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.

Notable Greeks of Melbourne artefact Wednesday

Well, lest one think that because  we spoke earlier in the week about one South Melbourne Hellas president that we have some sort of perverse agenda against our current nightmarish regime, here is a short piece which spreads the love to a despotic and nightmarish regime of an earlier, more innocent time.

Some time last year I think it was, while sitting on the outside tables at the Limerick Arms because we didn't have a social club at the time, that frequent artefact provider to South of the Border known as The Agitator lent us this book called The Greeks of Melbourne (published 1996) that he'd found in an op shop somewhere. Maybe it was even the Sacred Heart Mission shop just down the road from the pub. Clarendon Street's good like that.

The book is by someone named Dominique Francois De Stoop (who according to their own bio on the back had a very colourful career) which is not a very Greek name no matter how you try and spin it, and is unusual on that front for the fact that it's not a Greek writing this book because it's usually our deal to spin crap about how great we are.

Rather than going back and identifying every Greek that has ever done anything in Melbourne, the book msotly seems focused on contemporary Greek identities from all walks of life, and my goodness there are a lot of obscure people in there who happened to hit the jackpot by timing their burst of mediocre prominence to co-exist with the compilation of this book. Which is not to cast aspersions on any single one of those lucky souls, because soon enough the same will happen to this South of the Border correspondent in an upcoming book, and we'll all be the poorer for the experience and entertainment this fleeting bit of non-fame will provide.

Yes it's a terrible scan, but wait until you see the next one.

So anyway, The Greeks of Melbourne would surely have something about Hellenism's contribution to sport in Melbourne during this time. And because it would have that contribution to sport, surely soccer would be in there. And because soccer would be in there, surely there would be something about South Melbourne Hellas, but what exactly?

Well as it turns out, yes there is a section on sporting Greeks, and yes there is something about soccer, and yes there is something about South Melbourne Hellas. But for whatever reason this is limited to a brief biographical sketch of the club's then president, George Vasilopoulos.

For the record, here are the other names included in the sport section. Carlton footballer Ang Christou; his team mate Anthony Koutoufides; tennis player; Mark Philippoussis; super marathon runner Yiannis Kouros; taekwondo champion Lydia Zykkas; and er, Arthur Euriniadis, CEO of Collingwood Warriors. That not one Greek soccer player is included is perhaps interesting - maybe there were none good enough, or considered high profile enough - and instead we get two administrators to represent local Greek soccer.

The relevant biographical segment begins by noting that Vasilopoulos was the manager of a local bank branch, which is an extraordinarily dull thing to note except when you recall that so many slurs directed at the management of ethnic soccer clubs from those who mocked our capabilities focused on the 'fact' that our clubs were run by fish 'n chip shop owners, milk bar proprietors, and greengrocers. First, as if there is anything wrong with those kinds of people running a club at any level; second, in our case it just wasn't true. Surely the more important thing would be that the people running the joint were not out of their depth, and not their origins? Besides which, soccer in Victoria and probably across the country is so much more dependent on the health and wellbeing of the construction industry than anything else.

You want to read this? Click on it in order make it bigger.

The section on Vasilopoulos continues to trundle along aimlessly, providing a prosaic recap of George's life before finally getting to his involvement at South Melbourne Hellas, and then after just one paragraph, quickly returns to talking about George's life independent of South Melbourne Hellas.

Oh, but what commentary on our club in that brief space allocated to it. Vasilopoulos claims that the club had 3,500 paying members and expected to have 10,000 members by the year 2000. I am amazed by these assertions on so many levels. There is of course the 3,500 claim, because popular legend has it that our record was 2,700 at some point in the early 2000s. Then you have the ambition to reach 10,000, which just seems out of this world.

But take note also of the expectation that the club's new facilities would be a key factor in attracting new members, and what may otherwise come across as merely an obscure oddball comment suddenly has a kind of relevance to our present situation. After all, has not Bill Papastergiadis of our A-League bid team made similar comments about our club currently having 6,500 members? Does the club not hope that the people who will come to use our futsal court will in time come to our games, and in turn become South supporters? Sometimes it seems as if time is neither a straight line nor a circle, but rather just us sitting on the same spot forever. I'm sure some notable physicist has proven that to be the case anyway.

