Geelong, already promoted, only needed a draw to be crowned champions. Second-placed Moreland City needed a win to guarantee promotion, and to win the NPL2 championship; a draw would leave them vulnerable to being overtaken by Brunswick Juventus, who were playing relegation threatened Werribee City. Well when I said I got home in time early enough to watch most of the game, I meant that arrived home about twenty or more minutes into the game, with the score already 1-0, and who'd know that that's the way it would stay for the rest of the game? A pretty tight, kinda ugly game, ideally viewed from the ground level camera. North had a couple of good chances late on to take the draw and the title, but didn't.

Brunswick Juve then allegedly threw their game very late against Werribee, conceding what some have called two very suspect goals, which kept Werribee in NPL2 for another season. Having not seen the late comeback in question, I could not possibly comment on whether the result was indeed suspect, much like I could not possibly comment on Port Melbourne's equally allegedly suspect 95th minute equaliser against Werribee in the final round of 2014, a result which incidentally kept both teams up. But where was I? Oh yes. We'll be seeing North Geelong and Moreland in NPL1 next season, at the expense of Dandenong City and Eastern Lions, neither of whose grounds I was able to get to this year, and in the case of Dandy City, I'm not sorry they and their impossible to get to ground are gone, even if the eually ridiculously located Elcho Park is its replacement.

But what of Moreland City? Their Campbell Reserve ground might be up to scratch (just) for NPL2, but I doubt it will pass muster for NPL1. The thinking seems to be that they'll end up playing out at CB Smith, but good luck with that considering Fawkner, Pascoe Vale, and Brunswick Juve also play out of there. Anyway, while I won't buy into the rhetoric that Moreland City have returned to the top-flight for the first time in 75 years (or whatever the number is), because I'm counting their history from their 1989 merger rather than from their individual constituent parts, we can I suppose talk some history. We last played against Moreland in a competitive fixture in 1962; against Coburg, another merger constituent in 1960, our first season; and we never played against Park Rangers. Still, the fact that the Moreland City family tree does include Park Rangers, it means that next season will see a meeting of distant cousins, in that Park Rangers were born from an early 1940s offshoot of South Melbourne United. Think of it like the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac getting together.

Through the fog

Against all your natural inclinations you try to be kind, you hope to be forgiving, you want to be understanding, and not even from a "what if I was in their place" mentality; just because it's the right thing to do, and there's not much to be gained from being unnecessarily cruel. But the NPL TV product is not up to scratch on so many levels, and while I wish it wasn't so, there's no way of getting around it. Even the things the offering does well, get undone when they're not done well or at all. To wit: the last couple of weeks, NPL Tv's social media (at least on Twitter) has begun sharing goals as they happen. A marvellous innovation, long overdue, but welcome nonetheless. But if you wanted to see last week's winning goal in the Avondale vs South game? Not there. And if you were watching the Oakleigh vs Heidelberg game on a unwieldy stream cast from a laptop to a television, because there is no dedicated NPL TV app even though the host technology Cluch TV app exists, and you wanted to catch up painlessly with the goals ftom the Green Gully vs Bentleigh game on social media, because you don't want to deal with the mobile NPL TV app... well, they weren't on the socials last night either. Sure you could get the goals from the dead rubber Kingborough Lions vs Olympia game, but nothing from last night. So it goes, but damn if it doesn't suck, despite the best intentions of everyone trying to make it work.

Now I will note of this game that it was exciting. It was of a pretty decent standard at times, albeit too fast at times. There were two injury time goals that bailed Heidelberg out temporarily, plenty of near misses, a penalty shoot-out, and lots of shenanigans. And yet so much of the experience was undermined by a stream beset with technical issues - including missing the first part of what turned out to be an anti-climactic shoot-out - and so many bouts of out of focus camera that one felt bad for the people trying to put together the product. 

I never (OK, maybe not never) like to think I go out of my way to be cruel when I criticise, but the quality of the footage stream last night was not up to scratch, I know that it's done on the smell of an oliy rag, but if we are going to offer this service which dissuades people from going to games, the least we can do is make it good. How many times last night was a team streaming towards goal, only for the footage to look like a news segment on some sporting scandal which blurred the images so no player could be identified?

The penalty shoot-out turned temporarily into a radio broadcast, and though it came back eventually,for a moment there I had to use my imagination, like some sort of caveman. The graphics for the scored/missed penalties also got botched, though I suppose luckily for all concerned the shoot-out was over almost as soon as it started.

Anyway, as for the match itself, people will talk about things like Sean Ellis' free kick with the last kick of the game. Me, I'm all about Matthew Foschini acting like a pork chop, in this case trying to start nonsense with the Heidelberg bench after Oakleigh equalised against the run of play in the first half. It was so petty and stupid, and he got the yellow card that he deserved, but it was also disappointing in a different way. Foschini has had his back and forths with us over the past few seasons, but seeing him get it on with the Berger bench and fans, well... I thought we had something special. 

Well, those kinds of antics at least help explain in part why our so called leaders at the time had so much trouble reigning in the excesses of the People's Champ.

Final thought

It's a shocking thought, but it would be nice to win the grand final.

It's not what it used to be - Heidelberg United 2 South Melbourne 1

If I was still the younger me, things would be very different. OK, maybe only slightly different. This post certainly would have come out on Sunday evening, or Monday morning at the latest. But in what has become a common and tired refrain, that was then, and this is now. Back in (insert glory days of this blog) I was a career student making the most of ample leisure time and low responsibility. Now I'm scratching around temporary work scanning senate ballot papers alongside a resentful work-wife, waking up at 5:00am like every other alienated prole. 

At least I made it to the actual match this time, after missing two games a in a row before this one. Mind you, getting to away grounds via public transport continues to be a hell of an adventure. This time there were some sort of indecipherable (to me) alternative transport shenanigans on whatever the relevant train line is that I use to get to Olympic Village. This resulted in me ditching the train network around Dennis station, and catching some bus up to Southern Road and walking up to the old turnstile entrance, which I was informed during the week would be open for this game.

Miracle of miracles, it was. And there wasn't even a line, just one bored turnstile attendant, and one bored security guard. Even with delays, I got to the ground early enough to watch a good chunk of the second half of the under 21s with the very scant number of South fans that were at the ground at this stage. At least the line for the souvs wasn't very long, though for $15 I'd want my lamb a little less overcooked. I'd like to say it was nice to be back at Olympic Village after its renovation, but so much of the improvement is for players, that spectator amenities seem to have come a very distant second in consideration.

