Notes from the 2021 AGM

South Melbourne Hellas members are now well used to AGMs being delayed for unorthodox reasons, but the pandemic is the unimpeachable get out clause for everything these days. Attendance from committee members was poor, but that of the members was worse. A lot of regular faces at these things did not show up. Why, I do not know. Indifference? Covid? Inconvenient time-slot? Heaven help us if the senior men's preferred match day discussion ever gets combined with this topic.

And goodness knows where the armada of junior parents now eligible to attend such meetings was - thanks to Football Victoria constitutional changes some years back - because they weren't there, and have seldom ever attended since they have bee able to. Well, maybe they were at junior games. Still the meeting went ahead, and some useful information was parlayed to the small audience. 

As per usual, this is not a complete account of the AGM, because I did not take such detailed notes; nor should everything be made known to people who did not attend the meeting, or so I'm told. Then again, some people don't like any AGM details making their way into the public domain, but that ship sailed a long time ago.

There were two key presenters on the day, treasurer Mario Vinaccia, and president Nick Maikousis. At times the meeting resembled a conversation rather than a one-way information session, with the odd spiky exchange. But we get but one formal opportunity per year  (on average) to grill our representatives, and one would be wise to take it. 

Insofar as the treasurer's report went, there was generally good news in regards to the club's financial position as it ended at June 2021. The club made a profit of about $160,000, a good result considering the difficulties created by the pandemic with regards to sponsorship and match day revenue. The club is also on target to clear its external debts by June 2022. 

The club's business structure was once again explained. Essentially, the South Melbourne Hellas Club acts as the umbrella for a set of subsidiary organisations. Half of these are for profit businesses (the Bar & Grill, the Futsal Court, etc), and the other half are the various teams and clubs we operate (NPL and NPLW teams, miniroos, state league women's teams).

The assertion was made by the board that contrary to popular wisdom, it is the finances of the senior men's team which fills in the budgetary gaps (if and where they exist, though most teams break even) in other parts of the football business. How one gets that message out to a soccer public which takes as gospel that junior money funds senior wages (across many clubs, not just ours) is a difficult task. Because much more of the 2021 season was played compared to the 2020 season, there was less damage done in terms of refunds of fees to junior players due to the cancellation of the season.

The Bar & Grill more or less breaks even on match days, but does much better on special events. Of course, club hosted special events and the hiring of the function room by the general public have been hindered by the pandemic, but one hopes that will change as things open up again. The club's leasing of the futsal space to the Combat Institute of Australia for use as its National Performance Centre, which became official in January 2022, will see the club receive an annual six figure sum in rental fees. I think most of us will be glad that that space is finally earning its keep, albeit in an unorthodox manner. 

On the question of why no Sunday matches, it was made reiterated that much of the cost savings achieved by the club in recent times have been due to avoiding hosting Sunday matches, and especially the staff penalty rates that make Sunday games unappealing from a financial point of view. The four senior men's Friday night matches in 2022 are also being used as part of the attempt to garner and maintain sponsor networks.

Sponsorship is in a strong position, with the number of principle partners increasing substantially, as the club continues to leverage the business links of the current board. What might happen to that generosity should those members of the board - especially in the financial services sector, which we seem to have a focus on - depart, is a question left to the future. This approach is a variant of the construction industry funded teams in our league. Realistically, there would be few clubs in Victoria who can get by predominantly on gate takings, and in that sense we are not an outlier.

In short, gate takings and membership dues play second fiddle to sponsorship and other business ventures. While the club made a reasonable sum on the 2022 Melbourne City FFA Cup game given the circumstances, restrictive pandemic related trading circumstances diminished what could have been a higher taking. Still, it's nice to know that the club has a not insignificant item for its next financial report. Also to be taken into account for next year, is the already improved takings from merchandise sales. 

Though hampered by Lakeside Stadium being under the control of the state government rather than a local council, the club has improved its accessing of government grants. Most of these grants are relatively small, but collectively they help offset costs across our various football departments.

The president's report had some crossover with the treasurer's report, but also included other matters as you would expect. The relationship with the regular, match day staff of the Trust is currently good. However, the high turnover of bureaucrats at the Trust continues to make the management of that part of the relationship more difficult.

There was some discussion about further cementing our presence at some of our other locations, and the hope that there would be funding made available for the relaying of the synthetic pitches at Middle Park, among other improvements to our amenities.

With regards to Lakeside being used as a training venue for the 2023 Women's World Cup, there was little concrete news as of yet. There is the possibility of minor improvements being made to player amenities. It is also possible that the venue may be unavailable for several weeks, but otherwise there is scant detail on what the 2023 Women's World Cup will mean for us in an operational sense. That's something to keep an eye on for next year.

There was also discussion on the prospects of a National Soccer Division, but precious little of certainty to latch on to. There remain many open-ended questions about whether the NSD would be held during a winter or summer season; how long inaugural NSD clubs would be given to settle in, without the threat of being relegated themselves; how quickly full-time professionalism would be introduced; and of course, about how many clubs could realistically be expected to participate.

There was an acknowledgment that there would be need to be significant increases to membership, sponsorship, and attendance in order to the transition to an NSD work, with the club needing a large increase in turnover from its current position. The board however asserted confidence in its ability to make a successful transition to an NSD. In addition, the board was confident that the club could participate successfully in an NSD regardless of the ultimate format of the NSD,

Those members in attendance, while sharing the club's ingrained ambition to play at the highest level possible, generally had a more a wary disposition on the matter. Having said that, there are a wide range of opinions within the South community about the merits of an NSD, and the course of action the club should take. Thus it was disappointing not to have a greater attendance to have the range of those views considered. One hopes that the next AGM, which will hopefully see more concrete details released on the actual NSD format, will attract more interest from members.

A full-time sponsorship person has been hired.

The membership database issue is still an ongoing matter. 

Medium term, if the circumstances allow, the board is interested in re-aligning AGM dates and financial reporting to match the senior men's season, rather than going by the financial year.

At the end of the meeting, it was announced that Mario Vinaccia would be stepping down as treasurer, due to increased family commitments. The change will happen as soon as a suitable successor for the treasurer position is found. The membership thanked Mario for his efforts not only in cleaning up the club's books, but also for his efforts in changing the club's culture around transparency on these matters.

Western United blocked from using Lakeside

So the news came in late on Friday afternoon: South had successfully blocked Western United from using Lakeside for the upcoming A-League season. Thus ended the week-long saga that saw much energy expended by a lot of people, with just about everyone involved ending up more or less where they started from. South doesn't get an A-League intrusion at Lakeside. Western United will end up playing those seven home games designated for Lakeside at AAMI Park. And the Trust which manages Lakeside Stadium will continue scratching its head trying to figure out how to make soccer work at Lakeside.

Despite all parties involved seemingly ending up back at square one, one tangible change in the dynamic is the realisation that South's veto rights over football at Lakeside are actually quite real. This is a lesson - perhaps the only genuine lesson learned from the entire situation - that's been learned by both the online anti-South brigade, but also by South fans themselves. Otherwise, pretty much everyone who contributed to the public discussion on United's attempt at play at Lakeside, and South's thwarting of it, hasn't budged from their starting position of what they think about South Melbourne Hellas as a valued (or otherwise) member of the Australian soccer body politic. 

I don't know what the anti-South brigade thought about the veto's legitimacy - as Mark Boric noted, maybe they thought that because the most "excitable" online South fans kept bringing it up, that the veto must be a figment of those South fans' imagination. Combine that with South not being the owner of Lakeside, and I can see how some people came to that conclusion; but even as other comparatively non-hysterical South fans noted the veto's existence, the blindness caused by the anti-South cohort's visceral hatred for South meant that only the successful application of the veto itself could make it real.

For South fans, who have been used to hearing about the existence of the veto, it was a relief for to see that not only is the veto real, but that invoking it has real-world consequences. Considering South has long allowed W-League and Y-League games at Lakeside - which is not something some staunch South fans are happy with - we have seldom if ever seen the veto used in practice. The exception to that is a now ancient and maybe even apocryphal refusal to allow Melbourne Heart to use Lakeside, before they became Melbourne City. In contrast, the deployment of the veto means that its existence is now public and verifiable, and a marker for all future discussions on the topic, even if most of the specifics remain confidential.

Further to the confirmation of the veto's power, is the surprise and delight among many South fans that the South board actually decided to use it. Thanks in part to the clumsiness of United's attempt to barge into Lakeside without even wiping their feet on the welcome mat, we will never know if the South board would have decided on a different course of action had United's request been made with more tact. The immediate and overwhelming opposition from South members might have it impossible for the South board to agree to United using Lakeside anyway, but the manner in which the situation unfolded gave the South board little choice but to say "no".