Nothing to write home about - South Melbourne 2 North Geelong 1

After the joys of experiencing the social club, and then watching the women's team steal a win (5-4 over Bulleen) right at the death thanks to Lisa De Vanna, the only thing which could have ruined Sunday would been the men's team finding a way not to pick up all three points. Credit to them though, they gave it a good shake.

No Nikola Roganovic, who missed through injury, replaced by Zaim Zeneli for a rare league start. Carl Piergianni maybe called out as a scapegoat for the defensive implosion last week, replaced by Michael Eagar. Jesse Daley was out also after a hard week trialling in Perth, and coming back with the flu. Thank you very much Kenny Lowe.

We started off pretty well, even took the lead, and then did what we do best and that's let the other team back into the contest. Now after being mauled 8-0 the week before against ten men no less, one guessed that North Geelong might come in with a bit more desire and discipline, and that's what they did, but they also moved the ball around better than you might expect a team on its knees to do so. I'm not saying it was great, but it did threaten to be effective, and some of our shenanigans around the back line wouldn't have discouraged them.

For our part, at times like these we are often our worst enemy. It was rainy and windy and all of that made things harder, but you'd think the way we played the conditions that it was the first time we'd eve seen conditions like that. Not one low hard shot at the keeper, or low hard skidding cross, which would have spilled loose or been bundled in for an own goal. Of course North Geelong scored in more or less that manner - a low hard shot parried back into play by Zeneli (even taking into account the conditions, a continuing weakness of his), and tapped in for the equaliser.

After that the team snapped out of their lethargy, but it took what looked like a controversial penalty at the time - not for the foul itself, but on the question of whether it was in the box - to get us over the line. Not many around where I was standing thought or realised it was in the box except for Gains, and he only thought it was in the box because he actually pays attention to the game. Certainly the North Geelong cohort towards that end of the ground were very disappointed in the decision, but the video proves the referee was right. as I noted yesterday in the aftermath.

@a_jukic @smfc @NGWFC Thinnest of margins, most unnecessary of tackles. It's a cruel game, but sometimes we create our own miseries.

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) April 9, 2017

Milos Lujic tucked away his fourth goal of the league campaign - all from penalties - and we managed to withstand North's attempts at getting an equaliser, even though it wasn't always pretty. Chris Taylor's refusal to make a sub also confounded many in the ground. The wittiest suggestion as to why that might be was made by Griff of all people, who suggested that perhaps Taylor was under the impression that substitutes were like annual leave, and that he was hoping to roll over unused subs to the next game. Whereas, as Griff pointed out, unused subs are actually more like sick days - if you don't use them, you lose them!

Overall, it was a pretty lousy performance, but we got the job done, and since avoiding relegation is our main this year, it was an important win in that context.

Next game
At home on Easter Monday against Melbourne Knights. When it comes to the fixturing of big events, the mainstream Christian churches give FFV and FFA a run for their money, but everyone's lucked out this year because everything seems to have lined up nicely, as it does every few years for (literally) God knows what reason. Though of course there's a blockbuster footy clash on the Monday, for people who are easily distracted. Speaking of which...

The most Melbourne thing ever happened
During I believe what was the second half, all of a sudden over the stadium's PA system there was a stream of the television commentary for the Carlton-Essendon slogfest at the MCG. Good friend of the blog, one Mr Cuddles, who works in the control room working the scoreboard and (ergh) music, often has the footy on another laptop if his beloved (ergh, again) Carlton are playing. Something went wrong at one stage and I believe the whole grandstand then heard Bryce Gibbs going for goal or something like that. As one wit noted, 'there goes our A-League bid', which is for the best anyway.

Let there be banter
North Geelong brought along a decent (and seemingly youngish) chanting group, even if they seemed to be singing a lot of their chants to tunes that Clarendon Corner use, and somewhat less tastefully, one of which used the tune from Mousse T's 'Horny'. They didn't limit themselves to supporting their team however, also throwing in banter our way. 'You're not singing any more' was replied to with 'We weren't singing anyway'; 'Your social club is shit' was replied to with 'Our social club, is better than yours'; their sarcastic calls of 'penalty' were responded to with our own sarcastic calls for penalties. It did get a bit less fun when members of that crew stormed down to the players tunnel/race in order to berate the officials with much wild finger pointing. At least it wasn't us for once.

