Monkey's Paw Curls - South Melbourne 3 Kingston City 4

Getting done over by a lower division team helmed by two former coaches of ours, while fielding several ex-South players was bad enough. But you know how they say "it's the hope that kills you?" I'm wondering where the hope is nowadays. We trudge on, bedraggled, now reduced to the forlorn hope of being rescued by getting into the National Second Division, and leaving the dregs of the last five and a bit seasons behind, regardless of how 2023 ends. A true restart, a new team, a new coach, and maybe a new (old) approach as distant from whatever this is supposed to be.

For the time being, no visiting team should show any fear or deference toward South Melbourne. In the past, poor or lesser teams might put in more effort to take our scalp. In recent times, some of the better teams in our own division have paid no mind to it being an away game, an overrated concept in this league anyway. Now we're at the stage when any opponent of ours - even a lower division one - is well advised to just play. Play with the ball, knock it about, take the game on, take the ball up the field. 

It will sound flippant, but in the game we played against Kingston during the pre-season in the Greek Cup, I noted of one of their goals that it had the style of how I would want a South team to score a goal. Sure, all goals count the same, but the usual ways - set pieces and scraps - will always be there. So why not add style to that, to create more avenues to goal?

Watching this game, it was difficult to tell that there was an entire division between the two sides. That can happen in a cup match - one team plays out of its skin, and gets the rub of the green when it counts. But there was almost no rub needed for Kingston. Their goal scoring chances - the ones they scored from and the ones they didn't - were almost all from quality build-up play, and a welcome fearlessness. 

And what's to fear from us? We started with our second choice keeper, even though we have the best keeper in the league. (though to be fair to Lejeune, not one of the four goals we conceded were down to him). Our vice-captain and key mid (Schroen), played just an hour, before being dragged. Our only striker (Riak) was also benched after an hour, with the game still very much in the balance. He was replaced at first by a winger (Brennan), and then by a defensive mid (Langlois). 

Despite all that, we still scored three goals. But the more important thing, at no point did this game feel safe. Worse, at no point do I think that any South fan felt with anything resembling confidence that we would take this out. It's not about doomsaying, or death-riding. It just felt like there was no point in hoping. We might have won, but it would have somehow felt hollow, unearned. The three goals we scored were all from our holy trinity - penalty, corner, long throw. It was the "monkey's paw curls" of goal hauls, emphasising only that we have little else.

Next game
Tomorrow afternoon (Saturday) against Bentleigh.

Is there a curtain raiser?
Yes. The senior women kick off at 1:00 PM, playing against Bayside United.

Final thought
Someone says to me after the game, "there's more to life than South". Thank goodness for that.

Set expectations to... - South Melbourne 1 Kingston City 1 (South won 5-3 on penalties)

This was the first chance I'd had this season to have an extended look at what our senior men's team has been doing. So far it's been highlight snatches of deliberately obscure friendly matches, which it would be unsuitable to use to gauge anything resembling form or style. Whether it's much better to use a Facebook stream watched on a phone while making and/or eating dinner to make the same judgments I would have done anyway, is an ethical-philosophical question I'm not particularly equipped to answer.

Although, seeing a few familiar faces in that part of the crowd nearest to the camera, I was reminded that the years have been kinder to some heads of hair more than others. Also, I didn't think it was actually shorts weather on Saturday, but there were people in the crowd wearing shorts. Always the big issues on South of the Border. 

What I can say is that of what I saw in the first half of this game, I wasn't terribly impressed. We were dog's balls. I understand that the field a was a little bumpy, and that there was a fair bit of wind, but that didn't seem to effect Kingston in any significant way, as they maintained possession and played the ball on the ground, while we either panicked and belted the ball long, or hit stupid short passes not on the ground, but at shin height. And that goal Kingston scored? Sure, our midfield may as well have not been there, but it was an entertaining move nonetheless. I'd like to see us score more goals like that.

Now maybe I overreacted on the forum with criticisms of the first half performance, and my observations of certain players when I completely wrote off this team's chances for season 2023 based on 15 minutes of footage. But I hadn't quite gone to the lengths of suggesting that we play the youth team (who had done the heavy lifting in this tournament thus far) in the season proper, and just tank the league season and save some coin doing so, ala when Ballarat Red Devils did the same in 2013 in state league 2 north-west, in the belief (later proven true), that they would get promoted to a higher plane (inaugural NPL season) regardless of results. 

(And how sobering it must be to see in that same table two teams we'll be playing against this season. Well, that's promotion and relegation for you.)

I mean, assuming we can find nine more equally deluded clubs to join us, we're already guaranteed a place in the National Second Division, no? Otherwise what would be the point of basically setting up the ideological and operational framework for the NSD if we weren't first cab off the rank? Don't answer that question; not because it might be uncomfortable to think about, but because it's a question for another day.

Anyway, the second half was better. Not that these things should matter, especially in a pre-season match, but you'd like to think we would be better than an opponent a division below us, consisting in part of players (at senior and junior level) that we'd discarded, alongside two former coaches who happened to be in the same dugout. Also, we are nothing if not fitness machines compared to everyone else at this point of the year, so we could at least expect to overrun our opponents.

I looked away for a moment, and Marcus Schroen scored. Looking later the replay, it was a very nice team goal, so whatever gasket I'd blown about our lack of aesthetics was really a waste of everyone's time and energy. Unfortunately the side couldn't win the game in normal time, but won a penalty shootout (with backup keeper Willem Lejeune between the sticks), using an inordinate amount of left footers to do the job (and right-footer Alun Webb who fluffed his line, but got a second chance thank to a letter of the law assistant referee).

The great tragedy of winning this game is that now we're in the final, against the much lower league Mill Park. Ideally you'd have wanted another NPL opponent, but they'd all either been bundled out (Oakleigh, Heidelberg), or never entered in the first place (Bentleigh, Port). So the dilemma here is play the full senior squad, or the youth team, or a mix of youth and fringe senior players, while fielding the stating eleven against another opponent in a friendly.

December 2022 digest

One friendly down
Normally I'm falling over myself to tell you people about upcoming friendlies and such, but when it's a 6:30 PM Friday kickoff at Knox - with mixed messaging about whether it was even going to be on a Friday or a Saturday - well, even I have my limits. But having said that, there was a game some time before Christmas on a Friday evening, which we "won" 4-3 against Kingston City.

Scorers were Ajak Riak, Andy Brennan, Max Mikkola and Marcus Schroen. The only thing of meaning that I could glean from the available footage was that one of our scorers had gotten a blonde dye job. The blurry footage made him look like the People's Champ had made a comeback from lower league obscurity, but sadly for gimmick-lovers everywhere, it was just Max Mikkola making very poor hairstyle decisions.

But what about the next one?
If you're wondering when the friendly will be, well, I don't know. It looks like there will be a friendly against North Geelong up in Shepparton in a few weeks, which makes me think that there now familiar yearly pre-season week up Shepparton will also be taking place this year.

2023 memberships and season tickets
They're now available, with no change in price. But also we're probably going to have two fewer games at Lakeside, so it's a kind of price rise? Stop complaining, just buy one.

AGM
What's an AGM?

More South Poles
It looks like we've signed a new goalkeeper, one Ben Ratajczak from Western Australia. You would think he would be the back up the league's reigning goalkeeper of the year.

Calgary, again!
Former South player Jesse Daley has left Brisbane Roar, and signed for Calgary's Cavalry FC We brng this up not only because we wish certain former players well, but to also note the minor trivia that he will be the second former South player to play at Cavalry, after Oliver Minatel.

Friendly vs Kingston tonight

As per the club's notice, our senior men will be playing a friendly tonight against Kingston, at The Grange Reserve, 7pm kickoff.

Mental health day - Green Gully 0 South Melbourne 0

If Football Victoria still had a prize for photo of the year, I'd submit this, but you
know the PC wowsers wouldn't allow a pic of a man having a durry to win any
 accolades, being obsessed with anodyne wholesomeness. Photo: Luke Radziminksi

Well it seems a good number of you took the advice I dished out last week and took a mental health day last Saturday, perhaps anticipating that we would be crunched by a superior team. Or maybe you were told by people at the club that it was in your best interests to stay away for a while. Or maybe you were tired from staying up all night watching the cricket world cup for some stupid reason.