Moral grandstanding aside, for South the opportunity seemed to be there for some sort of financial gain, as well as improvements to Lakeside's amenities. On arguments about generating goodwill, I'm less convinced about that than I was last week. After all, what would be the long-term benefits of being good public soccer citizens to any member of a self-interested cartel? Key members of the A-League cartel - now almost completely a law unto itself in terms of its governance and operation - have made it clear they do not want South Melbourne in their clique. I mean, City and Victory didn't even want a third Melbourne team of any sort to be part of the A-League. Yet even as key parts of the national league cartel, whose goal should be the self-interest of the cartel as a whole, and not just the narrow self-interest of individual cartel members, City and Victory helped contribute to this mess by not allowing United to use AAMI Park for the upcoming season in the first place.

Sure they're rivals, but being part of the same cartel - and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, it's just facts - it was ridiculous there wasn't any evidence of cartel discipline or solidarity until someone in (I assume) Australian Professional Leagues (the A-League's governing body) forced the hand of City and Victory. It's the least they could do for the team whose licence fee, in at least some A-League fans' opinion, is helping keep several struggling teams afloat.

Of course most of the anti-South squawkers seemed to miss all of that. Asking why South copped so much grief for the situation United has found itself, and why more of the blame wasn't being directed not just at United, but also at Victory and City, is really a very rhetorical question. Those people will squawk about South "showing its true colours" with regards to helping Australian soccer (as well as itself in the short and long term), but the reality is a likely more cynical affair: that most of that squawking was done by people who have no time for South anyway; are in no position from which to turn any goodwill gesture from South into something which will tangibly benefit South; and even if they were, they would be just as likely to move the goalposts should South get even close to achieving its aim of a return to national league soccer.

Speaking for myself, as probably one of the few South fans who was nonplussed about United using Lakeside, I'm a little disappointed that South won't be able to cash in materially on the opportunity. Still, I understand the general elation from our supporters at the board's conduct and the overall outcome. Whether it was the right decision by the South board or not, the way things panned out they had little option other than to invoke the veto. 

United had been scratching around for months for a suitable venue, had come up short for a variety of reasons, and ended up falling onto Plan Z: Lakeside. 

The problems with this plan were myriad, but also contained elements specific to United's reason for existing. One of Victorian soccer's oldest problems has been a lack of suitable infrastructure; United promised to ameliorate that infrastructure deficit by building a new soccer only stadium, and an associated soccer precinct. A few years down the track, and next to no visible progress has been made on their promised solution. Thus we end up in the situation where United apparently trawled Australian Rules venues, tried to get government funding to improve a private soccer venue (not even their own) in the form of Knights Stadium, and then tried to stowaway on the good ship Lakeside.

And perhaps more than most venues they considered, Lakeside has its particular quirk as a moral choice for Western United: United didn't just win its A-League licence (at the expense of several other bids, including South's) by promising a new soccer specific stadium. During the bidding process for that licence it was also made very clear by a variety of people, including people affiliated with United's bid, that Lakeside was not a suitable venue for national league soccer. Somehow all of a sudden Lakeside, with the addition of some very simple improvements - better lighting and wifi - became a more than suitable venue.

Even those who saw this as a good opportunity for South to cash in financially, infrastructure-wise, and in building goodwill, could not ignore the moral heart of the matter. United and a whole bunch of people in high and low places had said that Lakeside Stadium was not good enough for national league football. The implication which followed on from that belief is that because Lakeside was not good enough for national league football, that South Melbourne was also not good enough for national league football. And yet there were a lot of people who got very mad that the club they said wasn't good enough for national league football, wasn't going to allow Western United to use a stadium that they themselves, as well as Western United, said was not good enough for national league football. That United tried to get into Lakeside by not even giving South a courtesy call until very, very late in the matter turned this strictly into a moral matter instead of one that also had a commercial element (though the South board was at pains to emphasise the commercial aspect). 

I'm happy to acknowledge that United may have genuinely been blissfully ignorant of the existence of South's Lakeside veto. I'm even willing to acknowledge that United took the right path officially by calling up the Trust first, the Trust being the venue manager after all, to start the process of trying to sort out their fixture problem. But having known that they were going to embark on this process, United could surely have contacted South much earlier than they did; and even with the pressure of a fixture deadline needing to be announced, not gone public with their announcement until the South board had had time to consider the situation.

(One also has to wonder who at the Trust who met with United - meetings which reportedly included senior figures and not just low level bureaucrats - forgot to mention to United that South has a football veto.)

The end result, so far as I'm concerned, shows South merely exercising its hard-fought for legal rights. United meanwhile continue to flounder about not just in terms of sorting out its ongoing stadium problem, but also in the basics of local soccer diplomacy and courtesy. For an organisation which has boasted about the bona fides of its core staff being football people - and which went on Greek radio no less to talk about their respect for South as a club and institution - their approach to making friends in the local soccer scenes came across as graceless at best, and arrogant at worst.

Some punters spun United now being allowed to play this set of matches at AAMI Park, as what United wanted all along. That's possibly true; but if it is, what an awful, circuitous way of getting to this point. For South, the end result is a moral victory in the short term. How that short-term victory plays in financial terms, and in the relationship with the Trust, remains to be seen. 

Still, at least it was something which helped pass the time.

Report on Lakeside / Western United situation, as heard on 3XY Radio Hellas

I'm not sure if they did a coin toss for who got to go first on the night, but it was our own president who was first cab off the rank. 

Nick Maikousis, South Melbourne president

South Melbourne were approached by Western United for discussions several months ago, which did not end up happening for reasons Maikousis was not clear about.

In the past week, Western United were advised by South Melbourne not to make an announcement about playing their games at Lakeside. They did anyway. South then exercised its legal rights to prevent that from happening. The process of getting a formal response from the Trust is ongoing.

Maikousis noted that Victory and City have also locked out Western United from AAMI Park, and that if fellow A-League teams are not going to look after each other, then its certainly not the place for South Melbourne to look after A-League teams. Also, weren't they supposed to build their own stadium? Isn't this the reason why they got picked over South?

There was also note made that training will resume for our senior men's side tomorrow for the FFA Cup, as that is classed as professional  sport.

Chris Pehlivanis, Western United CEO

Attempt at a conciliatory and collegiate tone throughout. Noted that the scheduled (but never held) meeting mentioned above was cancelled due to covid, but was not going to be about using Lakeside; rather it was about establishing good relations with all Victorian clubs. Pehlivanis then set up the framework under which the situation arrived at this point: lack of suitable soccer infrastructure; changed A-League season window; covid, etc. 

United were not locked out of AAMI Park because of Victory and City directly, but rather because the trust that operates that venue was concerned about overuse of the pitch due to the A-League season now having more crossover with the NRL and Super Rugby seasons. Also because Victory have moved their allocation of Docklands matches to AAMI Park. At least that's how I understood the situation.

Pehlivanis seemed to also insist that at all times Western United's discussions were conducted with the relevant Trusts for AAMI Park and Lakeside, without any knowledge of what tenancy rights were due to the extant leaseholders.

Alternative venues were not suitable for a variety of reasons: being used by other, primary tenants; resurfacing of turf; covid related seating capacity limits; limited time to implement necessary improvements to venue before start of season, and lack of government support to do that. Pehlivanis contested the claim in a recent Melbourne Knights press release that no stadium audit had taken place for Knights Stadium.

With time running out for Western United to sort out venues before the A-League fixture was released, they then decided to pursue Lakeside as an option. They approached the Trust, and had negotiations with the highest level within that organisation. The stadium audit revealed that Lakeside's lighting needed improvement to adhere to A-League standards (which the Trust was willing to do), and some minor improvements to media facilities. They got approval from the A-League governing body.

A meeting with Nick Maikousis took place, where Maikousis said he'd discuss the matter with the South Melbourne board before providing a formal response. With time running out before the fixture announcement, and before the South board could make a formal response, Western United announced that Lakeside would be one of their venues for the upcoming A-League season.  

South have exercised their legal rights to the stadium football veto, and are waiting a response from the Trust. United still intend to play those seven games at Lakeside.

The ironing is delicious / making hay while the sun shines with edit

Edit: Damn you to hell South Melbourne board, make me write things for the first time in months and then you post this update, lol.

Near everything below is now redundant, carry on as you were.

In this current environment of not very much South news, something popped up today which will intrigue and enrage South fans in unequal measure - namely, the announcement that A-League team Western United will be adding Lakeside Stadium to its home venue repertoire for the next A-League season. 

Quelle horror, and such.

Of course you may remember Western United as that property development enterprise which took the form of an A-League expansion licence bid, whose bid centrepiece was the promise to build a new soccer stadium precinct in Melbourne's western sprawl. More pertinently as it applies to South Melbourne Hellas, it was a bid which was successful at winning an A-League licence at a South related bid's expense. 

(the Western United bid also won at the expense of that Dandenong/South-East/Team 11 whatever thing, which is neither here nor there for the purposes of this discussion, and which is now literally not here, there, or anywhere anymore because that south-east angle was absorbed into the City Group empire, and the latter's future plans and schemes)

The Western United licence was won in large part because of that promise to build that stadium and accompanying precinct, thus attracting hoards of soccer fans in the western suburbs to its cause.