OK, so the running track is gone, and people on the western side of the ground can now be closer to the action. Problem is though, that it's been turned into the classic flat outer where a crowd any more than one deep is stuffed - and that's without the non-transparent benches. The hill underneath the shed on the western side has also been carved out, so if you don't want to stand on the fenceline, or behind the goals, or in the eastern stand and burning your retinas out facing the setting sun for a good couple of hours, you're basically being exiled to remaining hilly areas on the western side, basically in the corners. 

And then it gets cold, and dewy as the night falls. And it gets dark as the sun sets and the not fit for match days lights aren't turned on. And unless you time it yourself or use the Futbol24 app, you can't keep time because the scoreboard isn't in operation yet.

All of which complemented a pretty ordinary atmosphere, which saw a pretty ordinary South performance in a pretty ordinary game overall. Credit to the Bergers for the win - they deserved it, but even they'd think twice about putting this match on DVD and flogging it off for $25. They certainly looked fitter and more organised than they did in one round 1, and for whatever reason we chose not to press them up the pitch as we did in the season opener. In fact we seemed to sit off their midfielders throughout most of the match. What's more, we reverted to 2021 tactics in attack, bypassing our own midfield in favour of bombing it to Sawyer.

And as happened in 2021, bombing it to Sawyer meant Saywer getting mauled by the opposition defence. Marcus Schroen came on and kept spinning around in circles in search of an angle amenable to his left foot. After allegedly kidnapping diverting him at the airport on the eve of the season Eusebio style, Jai Ingham has remained largely disappointing. Oh, it all started well enough as he scored that corker against Bentleigh to win the game, and then we assumed he was building up to full fitness. But full fitness seems not to have arrived. Neither has full interest on his part, otherwise he'd be worth more than an average of a singular moment per game where he will do something significant or fail to do something significant with the opportunity on offer.  

Funnily enough, we could have been 2-0 down and/or 3-0 up in the first half. I'm still not quite sure how we scored from our worst attempt on goal in the first half, taking the lead, but by the end there was no argument: we sucked. Some are taking that 98 minutes of suckage as proof of much more suckage to come, almost desiring it, coveting its apparently imminent arrival like they were waiting for the rapture. Oh no, Oakleigh's going to catch up to us. Oh no, Oakleigh has caught up to us, after beating Knights in a midweek game I don't think anyone bothered to note the significance of. Oh no, Oakleigh will surely beat Eastern Lions and take top spot off us. Or at least draw.

But I get the point, even if its custard is over-egged somewhat. We have a good squad, which too often plays horrible looking football. Anyway, getting home meant taking the bus from Northland back into the city, which apart from a delay in setting off, was rather painless. Considered taking the 903 Smartbus all the way back from Northland to Sunshine, which would have been a good hour and a half trip.

Next game

Tomorrow night at home against Bentleigh. It's a very crowded schedule tomorrow - pretty much the entire comp has scheduled matches for tomorrow afternoon, evening, or night, which is a bit old fashioned. Let's just call it Super Saturday.

You know, I learned something this week

Yes, it's five subs you're allowed, but apparently you have to make them within a maximum of three windows. Should just go for full interchange.

Fickle me

Has the senior women's season turned a corner of some sort? I put on the stream of their game against Bulleen on at halftime, saw them concede early in the second half to fall 3-1 behind, and then I went to bed. The next day I see that the game finished in a 3-3 draw.

Final thought

Has anyone seen Oakleigh Harismidis lately? Feels like I haven't seen him for years. Heidelberg Harismidis meanwhile is still kicking on.

Glad to be back - South Melbourne 3 Heidelberg United 1

After everything that has happened over the past two years, it was just nice to be back, again. Coming in on the train, I had that sick feeling in the guts which means that I still care; that's a good thing, as I have been reassured by others, because if I didn't care, then the whole thing would be work, and not mangled joy. It was opening day, it was derby day, it was South Melbourne Hellas day.

I am now 16 years into my second South Melbourne Hellas life, the one where I have been able to be the kind of supporter that I was not able to be during the NSL years. In this second Hellas life, I have spent those 16 years largely among the same faces. Some people have left, some new people have come in, and others come in and out. But the core of the group I became attached to - based mostly around the people active on the defunct smfcboard.com, and its still extant replacement smfcfans.com - are still there.

Many of them are now married, with kids who they are bringing to games. Some of them had kids so long ago, that the kids are now the age I was when I started coming back to South. Everyone's a little older, a little tireder, a little more jaded, but also a bit more relaxed. The club's been to hell and not quite back on multiple occasions, the football remains quasi-watchable at the best of times, and the persistent promise of a brighter tomorrow is a running joke that's so old and well-worn that no one even bothers to complain about it anymore; at least not that much. And why should we? Cynicism at the idea that things might get better for us is as much a part of the club as the supporters who have to listen to the promises, as well as the people who have to try and make a better tomorrow happen.

At the bottom of the stairs outside the office entrance, I realised I didn't even have the QR code for Lakeside saved as a favourite in my Services Victoria app. Then picking up my membership, and while wearing a jersey from a few years ago now, I am told by a volunteer that it's time to update to a new jersey. My response to that is that I don't wear Kappa, so that could take awhile. The food was much the same, except for the food trucks outside which included an ice-cream truck, which along with the warm weather made it seem like an NSL revival.

Having only attended one pre-season game in the lead-up to the season opener - not that there were that many games to choose from - I had no idea about form, tactics, or expectations. All I wanted is for the team to try and score goals, which would be something to hang on to after last year's dire setup. It's easy to say you've defended well when you have six or seven players sitting so deep that you have no midfield. But that's not meant to be the South way, and it comes across as even sillier when people are falling over themselves to claim Ange Postecoglou and the pretty attacking football his teams play.

Look, I get that we're a world away from the personnel and training environments that could come close to emulating what Ange is doing, but there's also this: attacking football is more fun, for fans and for players. Conceding the initiative almost from the get-go, and preferring to try and absorb pressure from deep in your own half, is bloody draining. OK, so what was served up on Thursday wasn't necessarily pretty. in part because both teams were still underdone, especially the Bergers.

But my goodness it was exciting to watch us take the game on. Was it ball playing finesse work? No. Was is it an approach which could reliably produce more than a couple of chances a game? Yes. With the exception of a couple of teams which try and play a short passing game, NPL Victoria is still very much a turnover and counter-attack based affair. That's fine. I don't mind. As long as we consistently win the ball from midfield and not so deep that the opponent's goal looks like a mirage on the horizon, good things are more likely to happen.