Not that I have official data to back up the following claim, but this was the lowest crowd I can remember attending a fixture between these two sides at this ground since, like, I can remember attending. But then I remembered that most games this season have felt that way, especially as the season has wore on, and I was less alarmed and more placated that we actually just collectively continuing towards our ethnic senior soccer death spiral; although giving it the name of "death spiral" gives it too much balletic street-cred.

But those who did attend managed to at least see our side put in if not a remarkable than at least a creditable performance, of the sort that makes you upset with getting only a point where before the game you were contemplating sacrificing animals to petty ancient gods for us to get a mere point.

As to what caused us to put in what was for 2019 an above average performance.. I don't know. Was it the possible formation change? Was there even a formation change? I couldn't tell. There were some players not in their usual arrangement, and some players on the field with players they have usually not been on the field with this year, but that could go for a lot of games. Also the sun was in our eyes, and there was a pre-season warmth that kind of distracted a little from precise analysis of the action.

I will say that part of what was responsible for the improvement compared to several recent weeks was Gully's performance. They looked very good against Avondale the week before, but were a bit less sharp on Saturday. It's also possible that Gully played right into our hands with their style of play, playing a high line and being willing to attack. In cases such as that, this season has shown us that as long as we don't concede, this kind of situation suits us just fine, as it allows us to counter-attack via the wings and in this case also up the middle with long balls over the top of the high line.

Melvin Becket sends the ball wide of the goal and wide of
 former South keeper Jerrad Tyson. Photo: Cindy Nitsos

Unfortunately, we were unable to score from any of the four or so pretty good chances created in the first half. Pep Marafioti delayed shooting, approached the keeper, did not pass the ball to an open Peter Skapetis, and then took a shot straight into former South custodian Jerrad Tyson. Skapetis himself was more unfortunate then incompetent when his initial shot was blocked by an almost stranded Tyson, before the quick follow-up shot from the save hit the one Gully player in the way of the goal. Ben Djiba made an enterprising run on the right, but was unable to get either a shot away nor pass the ball to a waiting striker. Finally, Melvin Becket did all the hard work dribbling his way to the six yard box, only to stumble over his own feet and place his off-balance shot wide.

Having witnessed all that, one assumed that our comeuppance was near, especially within the last four minutes of the first half; but that comeuppance did not arrive. Sure, we were not as good in the second, and certainly did not find the space behind Gully's defence that we did in the first. But for all Gully's improvement, they were seldom able to seriously threaten our back four. I think they only managed the one shot on target for the whole game, and thankfully Josh Dorron was able to keep it out - a long range free kick from Jay Davies curled towards the top right hand corner, but Dorron was able to extend his large frame and palm the ball away.

Not the first lemon tree to be spotted at an NPL ground.
Photo. Luke Radziminski. 

Some of our defensive efforts were a bit more acrobatic than perhaps necessary, bringing out calls from me and Dave of "I see you know your judo well, sir", which while funny (of course) didn't fit, because judo is about throws and not acrobatic kicking. We perhaps could've made a better stab at taking all three points if we made more than one substitution, but we didn't, even though there were players like Gerrie Sylaidos who were completely gassed with about ten to play. One hopes that the reluctance to make more than one change was due to tactical considerations and not we can't afford to pay the players this week considerations.

But we could've also made a better play at getting all three points if we were a little bit smarter in the second half, and not so much trying to second guess ourselves. I'm thinking here of the mess of a free kick concocted by Billy Konstantinidis and Marcus Schroen from a good position. True, the defensive wall was a bit close for my liking, and true again that free kick taking is a hard enough business, but elaborate games of misdirection are best left to people in better leagues; in the NPL, just let someone take the shot without too much showboating and get on with the game.

Anyway the refereeing was good, until such time as the ref needed to make difficult decisions, and then his performance went down the gurgler. For those who care about such things, it was our first scoreless draw since midway through 2017, and it also continued our unbeaten run at Green Gully Reserve, which has been going since we beat Gully in the first round in 2013. More importantly, we got a point out of the whole thing, and I got a match program because Gully is one of the two clubs still producing those things.

One more thing
It was interesting to see the lack of sponsor boards at Green Gully. Now we won't get into the ins and outs of who's a paid sponsor at Lakeside and who might only be there as decoration (or even if we have that many sponsors from outside the circle of the board); but knowing that these things happen at clubs lower down the food-chain, I always wondered how many sponsor boards at NPL clubs were actually from active sponsors.

Under such circumstances, one wonders if there's scope for putting in decorative/club themed boards instead, or at least keeping some redundant sponsor boards for a heritage role... Buddy's Mobile Disco at least deserves more than it's current fate of paint and rust decay with its face turned away from the ground and toward the north wind.

Next game
The Knights at home on Sunday afternoon. They'll be coming off a midweek Dockerty Cup game against Bulleen.

Relegation battle (status: ongoing, gentlest of easing)
Not much changed on the relegation avoiding front this week - which is broadly good news for us, because it means that the teams in the bottom three who are trying to get out of the relegation and playoff spots are running out of time to do so.

Nearer to us, Port lost to Hume, the Dandy derby was a draw, and Pascoe Vale beat Kingston 2-0 to make it highly improbable that Kingston will be able to make it up to 11th. So we have a 10 point buffer to 12th (and 13th) with a maximum of 18 points up for grabs.

In our remaining games, it's the one against Dandy Thunder that'll likely be crucial. Let's hope we get some points on the board before then so that it's not crucial. Thunder are also due to play Pascoe Vale in the run home, so someone's going to have to take points off someone there.

Deckchairs on the Titanic
What is even this? I'm not going to pretend that I have any idea anymore how our football operations work, who does what, and what exactly it is they do. It's like people who work in offices - what do they do? So many buildings, so many offices, so many people in offices doing what, I don't know. Anyway back to the matter at hand. In summary, board member Andrew Mesourouni, previously in charge of junior football, is now in charge of the senior men's football department. Former general manager of the club Peter Kokotis, who was appointed football manager (senior men) last November, has now been put in charge of the juniors in conjunction with Mike Valkanis. Except that the latest article says "We welcome Peter back to the club." - so was Peter with us or wasn't he?

NCIP is gone
So it's gone. Now what? Will any major ethnic club officially revert to an older name? I can't really see that happening - especially those with a hankering to get into the mooted second division - but there's certainly more scope for blended branding incorporating old and new. I can also see some fans taking matters into their own hands, which will no doubt lead to some very mature outcomes. After all, freedom of expression for you is also freedom of expression for someone else; and has often been the case, it only take a minority of people to cause a fuss, and then for the rest of the club to either actively or passively condone the said fuss.

But I'm thinking of this stuff like it's current. Surely everyone has moved on, grown up, got a new hobby.

For our part, there's discussion about whether we should go back to South Melbourne Hellas, bring back the old logo, etc. I think most of our extant supporters are comfortable enough with the South Melbourne FC branding, and the possible use of 'Hellas' to augment that as a nickname or some such. I'd be in favour of an updated logo along the lines of the current commemorative badge, if for no other reason than that I've disliked the current one for a long time.

The most important thing though is that whatever the club and its members decide to do, it's now our choice, and not someone else's, which was one of the main points of my gripe about the NCIP in the first place.

What's happening with the Puskas film?
A few people asked about this a little while back, and I can't really provide a definitive answer. All that I know for sure is that quite a few interviews were done, that there seems to be a good story there, and after that... silence. Is money an issue? Is it competing projects? Have the boys fallen out among themselves?

If there's issues with getting the project going to the next stage - whatever that stage may be - I'm sure there's people that can help. Because as much as there's South fans wanting to know what's happening with the film, I'm guessing the people who've already been interviewed would also be asking what's going on with the film - and for them, it's not a just a movie, it's the story of an amazing moment in their lives.

You know, I actually got around to watching Rob, Cam and Tony's previous sports documentary The Galahs the other day, and I can see what they'd like to do with the Puskas film. Hopefully whatever's holding up production of the Puskas film is easy to enough to resolve, because it's a great story with much broader appeal than Harry Beitzel's Irish adventure, and a lot more archival footage to play with among other things.

On the couch
Not setting the couch on fire, yet
Watched Kingston at home to Pascoe Vale last night, in a real ordinary relegation six-pointer. It was good news for Pascoe Vale, but bad news for Kingston and people who inexplicably like Monday night football. Most frustrating of all was of course the fact that we've only been able to take three points off either team, but that assumes we're so much better than those teams and deserve to have taken more points off them. Thankfully there were also the last couple of SVU episodes with Dani Beck filling in for Olivia Benson to distract from the torpor of what was going on at The Grange.