To some people's surprise and to the confirmation of many people's cynicism, that promised stadium hasn't yet materialised. Seeing as I am not a member of the construction, government, town planning, or civil engineering fields, I assume the reasons for this are both pandemic and non-pandemic related, but I'm not willing to take a guess as to the exact reasons it hasn't happened, because frankly I'm a coward; but also, what if I'm wrong? There's too much misinformation going about these days as it is, and we don't need obscure, half-moribund blogs covering obscure, half-moribund soccer clubs adding to the ongoing crisis of a lack of trust in media.

At any rate, Western United say they're about to start their stadium build for real this time (even if it's just the construction of a dirt road), and for whatever my opinion is worth, that's probably true. But whatever the truth may be, their promised stadium is still some time from actually existing, let alone being functional.

But one stadium which does exist, imperfect as it may be for national league football - or apparently was until at least a few hours ago - is Lakeside Stadium. On top of its inbuilt imperfections - its lack of corporate spaces, limited seating capacity, the running track around the field, and its suboptimal media facilities - many people (lay and otherwise) at the time of the most recent A-League expansion bidding process also objected to Lakeside Stadium's mere proximity to the Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, extrapolating from that fact that the South bid was geographically too close to the main (shared) home ground of the extant Melbourne A-League licence holders.

That people from outside Victoria could make such generalisations about the geographical particularities of Melbourne's sporting culture was forgivable, albeit irritating. That some people within Melbourne also tried to use the same arguments was less tolerable, but regardless of my feelings, time moves on. And South of the Border has spieled at length on this matter in the past anyway, so there's no need to go over it again.

While time has indeed moved on, Western United have spent the past whatever number A-League seasons (two, I think, but it's all such a blur), wandering aimlessly and unsatisfactorily from the CBD, to footy ovals, to country towns, to Tasmania, and even to failed (irrespective of whoever was primarily responsible for that failure) attempts to get access to Knights Stadium.

And now here we are, after so much failure from Western United to settle in anywhere, much less build their promised stadium. Here we are, after so much objection to Lakeside being deemed a suitable national league venue for men's soccer, and thus by at least some logical extension to South Melbourne being a suitable club for the national league. Here we are, in the situation where Western United will play seven games in the upcoming A-League season at Lakeside, the little venue no-one wanted.

And I, for one, am OK with that. As long as the price is right - that is, we get significant compensation for doing so - we would be mad to decline the offer. Remembering that our monthly government stipend is due to permanently reduce in size very soon, that we have had negligible income from home games for nearly two seasons, and that sponsorship under pandemic parameters is very tight, I think we should take the money. 

It's just good business. At some point in the not too distant future, our government stipend will reduce even further. At some point Western United's stadium will be built, and they won't need to even consider Lakeside. At some point we should actually make use of our veto over competing soccer usage at Lakeside for the purposes of creating a subsidiary, non-South match day dependent income, instead of using it as a means to feel momentarily good (read: smug) about ourselves and our place in Australian soccer.

You would also hope that such a move would lead to at least temporarily improved relations with the Trust, and maybe some investment in the stadium from the government, but that's by the by really.

Seeing as we have the veto over soccer usage, clearly this is a decision that has been made possible by our board. Western United would have approached either the Trust or the club or both, some negotiations would have taken place, and our board would have then made a decision agreeing to this situation, I assume because the offer made was too good to refuse.

Of course this decision has enraged a good number of our fans, as you would expect, and it would be nice if they came out with their reasoning to the membership sooner rather than later. Club boards of all sorts sometimes have to make decisions that will piss off their supporters. And look, for better or worse it's a member run and owned club, and people have a right to their air their grievances on the matter. So you know, sack the board because they're sellouts and such. Still, I doubt that the board would have expected a different response from our fans in making this move. 

But then again, what's the alternative? 

Sack the board (who at least partly fund the club's ongoing existence through their sponsorships) and replace them with who? Reject the deal, and replace that possible income stream with what? Would people rather we wind up the club? I mean, I'm OK with that if that's what the members want, because we've had a good run, and I'm sure that once the current lockdown ends and autumn and winter swing around again, there's other things we could all be doing if South ceased to exist, even if we would miss it. 

For those people still pining for the old days and the prestige and clout that South used to have, all I can do is defer to Slim Charles on such matters. And distasteful as the entire situation may be, think of it this way: the Australian soccer public will get to see Lakeside functioning as a legitimate national league venue (outside the more limited reach in public consciousness of Lakeside's intermittent usage as a W-League venue) - which may in turn help push along the legitimacy of the cause of the national second division, and thus our own cause - and we get to enjoy the short term irony of those who promised big on the stadium and have yet to deliver, paying us for the privilege of using the ground they said wasn't good enough.

Just make sure the cheque clears before they play on the ground though.

Up, up, and away, in my beautiful... well you know the rest.

#Lakeside stadium in Microsoft's #FlightSimulator2020 @smfc pic.twitter.com/KJkfQASpOw

— SMFC Eastern Suburb Supporters (@EsSmfc) August 19, 2020

News! Sweet, nourishing news!

Finally some solid sense of when local soccer might come back, as well as in what form. Hold on to that feeling for as long as you can though, because you don't know when it will be taken away from you by irresponsible Essendon players or people attending poorly thought out house parties.

So the date for resumption of NPL Victoria is the weekend of July 25/26th. According to this Joey Lynch article (which is well worth a read), the recent spike in corona virus infections and the associated re-implementation of some pandemic restrictions won't have any effect on the resumption of local soccer, but we'll see. 

The consensus resumption format *seems* to be that in the men's NPL competition there will be eight more rounds played to complete the home and away season, which with the five already completed rounds, will at least set up a situation where everyone has at least played each other once. After that there will be an eight team finals component, of who knows what format.

This proposed return to action has been complicated by the fact that Bentleigh Greens have withdrawn from the rest of the 2020 season, As long as they pay their fiscal dues for this year, they get to keep their spot, and it seems like there won't be any relegation anyway.

As to what happens to Bentleigh's first five results, one assumes they'll be annulled and each team granted a bye from now on, but until such time as Football Victoria clarifies the situation all I can d is speculate. No official word either on what happens to members of Bentleigh's squad now that there's no senior team for them to play for in 2020. The talk is that at least some will try their luck in the state leagues.

No word either from what I can on the status of and/or existence of a mid-season transfer window, or whether the Dockerty Cup will continue - though the persistence of the latter for 2020 does seem to be something that is being mentioned.

As for the NPL women, they're looking at a 14 match home and away season with a top four finals series. Unlike the men, the women's NPL had not yet started before the pandemic lockdown. South is still signing players up for that competition, and in some respects it all looks a bit more straightforward on that front, for the time being at least.

In terms of whether fans will be allowed to attend games, my hunch - and it really is only a hunch - is that it's not bloody likely, especially with the recent spike in corona virus cases. Quite how anyone will enforce a ban on spectators at games in open parks - such as those used by many women's teams, and of course many state league teams - is anyone's guess though.

Football Victoria plans to continue streaming some games, but that doesn't mean there's any guarantee that we'd be a team being covered. Still, I assume the club itself would endeavour to do whatever is possible to provide streams of games.

And there's also this...
Interesting news emerged over the weekend that along with a reformatted broadcast deal, the A-League will move to a predominantly winter season from next year, for at least the next couple of seasons. Whether this is a temporary move in order to deal with the effects of COVID-19 and the 2022 Qatar World Cup - which will be played in November-December - or a move that the A-League will be in for the long haul, remains to be seen.

I have my doubts about the sensibleness of this change in direction, but that's for those who are more engaged with the A-League - and those who are trying to get promotion and relegation up - to deal with. What hasn't been explained yet - not that I was expecting to have been sorted out so early in the piece - is how this will effect the leagues below the A-League.

From a Victorian perspective, one assumes that there will be little problem in terms of accommodating the match day use of AAMI Park between Victory, Heart City, Storm, and the Rebels. Where Victoria Patriots Western United end up is an ongoing problem, and while I don't think that any of the local A-League teams will end up at Lakeside at times during the winter, it will be interesting to see if any attempt is made by the government to accommodate them on the off-chance that AAMI Park is double-booked by another sporting event or a concert.

Of course there's also the issue of training venues which some local A-League teams are sorted for (City, United), and one which still isn't (Victory). Again, we will wait and see.

Up until now the tail-end of the summer-based A-League seasons have already extended into the start and/or end of the NPL Victoria (and before that, Victorian Premier League) and state league seasons. In the beginning, when the A-League had an August-September start, the competition would finish in early February. In more recent seasons, as the A-League has pushed back its season starting point, the competition has gone all the way into May. That is much like the National Soccer League had done its business during its summer seasons, with both competitions crossing well over into the start of grassroots soccer seasons across the country.