Instead of bombing it to Harrison Sawyer with no support and no hope, we might this year be able to play both to and away from Sawyer. Andy Brennan put in a couple of decent corners. Max Mikkola can throw the ball a long way. Players being given the licence and setup to have a go means creating more chances, and more chance of luck going your way. Who knows how it will look when we fall behind, or playing against more capable and fitter teams. Who knows where Lirim Elmazi and Josh Wallen will fit into the team. 

But the most important thing was that the first half was enjoyable. We cruised home in the second half to the point where people could later focus on arguing about how large or small the crowd was, and how many people the Tardis space in the corporate areas can fit. We could focus on gimmick chants for winning "six points", and trying to get kids to lead certain chants.

Next game

Away to Bentleigh on Friday night.

2021 AGM date set

A date has been set - finally - for the dual 2021 annual general meetings. On Sunday March 6th at 11:00AM, the South Melbourne Hellas AGM will take place, followed by the South Melbourne FC AGM at 12:00. Both AGMs will of course be in the social club.

What happens if the season is cancelled again

Unfortunately buried deep within Joey Lynch's season preview on the Football Victoria site - I would have have preferred that it be posted in massive letters at the start of the piece - lies the answer to what happens if the season is cancelled again.

However, in the event that COVID does its unwelcome thing and the season is forced to be cancelled for the third-straight year, the premiership and promotion and relegation will all be determined via ladder position on the condition that at least 50% of the league’s fixtures have been played. If all teams have played the same amount of games it’s a pretty easy determination, but in the event that there is an uneven spread then a points per game basis will be used, followed by average goal difference per game, and then average goals for per game. 

So there you go, the protocol that should have existed a year ago and which could have saved us a lot of bother and the need for bespoke solutions, but didn't. 

Show me the money

This bit of news is a little bit out of date now, in that it's from February 1st, but it's worth noting nonetheless. Channel 10 reported back then that Ross Pelligra and the Pelligra Group had made an offer of around $20 million to purchase Adelaide United. 

You may know the Pelligra name from some of the sponsor boards around Lakeside, or the brand's prominent position on the scoreboard during matches. You may even remember the Pelligra name from our most recent A-League bid, even if you'd rather not remember that we made a bid, preferring instead to pretend that you were always in favour of pro-rel and a second division. Me, I always preferred the (hypothetical) drawbridge model; that is, getting in, pulling up the gate, and filling in the moat with crocodiles. But I digress.

Anyway, for that most recent bid of ours, Ross Pelligra and his property development concern were set to be the major financial backers for the entity representing South Melbourne Hellas in the A-League. So, that's one question answered three years down the line - yes, the money was actually there for a South aligned bid. The second question was a bit more current: would the Pelligra purchase of Adelaide United, and the Pelligra Group's wider Adelaide sporting interests, see a diminishing of its sponsorship of South Melbourne? At the moment, that does not appear the case. 

Maybe people can support both the A-League and a former NSL club? Shocking if true. Also kind of icky.

Australia Cup Mk II

No one at South needs to worry about this for a few weeks yet, but just in case you haven't caught up on this little bit of oldish news, the FFA Cup has been renamed to the Australia Cup. This change was likely deemed necessary when Football Federation Australia decided it no longer wanted to be a Federation, and instead wanted to... I don't actually know where I'm going with this, except to say that an unnecessary name change in one department has led to led to a stupid name change in another.

A handful of people reading this are probably aware that there was already once an Australia Cup for soccer, which ran from 1962-1968. It ran on a sort of Champions League format, in that qualification seemed to be offered not only to champions of the various state federations, but also state cup winners, and teams that finished in the upper echelons of the bigger state leagues. The original Australia Cup was ended due to the high cost of travel, and diminishing fan interest in the tournament - which was probably a reflection of the wider cooling off of interest in local soccer as the effects of the ethnic boom started to peter out.

The FFA Cup trophy was modeled on the Australia Cup trophy, which was named the Henry Seamonds Memorial Trophy in 1963, after the then recent passing of the Australian soccer administrator. You may recall that this trophy was found in a skip outside the Hakoah club in Sydney. After a refurbishment, the original trophy now resides with Caroline Springs George Cross, the 1964 winners of the Cup.Modeling the FFA Cup trophy on the Australia Cup trophy was a clever and respectful nod to the past, without claiming direct continuity. 

This name change though comes across as neither clever nor respectful, just slack. They could've named it after Alex Pongrass. They could've named it after Frank Lowy. They could've even named it after the skip they found the old trophy in.

The PR statements around the name change claim that there was consultation with people, and that everyone seemed to be happy with the name change. Well, they didn't consult me, or the other layabouts involved with Australian soccer history. Frankly, it's just an attempt to hitch a ride on the coattails of a defunct competition that was won by several now dead clubs no one cares about, played under a different format. Instead of doing something new or thoughtful, they did something cheap and lazy, which will muddle statistical compilation and historical narrative as people inevtiable conflate the two competitions. And they'll call it respecting history.

Around the streams

The future of NPL streaming is here, and it's called npl.tv, accessed via the "Cluch" app. Horrible name, who knows where the "t" ended up. Anyway, Cluch seems to be a streaming platform which focuses on a lot of minor sports, as well as second and third tier competitions of otherwise major sports. Four state federations have jumped on board with NPL TV, Football Victoria being one of them.

The service - which you need to register for - is available via a phone app, and also via desktop through the NPL TV website. At the moment it's a free service, and I haven't seen any indication yet of if or when that might change to a paid service. You do have to wonder though at what point someone will actually try and make some money from this. 

The opening weekend hasn't been all smooth sailing for the new service, with reports of crashes, games not even starting, and people struggling to sign up. Having not watched any of the games on a television via Chromecast or some such, I can't vouch for whether the video quality is better (significantly or otherwise) than the YouTube or Facebook streams. I don't know squat about smart TVs and such, so I can't elaborate on how those things will work, except that Apple TV and Android TV applications are in the works

I have a pretty dated Nokia smartphone, with a small screen and not much of a memory cache, but I was surprised at how well the app worked for the most part. There was some minor, occasional buffering, but otherwise I didn't seem to run into some of the problems others were reporting. I was not exactly thrilled however that the phone app seems to redirect to a browser function rather than merely running the stream through the app itself.