Final thought

Holy shit, @OliverMinatel is on a fucking train! And to think we couldn't even get a banner for him on @yarratrams... no wonder he left us for bigger and better things! https://t.co/mdavFqb2rj

— dj ēļřāffő (@dvrf1878) July 8, 2019

Another tipping point - South Melbourne 0 Kingston City 2

Two weeks ago, before the Avondale game, we were at least nominally the form team of the competition, having won four out of the previous five league games, and most of those against the either sides in the top three or against sides who were not so bad that they were in the bottom three.

Since then we have had a disappointing but nevertheless expected loss against Avondale, and whatever that was meant to be on Sunday. When these two teams played earlier in the season, Kingston hadn't yet won a game, but looked good at least for the first hour or so, and we looked good in the last half or so.

Sunday by comparison was dire from both teams. Kingston had only won one game since they'd beaten us, while we'd been up and down, our best being quite good and our worst... well there's plenty of room to talk about that, here and elsewhere.

Especially elsewhere, where people have written off the rest of this season as nothing more than an extended pre-season for 2020; and that's if we're in the NPL instead of NPL2 which, as noted by the doomsayers (currently in ascendancy over the optimists) is not exactly guaranteed.

This was a dull game from almost beginning to end. At least for the first 45 minutes, even as nothing of note happened for us, at least nothing of note had happened against us.

Then came a cheap defensive turnover, a quick forward thrust by Kingston - their first meaningful forward movement - and then a low cross (I won't deign to call it a shot) which deflected over the keeper into the back of the net. That sucked what little air was left in the stadium, and things only got worse from there.

The second half started with what was predictably a flurry of action from our end, but very little of attacking quality. By the end of the game, Kingston had added a second, subs were made, and we could've played for another two hours and not gotten close to scoring.

I've not named any players today, because we've fallen into the trap of scapegoating people, and sometimes they can take the blame, but there was so many flat performances on Sunday that it'd be wrong to single out any particular person.

Passing, movement, direction, and leadership - especially leadership - were all found wanting from our end. Had we been beaten by a team playing free flowing football, we could perhaps have rationalised it in some way.

But we lost to a team so low on confidence, playing such a simple game plan that in many ways was beneath them, and out of character too for a team that had built a reputation of playing attractive, attacking football on a limited budget, and despite the risks that entails for a team always likely to be threatened by relegation in this competition.

We were instead beaten by a team that sat back, gifted us possession while denying us space, and just waited for us to screw up. And screw up we did, enough times and bad enough that even those few chances that the visitors were able to muster were still of higher quality than anything we managed to put together.

By the end of the game there were more of those chances, too. And in the stands there was anger, and anger at the people who were getting angry, and all of sudden here we are again in another low. Every time we end up here, it seems like there's no way out. And each time, whether for an extended period or (usually) for a brief one, we manage to dig ourselves out for long enough to revive hope.

But each time that recovery takes a bit more out of everyone that's still left at the club, and it pushes more of our supporters beyond the threshold to which they can be bothered to give a stuff.

Relegation Battle (status: ongoing, stable but precarious, imminent change arriving)
Not a great week overall on the relegation front. Of course the centrepiece of that not greatness is our loss to Kingston, which arguably hurts us more than it has helped them, though of course all these things remain to be played out over eight more weeks. Dandy City continues to collect points. Port will be spewing that they weren't able to pick up a win against Gully, after leading by two goals and with a man advantage.

On the positive side - and there were positives - Pascoe Vale and Dandenong Thunder continue to rack up losses, and thus the nine point buffer between ourselves and the dreaded playoff spot remains for at least one more week.

Next week
Pascoe Vale at home on Sunday, for a ridgy-didge relegation six-pointer. Talk is that they've sacked their coach Vitale Ferrante. Not sure if that will make a difference.

If we win this game, I'm not going to come out and say that we'll be safe, but it'll do us a hell of a lot of good. If we lose, well, strap yourselves in for another stressful finish to the season.

Where's Luke's site?
It looks like Luke Radziminski's South Melbourne FC related photo-blog has disappeared off the internet. Not sure why.

Final thought
The national second division white paper has been released. Maybe we'll talk about that here next time.

Wrong about everything - South Melbourne 3 Bentleigh Greens 2

I can't quite figure it out, but perhaps we've just got to accept that most of us are going to be wrong about this team and most of these players on a weekly basis, and maybe even on a minute-by-minute basis.

Certainly this season is taking its emotional toll on some of our supporters, in ways quite different from 2018. Where in 2018 one (retrospectively) spent the entire season after round 3 gearing up for a relegation battle, halfway through this season we've been through the highs of two wins in the first three games, an erratic stretch of form which saw the loss of a senior coach, still more erratic form which saw us flirt with the bottom three thanks to dropping points to most of our relegation battling compadres, and yet over the past three weeks have knocked over three of the best credentialed teams in the league.

Now to be fair, some of our supporters are more susceptible to violent mood swings than others. But this season has had a knack of overturning the expectations of even the most astute commentators. Every player is wrong, every tactic is wrong, every signing is wrong, every board maneuver in regards to coaching, player management, and selection is wrong, until things just fall into place and it works. That's not to imply imminent ascendancy for this team, because the next two weeks against bottom half teams could see us drop back into old habits and poor results. But if you're hoping for grinding 1-0 wins for the rest of the year and a seventh place finish, this might not be the season for you. You should instead settle down in front of the heater and watch videos of (stereotypical) Chris Taylor coached South sides.

Though it would be nice to keep a clean sheet, something we've only done twice in the league all season.

Losing Brad Norton to injury early on (and here's hoping it's not a serious one, even though Brad had no hesitation in subbing himself off immediately) wouldn't have helped our cause, especially since he was replaced by the Much Maligned Perry Lambropoulos on the left. Having lost his spot at right full-back to Ben Djiba, Perry is basically in the squad now as cover. One person's misfortune (Luke Adams) plus another's (Brad Norton) meant where one might otherwise play Kristian Konstantinidis on the left, Perry gets a go instead.

Perry's inclusion did stymie our ability to make progress on the left, as Lambropoulos is mich less of an attacking threat than Norton or any of the rest of our full-back options. This meant Pep Marafioti had to work a lot harder on the left in the first half, and he wasn't having a great game before that of Norton's going off anyway.

Having shown some positive signs and an ability to match it with Bentleigh in the first 20 minutes or so, we were overwhelmed bu a superior side for the rest of the half. The Greens were getting numbers forward, and their opening the scoring looked inevitable, except for Nikola Roganovic pulling out some superb saves. Unfortunately another routine defensive blunder from Kristian Konstantinidis cost us a goal.

It was his third goal-costing mistake in four matches, and each of the mistakes was easily avoidable. Against the Magic he could've easily hoofed the ball upfield instead of trying to dribble his way on his own byline; against Heidelberg, he gave away a needless and reckless penalty; and here against Bentleigh, as a cross was cleared by our defenders to the edge of the box and the rest of the defensive line moved up the field, KK decided to sit on the goal-line, keeping the Bentleigh attacker onside when the ball was sent into the box again.

And yet somehow we've managed to not lose any of those games. Go figure.

At least someone's happy - for now. Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

We equalised early enough in the second half from a goal so simple in its execution you wonder why teams don't try it more often. The flu-stricken Gerrie Sylaidos got free on the right edge of the box, shot low and hard across at the Bentleigh keeper, and the resultant spill sat up beautifully for Pep Marafioti to belt home from close range.

Now I'm a Negative Nancy at the best of times, so while the crowd lifted from that unexpected goal, I said to the younger lads behind me (and they can vouch for this), "enjoy the five minutes while it lasts". Well, I was wrong about that, because we held on to the 1-1 scoreline for just three minutes, as Matt Thurtell raced through on goal unimpeded and slammed his shot into the back of the net.

Oh well, being level was fun while it lasted. And how nice would it have been if Marafioti or "he of the hamstrings which are always about to snap" Zac Bates could've slotted one of their chances soon after we had equalised. Anyway, at 2-1 down it's not like it was over, but I felt like we always had more goals to concede and not necessarily any way to match that. Well, I was wrong about that too, as Marafioti - who was playing on the right on the second half - decided to take a speculative low shot from the edge of the box, which took a deflection before settling in the back of the net.