Where this becomes relevant to us is scheduling. Some states - I believe South Australia is one such case - does not allow local competitions to run against Adelaide United fixtures. That's easy enough to do when you have just one A-League team in your city, but also where there isn't a holdover collective of clubs who are not fans of your city's A-League team representatives. The multiple teams issue in particular is going to be very interesting to see play in Victoria in terms of scheduling A-League matches.

On any given week, there could be two A-League games in Melbourne, with limited premium time-slots available. Saturday afternoons are out, because that's already taken up by the vast majority of senior men's soccer teams. Sunday afternoons have a variety of junior and women's competitions in action, though most will be over by early afternoon in the event that our local A-League teams choose to go with a late Sunday afternoon kickoff.

Friday nights, apart from often being the AFL's marquee night (with most of those games being played in Melbourne), will also go up against the majority of NPL senior men's games. These Friday night senior men's games have come about sometimes from long habit, and some from recent attempts to avoid clashing with junior NPL Sunday fixtures.

Will the A-League seek to create rules in cities like Melbourne, which have multiple teams, preventing local soccer from clashing with local A-League fixtures? Or will most teams - including the increasing numbers of state league teams which have gone with Friday nights as their preferred home game timeslot - simply move out of the way when there's a clash? It will be interesting to see how the A-League goes about trying to make this work, considering that some of the accompanying rhetoric around the move to winter is about coming into line with/connecting with grassroots soccer and its participants.

(keep in mind that I don't buy the angle that there is any great hostility toward the A-League from most local soccer people - apart from the usual suspects - just indifference)

The switch to winter doesn't seem to bode well for the future of the perennially embattled Y-League. Will they persist with their too-short, budget summer season? Or will it also move to a full-length winter season winter, where you would then assume the A-League (senior) NPL reps would leave their respective comps? Or will the concept gets dumped entirely - with A-League youth teams (and I assume senior players who miss out on A-League selection) going on about their business in the NPL competitions?

There's also no word on what will happen to the W-League, and whether it will also move to winter. If the W-League moves to winter, it jeopardises its favourable alignment with the American NWSL. If the W-League does move to winter, it will probably see most capable W-League players move overseas to the more lucrative NWSL, as well as then sucking up even more players from local WNPL competitions to fill out the numbers.

All in all, a lot of things to ponder for those of us in the second (and third and fourth) tiers, even though public consideration of our relationship to this change seems to have been negligible at best, except as possible customers for a competition heading into waters left uncharted for 30 years.

More nothing than you can poke a stick at

Even though the pandemic is hardly over, Australia is gradually opening up again, and across the board sports are looking to resume in some form or another. So are is the NPL Victoria coming back this year?

Last week indiscreet murmurings on internet forums suggested that in our division, nine of the fourteen clubs weren't too keen to resume in 2020. Furthermore, the other five clubs, while wanting to resume, were sympathetic to those that didn't want to start again, especially if it meant not having crowds and the associated revenue at games.

But this apparent understanding began coming undone when news seeped out that the NPL 2 and 3 teams were keen on getting their seasons underway. How this would work without promotion to and relegation from the top division is an interesting question.

The whole notion of a detente however was blasted out of the water by Hume City's president Steve Kaya, who railed against the apparently ten NPL Victoria clubs refusing to resume, and noting that his club had resumed training. So, one team named within one faction, thirteen more to go across both. Then Green Gully announced that it was also resuming training, and the question for me was where did South sit?

My hunch - and it was only a hunch - was probably on the side of South being one of those not keen on coming back. That's less because of middling our performances had been, and mostly because our president Nick Maikousis had said at the beginning of the competition's shutdown that he didn't think the competition would return.

But according to Michael Lynch, alongside Hume and Gully, it's our club and Eastern Lions who make up the group of four clubs looking and/pushing for a resumption in play. Though there's some soccer-forum conjecture about Lions are actually in favour of resuming.

Football Victoria, which has been sending out intermittent updates on the situation via email, has a hopeful target of early July for the resumption of NPL senior football. From my isolated locale, I can't tell what's likely to happen.

Do the fans really want play to resume so badly that they're willing to put up with not being able to go to games? Are the players keen enough to come back even though it would mean having to put up with extremely stringent safety procedures on match days and at training? Is there even genuine scope for a return while the corona virus is still active within the community? What's the point of resuming if the whole thing can probably get shutdown with just one case if the virus in a player or official?

As usual, I've got a lot of questions and no answers.

Lakeside to receive funds for renovation
In other COVID-19 related news, the state government is planning to upgrade a wide variety of sporting facilities, as part of a pandemic economic recovery plan. According to this article in The Age, that includes renovation of Lakeside Stadium, whatever that means.

Match programs
Program-wise I've added the "possibly incomplete" Canberra City away 1980, the "I recently bought a copy off eBay" Sydney Olympic away 2004, and the "I was tardy in scanning it" Green Gully away 2019 to the collection. You know where to find these by now.

Take me out to the ball game (reprise)

Well, interesting news courtesy of the Herald Sun (and courtesy of the clever duck on Twitter who took a photo of the relevant article so we don't have to deal with News Corp paywalls).

It appears that the Melbourne Aces of the Australian Baseball League are considering shifting the at least some or possibly even the majority of their home matches to Lakeside Stadium.

Now for those who need a quick refresher of baseball in Australia. It's been around in Australia for a long, long time; it had a national league that was televised to a degree in the 1990s which eventually tanked; another national comp which tanked even faster than the previous; and it is now on to its third national league, which was initially funded by Major League Baseball but is now in the hands of independent investors since MLB divested itself of most (all?) of its responsibility.

Melbourne's current national league representatives, the Aces, play their home games out of the Melbourne Ballpark out in the back blocks of Altona/Laverton, a facility perfectly suited to baseball despite its age (built circa late 19080s), but which is also seen as a white elephant by Melbourne's baseball community, for the simple reason it seems of its location.

Now I'm biased, because I live a ten minute drive from Melbourne Ballpark, but even aside from that, it doesn't seem like that hard of a venue to get to - it's right off the Princes Freeway, and not that much of a walk from Laverton station. But that's eastern suburbs people for ya, no sense of geographic perspective. Or maybe baseball is a predominately eastern suburbs based sport in this city

(Incidentally, while I've seen the quip made by at least one South supporter that this is some sort of proof that FFA selecting a team to be based out of Tarneit is madness, the ideas behind Melbourne Aces and Western Melbourne Group are fundamentally different; more to the point, they also exist within fundamentally different sporting and business environments, with their current suburban proximity - assuming WMG even end up in Tarneit - a mere coincidence rather than anything we can draw causation based conclusions from).

Anyway, the Aces struggle to pull a crowd, and their soon to be owner reckons there isn't much point in sticking it out at the costly ballpark which won't pay its own way, because people won't go. This is not a new problem for the Aces, as originally they played out of the Melbourne Showgrounds, a ridiculous situation due to the small size of the field.

The solution to the Aces' problem - or at least a big part of the solution - is to play baseball out of Lakeside Stadium. Yes, that Lakeside Stadium, the one that is currently used by athletics and soccer. I can't get my head around how that would even look, and I'll leave that to the boffins behind this scheme to work out - but they reckon it'll be easy to move in and out without undue disruption to the stadium.

At the moment, the ABL runs a 40 game regular season with an additional playoff series from November to early February. Typically, each team plays 20 games at home, bundled into series of four matches. These are usually played on a Friday night, Saturday afternoon/evening double header, and Sunday afternoon, with Thursday games sometimes taking a game off the Saturday double-header.

Ignoring for a moment the new Aces owner's desire for overseas teams and such to visit - which is a long way from happening considering the crowds the Aces pull now - the Aces are looking to spend part of December and perhaps most (if not all) of January at Lakeside.

There do however appear to be contradictory statements when looking at the article in question and some of the commentary on social media around this matter. In the article, the claim is that there would be only 6-8 matches played At Lakeside (equivalent of about 1.5/2 home series), but a commentator on Twitter claims all but the equivalent of two home Aces' series will be played at Lakeside, with probably one at Altona, another at a regional facility.

(Peter Rolfe, the article's writer, also appears to be under the impression that Lakeside Stadium seats 7,400 patrons; as we have established before here on South of the Border, the stadium only seats 5338 patrons, unless they bring back the temporary stands that were used for the Nitro series.)

Whatever the specifics of this plan, should it go ahead it will prove disruptive to South Melbourne Hellas (I can't speak for athletics on this matter), because we do spend a fair bit of January training and playing practice games (albeit this year the latter behind closed doors).

(though I fancy some of you will be happy with the thought that such a plan would also mean fewer opportunities for Melbourne Victory's affiliated teams to play out of the venue.)

We already lose access to the ground for a good chunk of the early part of the season (for good and bad reasons), and now this? More running around searching for grounds to train on? If we were able to capitalise on the Aces playing out of the venue by getting people to come into the social club, I'd be less instinctively against the idea, but I just can't see that happening. Fat chance, too, of getting  cut from the rent that the Aces would be paying.

Of course we'll ll be keeping an eye on developments on this front. I do wonder if the South Melbourne board were aware of this plan.