The desktop variant is much the same, but here's where I ran into some problems - namely that some streams didn't even seem to be working, as in the case of Avondale vs Bentleigh, including the quite unhelpful message "this video file cannot be played: error code 232011". At least there was a backup YouTube stream for all of this week's games, which I found myself defaulting to in preference to the app and desktop options. In time, once the new app overcomes its teething problems, it is likely that this service will see the end of the Facebook and YouTube streams we have become accustomed to using for the past few season. The Facebook streams are already gone, and the YouTube streams seem to exist mostly as a backup. 

This is a pity, though I do understand the reasoning behind it. No point in making a big song and dance about a new streaming platform, and then having a competing service running against it. Part of NPL TV's reason for existing will be to gather more accurate demographic data about who is watching Australian second tier soccer, likely minus much of the European and Asian gambling fraternity which piggybacked off the more easily accessible Facebook and YouTube streams. It's the kind of data that might prove useful for trying to figure out how to make a possible national second division broadcasting arrangement work.

The NPL TV desktop and app options have a couple of nice features, the best of which is a list of videos of important moments within each game such as goals, shots on goal, corners won, and cards dished out. Of these, the "corners won" feature is clearly the most pointless, but it's nice not to have fling back and forth on a whole match timeline looking for footage of goals. 

Switching to that highlights menu, and especially switching between games, is a pain in the arse. Others have also bemoaned the inability to start watching a game from any given point in time, being forced to watch the game from that moment you log in. After giving both the app and desktop version a run, and despite being pleased with some of the NPL TV add-ons, I still find the YouTube stream easier to use, just because it's so much easier to switch between different simultaneous streams. With so many overlapping matches, I'll likely be sticking to the YouTube option until its no longer available.

Scaffolding news

Viewers may have also noticed that many of the camera angles on the opening round's streams were closer to ground level than is usually the case. I noticed this at first on the stream of the Port Melbourne vs St Albans game yesterday, though I should have also noted that it was the case at some other games I watched, like Dandenong City vs Melbourne Knights.

This is because the kinds of temporary scaffolding many clubs use for camera and commentary positions are no longer covered by Football Victoria's public liability insurance. It's a change in policy which seems to follow in the wake of the tragic death last year of a Queensland man, who was crushed by collapsing media scaffolding while watching his son play.

The only way to change the status of such temporary scaffolding is to convert the relevant temporary structures into permanent ones; or to follow a three step process whereby the third party provider/installer of a temporary structure (which may include a local council) provides a certificate of currency, as well as significant liability insurance of its own.

It makes you wonder about the day in 2014 when South fans put together a temporary gantry out at Werribee. Goodness knows who would have been liable if anything happened to Tim the cameraman on that day.

Final thought

A shame about the minute's silence for Ulysses Kokkinos. Hell of a time for the PA system to go awry. So it goes.

Hello, Nuna! Dandenong Thunder 4 South Melbourne 1

So, for the transport engineers out there, here was Saturday's method for getting to the game. Both main car parks at Sunshine station closed, so decided to take the bus up to the station instead, thinking I would get a cab on the way back because buses stop by the time I would get back. Instead of getting the bus from my nearest stop (about 50 metres away), I walked up to the next stop (about 300 metres up the road), because my nearest stop is a bit of a mess thanks to extensive road and footpath rehabilitation works.

The wait for the rail replacement bus wasn't more than a few minutes, a stopping all stations effort to North Melbourne. Once at North Melbourne the task was to get on a train to somewhere in the city to change to a Pakenham or Cranbourne service. That didn't take more than about five minutes, getting on a train to Frankston.

Oh yes, there's this thing which still throws me off sometimes, that a train from Werribee towards the city might nowadays come under a "Frankston" designation on the screens, because Werribee trains often run through to Frankston after reaching the city. So I took the Frankston train to Richmond from North Melbourne, and changed at Richmond to a Pakenham service, which again, I didn't have to wait long for. That went pretty smoothly, and then I got to Dandenong Station.

It was freezing, and there was a 20 minute wait for the 901 bus, so what else to do but keep watching the stream of the women's game against Heidelberg at Lakeside. The NPLW can be such an unsatisfying competition to watch because of the lack of depth and its inbuilt imbalances, but the South women this season... I don't know, there's also something annoying about the way they play. It's a bit showboaty, it's a bit pull finger out only when necessary, and more than a bit careless. Heidelberg are an OK team, but we made them look a lot better than they are - at least during the first half - because there was little desire on our part to play meaningful football in the middle of the park.

Sure, there was the dangerous (and pointless) backline passing around, which attracted pressure for no good reason. But midfield proficiency? It's been a problem for much of the season as far as I can tell, where the all the caution and possession based style of the back third becomes all about booting the ball into space and hoping Melina Ayres (mostly) can run on to a loose ball and smash the ball past a helpless keeper. But where's the midfield panache, the evidence of stylistic and player growth? Hard to see where I'm watching from, but hey, we e3nded up crunching the Bergers 7-0, so everything's good, right?

Finally got to the ground, super early - because if I'm going to hike it all the way to Dandenong on public transport, I might as well get as much football in as possible - and caught most of the reserves game, which we ended up losing 4-2. One tolerable but nevertheless overpriced chicken roll was not enough to ward off the cold, and double-socked or not, there was no chance that my feet weren't going to freeze on standing on cold concrete or on dewy grass. I was disheartened also with a conversation with one of the few former South players that still comes to our games, who wanted to place most of the blame for our recent poor run of results on our injury toll, and none whatsoever on the coaching methodology. Well, we all see the game differently; we're all blind men touching different parts of the same elephant.

Still more time to kill, and not many South fans in sight, because pretty much everyone's given up, possibly for good. Having ditched the Futbol24 app some time ago because there just isn't the space on my phone for more apps, I am nowadays checking up on NPL scores via flicking over briefly onto NPL Victoria YouTube streams. Do I like what I see? Not really. That's because I see good and mediocre teams punish the poor teams in ways that we could not, even when we were "good". So you see Hume cracking four past Eastern Lions, Oakleigh crushing Dandy City, Green Gully smashing Altona Magic - with my three seconds of live viewing of that match being some goal from 30 metres out - and Port crunching St Albans. All very good, very reassuring only insofar that there should be just enough bad teams in this league that they won't all be able to catch up to us in our current mediocre state. 

And then there was Avondale vs Bentleigh, which finished 3-1 to the home side, after they trailed early on. Now, apart from the observation being made that not only does Avondale have good footballers (which costs money, I admit), there's also the fact Avondale also play good football (which doesn't cost any money, really); the kind of football that you'd like to see your team play, whether your side has the kind of resources that Avondale has, or merely half of them. It's a question of attitude, to a certain extent. And I get it - sometimes situations cause you to play more circumspect football, sometimes you need to deploy a more defensive state of mind.