All of a sudden it was 2-2, one felt that anything could happen, even if the most likely scenario was still us losing the game somehow. Before the game I would've been happy with a point, and at 2-2 with about twenty minutes to play, I would still have been happy with that point.

When Jake Marshall (2019's most improved South Melbourne player by a long way) got subbed off, I have to say I was a bit confused and concerned. But looking at the replay - especially of Bentleigh's second goal - and thinking it about it a bit more dispassionately, I think I understand the logic of it; even though Marshall wasn't having a poor game per se, Matt Thurtell was burning past him with pure speed too often.

But then we got the winner thanks to a corner and Kostas Stratomitros being in the right place at the right time. Say what you will about Marcus Schroen's corner taking this season - and it has often been dire - it has also occasionally been good, and when it has we have looked very dangerous from these situations.

Here's the thing - and I may have mentioned it in a previous post about Bentleigh, or I may not have, I can't recall and I'm not going to back and look for it - as good as they are in an attacking sense, they are more suspect defensively this season. Now let's put that in perspective: most NPL defences once you start putting pressure on them look suspect. But Bentleigh have looked particularly vulnerable to me, and the fact that we actually had a go made things happen.

It's a tautology of sorts, I know, but there's no use dying wondering. The corner we scored from? It came because Nick Krousoratis put in a crap ball into the box and the Bentleigh defender freaked out and booted it out behind his own goal line. That's the standard of pretty much every team in this comp once they sense there's any danger, no matter how remote.

Did we ride our luck? Did we look shaky when Bentleigh threw everything at us in the last few minutes? Well yes, of course. Did we get three points? Well actually, yes, we did. I expected at most three points from these past three league games (and really, probably only one) but here we are now with what some might call form or momentum.

We've returned to equilibrium, now can we maintain that?
It was a handy win in other ways as well, because with regards to the relegation battle, the round's other results were a bit of a mixed bag. Oakleigh and Port both won on the road, while Dandy Thunder, Pascoe Vale and Kingston all lost. Probably the most surprising result was Dandy City picking up a point at Avondale, in what may be a chilling sign of things to come.

Still, some of our bottom-half rivals might be looking at the table and wondering - as many of us are - how the hell did we manage to beat three teams on the trot that were sitting in the top six at the time.

That nice run of form has some people already looking up to a possible finals run - after all, we're just three points adrift from the sixth-placed and stuttering Melbourne Knights.

I remain more focused on getting enough points to avoid the drop or a relegation playoff. Though one person is intent on moving the goalposts about what would constitute a points total that would see us safe, I'm keener to stick with the 30 point mark as the initial aim here. At the moment we're three wins and a draw adrift of that target, and if we can't manage at least that in our remaining games, then we deserve to go down.

Next game
Dandenong City away on Friday night. Dandy City have splashed out during the mid-season transfer window, signing Carl Valeri, Adrian Leijer, and Brendon Santalab. Some of you may remember the last two playing for various clubs during the late NSL era, though I'm not sure what they've been doing in the last 15 or so years, as they kinda seemed to fall off the face of the earth.

If you're one of those weirdos who love getting to the grounds by public transport, this might be one to avoid, unless you have a plan for getting back out to civilisation somehow.

The club should demand its $50 back
We made a substitution during the second half, in which the fourth official put up the number 12 on his fancy board as both the player coming off and coming on. These blokes have basically four jobs, all of them very simple.

1. Put up the correct numbers of the subs on their fancy boards.
2. Put up the correct number of minimum amount of injury time minutes to be played.
3. Occasionally tell coaches to get back in their technical areas.
4. Pray like hell that they don't have to actually get called up to do the ref's or the lino's jobs.

That's money well spent across a season, dollars which would could just as easily be spent being put into the pocket of hard working professional NPL players who entertain thousands of people (most of them overseas gamblers, admittedly) on a weekly basis. These fourth officials need to lift their game.

Photo: Luke Radziminski.

Bucket of sand
Does anybody remember the last time a flare was lit at Lakeside Stadium? No, that's not a call for you to rip one and break the drought. It's just that someone noticed the flare buckets on standby during Sunday's game, and people were wondering when was the last time they were even needed.

The best that anyone could seem to recall, people affiliated with Pascoe Vale ripped one during the 2015 semi-final they lost against us. There was a flare confiscated and/or found during that Melbourne Victory game in 2016, but I think that's about as close as we've gotten since 2015. I can't remember the last time one of our fans ripped one.

Mumble grumble (social club kitchen)
Much dissatisfaction expressed on the forum this week about the food service in the social club. Mostly based around how slow it is. Now I usually eat in the social club well before the game, so I've dodged most of in the "just before kickoff and during the game" issues with getting food quickly from our social club.

What I will say is that the social club did look understaffed on Sunday, for reasons I'm not aware of. That certainly added to the problems experienced by several of our supporters looking to get food and drink on Sunday. There was one register open, and one guy responsible for taking order, making coffees, and getting people's drinks. That's not usually been the case the season, but you can see how that caused a lot of problems.

There have been three operators of the social club since the social club reopened, and while the quality and the range of food have varied between operators, the problems remain largely the same. Slow service and an ability to decide whether the social club space is going for speedy match day service (if it is even capable of doing this under its current setup) or bistro style cooked-on-request service.

I'm not in hospitality and never have been, but it seems that there are at least some basic solutions which would alleviate some of the current problems. The first would be to open up the canteen on the side of the grandstand (if it's not open already), and let people know that it is open (seeing as how most people enter the venue via the social club), taking some of the heat off the social club kitchen.

(and isn't getting access to that canteen and outside pouring rights on match days part of what we gave up some of our monthly income for?)

Second would be to get a coffee cart working outside of the social club. We're a winter competition, and some people are understandably going to want a warming beverage. Coffee takes longer and more effort to make than pouring a beer or soft drink. Why would you make it harder to access for punters to access and harder for staff to provide this service?

Third - and this is not my suggestion, but rather a popular one from the forum - just provide food that is easy to prepare, cook, and serve on a speed and scale befitting a soccer match instead of a sit-down restaurant. These people (by which I mean all these people who have attempted to operate the social club) have been experienced hospitality people in one form or another. It boggles the mind how this issue still hasn't been sorted out.

Mid-season transfer period news
Though some people on Sunday said there would be a Peter Skapetis related announcement on Monday, as of Tuesday afternoon there was no Peter Skapetis related news other than to say that there was strong word that he was no longer at Dandenong Thunder, which is the very definition of being neither here nor there.

Then on Tuesday evening, the announcement was finally made that the Skapetis signing had come to pass. Skapetis is a former South junior, who claimed with what felt like something with believability that scoring against us earlier in the season for Dandenong Thunder felt very wrong. He's signed until the end of 2020, but the more immediate question is who is going to make way for him? I'm guessing it's going to be Zac Bates' hamstrings, because you wouldn't drop your leading scorer in Pep Marafioti, would you?

There has also been simmering rumour chat that Canadian defensive midfielder Ethan Gage is on his way out of Lakeside, but as of Wednesday morning, he's still with us as far as I'm aware. Having said that, Gage's not being used in either the midweek cup match nor the Bentleigh game says to me that unless he's injured, there's something wrong here. We'll see what comes of it.

The transfer window reportedly closes on June 4th, so there's still time for lots of stuff to happen, or not happen.

On the couch

Momentary abstraction/Eventual clarity
It's the most curious thing - my zeal for watching other games from this league has returned just as South has managed to win a few games. I wonder what the connection might be? I'm sure I'll figure it out one day. Anyway, for whatever reason I was compelled on Monday night to watch Kingston vs Port Melbourne. I was hoping for a Kingston win, or at worst a draw between the two teams. We didn't get that. Sure, Kingston took the lead, but they coughed it up to, well, a team that deserved to win it on the balance of play. To go back to an earlier point in this post - being entertaining is fun, but perhaps not so much when you're on the bottom of the ladder. At some point you've got to control the tempo of a match, disrupt the momentum of your opponent, and grind out results rather than lose honourably.