First impressions of Earth/Social Club discussion in multiple parts
2017 Jersey Night
The 2017 Jersey Presentation Night was the first one to be held in our social club since its (still incomplete, but good enough to start using it) redevelopment. Was it held there also in 2010? I can't remember - I think that was the year I missed the event (and Faith No More at Soundwave) because I was having my wisdom teeth pulled out.

My first impression of the social club space was, like many of you would have found, that it was small. The futsal court utterly dominates the senses. But over the course of the night (and much more so on Sunday) I found that the space instead of being small, was instead intimate, social even.

It was a good night overall, and people there seemed pleased with the social club in general, even with the tight squeeze of the tables to accommodate the (I'm guessing) 200 or so guests. A couple of technical hitches with the audio aside, the presentation of the event was pretty good, and if anything when it went drastically wrong or over time, it was because the audience had to constantly be shushed during the player auctions.

On that front, the real bolters were the Queensland pair (and many of these lots were done in pairs) of Luke Pavlou and Jesse Daley. The women's team as a collective fetched a good price as well, but I've stopped being able to keep track of the amounts raised on the night let alone across the years. I'm not even sure if every player was auctioned off. I can't recall if Liam McCormack for instance was called up or even present. The People's Champ, as is the case every year with this event, was not there.

The food was a bit all over the shop. The delays in getting the main meal out were a bit crap, but I think like of lot of things with the new social club we're all happy to be tolerant while everything settles down. The salads were fine, calamari dull, the roasted pulled meats OK, and the desserts - baklava and galaktobouriko which I invited to scoff from another table - warm and rather good.

What's-his-name was at the jersey night on Friday.  Photo : FourFourTwo.

The panel session was Bill Papastergiadis going on about the A-League bid; Lisa De Vanna - new signing for the women's team - discussing her career and drive to succeed; and that bloke off that Nunawading mural (not him, not the other one either, yeah, that guy) talking about how he has very few friends and how most of those few friends he has were made at South. Hey, wait, that sounds like a lot of people left at South right now! Or maybe I'm just projecting.

Anyway, after complaining last week about never winning raffles, I still bought ten dollars worth of tickets, and when the draw was being re-done for the small label boutique handbag prize (because no one had claimed to have the original winning ticket) I pointed to a particular green ticket in my possession, told the rest of the table that I was on that I was going to win it, and lo and behold I won the damn handbag.

Now while many of those in the room who know me had a good chuckle, I was not ashamed to collect my prize (though I'd rather have won the tyre voucher), because it's just a handbag of indeterminate monetary value, and I would have found someone to gift it to later on. As it was, I didn't even get to leave with the prize, as I was made a very generous cash offer for the bag, which I accepted. The buyer's daughter is apparently quite happy with my her new handbag, I was happy with the price offered, and I sought to plough that money back into the club coffers as quickly as I could on Sunday, with three-quarters of it already donated to a better cause; namely a rather nice new home shirt - one in which the badges and sponsors are not ironed on or sewed on, but are like, actually part of the shirt.

Anyway, the highlight of the night for me - apart from watching the last two minutes of the Swans-Pies game on someone's tablet - was being seated near the players (who arrived after completing a training session), who at one point were watching themselves on one of the many screens on the 2016 montage being played on said screens, and partook in some playful taking the piss of themselves and each other. Overall, an enjoyable evening which I wouldn't have missed for the world, and yet that's not all that happened that night.

Farewell, old friend (He's bad - but he'll die - so I like it.)
I can't remember when I first put the clock up. It must have been some time around 2013 or 2014, but who can say for sure without trawling through the archives (actually October 2013, thank you very much to Twitter's searchable archive download service). It was not exactly the most accurate or honest of things. I had as its starting point the end of our last home game at the old Lakeside. That decision was at best only theoretically accurate; after all, people hung around the old social club on that day for a few hours, being either appalled or attempting to justify the carnage of the pitch invasion.

But that wasn't the end either. The social club still got some use from the average South Melbourne Hellas punter. There was a casino night, and there was an 80s themed birthday party for board member Tony Margaritis, which included music by 80s tribute band Powerstryde.

[I didn't wear any stereotypically 80s gear to that party. Collingwood had just won the flag in a replay, and so I was wearing a Pies guernsey, having decided to commit to a friend's celebration and instead of hanging out with the teeming boganity listening to Lionel Ritchie.]