But Avondale, after trailing early on, against what is a defensively suspect but otherwise pretty decent outfit in Bentleigh, amassed 21 shots on goal, and 13 on target by the end of the game. Against Altona Magic last week, a team who had not won a game all year, and whom we trailed (and eventually lost to) 2-1, we could manage three shots on target, over 90+ minutes of football. Against Thunder, we had two timid shots early in the half, to 13 on goal and seven on target from Thunder. Of course numbers don't tell the whole story, because by the end of last Saturday night's game we had more shots on target to Thunder, but that only goes to show that if want to play attacking football that we can. 

Of course the instruction to our players is obviously to play awful, boring, dispiriting football, in the hopes that we will win 0-0; which will only happen if the opposition is stupid enough to play a suspended player. But what we witnessed on Saturday night would have got most coaches sacked. Hell, I would've had the coach sacked at halftime, or even 30 minutes in if that was an option. Apart from a moderately promising opening five minutes, the team spent the rest of the half basically camped in its own half, gifting the opposition possession and territory. Thunder have good some players, they're no mugs, but they're also no world beaters, and yet we could not get possession of the ball in the opposition half. 

1-0 down, and then 2-0 down, both goals coming from corners - which is three goals conceded from corners since lockdown ended - and probably lucky not to be further down. And despite all of that, we continued to try and do the stupidest things imaginable under the circumstances. Down and out, under siege, we invited even more pressure onto ourselves by trying to play out the back from every situation. The goal kicks were the worst of it. Pierce Clark, seemingly not trusted to just belt the ball long under any circumstances, would inevitably play the ball left or right (usually to his left), no further than the edge of the 18 yard box, whereupon usually Brad Norton would pass the ball back to Clark, who would be rushed upon by Thunder forwards who knew exactly what we we're going to do all along, and then good luck hoping that we wouldn't concede.

The lack of situational awareness from anyone on field or on the bench was astonishing. In a game of soccer, there's skill level, there's tactics, and there's psychology. Our skill level is good enough to be competitive against almost any team in this competition, but our tactics are dire, but we've already said that. But our situational awareness is also completely shot. You have an opponent that is fired up, is in the ascendancy, and looking to press high up the field. They want the game to be played at the same high tempo that's benefiting them at that moment of time. So instead of taking the sting out of the game, we try to match that tempo, try to knock the ball around right on our goal line, and keep playing the game on the opposition's terms.

It was astonishing stuff, watching South Melbourne psychologically capitulate to the extent that no matter how many times it failed, that our players would robotically perform Nunawading "Evolution of the Idea" playing out of the back. Sure, there had already been the robotic qualities earlier in the season with our retreats from midfield back to the keeper, but on Saturday night the situation had become deploringly bad. It was, dare I say it, Southern Stars 2013 bad, and I don't use that comparison lightly.  It was a gut wrenching, soul destroying, club destroying spectacle. Two subs made on the half hour mark only served to show that Quintas had got the starting line-up badly wrong, and that he has no switch-up from Plan A (whatever that means in a non hit it long to Harry Sawyer world) to whatever else he might have up his sleeve.

That we came out in the second half in a more positive frame of mind, pulled a goal back, and almost levelled the score was even more dispiriting. Clearly we have the talent on our books to play imperfect, but still generally good attacking football. But let's say for arguments sake that we did equalise. Let's even say for argument's sake that we somehow went on to win the game. That would only prove the point that we are being coached horrendously, and that just about anyone else in this state could do the job better. At this stage of the season, it's barely about personnel anymore. Tactically and psychologically, we are shot. No one out there playing for South is enjoying the game anymore, you can see that at least half the senior squad is beyond fucking miserable. It's been a grind for the whole season, salvaged only by a ridiculously fortunate unbeaten run to start the year, and no amount of Shepparton bonding trips and renditions of Sweet Caroline can make playing this kind of football under this manager feel worthwhile. 

Apparently on 3XY Radio Hellas on Sunday, the sports program read out a message from president Nick Maikousis that Quintas will remain as South coach for the rest of the season. You can read that in classic "he's got the full support of the board" style, which means he'll be sacked soon, but the reality is that we probably can't afford to pay out his contract. Why this is the case when we were told that Quintas' performance was tied to certain KPIs is anyone's guess, but it seems we are stuck with him until the end of this year, unless he falls on his own sword. 

So what's left to do? Hope the players perform a quiet mutiny, by taking over control of training and matchday themselves, completely cutting out management? 

(Big hint to any of our players stupid enough to read this blog - you should totally do this) 

I mean, what could possibly go wrong with such an approach that would be worse than the last two months worth of performances, and the misery you have (and we, the supporters) have been forced to endure?

Next game

FFA Cup qualifier tomorrow night against Oakleigh Cannons at Jack Edwards. A win here gets us into the national stage of the competition, and into the Dockerty Cup semi finals. No one expects us to win though.

Final thought

Big thanks to Johnny for giving me a lift back to Footscray, and to Kartsi for offering to give me a ride back to somewhere approximating civilisation. Then when I got back to Sunshine station on the rail replacement bus at about 10:30, there were no cabs in the vicinity, so I walked the kilometre and a half home. A tiptop end to a tiptop day.

The New Normal - Heidelberg United 0 South Melbourne 1

A healthy crowd in a compact ground. It all felt
a bit country footy. Photo: Luke Radziminksi.

I know I said that I was unlikely to go to Jack Edwards Reserve, in the event that there was a lack of a plan with regards to ticketing and crowd capacity. And yet, though there was no plan publicised, I ended up at the ground anyway. 

You'll say that of course that I was always going to turn up, but what turned it for me was the Dandenong derby on the Friday night, where a large crowd was in attendance all around the ground, and who knows what if any advice was given to spectators beforehand. Later on I heard they may have begun to turn people away from George Andrews Reserve, but that's more or less hearsay to me, much in the same way that the rumour started that the grandstand at Olympic Village had been condemned. 

More likely in the latter case, it was actually the old media and VIP shed on the western side of the ground that's been deemed even more unsafe than the rest of the venue. That would make sense; after all, if the eastern stand was really that dangerous, why were there spectators and a film crew allowed in there to watch the under 19s and 21s fixtures? But I digress.

Out here in Sunshine, it's rail replacement services up and down the Sunbury line at the moment, which makes getting out to places like Oakleigh that little bit more bothersome. Still, one of the minor perks of covid is that there's fewer people using public transport, so everything went smoothly enough on that front. Caught up with Gains at Flinders Street (but not before trying to jog my memory about which line Huntingdale station is on), then we took another petri dish out to Oakleigh, and soon we were at the ground.