Not ideal - South Melbourne 1 Heidelberg United 3

Got there early enough to buy a burger and watch the women's curtain raiser. Within ten minutes it was 3-0 to South, and the game was as good as done. It was only 4-0 at the break, but after having chatted with people throughout the first half, I'd decided I'd seen enough. It's not the fault of our women's team, it's just that there are so many uncompetitive teams in their league. Besides, you can't buy gin and tonics in the booze tent outside the social club, and I was hoping someone would have the good sense to put on the women's game that was being streamed on Facebook on the screen inside the social club. No dice, but at least they won 7-0.

Onto the men's game, about which I had no grand expectations, hoping at best for a draw. Other relevant results across the weekend were mixed, and Kingston were beating the Knights, so even in there were good vibes in the stand from a bigger than normal crowd and the feeling that this was a game we could win, did anyone think we could actually win this game? Our recent results had been good, but our form doing so was sketchier than we'd perhaps like to admit, even if the attitude and morale had clearly improved.

Playing with a gale force wind in the first half certainly helped us, but to be fair, we also actually looked as good as we have for long time. We looked to open up, we looked good in moving the ball up the field, and kept the Bergers to a minimum of chances. There was that one moment where Nikola Roganovic had to make a good low save, but apart from that we had taken the game up to the best team in the league, and looked good in doing so.

That we took the lead was a joyous but also a deserved thing, Marcus Schroen finishing some actually pretty good lead up play. But then Pep Marafioti squandered two great chances to put us up by two or three goals at the break, and playing against a superior opponent, with the wind at their backs, and having probably withstood the best of what we could throw at them, I didn't feel great about our chances of getting win, and even a draw wasn't something I'd have bet on.

That's not to blame Pep, he's scored some nice goals since he came to us, and he helped set up Schroen's goal, but he should've buried at least one of those chances, certainly at least got them on target. As it was, it didn't take long for us to concede in the second half, and then when the second one went in... I don't like to say we were cooked then and there, but the odds were so stacked against us I couldn't see it happening. The third goal was the killer, obviously, and while we battled to the end there's no complaining about the merits of the result - although I would like to see if Heidelberg's second goal was scored by a player in an offside position.

Despite being a less than ideal result, especially when coupled with some of the week's other results, the performance and the attitude that spurred it on were pleasing, and something which I hope can be carried into the final games of the season. We may not be able to play with so much freedom in those games which are pretty much six-pointers, but it's reassuring to know that the squad will fight it out to the death if need be, though we all hope it doesn't come to that of course.

The loss and our performance and attitude were only half the story of the game though. What was at first pantomime hostility and humour gradually built up into something much more stupid. It began with Clarendon Corner taking the piss out of players falling over or being fouled and staying down - including South players - by chanting "call it off", in reference to the last time these two teams met, a match aborted due to the Bergers' Harry Noon suffering a serious injury courtesy of his collision with a corner flag. It's the kind of thing that's funny only because Noon has made a stunning recovery from the injury, and to a lesser extent also his excellent run of personal form.

When the Bergers scored their goals, while briefly acknowledging their own rather quiet support on the right hand side of the grandstand, Noon (among others) decided to direct to flip the bird towards Clarendon Corner on more than one occasion, including the double bird. Some have argued that  he should have just kept it as a "shush" gesture, or nothing at all, but for what's it's worth I'm not offended by the gesture though I get how others were. For mine, it was so childish, and so... haven't we seen this kind of thing directed at us so many times before by opposition players?

You can say that players should act more professionally, and they should seeing as they are professionals, but it's also in its own cack-headed way a compliment to South fans that these guys would rather turn their attention towards us rather than their own fans. That's understandable in cases where players are representing teams in this league with no fans, especially no travelling support, but the Bergers scored all their goals at the end where their supporters were, and yet their attention was still on us, and that we are to some extent living rent free in their heads.

Still, whatever the feelings between ourselves and opposition players, one thing that is interesting is that opposition players continue to get away with deliberately trying to incite South supporters. Again, we should be used to it by now, but Noon's double bird crossed a different line. So much noise is made about abuse and players showing proper decorum on the field, to the point where even bouncing a ball hard into the turf after a foul has gone against you can lead to a yellow card. So why no punishment here? Players have been yellow carded (and sent off because of those yellow cards) for all sorts of nonsense conducted during goal celebrations; would not such flagrant and repeated offensive behaviour warrant at least a caution from the officials?

Who knows to be honest, and I was pretty much over it even as it was happening. It prompted the tone of Clarendon Corner's chanting to go a bit lower, including reminding Noon that his injury was self-inflicted. All of that contributed to some unsavoury scenes at the end of the game on the other side of the players race (and well away from Clarendon Corner), where who knows what was happening, and who knows who was inciting who. All I could tell from my vantage point was that security had moved in, and competing chants occasionally broke out from supporters, and that this lasted for about ten minutes. Then the situation calmed down enough as people went home, or back into the social club, and I'm none the wiser for what actually did happen, leaving me to speculate wildly that George Katsakis (who was in the stands, having been suspended for several games following an incident in the recent Dockerty Cup final) and his consumption of one too many cans of Red Bull (for an excitable person like him even one can being probably one too many) had something to with it. But as I've noted, that's just wild speculation on my part.

All I can hope is that by the next time we play each other - in just a few weeks time when we replay the aborted fixture from the earlier in the season - that everyone comes back to their senses a little bit, and there's no repeat or worse of what happened on Sunday. Also, that we win, because that would also be good.

Next game
Green Gully away on Friday night. Freezy fun for the whole family.

Relegation/survival prognostication, very much still an ongoing concern and not likely to be put to bed this week
There was marginal good news and a lot more bad news on the relegation scrap front this week. The good news? Bulleen, Northcote, and Green Gully all lost. That means Bulleen remain ten points behind us with just four games to play, meaning it is highly unlikely they'll be catching up to us. So I think we can safely say we won't be finishing last in 2018, unless someone gets us docked points for some reason, but let's not dwell on that possibility just yet. Northcote's result sees them remain seven points behind us, and while not without the chance to make up the difference, you'd like to think that they wouldn't be able to catch up to us.

So putting our cautious optimist caps on, the worst we could finish is in 12th, aka the relegation playoff spot. And on that front, last week was not a good round for us. For starters, we lost. Then there's the fact that Kingston beat the Knights, closing the gap to us from four points to one. Hume also snagged a late equaliser against Thunder to earn a draw - incidentally Thunder's first draw for 2018 - and closed the gap to us from three points to two. So the four point buffer we had between ourselves and the playoff spot is now just two, and that dreaded nauseous feeling is back again after a solitary week where we could feel just a little better about our situation.

These results, and Gully's free fall in form and/or results (which sees them level on points with us, but behind on goal difference), means that the next two weeks for us are huge. It's Gully this week, and Kingston next. Picking up four points from these two games would be good, six points even better obviously, but failing to win either of them would be not good at all.

Tribunal tribulations
So, yes, we did end up at the tribunal for the stupid, stupid, stupid melee that took place in the game against Northcote. How did this happen, after the incident was already apparently dealt with some weeks ago? Well, the original report was compiled by the referee, and since that painted a relatively benign picture of the whole affair, with George Howard getting three weeks for his part in the affair, cut down to two for a guilty plea. But then FFV was apparently given several pieces of footage, so that the issue was brought to the tribunal.

In the end, we were fortunate to get away with a small fine for the club and a suspension for Giordano Marafioti. So how did we get off relatively lightly? My understanding of it is as follows. First, by the sheer dumb luck that Marafioti had an Access All Areas pass by virtue of being a senior/under 20s player. Second, by the incident taking place on the running track, and not the field of play (though who knows if that was actually taken into account). Third, as noted in the tribunal notice itself, that South had imposed its own five match suspension on Marafioti immediately following the incident, to which FFV has added two more games. Lastly, by the video itself (as provided by SMFC TV), showing no clear evidences of punches being thrown by anyone, and thus putting this incident at the lower end of the violent incident scale.

It has been noted that FFV are apparently seeking to clamp down on corralling of the referee by players, as well as melee push and shove nonsense. This is good of course, as long as it is applied consistently too many clubs have been getting away with these kinds of antics.

Trumpet troubles
Every year it seems that someone from the State Sport Centres Trust tries to get the trumpet or drums banned from Lakeside. Now admittedly, neither is brought out often these days, but yesterday was a special occasion if not for the fact of the derby itself, than for the fact that Clarendon Corner's only know competent trumpeter Bruno was in attendance; Bruno living quite a distance from Melbourne these days, the trumpet doesn't get as much of a workout as we'd like, which might mean someone else will have to go and learn the basics.

Anyway, the famous trumpet sound was played, and then security rocked up to tell us that the drum was fine, but the trumpet was not. To be fair to security, they were very good at explaining themselves and the situation, and eventually what happened is what always seems to happen in these situations - a board member, in this case as per usual Tony Margaritis, goes up to the SSCT booth, lays down the law/calmly explains the situation and the important cultural heritage underpinning the use of the trumpet, and everything is right again with the world and we move on.