Cue, meet rack... wait...
That aforementioned return of a zest for life? Yeah, I ended up at Knights Stadium yesterday because of it. A bit cold and some regret on that front, but I emerged emotionally unscathed, and actually also a bit entertained as well. There was an announcement that a white Toyota was blocking something or other and needed to be moved, and I had a momentary flash of panic that it was my Toyota... thankfully the licence plate number was different, and later on we found that the car was also an Aurion and not a 1989 Camry, which was eventually moved once the announcement was made again, this time in both English and Croatian.

As for the match, either way this turned out would've been funny, but seeing the cash-splashing Avondale bow out after putting the cue in the rack with a 1-0 lead and about half an hour to play, on the assumption (not entirely unreasonable, but still) that Knights would not pose a serious threat going forward, was pretty funny. This was a game whose excellence built up slowly, revealing itself only in the final minutes. A slow start from both team playing between arcs. Then Avondale having a goal cleared off the line by what Twitter says was a clear handball. Then missing a one on one. Then finally taking the lead early in the second half and deservedly so. Five or so more minutes of trying to put the game away seemed to be enough for the visitors, and that turned out to be their downfall. Knights had been ceded the initiative, they managed to get an equaliser, and we were off to extra time. Then Knights took the lead, and Avondale had to figure out how to get their way back into the game. And it wasn't like Knights were going to be hospitable in that - the ball at one stage went over the fence on the Quarry Hill side, and no one, not even the ball boys, made any effort to retrieve the ball necessitating the Avondale player on that side jumping the fence.

Funny thing was the gate was next to him 😂

— Andrew Golub (@andrewg_90) May 28, 2019

It was a stunt made riskier by the fact that it had started bucketing down in extra time. The chances also flowed from both sides after that, with Knights keeper Cakarun making one final, reaching save to preserve their lead, and Avondale sending a header from the resulting corner over the bar. So Knights progress against the odds, while Avondale bow out to chants of "cigane" coming from the Mark Viduka Stand.

Final thought
Googled myself on Google Scholar this week, and found that Andy Harper had cited my now six-year-old journal article in his own recently released journal article. I mean, it was only part of his literature review, but it's something I suppose.

Let's see where he's going with this - Kingston City 1 South Melbourne 0

It's a decent walk from Westall station to the The Grange, and a decent walk back after a game, but two things can make the effort seem more worthwhile. First, a win; and second, a decent souv.  Sadly neither of these things was on offer on Monday night, and we have to make do with the hand we've been dealt.

It's not the result we wanted, and for a good chunk of the game, not the kind of performance we wanted either. The portents were there from before the game, when we saw that once again Gerrie Sylaidos was on the bench. Starting on the bench against Avondale, I can understand even if not entirely agree, but why he didn't start on Monday is anyone's guess.

More to the point, why was Gerrie not subbed on until about ten minutes after Kingston got their red card? And why was Luke Adams not even in the starting eleven? And why was Perry Lambropoulos still starting at right-back? These are the questions that I and many other South fans had on Monday night and afterward. The consensus among our social media dwelling fans seems to be pretty clear. It starts with a back four of KK, Adams, Marshall, and Norton. And just as importantly, starting Gerrie in the same team as Schroen, and dropping one of the two defensive mids we've been starting every game with.

The VIP section at any ground is wherever Mike Mandalis is located.
Photo: Luke Radziminksi

If Tangalakis is of the idea that Gerrie and Schroen can't play in the same team, surely that notion would've been dismantled once and for all by the way the team played in the 25 odd minutes they were on the park together. Yes they were playing against ten men, but the team as a whole showed more purpose and drive than it had prior to that point. It's understandable that in some games, against a superior opponent, a coach might want to go more defensive, try to grind out a result. This makes even more sense I suppose when you don't start a recognised striker in a game for seeming lack of other options.

But Kingston, despite being a good team in their own right, are not Bentleigh or Avondale, and we should not be afraid of taking on a team like that. We let them take the initiative in the early part of the game, and were only able to make do with the odd long ball out of defence that caught our opponents out of position. But the fact that we were able to manage to get some good chances out of even

No amount of voodoo stick magic was able to get us over the line.
Photo: Luke Radziminksi

The other side of this apparent desire to preference defence over attack is this - our strengths this season, such as they are, lie not in defense, but in our attacking prowess. Sylaidos, Marafioti, and Krousoratis are dynamic, creative players who thrive on being given licence to attack. Marcus Schroen is capable of scoring goals, even if he didn't make the most of either of his two headed chances in this game. And now that we have Billy Konstantinidis starting, surely our efforts should go on to maximising that threat.

Indeed the biggest positive to take from this game, other than the fact that we did fight out the game to the end without too many obvious signs of despair, was Billy's performance. He straightens the team up, provides an obvious focal point, and has a powerful shot. But most importantly, he showed on Monday night that he can also be a hard worker. Numerous times in the latter part of the game, he would move out of the box to provide an option, to collect a pass, to create room in the space left behind for other players to move into.

This dog is every South fan at the moment.
Photo: Luke Radziminksi 

There was a lot of resignation among our supporters after the game, and to a degree it was warranted. But I felt that when we actually started playing the way we are capable of, we are actually a very threatening side. The key seems to me to settle on a starting eleven that takes advantage of our strengths. That doesn't negate our deficiencies - we are too reliant on counter-attack, we play the ball back to much, Roganovic's distribution is in poor shape, etc, etc - but I was more upset at the beginning of the game than I was at the end. That's not to say I was happy with the result, only that one has to acknowledge that the team fought until the end, created its share of chances, and played against a keeper that had a very good game. As long as morale remains steady, and the right team setup is put on the field, more positive results shouldn't necessarily be far away.

There's a lot of ifs and buts in that, and if we lose another two or three games soon and find ourselves in the relegation zone rather than hovering above it, all pretense of stoicism will fall away. I hope that it doesn't come to that, because this team has the potential to do good things.

Next game
Pascoe Vale away at CB Smith Reserve on Friday night.

On the couch
Thank goodness the footy and the state leagues are starting this week
Kinda weird watching Dandenong City vs Melbourne Knights, this year's variant of the NPL Croatian derby, in that while making references to the FFA Cup match these teams played against each other a year or two back, neither commentator seemed to make reference to the promotion-relegation playoff match they had in 2017, and which one associate of mine who used to work on local building sites said would be fixed in favour of Knights. Now that that result just happened to fall Knights' way proves nothing, but the game itself could've been a momentous occasion, and I wish it'd be treated as such. Far less momentous was this game, which never reached any great heights, and which Melbourne Knights won comfortably.

So over on to another of the live streamed games, Port Melbourne vs Green Gully, at Green Gully Reserve for reasons I do not know. I tried to come up with all sorts of possible reasons, but nothing worth putting to print. It looks like there are even fewer people at the game than either a normal Port or Gully home game, which makes sense. Port is 1-0 down at their home-away-from-home, thanks to a Michael Eagar mistake, and they are soon down 2-0 thanks to Eags again. You can't win them all.

On Saturday, I checked into Avondale vs Pascoe Vale, a pretty ordinary game that was only ever going to have one winner, in part because Davey van 't Schip is being expected to score all of Paco's goals this year; that is, until this Friday one assumes, when Joey Youssef will score his trademark goal against us.

Switching over to the Geelong derby between North Geelong and Geelong. I was promised fireworks and atmosphere the likes of which we scarcely see at this level. Instead we got an awful game, and an audio feed where one had to trust the commentary team that the local Cros were making a lot of noise. At least there was some action eventually, with North taking the lead, and quickly rushing out to a 3-0 lead with the visitors looking totally unlike scoring except for the one time they did, and thus at halftime of this game I switched over to the main event, hoping for no regrets and expecting none.

Altona Magic vs Oakleigh Cannons provided its own moment enlightenment. Now when Chris Taylor was coaching, we were often winning. Sometimes it looked great, sometimes far less so, but even when it didn't, the ends justified the means. But now that CT is at Oaks, along with a variety of former South players of a recent vintage, the style of play is currently borderline unwatchable; I say borderline, because I have been watching them with some regularity this year, but the whole thing has the moral stench of a snuff film. I'm entertained, but I also feel unclean after the experience, like I should be wearing a raincoat and dark shades while entering the theatre via shady back lane entrance. In previous weeks there was the just the idea that Oaks was struggling, perhaps being a touch unlucky, that result would eventually turnaround. And maybe they will. But last week the on-field arguments and abuse towards teammates started, and I felt like I was back in 2018, as people who should've known better chewed each other out and contributed to our own dire situation. And if our own potential 2019 dire situation is not completely unrelated to what happened last year, neither is Oaks situation that far removed. If one was to choose an allegory from Greek mythology, I would choose the well-known fable of Collingwood sacking Mick Malthouse and Carlton rushing in thinking to may hay of that famous ray of sunshine. It didn't work for the Blues, and it's not working yet for Oaks, but it's early days yet. Still, they'd like to get some more points on the board before they're due to beat us in a few weeks.