Once at the gate, I saw the first evidence of a covid plan of some sort. Usually my media pass is enough to get me into a ground without too much hassle, but on Sunday there was a QR code on the ticket booth to scan and fill in details for. Good for pleb members of the crowd, albeit it'd be nice if there was some forewarning in case the majority Greek crowd turned up five minutes before kickoff as per custom, and then had to fiddle with phones and digital forms to get in.

Which is another way of saying, considering that as part of my media pass a lication I already had to supply contact detail information, couldn't they just let me into the venue after taking down my pass number? But after no soccer for a year, one doesn't want to complain too much, because the experience on that front went fine enough. I do wonder though whether it will mirror the procedure for entering Lakeside this Friday and the weeks to come. Might be a good idea to put out a note in the socials in the leadup to the game. Maybe.

Once in the ground, everything just seemed mellow. Warm, sunny day, some people I saw last week or the week before, and a whole bunch of people I hadn't seen for about a year. There was also a distinct lack of emotional angst. Maybe everyone's a bit rusty and the angst and anger will come back, or maybe the time off has seen everyone grow a bit older in ways other than just the chronological. 

Maybe most of our diehards have realised, finally, that the war is indeed over, and that we should enjoy the time we have left with this club, whether that be two years, ten years, or somehow more. Sure, there's still going to be people who haven't got the message yet that we've surrendered, and thus they'll keep fighting in Twitter's Filipino jungles for a couple more decades; but most people just seemed glad to be back. How many people that were there on Sunday will once again become regulars - outside of a game against old rivals, and for many at least, at venues within short distance of home - remains to be seen.

Without being at all scientific about it, the consensus may well be that people are getting tired of fighting, or at least tired of fighting the forever war that was South Melbourne 2005-2020. Some of them are probably also tired of fighting with people at home to go South games, instead of family functions and sundry responsibilities. I reckon it's been a long time since a South game would've fallen under the category of a family outing as it was in the past. As usual though, I worry that when I make these kinds of observations, I am actually just extrapolating my own feelings onto the wider South Melbourne Hellas community who may have already reached that stage of emotional resignation years before I caught up to what might now be an ancient zeitgeist.

The mellow vibe extended to the surrounds. Middle Park was a classic suburban venue, Olympic Village much the same, and Lakeside a step or two up from either of those while still inhabiting that conceptual space. But Jack Edwards is more truly suburban, and no amount of new electronic scoreboards can change that feeling. Important things happened at the other grounds mentioned - and while it's not like there haven't been important games here, too - it's not really even remotely the same thing.

Instead of being partisan, the atmosphere was closer to that of a large community picnic. I reckon also that were there were considerably more South fans or sympathisers there than Berger fans. That's unusual in that the numbers have been more even over the past few years. Maybe being in more South friendly territory in the south-eastern suburbs, and the fact that the nominal home team support couldn't rally around the Snake Charmer (who was apparently banned from playing his clarinet) distorted that perception.

I don't know how many people were in attendance. The stand wasn't full, but maybe there were restrictions on how many could sit there - or maybe people didn't feel comfortable staring into the setting sun. Around the rest of the ground there was a solid amount of people without anyone feeling that their personal space and enjoyment of the game would be impeded. Is this the kind of crowd that people would envisage as being suitable for a second division, in both numbers and style? I don't know the answer to that question either.

The game itself - and there was a game in the middle of my musings on mellowness - was exciting, and occasionally of a certain quality, though the latter had more to do with Heidelberg's Japanese signing from New South Wales than anything we were able to put together for much of the game. 

Just about everyone's said it, and so there's no harm in me saying it as well: South's performance in the first half was rusty at best, and several unmentionable adjectives at worst. Only Heidelberg's profligate finishing kept us in the game at the break. To be fair, while we were cut up in midfield and allowed the Bergers to get into the box far too easily, I was at least pleased to see that instead of panicky defense, we decided to rugby union our way out of trouble more often than not, rather than pussy-foot around the back.

One thing I forgot to mention from last week's report from the St Albans friendly was how much it seemed that Esteban Quintas wanted the team to play out from the back. It didn't really work then, and while we set up in vintage Nunawading style from goal kicks a couple of times, I think someone figured out early enough (maybe due to the narrow ground, or maybe due to Pierce Clark's poor distribution by foot) that it wasn't going to work on Sunday and put an end to it. 

Even when we muscled our way back into the game after a shaky start - and apart from the three points, the welcome bullying physicality of Josh Wallen and Marco Jankovic seemed to be the main takeaway for a lot of people - going forward there were clear issues. Maintaining possession in midfield seemed difficult, especially when expecting Gerrie "he's only a little kid" Sylaidos to shoulder a lot of that burden. Henry Hore, who by all reports appeared lively during pre-season, was not quite as effective in this game.

What's more, it didn't really make any difference on whether a player had played something closer to a full season last year (say, in Queensland) or not (pretty much everyone else). Some people played better than others, and there was no real method to it other than the people I generally expected to play well did so, and those that I have longstanding doubts about, didn't.

It's funny though how sometimes dumb luck smiles upon you, and shows you what you may be good at. For us, that aforementioned physicality and the height that comes with it, might well be the thing that carries us to at least mid-table mediocrity in 2021. Six years ago at the same venue, Tim Mala put in the best cross of his life to find Nick Epifano at the back post, who controlled well and snuck the ball in past the goalkeeper. 

On Sunday, at the same end of the ground, Josh Wallen lumped a mess of a cross into the box, which fell onto the head of the very tall Harry Sawyer, who had front position in front of the very short Heidelberg keeper trying to reach the ball; after hitting Sawyer's head, shoulders, and back, the ball proceeded to fall over the goal line before the Berger defenders could clear it away.

The well-worn truism remains the same as it ever was - they all count the same. But a bit more polish and method wouldn't go astray.

Now the state leagues, mercifully, don't have VAR. And even if they did have VAR, you'd hope they wouldn't have overturned this goal. Still, goalkeepers being protected species, regardless of whether VAR exists or not, I don't think anyone was expecting the otherwise perfectly legitimate goal to stand. In that respect, the celebrations were muted as if there was VAR involved. 