Until the next time it happens, I suppose.

A-League bid info night meeting thingamabob 
Last Thursday there was an information session for South supporters - and I suppose anyone else that wished to turn up, because it wasn't like there was a door bitch checking memberships - to let people know some more detail about the club's A-League bid. Those in attendance, about 40 people, were treated to just over an hour of South Melbourne board member and A-League bid team leader Bill Papastergiadis giving a presentation on various aspects of the bid, reading from the bid book while slides were put up on the social club's projector.

Papastergiadis did not want to be quoted on specific elements of the presentation, but the truth of the matter is that there was little new information provided. That doesn't mean that I'm unappreciative of the gesture to hold the meeting, but for those expecting something revelatory to emerge from the meeting, they would've been left disappointed. It also means I'm comfortable writing about what was said on the night, because it was as much about how it was said as what was said.

We got what Papastergiadis believed were the selling points of the bid. Among these were the club's history, not as something to be deferred to as some sort of token gesture or PR guff, but as evidence of the club's success and the fact that it has survived as an ongoing concern; in other words, the club has a longstanding continuity. This was backed up by testimonials and references provided within the bid book by past and present players of the club. For the present, this included male and female players, emphasising the club's commitment to gender equity, as well as its commitment to youth development, with the revelation (if one were to use that term) that the club currently has sixty scholarship places for youth players.

I was less comfortable about our claims regarding Socceroos produced, and I will continue to blanch at those claims; but I suppose when the Southern Expansion bid makes historic claims to Socceroos, we look almost cute doing it by comparison; at least all those players we list played for us, and many of them played for the Socceroos while they were at South Melbourne even if they were not our own juniors. Still, like the internet popularity polls, much of this stuff is about optics rather than objective reality. At least, that's what I hope.

But as Papastergiadis noted, this bid wouldn't have a chance if not for the stadium and our ongoing lease. The stadium's mere existence is our foot in the door; without it we'd be nothing. To summarise points on the night and which have made here and elsewhere often enough, Lakeside Stadium exists (#ItExists) whereas the stadiums the other Melbourne bids wish to use are just "artist's conceptions" at this point in time. The deal we have at Lakeside means that we will apparently be able to pull profits on crowds much lower than what current A-League teams do at their stadiums. The point was also made that while we already have good public transport connections to the ground, these will only be improved once the Metro Tunnel is completed; again, this is a project which is currently under construction, as opposed to the planned but still almost hypothetical future stations on the Regional Rail Link line.

However, it is worth noting a few things in regards to these matters. While the club claims it has bipartisan political support, it's not like the other Melbourne bids don't have their own supporters within government (and opposition) ranks. Likewise, just because we may believe that either side of politics would be unwilling to fund a Dandenong stadium, or rush through planning approvals for the Western Melbourne group's Tarneit idea, it doesn't mean that they won't change their minds. In the same vein of thought, the idea that we're at an advantage because governments now prefer centrally located stadiums is tempered by the idea that the state government spent money on refurbishing a Ballarat football oval so that Footscray could play three games a year there.

Again, it all comes down to points I've made here before. The FFA's choice will be between boutique options (whether in Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, or Wollongong) or big dream options (Southern Expansion, Dandenong, Western Melbourne). In our case, there is a also a counterintuitive scenario which has revealed itself: for so long South Melbourne Hellas has been judged to be a risky proposition, and yet if the numbers stack up, and FFA's need is such that it needs a bid that's likely to provide the full package (stadium, women's, youth, etc) sooner rather than much later, then all of a sudden we look like a much more reasonable and agreeable proposition than we have for a long time, especially when compared to bids which have a lot more unknowns surrounding them.

I know I'm hammering away at the same point but it does seem to be that simple: FFA making a decision between "what is" and "what might be". That gives us advantages in some regards, but the flip side of that is that if we screw up in some way, these are screw ups which can only happen to us because we exist and the others do not. Thus the FFA Cup semi-final last season was, whether anyone liked it or not, a trial run for what a South Melbourne match day might look like on the big stage. It was an opportunity to show what we can do, to learn about higher end FFA match requirements, and a chance for us to screw up.

There was no information provided on who the private backers of the South Melbourne bid are, nor was there any public commitment to a specific ownership/partnership model. There was reiteration that it would be in effect a public/private arrangement, but supporters would have already figured this out long ago, because there is no way that a member-owned soccer club in Australia can finance an A-League team on its own. There was no information provided on what an A-League licence would ultimately cost. There was no information provided to those in the room on potential branding, colours or a name, except to say that so far in this bid process the club has been unashamed to use current logos and the name South Melbourne in its pitch to the FFA and Deloitte.

There was acknowledgement also of the FFA's current Congress crisis, and what effect that might have on the process, an effect that is unknowable. That admission solidified the sometimes Rumsfeldian feeling coming from Papastergiadis during his presentation. As much as the bid team (and the club as a whole) has sought to cover as many bases as possible, there is still so much that is unknowable and intangible until those things manifest themselves; in our case, whenever the FFA take

So given that there was not much new information provided, what was new and interesting about the night - to me at least - was seeing Papastergiadis in pre-prepared lawyer mode; not forced to ad lib or provide those infamous sound bites. Here he was in his element, creating a narrative for the club's bid, and reiterating the same points throughout the night in different ways. He also did the political stuff well, paying credit to those who had come before, both prior custodians of the club as well as those who had worked on previous A-League bids. The point was made by Bill on the night, as it has been made to me in private on other occasions by others, that though the club has failed to win an A-League licence up until this point, it has nevertheless learned much from each attempt to do so; not just about the political obstacles which need to be overcome, but also about the operational and financial requirements needed for participating at the highest level.

In that sense, as much as the club clearly wants to succeed in achieving its goal of returning to top-flight Australian soccer through this bid, not winning is not a complete waste of time as it would be for most of the other bids. This is because the reconnaissance made from each sortie is something that can be used for either a future attempt at entering the A-League, or at the very least in preparation for a second division should that ever get up and running.

Finally, Papastergiadis did note that there would be some more announcements made by the club soon, so we wait for those moments. Discussions with Deloitte, FFA, government, backers, and all sorts of bodies are ongoing. Not that any of that matters.

Statue of Swans champion Bob Skilton outside what used to be the Lake Oval.
Photo: Paul Mavroudis. 

Bob Skilton statue
There's now a Bob Skilton statue outside Lakeside Stadium, pretty much right outside our front office. Speaking of the office, there's now Sydney Swans branding out the front wall which seems to indicate that they have an equal presence to us at Lakeside, so that's reassuring. Or I suppose we could look at the positives of being considered as having equal cultural footing with one of this nation's more successful sporting brands.

True story - when I moved into my Sunshine West residence a touch over three years ago, I found a small amount of Swans memorabilia left behind into a built-in wardrobe, which included a card of some sort signed by Skilton. I sold all of it on eBay, and probably spent the proceeds at Hellas; either that, or squandered it.

There's probably some foot traffic or aesthetic or grand prix related reason why the statue couldn't be placed in front of the 1926 stand, but that's the least of my concerns here. Anyway, what's fun to do is stand on the statue's plinth and realise how short footy players were back in the day, before clubs started recruiting former basketballers for every position; though I suppose we have to take into account that Skilton was a rover. Just watch out for Skilton's left boot as you walk past the statue - I'm shocked at how something that in these OH&S and public liability times that something like that could be positioned as it is.

Now, who's going to stump up the cash and grease the political wheels for an Ange Postecoglou statue outside the ground? And do we want skinny player Ange, bad 90s tracksuit assistant coach Ange, Ange, suit wearing coach Ange, or sweaty coaching the Socceroos in the Persian Gulf Ange?

The intangible quality of Saturday afternoon mid-winter Melbourne light
 makes some people reach for the thesaurus to describe its beauty.
Me, I can take it or leave it. It's nice I guess. Photo: Paul Mavroudis.

Around the grounds
No profundity to be found here
Decided against going to the footy on a Saturday arvo, instead spending the money which would've ended up in the cost of a reserved seat and the privilege of printing my ticket at home on gate entry and a souv at Altona East instead. East are stumbling erratically towards the season's end, safe from relegation (probably), safe from any threat of promotion, occasionally picking up the odd surprise win, just as likely to drop points with mediocre performances. That's still a lot better than the doomed Diamond Valley United, who had yet to win a game after sixteen rounds. That Valley's reserves also lost 4-1 in the curtain raiser didn't bode well for an exciting or even contest in the seniors. And yet for the first 50 minutes or so, these teams provided enough entertainment to justify attending and not wishing nuclear holocaust on everyone. Valley created a couple of great chances in the first half, and East had the better of play, a disallowed goal, and enough momentum to suggest that they were the likelier to score. East created two great chances within the first minute of the second half. Then the game deteriorated by degrees, players got tired, coaches got frustrated, and the game increasingly had 0-0 written all over it, and I had my keys in my hand and was almost to my car by the time referee ended a game which promised nothing and ended up delivering, 

Final thought

Undisputed highlight of @smfc A-League bid member info night. pic.twitter.com/TrJe2YApGO

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) July 26, 2018

On the matter of the sudden expansion of a giant ball of burning gas

If there are any South Melbourne Hellas fans left - and I'm not sure that there are - they may be wondering what's going on at their beloved club. Is the club signing any players? Does the senior team have any friendlies coming up? Does the club even exist?