Live streaming these first few weeks has been a hell of an experience, but all of sudden I feel like I've not really enjoyed much of it; like there has been too much choice and no chance to savour the delights of a singular meal. Hopefully the start of the unstreamed state leagues will get me out of the house and at the grounds a bit more.

Final thought
At least I got some fresh air and exercise I suppose.

Safe - South Melbourne 0 Port Melbourne 1

Having looked for it in a few places since I first read it several years ago and come up empty, the following anecdote is possibly something I've made up. When the late Les Murray  published his memoir By the Balls, he joked that he wanted to use the title The Great Poison instead, alluding to the hold that soccer has on its most dedicated supporters. And whether my recollection is true or not, the trope of football fans joking about how their support of their team is like an illness is a well-worn one anyway.

Usually we laugh when we talk about such things. In the first place, it's because it's just an absurd thing to say. In the second place, it's because when we say such things we seek to establish a sort of self-valourising and self-justifying aspect to it; we add a moral dimension to our support of the game and our particular club, clothing ourselves in the idea that we are making a noble sacrifice, both misunderstood and not understood by those poor souls who exist outside that cultural milieu. The more dour the experience, the worse the results, the more obscure and downtrodden the club, the more football fandom karma we accrue if not quite the benefit in the next life, then at least the ability to be smug in this one. What would those other people know about loyalty, dedication, and good old fashioned sticktoitiveness?

But there is of course the other side of this fable: that the unconditional attachment to this kind of cause can be very unhealthy. Thus I put it to you, dear reader, that South Melbourne Hellas' 2018 season consisted of little to no nobility, honour, valour or whatever other lofty epithet you want to attach to it. Indeed, it probably actually made people sick. Proximity to the abomination that was this season made just about everyone who came into contact with it much worse off mentally, socially, and in some cases maybe even physically.

Things were bad enough as they were leading into the game, and worse when we saw Sunday's squad weakened by the absence of Luke Adams with injury, Then when Tim Mala got himself sent off a minute and a half into the game with one of the dumbest challenges you'll ever see, all thoughts turned towards waiting to see how much worse it could get, which didn't take long: youth team debutant Ben Djiba, thrust into the left-back position as a starter, gave Sam Smith - one of Port Melbourne's many ex-South players taking the field that day - the perfect chance to give Port the lead and thrust them towards the finals, and send us toward relegation.

At that moment I just wanted to leave, or throw up. I've had nervous spells and felt dizzy at football matches, I walked out (as far as the social club) once, I've had my arms go numb, but the only other time I ever wanted to spew was round one, 2010 in the AFL, when Collingwood dodged a bullet by beating the Demons by a point when some Melbourne plonker dropped a mark with about two seconds left. Thankfully for the patrons in the top deck of the Great Southern Stand that day, I was able to collect myself and not chunder across the row in front of me.

What made things much, much worse on Sunday was that all things considered, we actually started playing well. Sure we were shaky or less than competent across different areas, but we weren't nearly as bad as we had been at times in 2018. One felt that Port were the more likely to score next, but it was not the fait accompli that the previous two weeks had been. At times we even outplayed Port, though you knew the goal was never going to come, and thus we had to do that thing where half our time was spent watching our phones for updates of other games. Hume had taken the lead at Pascoe Vale, but Kingston were doing well against Gully, and thus despite being down in our own game, things were looking up.

Apart from a couple of near miss free kicks, our great moment came late in the first half, when Pep Marafioti squared the ball to an unmarked Marcus Schroen on the edge of th six yard box and right in front, only for Schroen to blast it over the bar. Realistically, we weren't going to save ourselves, and some atrocious refereeing didn't help, as the game threatened to flare up into several scuffles. The worst decision was none of the three officials seeing one of our players getting potted by a Port player behind play in the middle of the field. Not that any of that mattered. Kingston went up 3-0 late in their game, and for good measure Paco equalised late in their match. So, without having to do any heavy lifting of our own over the last four games, we survived thanks to the kindness of strangers - and that 3-2 win against Gully before things fell apart well and proper for the last month of the season.

As our survival was secured well before full time, there was time to ponder things half relevant. Like if we got into the A-League, how good would it be to have Clarendon Corner located in the few surviving spectator amenities of the 1926 Stand? It would fulfil so many of our requirements - in the best Clarendon Corner tradition it would be the worst spot in the ground to watch a game from; it would be perfect for making sure we were nowhere near the returning bandwagon; in a few decades there'd eventually there'd be just a couple of people left, leaving two lucky fans the chance to live out a real life Statler and Waldorf fantasy.

Some people broke out some chants, willing us to score to get Kingston into the finals as payment for rescuing us. Milos Lujic got benched, to his disgust. Everyone has the feeling that he's on his way out, probably to Oakleigh and Chris Taylor. We can talk about ignominious ends, but there almost no one came out of this year clean. You looked out onto the field, at the players who took part on the day and even those who weren't there, and wondered how many would be back next year. Brad Norton, probably. Leigh Minopoulos, if he feels his body is right, perhaps. Kristian Konstantinidis, if his head's screwed on right. Luke Adams if he wants to settle down in Australia permanatently. But the rest? Makeche, Howard, Foschini, Jawadi, Mala, Marshall, Minatel you'd all assume our likely to be gone.

Will we keep one or either of the Marafioti brothers? Pep did well enough I thought to earn another season; Giordano was meant to be the great white hope of the youth system, for whom so much was sacrificed for, but injury and insanity meant his season was a wash. Will the once implausible but now perhaps merely unlikely happen, and Nikola Roganovic stick around? We went through four goalkeepers this year - one injured, one discarded, one flew in and flew out, and the last came back in our hour of need but can he commit to something more substantial? What's the fate of the several youth players we tried once Sasa Kolman left? As promising as almost all of them looked at some point, did anyone of them do enough to warrant anything more than fringe bench spot next year? Next year, eh? What a luxury to be able to say that without a complete and overbearing sense of shame.

Those who still listen to 3XY say that they heard president Leo Athanasakis had re-appointed Con Tangalakis as our coach for 2019, but as usual with these things, I'll believe it when I see it. A strange coaching decision at the start of the season set all of this in motion, to the point where we were two bad results away from a relegation playoff, and our now on the verge of a player exodus the likes of which we haven't seen since the end of the NSL. Now maybe the sacking of Chris Taylor was necessary, maybe it wasn't - regardless one gets the feeling that things were coming to a head one way or another behind the scenes for reasons that probably have as much to do with interpersonal dynamics between Taylor and the board than any issues of competence.And even if his sacking was executed brilliantly from a Machiavellian, didn't see that coming point of view, clearly everything else to do with that decision was done so poorly, that one wonders if people actually thought this through properly.

At the end of the day and at the end of our season, there was relief, and time for a rum and coke. But there was also the feeling for me that had this season gone on any longer, then I would have had to follow in the footsteps of Julianne Moore's character in Todd Haynes' 1995 film Safe, and remove myself to an igloo in the desert, where none of this mattered, or even existed.

But, please, South, don't drive into that chasm!
Now a lot of this next segment originally made its appearance on Twitter, so if you've already seen it there, you can skip to the bit.

As much as South Melbourne's car crash 2018 season was (rightly) the focus of many people's attention, let's not let it obscure Green Gully's remarkable decline. After round ten, where Gully had crunched us 3-0 at Lakeside, Gully sat in fourth spot with six wins, two draws and two losses. They were eleven points clear of us, and in a good position you'd think to make a finals run, and certainly not be considered a likely candidate for (provisional) relegation. Yet Gully picked up just one win and three draws in their final sixteen games. For a club with a stable income, no obvious external sponsor and supporter expectations to live up to, as well twenty years of alternately successful/competitive teams, it's quite an astonishing situation.