Anyway, having gone ahead, we may have learned something about this team: that it looks better with a lead than without one. With the game in the balance, we looked more vulnerable than our opposition. With the lead, and with the opposition committing more numbers forward to get the goal back, we were able to break forward a few times on the counter-attack. That we were unable to add to our single goal was disappointing, as was the late fade out which saw the otherwise tired Bergers find a second wind, but we held on and won the game; our first win in round 1 since 2016.

Neither team was at its fittest. That's round 1 for you, and it's especially evidence of how much lockdown interrupted pre-season has stalled preparations. We were a bit fitter, a bit stronger, and a bit luckier. Sometimes that's enough. It's not a win that solved any of our on-field problems, but it did help expose them a bit more and hopefully gets the coaching staff thinking about more tenable solutions. Pierce Clark had a good game in terms of shot stopping, but a messy game in other facets. We have a lot of defenders to choose from, and not all of them can play in the same team. Apart from Brad Norton, our back four was tall, heavy, and somewhat flatfooted against speedy smaller players.

Having Luke Adams at right fullback also meant limited opportunities for overlapping runs. At one point in the second half Daniel Clark played a ball into the corner, expecting a run from Adams, but the run never came. And yet despite the disappointment contained in that sequence, I also get why Adams wasn't there - if the pass went awry in some fashion, all of a sudden there'd be no-one behind Adams to close down the channel on that right wing.

Attacking wise we have some talent which misfired a bit, especially when trying to work together. Much of the plan going forward became long diagonal balls to backtracking opponents, and hoping to win the second ball crumbs. That tactic worked a bit more than I expected, but I wouldn't expect that to work so much against the better teams. And the tactic also has the whiff of George Cross rugby tactics circa the mid 2000s that gives me the heebie-jeebies, if for no other reason than the fact that George Cross are several divisions below us for reasons like a reliance on that tactic.

At the end of the game, the celebrations were politely raucous, and contrary to one interpretation of a post-match photo of yours truly, I was content with the result, if not exactly the method used to reach that point. And then I had to find someone I'd promised to loan two portable blank hard drives. Then I saw my FNR colleague and NPL commentator Josh Parish, and asked him if he was able to work any of the insights I gave him into the game. Then I saw Ben Coonan, producer of the little Football Belongs ethnic vignettes. And then I went home.

Next week

Eastern Lions at home on Friday night. Lions are once again everyone's pick to get relegated, but that doesn't mean they should be taken lightly. I mean, they pushed hard against us last year

Optus Sport Football Belongs podcast

The other week I was on a podcast with Roy Hay, John Didulica, and David Davutovic, discussing the 1964 Slavia vs VFL XI match at Olympic Park, as well as other digressions.

Match programs

Greg Stock has been scanning and uploading Canberra City and Cosmos match programs, and sending the South related stuff our way. His efforts have filled in three or four gaps, including one where I didn't expect a program to exist - a 1980 pre-season friendly. 

On the streams

A half here, a half there, and bits of pieces everywhere else.

For better or worse, I'm going to be experiencing more NPL action via the streams than in person than I used to. I suppose that we should be reassured that this service is still going, though I'm not convinced that they need to do the under 21s matches. Then again, I'm not convinced that the under 21s need to exist, because I'm not sure any player reaching that age should be doing anything other than playing regular senior football. Still, while the service exists, we home viewers might as well as make use of it, much as the commentators and film crews make use of the experience gained. Friday night, I saw the first half of Port vs Knights, where the latter looked like they had a plan for the first time in a few years, while the former looked trapped by the way they'd been instructed to play. The second half of Thunder vs City was more competitive, but apart from playing spot the ex-South player, I saw nothing that would indicate a title threat. I watched the first 15 minutes or so of Eastern Lions vs Bulleen, enough to learn that Bentleigh will be fine, and Lions probably won't be. By the standard of Friday night's games, the first half of Avondale vs Oakleigh, and the bits I skimmed later on, were a revelation: fast-paced, competent, flexible, and hard football from both teams - and mistakes were punished with prejudice. The second half of Hume vs Altona Magic also had too good teams, albeit with less fluency.

Final thought

It was good to be back. There's no comparison to seeing a game in the flesh.

Venue and kickoff time change for this week's match - UPDATED

What was rumoured to be the case earlier in the week, has now been confirmed as fact - although a few details remain undetermined. 

The Heidelberg United vs South Melbourne match for this Sunday has been moved from Olympic Village, to Jack Edwards Reserve in Oakleigh.

The kickoff time has also been pushed back from 5:00pm, to 6:00pm.

There will be no curtain raiser match - these are still being played at Olympic Village.

There has been no information released yet as far as I'm aware about what the crowd capacity will be limited to. There is also no information yet on whether there will be pre-sold tickets.

While the situation could develop quickly, at this stage I am not recommending heading to this game, until such time as matters relating to capacity and ticketing are resolved.

UPDATE 27/02/2021

In lieu of any official guidance from Heidelberg and Football Victoria in regards to a crowd cap and ticketing arrangements, I was very much leaning to not attending this game. 

However, after watching last night's games on YouTube, especially the Dandenong derby, my opinion has changed insofar as no one seems to want to take any responsibility for how games are organised on the covid safety front, 

So my advice now is, if you're going to go, do what I plan to do, and get there early enough so that in the event that they do reach a point where someone decised there are enough people there, you'll be in Jack Edwards Petri Dish Stadium rather than outside of it.

Journey to the centre of the earth - South Melbourne 0 Heidelberg United 3

pic.twitter.com/Go4IM0VpNL

— Video Game Advisor (@VGAdvisor) February 14, 2020

Photo: Luke Radziminski.

For those people who were worried that there'd be drastic changes to the South Melbourne experience in 2020, this game was endlessly reassuring.

Isolated striker? Check.

More wingers than you can poke a stick at? Check.

Blokes playing out of position? Check.

Gerrie Sylaidos getting subbed off too early, and thus any chance of central corridor play being used to get back in the game? Check.

Melvin Becket having high energy but no end product? Check.

No end in sight to our goalkeeping issues? Check.

Copping a goal and falling behind early, and having increasingly diminishing ideas about what to do to score after that? Check.

Now there were things about this performance that I did like, mostly from the first half hour before we conceded the opening goal. I think the wingers we have on hand are faster than we had last year, which at least gives you a tactical option independent of skill. Provided he aims for raw power over swerve, Stephen Folan looks dangerous from free kicks. Harry Sawyer works hard, and I want to see him in a team that looks more organised before judging his skill. Lirim Elmazi was very good in his South debut, and looks an excellent pick up.