Some of these concerns can be put down to the club's sole paid part-time social media person being overseas on holiday (fair enough), but I assume that there are other people around at the club who could tell us stuff if they wanted to. But maybe they don't want to? Maybe they don't know how to? Maybe they think that if no one talks about the club for long enough, it will cease to exist, and therefore we'll all be the better for it.

Let's look at one curious situation in the lack of 'news'. Jump onto the Lakeside Stadium website and check out the calendar there for a list of upcoming events. In December 2017, within a reasonably crowded month events-wise for Lakeside Stadium, you can see SMFC gala days and midweek exclusive use sessions, used for training and scratch matches.

Moving ahead to January 2018 however...

and there appears to be diddly squat SMFC content. There's South Melbourne athletics, Athletics Victoria, and even a Carlton Football Club exclusive session, which I assume is them trying to prepare for the AFLX thing, or else why waste time hiring out Lakeside? For the running track? To be fair, there appears to be very little official use by anyone for January, but that doesn't lessen my concern from a South Melbourne Hellas point of view.

Is it possible then that the former, glorious South Melbourne Hellas social media presence was actually an example of star death?

When a star like South Melbourne Hellas has burned all of its hydrogen fuel, it expands to become a red giant. This may be millions of kilometres across - big enough to swallow the planets Mercury and Venus. After puffing off its outer layers, the star collapses to form a very dense white dwarf.

In simpler terms, perhaps our social media presence, self-produced media, and A-League bid antics, rather than being a case of a resurgent South Melbourne, those efforts were actually a form of bloated nuclear-cosmic self-cannibalism; the final stages of the lifespan of what was at best only a modest sun, before it collapsed upon itself and becomes a dim white dwarf. Hey, you try and come up with new analogies for this situation after ten years.

On another topic, with the A-League expansion banter fading well into the background, there has been what I would consider a shift in the rhetoric coming from the club, or at least from the president. Where once South Melbourne A-League bid media efforts were totally geared toward A-League expansion, as that issue has moved to the backburner, Leo Athanasakis has been posting comments in favour of promotion and relegation.

The following examples - here, here and here - are just some of the posts which our lovable larrikin prez has made over the past couple months on the matter. This point of view of his may be new or it may be old, but it is not one that has been made by someone at South Melbourne with any official standing, at least certainly not at the levels where I would have expected to have noticed it before.

But back to Lakeside. We're told repeatedly that we're in control of at least some (perhaps key, perhaps not) aspects of Lakeside Stadium, so where is our presence? Outside our priority period during the soccer season (April to September, or thereabouts), do our costs for using the venue go up? Is that why we're scheduled not to be at home in the early part of the 2018 season? Is that why our January presence on the Lakeside calendar is invisible?

What I'm trying to say is, in recent pre-seasons following our return to Lakeside, we have promoted pre-season matches held at Lakeside to our supporters, and attracted interested crowds, and yet for the moment it appears that we're not doing that. Could we even - and I'm shuddering as I type this - could we even be breaking in clandestinely, Alex Dimitriades style, into Lakeside to play and train?

Notes from last night's members meeting

Whenever the club calls one of these meetings - all too infrequently, really - you always wonder how many people will turn up, what the night will see us cover, and what the mood of the joint will be.

My hunch was that this meeting would be a little bit about the upcoming FFA Cup match in Queensland, a lot more about the operation of the social club, and apart from those items whatever else could be thrown in by whoever saw an opening in the likely loose agenda/running order.

And that's pretty much happened. For the most part the evening was civil and constructive. While folks like me are generally happy with how the social club has been operating, there are many, many areas which can and should be improved upon. And for the 20 odd supporters who came down to the meeting, I think it's fair to say that they got their points across on those matters in a clear manner.

That doesn't mean that some suggestions and preferences didn't contradict each other, but that's always going to be the case; you can't please everybody all of the time all at once. The club hopes to hold these kinds of events more often. I agree with this, and the mere existence of the social club makes it easier to do that. The next such meeting may happen before the AGM. The AGM itself is slated to happen 'this side of Christmas'.

Queensland FFA Cup plans

This came across as a bit ad hoc and likely to end up a bit of a mess. The intention seemed to be to organise pre-game meet-ups, a lunch session, and post-game drinks on the Gold Coast on the day of the game. Whether the club will be able to organise anything at such short notice I don't know. The key points seemed to be:

• The team will be flying up the day before game. On the day of the game, they'll be having a training session at Broadbeach United Soccer Club. This is because it's apparently the only club in the region that has a surface in reasonable enough shape. Fans will be able to go and have a look, but there won't be a barbecue or anything like that.
• The club is interested in getting supporters together for lunch after this training session, but as to the details, that remains unclear. Likewise for the post-game drinks gathering. Stay tuned to the club's official media channels I suppose, in the event that something comes together.
• There were names and emails being collected by the president, on the premise that the club would purchase tickets for those people. Again, I don't know how widely this will be promoted outside the group that attended last night's meeting.
• Gold Coast City is also promoting a deal for online ticket sales, whereby for every adult ticket you purchase you get a free concession ticket. 

For those left behind here in Melbourne, the club will be screening the game in the social club. One would assume and hope that the social club would be packed out for such an affair, but you never know. 

Social Club matters

Most of the issues with the functionality of the social club can be reduced to two factors:

• On match days, the club misunderstanding how different South fans want to use the social club.
• On non-match days, the club overestimating how often members were likely to use the facility.

As a case in point: though of course I see my friends and well-wishers at games and sit with them in the social club if they're present, I go to games by myself. I prefer to arrive at games early. I'm in the social club when it's not busy. I'm able to order and be served food and drink quickly. I drink alcohol only moderately, and prefer craft beer, mixed drinks or soft drinks over standard beer. I tend to leave games fairly quickly after their conclusion, because I have family commitments. I'm interested in some kinds of events hosted at the club (Socceroos screenings, trivia nights) but I'm not interested in others (Greece national team games, Greek nights, futsal, poker nights). I'm a bit of a spendthrift, but I'm more than willing to pay slightly higher prices at the social club because more of the money will stay at the club.

This is one kind of experience and attitude. Others will arrive later and stay later than I do. They may drink more booze than I do and have different tastes, and they may shout drinks for others. They will have a different preference in terms of food and drink and how they want it served, what kind of events they want to see held, how they get to and from games. They are more conscious of pricing, either on principle or because of necessity. The club needs to get across these details, some of which can only be learned from the experience of running the social club, some which can only be learned from listening to supporter feedback, and others... well, they're in the marketing and business game, not me.

South Melbourne's membership is at its most demographically diverse in its history. I'm not talking only about the ethnic angle. We have the core membership and fan base which is mostly interested in the fate of the senior men's team, and builds their relationship to the club around that. Others may extend their interest towards the senior women, or follow the women's team more specifically. As well as having as the WNPL women's team, we also have at least an implied continuing connection to the social women players at SMWFC.

Then we have the juniors (now made up of boys and girls), and their parents. We have people who live near the ground, but most live somewhere farther away. We have our staunch members who have kept coming, and we have a smattering of people who have joined up more recently. Of course our majority 'support' is now made up of latent and lapsed fans, and it's harder and perhaps even pointless for the purposes of this discussion to include them. As hard as it may be to achieve, the social club then needs to be almost all things to all people, or failing that, it needs to achieve a level of proficiency on access and price that works for as many of our different demographics as is feasible and reasonable. It's not an easy balance, but at the moment there is still so much work to do, but there's also opportunity in that.

Food and drink
Speed of service was a big issue, as has been the case since the social club opened. There is also the confusion for patrons and staff at busy and crowded times with the ticket system. One solution offered up by a supporter was a buzzer or pager system, which works well in pubs and places like large pharmacies. Nevertheless, that doesn't help those who don't want to wait a long time for food, especially because they have no interest in hanging around in the social cub and would rather be outside.

The overemphasis on stocking premium and craft beers was also brought up. Some (like yours truly) are more than happy with the selection of beers on tap, but others want the choice of more 'common fare' for want of a better term. There was also strong criticism of the absolute mess for those wanting to buy coffee. There was the suggestion that the coffee cart would be moved elsewhere to a more suitable position, and that the payment system - which currently sees tickets purchased from the bar and not from the coffee cart - would be improved. The suggestion was also made that one should be able to order pretty much anything from any cash register.