Gully also have some quality players - who many clubs will be circling in the event they lose the playoff game - played some decent football, and seldom got belted (especially in the way that did). One shouldn't write them off in the upcoming playoff, of course - but you have to wonder how they of all clubs ended up in this situation. The on again/off again affair with Arthur Papas hasn't helped; and for a coach touted by some as part of a young generation of up and coming Australian coaches, that should put a solid dent in what's left of his local reputation.

Part of the word on the street is that Papas shared at least one trait with fellow young full-time coach Sasa Kolman, in that his expectations of semi-professional players - especially the time they could reasonably be expected to give to their soccer careers - were wildly optimistic. I'm talking extra training sessions, before work morning sessions and the like. Now well may we say that for the money players in the NPL are getting, they should be doing more than what they do (especially since their ability to draw cards is negligible at best), but as long their chief source of income comes from a day job, that's not going to happen.

Alongside playing in a second tier cut up into a dozen pieces, we are all aware that the differing levels of professionalism between the A-League and the aforementioned second tiers is one of the most-significant barriers to Australian players making the step up to professional ranks. As we all know, there are people working on fixing at least one part of that issue, by virtue of getting a national second tier up and running, but one wonders whether it'll be worth it if the players are full professionals. But that's for the optimists to figure out.

In summary, this is another warning that in NPL Victoria you don't even have to completely sabotage your own season like we did to find yourself in trouble - just the slightest complacency in a tight season, and you're in the relegation playoff. And it's only going to get tougher next year with Altona Magic and Dandenong City getting promoted. For the moment just be grateful that were at least three teams worse than us in 2018, remarkable as that might be..

Off-season winding down mode, pending...
Usually when the senior men's team season ends, South of the Border goes into our half-arsed off-season mode. In recent times that's meant at least a few more weeks of blog action, but since this will be the first time since 2012 that the men won't be involved in any post-season antics, we find ourselves in the slightly anomalous situation insofar as the blog is concerned. That's because even though our men have greatly disappointed all of us, the senior women's teams are still very much alive and kicking, and looking to add several pieces of silverware to their collection.

This week they're aware to Bulleen on Saturday afternoon, hoping to clinch what I still anachronistically call the minor premiership, and after that they will be embarking on a finals campaign which will hopefully see them make an appearance at AAMI Park on grand final day. It'd be great to see a few more people at their games, because they are worth watching, and lopsided as the NPLW can be, at the business end of the season things get a lot more competitive.

Now that's all well and good for those who have an interest in our women's teams, but I get that's not a sentiment shared by everyone at South Melbourne. As noted ad nauseum recently (OK, twice), I'm a bit busy with work and stuff at the moment, and I don't expect that to let up until early November. Nevertheless, along with the women's stuff, there'll eventually be the usual off-season winding down of South of the Border. So that means the usual patchwork awards, book reviews, maybe some historical guff, and possibly drawing into the archives for draft pieces that maybe should see the light of day at some point.

There will also be some A-League bid news (not that any of that matters), and I assume there'll be an AGM at some point. So, there'll be enough to talk about: just gotta find the time to do it all.

Speaking of the A-League bid
The club has confirmed that it has "submitted its formal bid to join the Hyundai A-league in season 2019/20". Some have mocked the "60 years in the making reference", though I'm not sure why. If anything they should be congratulating the club on at least making the sensible decision to post the notice after we had avoided the relegation playoff, rather than putting it up beforehand.

Final thought
It's well before my end of year round round up, and it'll sound typically self-pitying as I write this, but I feel as if in a lot of ways I've let down the South of the Border readership this year with my writing efforts. There are some personal reasons for this - which I can hopefully let you all know about in due course - but mostly it comes down to me being utterly depressed and demotivated by the experience of watching and attending South Melbourne matches this year.

That goes for almost the whole experience - the performance of the men's team, the often self-serving and self-preservation antics of the board, the decline in quality of the social club (I'm leaving out manager Tegan, and Noula the cook, who did the best they could with the resources given to them), and the sometimes (often) embarrassing antics of the fans, myself included. The things that kept it all together? The fact that enough players gave enough of a stuff for just long enough to get us over the line, showing us that there was at least some residual pride left in the squad; the persistent camaraderie of the ramshackle operation that is Clarendon Corner, including some of the younger boys; lastly, the fact of what else are you going to do when there's a South game on?

Here's to the hope that this is a serious wake up call to the club that a half-arsed approach to running and supporting South Melbourne Hellas is going to end very badly. Here's to the hope that 2019 will provide us with a much better season on the field than the rollicking shambles that was 2018.

Sack everyone and everything - South Melbourne 1 Kingston City 4

If I wanted last season to be over because of its brutal length, then surely this season I want to come to an end as quickly and as painlessly as possible. It has been a nightmare on several fronts, with a brief half-earned, half-gifted to us revival which is keeping our head above water, and which for a short period of time brought if not happiness nor peace of mind, than at least

It was a strange week, too, even before we got our caning against Kingston and pulled back down into the heart of the relegation stoush. South fans, paranoid, panicky, and with a 14 year chip on their collective shoulder, are ready to lash out at anyone. The first target was Paul Wade, for his support of the Dandenong A-League bid. It was a reaction from our fans which I wasn't surprised by, but one that I felt was misdirected for a couple of reasons. First, where Wade can be considered to have a coherent and/or consistent policy with regards to what our nation's top tier should look like, he is long ago on record as saying that "broadbased" teams (complete with gimmick nicknames) were/are the future of the game. That was all the way back in 1995, in his autobiography - which I apologise again for not having reviewed in depth, ten and a half years into the blog.

Now it was pointed out (and rightly so) that Wade had also endorsed our bid last year, and that therefore something must have changed for him to do this, and that "something" was money. I wouldn't rule it out - why rule anything out in Australian soccer? - but Wade never seemed to me like the kind of guy who would do something just for the money. Still, that seeming inconsistency in his endorsements goes to another point about how nonsensical the fury at Wade's most recent comments was: and that point is, who actually takes what Paul Wade has to say seriously? Yes, he'll get wheeled out by the ABC from time to time to talk about the Socceroos or the state of the game, but his overblown pronouncements almost always make him seem incredibly out of touch with everything going on in Australian soccer. He is in a lot ways an Australian soccer media relic, one whose heyday was a very long time ago as a player, not that much far removed as a commentator, and it's odd to me that anyone takes what he says seriously, let alone personally.

Once everyone got bored with Wade, it was time to turn on The Age's Michael Lynch. Now goodness knows, South of the Border has hardly been Lynch's biggest fan over the years, but we've mellowed out to the point where my loathing is now muted, and I'm now mostly just plain old distrustful. Lynch, who has found if not a soft-spot for "the old clubs" in recent times, has certainly managed to rediscover at least a peripheral interest in them. As to what prompted that rediscovery, the only wisdom I can offer on that front is typically cynical and a little bit hackneyed: that Lynch and other soccer journos noticed a change in the air, and they thought that maybe their previously dismissive attitudes towards the old clubs might see them miss the zeitgeist.

And when it comes to Australian soccer media, the zeitgeist is all, and anyone who falls outside of that looks naff, old, fossilised, doddering. In this case, Lynch didn't necessarily commit any heinous crime other than putting forward the idea that in his view, and so far as the Melbourne A-League bidders were concerned, behind the scenes it was not South Melbourne that were favoured, but rather the other two bids. Enter a more subdued version of the angry mob that went after Wade, which hadn't necessarily taken the time to think about the situation. For as absurd as the South bid is, and as as absurd as the other two Melbourne bids are, and any A-League bids for a system that needs drastic overhaul (whether pro/rel or plainer reform to its current state), is noting that the powers that be might prefer some over others, and that such attitudes may have been locked in place for a long time, really that absurd of an idea?

Anyway, having amused ourselves by turning onto outsiders, and someone who people had convinced themselves was South through and through by virtue of stuff that happened most recently 23 years ago, ignoring the fact that Wade has had little to do with us since, it was time to lash out at each other. Which, to be fair, is a longstanding South speciality, and in recent times enjoyed by some of our people more than what happens on field. At some point during the under 20s game on Sunday, word was going around about a small group of South fans - perhaps half a dozen - being banned by the club, and/or possibly the stadium trust.