But everything else was all too familiar. After several successful seasons, Heidelberg are in a transition period, having seen much of their regular squad depart and a lot of new faces arrive. And by a Berger insider's admission (made while we were having a chat on the tram after the game), it was the worst or weakest Heidelberg side for about a decade. And their own performance never reached any particularly great heights, except for their finishing.

Someone piffed a flare over the fence near Gate 1 towards the end of the
 game. Who knows why they bothered. Photo: Luke Radziminski. 

But tactically we were outdone once again. Once Heidelberg took the lead - somewhat against the run of play, not that that makes things better - they were content to sit back and absorb our increasingly flimsy attacks. Once Sylaidos was subbed off around the hour mark, things got worse as we retreated exclusively to the wings, and the Bergers were happy enough to squeeze us onto the touchline. We got past the squeeze on occasion, but then our crossing let us down.

So it might have been a bad day, a bit of bad luck conceding the first goal, and a scoreline made worse as a result of having to chase the game. These things happen, and maybe 2020 won't be a replica of the last two years. A couple of inclusions to the midfield spine, like Luke Pavlou or even Marcus Schroen, and maybe we won't be so one-dimensional and reliant on Sylaidos having to do everything in the middle. Maybe some better crossing.

Oh god, we're one game into the season and I'm already into "if this" and "if that" scenarios.

Next game
Eastern Lions at home on Sunday. Were it not for Avondale's point deduction, these two teams would be last and second last, but as it is, Lions are ahead of us and out of the relegation zone by virtue of alphabetical priority.

Digging deeper still
While some South fans on social media have rightly caned former supporter of the club (and now cursed apostate) George Calombaris for the wage theft proclivities of his businesses, the old wisdom of "be careful what you mock, lest you become it" has sprouted its head again -  and because it seems that they're not cognisant of the fact, that goes for fans of other clubs too, who are enjoying this bit of schadenfreude.

Because over the past week or so our own alleged shoddy behaviour when it comes to paying wages has come to fill out newspaper column inches, and all you can do is hope that it's all very, very wrong, and that the players who are still with us or especially those who have rejoined us are incredibly naive or know something that we pleb fans don't.

But past examples like Kevin Nelson and Adam Van Dommelle successfully claiming moneys owed to them by us (and perhaps others who were naive enough to sign a waiver when seeking a transfer out) don't fill me with much confidence that the club has learned anything from prior experiences.

First up is the still(!) ongoing matter of Chris Taylor's sacking. At various points since Taylor's dismissal in early 2018, South Melbourne Hellas supporters have been told by the club that Taylor was owed nothing more than the week's notice he was paid out upon his sacking; and furthermore, that Taylor's attempt to take the club to a FIFA tribunal (if the club admitted that such a thing was actually happening) was unlikely to succeed.

Well, news came in last week that Taylor had won a FIFA tribunal case which states that he must be paid out approximately $80,000. The article does note that the club is considering taking the matter further, but boy, what another dent to whatever's left of our reputation. To be fair, we weren't the only club named in the article - Sydney Olympic also got its comeuppance with a coach it had sacked - but at least Olympic were able to say that they'd won a championship in part because of that decision.

Meanwhile, we've floundered in a mess of our own making, with high player turnover, poor morale, and no discernible middle let alone long-term on-field direction. Now maybe the decision to sack Taylor was absolutely necessary, even though those of us outside the board meeting which made the decision will probably never know either way. But it does show the perils of giving anyone, even someone as capable and as successful as Taylor, a five year deal in the first place.

Of more immediate concern is what this means for the club in terms of its finances and its alleged liabilities. Much was made at the recent AGM of the deep audit made of the club's books, and the plans to pay off the club's debts. Now here's another one, to be paid for how? With more director loans? And if you believe even some of what's being said out there, there's possibly another coach looking to be paid what they're owed, as well as persistent talk about players being owed money, and who knows who else.

In the Daily Telegraph it's being reported (behind a paywall which I'm not sure how I circumvented this time) there are at least three players seeking money they believe is owed by us. Just as concerning is that in terms of the comments made by public officials from various angles on this matter, there's no way of getting around that what the club is saying doesn't match up with what representatives from Football Victoria and the Professional Footballer's Association are saying.

While South president Nick Maikousis is (according to Tom Smithies' article) claiming that "Our governing body, the FFV, has not made any comment or contact in relation to these matters, nor has the PFA" the PFA and Football Victoria CEO Peter Filopoulos are on record as saying that the opposite is true. And matters aren't being helped when Maikousis attempts to turn this issue into one where the club is the victim rather than the players who are owed their rightful wages - which Maikousis unhelpfully says add up to "a relatively small amount". If the amount owed is that small, then why not pay what's due and avoid this drama?

Now there's little doubt that we are the only club at this level that will fall behind in wages at one point or another, while other clubs are paying wages far beyond what is appropriate and sustainable for this level. But until we enter a league or competition with some semblance of cartel discipline and a sustainable operating model, all we can do - all that we should do - is make sure that we operate our own business in a proper and dignified manner that avoids such things becoming an issue.

And if that's not possible in this post-shame world, than at least start backgrounding journos off the record about the shonky behaviour of other clubs, and get them into the limelight as well. The next members' forum should be interesting.

Reaching new depths
On field, off-field, in the kitchen - is there anything this club can do right at the moment?

25 minute wait to receive this stale broken pita bread Souva from South Melbourne’s
Bar 1959 tonight. By far the worst NPL food in the league last season and round 1 2020 its worse 😩

I’ll pack my own dinner next time. pic.twitter.com/YXAyV86bp5

— Chris Gleeson (@gleebo41) February 14, 2020

I'm not one to dedicate too much time to the food that clubs offer, so long as it's relatively prompt and more than nominally edible. Now I can't see the former being solved any time soon at South, but at least the burgers have been good enough. But the souvs? The souvs have been ordinary for a while now, and I made the same mistake that local soccer commentator Chris Gleeson made last week by ordering one. How could they get everything about it so wrong?

The souv was so bad that we've sunk beneath the old "don't eat at Green Gully" level. The bizarre thing is that a solution to their problem of mushy pita and indistinguishable meat content is right there in front of them - ditch the pita except for those ordering a plate meal, and use bread rolls instead with the lamb skewers on the menu instead of whatever it is that was passed off as meat last week.

Maybe we should hire Calombaris to work in the kitchen - it might not solve the wages issue, but it might at least solve the food issue.

Final thought
I find it funny - but not "haha" funny - that after all the effort that went into pushing the A-League bid and trying to draw attention to ourselves, often in the most shameless ways, that we'd complain about someone writing an article about us because they're out to "get" us.