Some changes already planned for next season should help improve the general experience. Chief among these will be our taking over the running of the kiosk on the right hand side of the grandstand, which will hopefully spread the load. Operating that kiosk will also mean that people who want to buy from and support the club will not need to be in the social club to do so. But it doesn't mean that the social club kitchen as it has been built is effectively able to cope with large crowds, and that in itself is a worry.

The idea of a happy hour at some point before or after the game was also floated, and seemed to garner support. The pricing of drinks was also brought up as an issue, specifically soft drinks, but don't expect significant change on that front as post-mix makes the club more money.

Entry and exit
This is often a mess. The single entry system has been a shambles, and this is all on the club because it has forgotten that a lot of our supporters turn up close to kickoff. There seemed to be the suggestion that the club would likely open up multiple entrances on more occasions next year, whether that was a combination of the futsal entrance and Gate 2 or office entrances. I brought up the fact that entry to the venue is often poorly patrolled/controlled by security and door people, and people can walk in without paying or having their memberships checked.

Exits were also a problem. Because of a combination of using only one entry point, as well as the priority access for social club members to the social club immediately after a game, exiting the venue has been problematic, To some extent this is a communication issue, with many patrons apparently being unaware that regardless of whatever the entry situation is on any given match day, Gate 2 is always available as an exit point.

There were also points made about the way people cluster around the bar, even when not buying food or drinks, which makes moving around the social club difficult. To this was added the potential for different arrangements of tables, including round tables. Still, one gets the feeling that the board are going to continue to wing it on these particular issues, as well as maintaining the emphasis on trying to get people into the social club.

Scheduling
We may see some reduction in the NPL/WNPL double headers. This would be done in part to increase our footprint at Lakeside across more days, and hopefully have more traffic through the social club. An added benefit of such an approach, though not mentioned on the night, would be having our under 20s NPL and under 18s WNPL teams get more time on a half decent pitch as opposed to the minefield pitches down Middle Park way.

Scheduling for the men's games remains contested. There's a split between people who prefer Fridays and people who prefer Sundays. My main contribution to that discussion was that if we were going to mix it up by including Friday night games, could we not do them in the middle of winter? I know the board has its own preferences on time-slots, and for every staunch '3PM Sunday' type, there are others who want to avoid going up against junior games. You can't please everyone.

Ultimately senior men's game scheduling will be decided, as it has been for the past few seasons, according to preferences of the coaching staff. There was the apparent promise of getting in one or two home games before the grand prix next season. This season it was understandable (albeit detrimental to our on field performances) that the club held off hosting home games until the social club was ready. Next year, notwithstanding annual work on the Lakeside surface, this should be avoided as much as possible.

Events and usage - Futsal court

As has been discussed around the traps, the club was approached by several outside groups to run the futsal court. The club decided against this approach. The bad side of that is that it appears that the club made that decision without any obvious due diligence. That's balanced out (at least in my opinion, though others will certainly disagree) that the club was entitled to find out in its own time what the functional capacity of the futsal court was, what the club could achieve from a commercial point of view on its own, as well balancing the desire to use the court for junior training sessions as well. The option to lease out the futsal court to an outside group in future has not been ruled out. The club claims that the court's daytime usage is going quite well, principally based around local schools, and that the court is also getting good usage on Saturdays from junior competition.

Events and usage - Bistro
The club was disappointed at the lack of patronage and usage of the social club outside of match days by club members. The members in attendance were quick to point out several reasons for this:

• South members as a whole do not live near the ground. Indeed, many live quite far away from the venue, making an impromptu trip out to Lakeside untenable for many of our fans.
• There is a reason why our juniors and their parents are more frequent attendees during the week - because their schedules are based around the club.
• In terms of events, there is not enough attracting people to Friday sessions, the day of the week currently lagging the most and which the club would like to improve the most.
• The club could not solely rely on leveraging off the club's limited membership base; it needs to branch out to other potentially interested groups.

OK, look. If one was to choose one singularly magnificent mind-boggling example of stupidity so far as the club's operation of the social club is concerned, it's this: the club expected most if not all of the promotional work for the social club to come from the club's membership. Now I can agree with the board that word of mouth is going to be more than useful in the gradual promotion of the social club, but when:

• There are no obvious contact details about hiring out the venue.
• There is no price list or set menu list for events.
• It is not even clear when the social club is open.

What hope do we really have of telling others about our social club, when we ourselves don't know what's going on? In other words, the promotion of the social club as a whole has been dire. Of course one could just contact the club directly, but if you're going to run a bistro that hopes to attract members to non-game day visits, let alone run as a low key/casual function space, than the club really needs to step up its promotional game.

Think of it this way. If the folk from Clarendon Corner wanted to organise a one day futsal tournament among themselves during the off-season, who would they contact? How would they find out that information? Sure, someone like myself could figuratively be bothered to email or call the generic club contact, or ask people working (for now...) at the club about sorting stuff out, but it shouldn't have to be like that. The information needs to be clear and easy to access.

I get that it's going to take time for things to settle. Having so many home games back-to-back possibly made things more difficult. I think another part of the problem was the high expectations set by the board and supporters for the social club, but also with how things began when it opened. For the last point in particular, the initial menus were broad and sought to cater to a bistro clientèle... then over several weeks everything was scaled back. The good news is that apparently the club does tend to make money off most nights and events that it holds, though there are erratic or inconsistent results. Some Socceroos games get much better turnouts than others for instance.

There was of course the issue of being able to leverage off of schools and athletics and such using Lakeside. Some of the issues come across as bureaucratic nonsense, others more understandable. In the former category, issues around emergency exits, safety and such seemed kind of ridiculous. On the latter part, schools asking for food that fits specific dietary requirements - in other words, healthy foods - is more problematic. It goes some way to explaining why other, outside groups have also not bothered to set up shop for such events. Maybe we need Jamie Oliver to step in and help us?

After last week's initially confusing set up with regards to which social club door should be open for the grand final - and for me at least, how we were able to manage to be open at all, despite it not being our event - was answered in that because it was a soccer event, we could open.

But some issues are not going to be able to overcome. The liquor licensing laws are always going to hold us back. The inability to carry liquor outside the social club into the arena area is an issue that is not going to go away. But our restricted (midnight) licence also means that, realistically, we won't be able to host things like late night EPL fixtures, inhibiting our ability to play host to specific EPL fan groups. Not having FoxSports or Optus also limits the kind of sports screenings you can have.

Decor and design
There was some criticism of the look of the social club. The president's response to that was that the emphasis should be on the major things we have won, as well as keeping things in tune with the 'clean' look of the social club space. To be fair (and by way of explanation), that approach is in line with some of the recommendations made by people (including myself) who visited several AFL club museums as part of research into how other sporting clubs do museum spaces (the details of which are for another time).

Still, some good points were brought up, in that the space as a whole was still too bare, and that there were several walls which could use something - whether trophies, pennants or other stuff - to complement the existing look. For example, I'm not in favour of going back to the old cluttered look of the previous museum, but there should be room for honour boards, pennants or more club branding around the place. I like the general aesthetic ideas being used at the moment (though I had nothing to do with its implementation after the research trip), but it veers too much the other way towards austerity.

If the idea was to create a 'neutral' space suitable for non-South functions, then it misses the point somewhat. Groups who hold work or other functions in bowls clubs and the like aren't in neutral spaces, indeed quite the contrary. What we can do is implement a more prominent South feel to the place whose aesthetics also fit in with the current arrangement. The lack of an honour board was one point brought up. The old honour board, currently located in the players' rooms, would look very much out of place in a 'modern' setting like our social club. But what about a modernised, perspex version as used by Collingwood in its foyer and museum spaces? They use a black and white motif which looks clean and smart, and is the kind of thing that we could certainly implement ourselves to add more of a 'blue and white' feel to the place.

The president stated that there is a sub-committee working on such ideas, which I'm glad to hear. Further mooted improvements include a history of the evolution of our jersey and our badges over the years, which if implemented would be a drastic improvement on the current under-utilisation of wall space. If they want any particular feedback, I'm willing to be a sounding board.

Communication
This is always going to be an issue. Most irritatingly, it tends to veer between the sometimes very good (our general social media presence) and the sometimes very, very bad (pick your own case study). The worst cases are when the board think their ideas are clear or are likely to have wide ranging support within the club, but are in reality quite the opposite. The FFA Cup event in the social club and the requirement to pay for entry into our NPL finals game are just two examples where had the board not assumed to know how pleb South fans would react and instead maybe done a straw poll of some such fans, they could've avoided copping grief for those decisions.

We have members with real world experiences, some who help run other soccer and sporting clubs, some of whom have experience running event spaces and corporate gigs, who would be ready to offer advice if asked. We also have people who aren't trapped in the echo chamber of the boardroom, and who have a different feel for what's going on among the supporters. It's up to the board to seek out those people and to use that expertise, and if not to follow it, then to at least take it into account.

Afterwards
The tail end of the meeting veered off into discussions about Facebook and member numbers, which turned into an unruly mess. I agreed with some of the points being made, but that discussion was a bit of a dog's breakfast if I'm being honest.