This was odd, in part because at least some of those supposedly banned were already in the stadium, an oversight which it turned out one could put down to the club being too slow to get its act together from the time gates were opened. Eventually had photos of the banned supporters, and prevented them from entering (or re-entering) the stadium. The other odd aspect was no one seemed sure why it was that these supporters had been banned, for how long they'd been banned, and what efforts the club had taken (if they had taken any effort) to inform those banned that they were indeed banned from Lakeside.

That obviously cast a pall over affairs from before kickoff, and eventually most of Clarendon Corner decided to watch the game from outside the ground from behind the fence at the western end of the ground. It's not the best of the view of the ground, but for this banned and their sympathisers, there was an obvious principle involved, and also precedent - let's not forget that members of Clarendon Corner had spent a good portion of our early time at Northcote protesting the banning of some fans following the pitch invasion at the final game at the old Lakeside.

There was next to no chanting from what was left of Clarendon Corner inside the ground, and a lot of chanting from the majority of those who decamped outside the ground. Nothing out of the ordinary was chanted that I could discern from my position inside the ground. Those at the ground who are not up to speed on all these kinds of things must have been very confused by what was going on. At times volunteer marshals spent some time there, as did security, and one stadium trust staffer seemed particularly nervous about the whole affair, though seemingly not doing much other than pacing up and down the stairs in front of his match day office.

While their chants were mostly clearly audible, Clarendon Corner in exile were largely invisible to those inside the ground, except for one character who was quite visible as he climbed on top of the ticket box next to the Gate 1 entrance, and proceeded to walk along the top of the outer fence to the bewilderment of most and even to the amusement of some - including a security guard - who I suppose could appreciate the farce of the performance and the situation that performance was embedded in. As security approached, he jumped down back outside

Me, I acknowledge that farce of what passes for supporting this club on a weekly basis, but I couldn't help find the whole thing exceptionally grim. I wouldn't go so far as to call the past few weeks a truce between disgruntled fans and the board, but as has tended to be the case at South in recent years, a run of good results acts like a sedative, numbing tension for a short time before a bad result or two brings the underlying issues back to the surface. The only odd thing, if one could it even call it that, is that on Sunday we didn't even get to the bad result bit before the unpleasantness began.

And if everything else going on wasn't making things grim enough, the team itself came out of the sheds half asleep and seldom looked like it was a chance in a game where, had we won, it would've secured our NPL status for 2019. Kingston took the lead early through a penalty (no complaints from me on the decision) and eerily - and not bloody helpfully - Gully had also taken the lead at Olympic Village at the same time. Kingston being a quick side, I just had a feeling that we would struggle to keep them away from goal, and we weren't helped by having an unsettled defensive set up thanks to the absence of Brad Norton.

We did eventually start clicking into gear, and I thought we finished the half reasonably strongly. Marcus Schroen's goal direct from the corner got us level at halftime, just as the Bergers themselves had equalised. So at that particular moment, things were looking a lot better than they had five minutes into the game. I wasn't especially confident about the second half, but I didn't foresee the second half collapse. You could, as some have done, try to put it to the fact of Kingston having the wind in the second half, but it wasn't like they were hoofing the ball down the field. It was all very neat and tidy, and exploiting a slow defence.

Before you knew it we were behind again. By the time we got to 3-1, it was a matter of playing out time and hoping things didn't get worse. They did, of course, but the bigger concern was Schroen coming off injured; along with Oliver Minatel, Schroen has been the other key player in turning our season around from its direst point, and to potentially lose him for further matches would be a massive blow. This is especially the case when we have three tough games to go, including two of the top three side. But all credit to Kingston - they have a smaller budget, they play youth, and they play attractive football. I hate Monday night football, but if we're going to have a surplus of (Greek) minnow teams in this comp, the least that we can hope for is that try to entertain.

As the sun set on another home loss in 2018, and people retreated to their various internet hovels to vent and moan and plan their next moves, some of our people turned their attention towards the spectacle of the Western Melbourne Group's open forum, deciding to scoff and deride several of the key takeaways from that affair. Not that any of that matters, of course, but I guess it's nice to have a hobby that people get some joy from. Goodness knows there hasn't been much joy at South this season.

Next game
At Heidelberg on Sunday afternoon, in a replay of the previously abandoned match. It's the catch-up round, and we're the only teams playing, so there could be a decent crowd. That, and the Bergers can secure what I'm still calling the minor premiership with a win here. Rather than making the game free entry, there will be a cover charge - with the proceeds going to the Greek bushfire appeal. As noble as that sentiment is, I can positively sense the cynicism dripping out of some of our supporters.

The arrangement is going ahead with the blessing of our own club, which makes total sense when you think about it. After all, we are a Greek club; we would be destroyed in the media if we didn't support it; and at any rate, one of our board members also happens to be the president of the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne.

Apparently you will be able to get a receipt for your donation/entry ticket, if you are that way inclined. I'm just hoping for a win, and no repeat of the nonsense which took place after our most recent meeting. Which, when I put it like that, is clearly hoping for too much.

Relegation/survival prognostication - as stolen from Greekfire's post on smfcfans.com
The following post by "Greekfire" appeared on smfcfans.com, and does a much better job at summarising our predicament than any amount of waffling I could do. All I've changed from it is shortening the team names so they don't stretch out the table template.

I've run the numbers on the remaining games to analyse the scenarios whereby we can end up in 12th and the relegation playoff. There are basically 5 teams in the mix:

• South Melbourne
• Kingston City
• Hume City
• Green Gully
• Dandenong Thunder

Before going on to look at the games that matter, there are a few assumptions:

1. We lose all of our last 3 games - to put us in the worst possible case for ourselves
2. Goal difference plays no part in the result (i.e. we don't get battered / we lose 1-0 in each game / no one else belts anyone)
3. Dandenong Thunder is ignored for now - the teams they play (Northcote @ home, Knights away) don't have any other influence on the results of anyone else, so it's not worth analysing every combo of their games

The relevant games are then the games featuring the other 3 contenders:

• Kingston City vs Heidelberg United
• Hume City vs Green Gully
• Hume City vs Pascoe Vale
• Green Gully vs Kingston City

We're very lucky, at this point, that there are 2 games where 2 contenders play each other.

If we consider that each game can either be a win to the home team (1), a draw (X) or a loss (2), then there are 3x3x3x3 possible outcomes, or 81 scenarios.

Of these, we finish 12th in 7 of them, or in 8.6% of cases (assuming every result of every game is equally likely and independent) - these are outlined below:

Home	Away	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Kingston	Heidelberg	1	1	1	X	X	X	2
Hume	Gully	X	2	2	X	2	2	2
Hume	Paco	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Gully	Kingston	1	1	X	1	1	X	X
	Team	Pts
	South Melbourne	28.5	28.5	28.5	28.5	28.5	28.5	28.5
	Kingston	31	31	32	29	29	30	29
	Hume	30	29	29	30	29	29	29
	Gully	29	31	29	29	31	29	29

Key things to note:

• If we get a point from any of our last 3 games, we avoid all of these scenarios as we would move up to 29.5 points and safely above at least 1 other team in every scenario (assuming we still have better GD)
• Green Gully have to get a result from Hume City in 2 weeks, or else we are safe
• Hume City have to beat Pascoe Vale on the last day, or else we are safe
• Green Gully have to get a result from Kingston City on the last day, or else we are safe

In summary, from these 81 scenarios, the team most likely to go down is Green Gully:

Team	Scenarios finishing 12th	% chance
South Melbourne	7	8.64%
Kingston City	6	7.41%
Hume City	26	32.10%
Green Gully	42	51.85%

Of course, if Dandenong don't get a point from their last 2 games, we are safe anyway as they would stay below us on 28 points and lower GD, and all this would be moot.

Around the grounds
Friday night
Sat at home reading Kate Grenville's The Lieutenant while watching Batman, and later the footy.

Saturday arvo
Supermarket duties.

Saturday night
Went to the footy. Was alright.

Final thought
This semester I am in what may be called semi-gainful employment, with the possibility that my workload will increase significantly at very short notice. So, if you've been disappointed by the quality of South of the Border match posts in 2018, the lack of ephemeral material, or even just the deplorable promptness of publication, things are going to be pretty annoying for the next three months or so. Also, I've become quite fond of coming home on a Sunday evening after a game, switching my phone off, and just lying on the couch watching trash TV. So you know, take all of that into account for the next little bit.