2021 South of the Border Awards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry Hore departs for A-League

It was being talked about around the traps, and now it has officially happened - South Melbourne midfielder Henry Hore has joined Brisbane Roar.

It's a pity for South, as he was one of our better players this season - and it'd be nice to have him in the team when we take on Melbourne City in the FFA Cup - but it's exactly the result Hore would have been aiming for when he made the move to Victoria from Queensland.

As others have noted, the covid interrupted season meant we didn't get to see the best of him at South. To covid, I'd also add the very conservative playing style deployed by our team as also hindering Hore's proficiency. 

Still, brief and interrupted as it was, I'm sad to see Henry leave, but wish him well.

New year, new signings

A new year is here, and a little more progress has been made on the playing personnel front.

Two areas of concern seem to have been addressed with these signings, one being the back up goalkeeper situation, and the other, the desire for another forward.

The goalkeeper is one James Burgess, a 21 year old former South junior, who's been plying his trade Langwarrin and Springvale White Eagles. Insert some of joke about once a upon a time having a coach who would recruit from those places, or banish players to them.

I know nothing about Burgess apart from what comes out of the official press release, but one does wonder - surely a 21 year old isn't moving from (I assume) a starter's role lower down the leagues to sit on the bench here?

Burgess' arrival at Lakeside surely means that Josh Dorron's time is officially up, even if nothing is actually officially announced. He was on the fringiest of fringes in 2020, when he was "loaned" to some club lower down the food-chain, so it always seemed unlikely that he was going to get a game ahead of Clark and Nikola Roganovic last year. 

That it turned out that no one would play a game after March probably just made it even easier to let him go. But we'll always have the night that South plucked him from obscurity - that is, recruiting him because the football department actually saw him - and one of the worst chants ever performed by South fans that wasn't racist, homophobic, sexist, sweary, or offensive in some other way.

The other signing is a bit more pivotal. The player in question is one Henry Hore, another Queenslander making the move to what one Bananabender has referred to as the Queensland Development League - that is, NPL Victoria.

Again, I know very little about Hore, except that he was in a championship winning team up there last year, including being teammates with fellow South signing Marco Jankovic. Who knows if Hore can make it happen down in Melbounre, but you'd rather winners than losers, yes? Maybe.

Scrabbling around on the internet suggests that Hore is a forward/attacking midfielder, who apparently only weighs 67kgs. I don't know who's been weighing him and posting his details online, but if that weight class is true, it does seem a bit on the lean side.

Nevertheless, asking around social media for comments on Hore's quality, and the Queenslanders seemed universal in their praise and assessment. They say that Hore is a technically sound, versatile player, who can play across any of the attacking positions; tyat we can expect plenty of goals and assists; that he has a bag of tricks and a good deal of pace, and covers a lot of ground, and that he loves to play a 1-2.

All of which sounds very promising, but there's always a potential catch, and in this case it's one of South of the Border's all time favourites: if he's actually that good, why is he playing for us, in this competition? It's a valid question when you consider that Hore has played for Perth Glory in the National Youth League, and apparently "killed it" there, and that he was also apparently close to getting signed by Brisbane Roar as recently as last month.

It makes you wonder what those two teams know that no one else is telling us, especially Roar, who you assume would have been Hore from up close for the past couple of years. Is it because he's too little? Too old at 21? A-League scouts too dumb or cowardly, or merely distrustful of the standard of the NYL or NPL Queensland to take a punt on home grown talent right in front of their eyes?

Whatever the case may be, in time we will hopefully see plenty of Henry Hore, or at least enough to judge for ourselves whether his admirers were right in their assessments. 

We'll also see whether or not we got the right Hore, with Henry's older brother Mitch signing for Bentleigh. 

South senior men's squad as of 3/1/2021

• Luke Adams (played in pre-season friendly, and interviewed following one of those games)
• Zac Bates (played in pre-season friendly, and interviewed following one of those games))
• Daniel Clark (yes, back from Queensland)
• Pierce Clark ((yes, also back from Queensland)
• Ben Djiba (could yet become the right-sided fullback or winger of our NPL dreams)
• Lirim Elmazi (was wished a happy birthday, distinctive head spotted in other social media content)
• Chris Irwin
• Perry Lambropoulos (was wished a happy birthday)
• Mathew Loutrakis (interviewed post friendly)
• Jake Marshall (played in pre-season friendly
• Brad Norton (scored goal in pre-season friendly)
• Luke Pavlou (some sort of mention in a social media gimmick video or something)
• Harrison Sawyer (yes, also back from Queensland)
• Marcus Schroen (was interviewed in that video about South Melbourne;s new blind football team)
• Gerrie Sylaidos (scored goal in pre-season friendly, also easily recognisable thanks to trademark bandana)

Youth team players named as part of social media guff from a recent friendly played with a "youthful side", and/or, 20s players that might still be around next season:

• Sasha Murphy
• Yianni Panakos
• Esad Saglam
• Giorgi Zarbos (unclear if he will stay or seek greener senior football pastures)

In:

• James Burgess
• Henry Hore
• Marco Jankovic
• Josh Wallen

Neither here nor there as far as I can tell:

• Josh Meaker

Out:

• Melvin Becket
• Josh Dorron
• Stephen Folan (returned to Ireland in mid-2020)
• Amadu Koroma
• Nick Krousoratis
• Nikola Roganovic (retired, again)
• Peter Skapetis (Kingston City)