I'd started the clock as a quiet lark, and as a silent protest. People who read the blog - whoever they were - would hopefully have a laugh at the grim situation. As for protest, really, who that was against was less well defined. Was it against the government and their bureaucracy? They probably didn't visit too often. Was it against the board? Probably a bit, but if they could have satisfactorily resolved the issue sooner I'm certain they would have done so. More likely, and typically, it was a protest against the cosmic injustice of the whole thing, and an acknowledgement of the absurdity of it as well.

It took a few attempts to find the right kind of extension, and then to figure out how to fit it in within the blog. Of course, in keeping with South of the Border's design aesthetic of looking like a dog's breakfast, it only added to that overall effect.

After the lark honeymoon period was over, the social club counter gained its own notoriety - first among readers of South of the Border, and later out in the digital realm. Opposition club fans were huge fans, but there was also interest from far flung quarters of what is called #sokkahtwitter, the loose gaggle that could barely be considered a collective that makes up the people who talk about Australian soccer on Twitter. Without going over the top and saying that it was some sort of transcendent Australian soccer phenomenon, among those people who care about such things people knew about it, and kept an eye on it. This is one of the last tweets on the subject of the clock before its demise, which summed up people's feelings on the matter

after tonight one of my favourite things in Australian soccer will be gone @PaulMavroudis pic.twitter.com/KRWt0d7Pf0

— Joe Gorman (@JoeGorman_89) April 7, 2017

That notoriety was both fascinating and dispiriting. Yes, all of our fans wanted the issue of the social club resolved. For the pleb fan, this was because we just wanted our social club space back. For the board members, it was because so much of the future prosperity of the club that they were and are responsible for was still attached to it. But for me, there was the added condition of 'I just want to get rid of this damn albatross'. I hated it. When one day late last year I think it was, it mysteriously broke and showed the (all things considered) wrong time, I had to go back and manually fix it.

But then, as its demise came nearer, I also felt sort of strange about that pending end. It had become an essential part of the blog, the most obvious thing, and the only moving thing on here, its metronomic persistence - except in the one case noted above - was soothing. And the hatred I had for it was revealed, as it sometimes was wont to do, to be tempered with a strange appreciation for its toxic attempt at humour.

Actually, I don't care about the social club any more; I prefer having the counter instead http://t.co/og2YmAy6wx

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) October 16, 2015

On the day of the jersey night, I had mostly overcome my ten day bout with illness. The plan on the day had been settled. I'd go to a free lunch in Fitzroy and the Jersey Night after that, with hopefully two hours in between to get to a computer at uni in the city in order to quietly remove the social club count-up clock. (Blogger's back-end management processes work very badly in my phone's browser). But I got waylaid for several hours in the late afternoon by drinks in Brunswick Street with an assortment of characters known and unknown. By the time I managed to extricate myself from the situation, I was overdue at Lakeside, and the clock was still running.

So, while getting playfully heckled online and at jersey night was fun for about two minutes, I really wanted to just get the damn thing off the blog. So after asking the evening's media operator whether I could borrow his computer to just dump it quietly, discreetly, the situation was engineered - admittedly with my agreement - that at a suitable point in the evening, we would film the process. And thus at some point late in evening, around 11:30 or so, the farce of an amateur blogger deleting a bit of html off a website was filmed and uploaded to the world.

Aaaaaaand it's gone! @PaulMavroudis @smfc #socialclubcountdownclock pic.twitter.com/6vGrlltMQQ

— Tony Margaritis (@sthmel) April 7, 2017

Several years ago when people were discussing how we should inaugurate the opening of the social club, I'd mentioned this as a possibility, but there was no planning for it until the night itself. Usually South of the Border likes to steer clear of anything resembling an official connection to the club, but late in the evening, with the room half emptied, and with the wife of a South of the Border reader (you can hear her in the video's background) heckling her partner, everything seemed to fall into place. Thanks to MC David Henning for his kind words and nimble speech.

That wasn't the end of course, as the witty but topical banter kept rolling on.

@sthmel @PaulMavroudis @smfc Reminiscent of the scenes in Berlin when the wall came down.

— Name cannot be blank (@jgrb) April 8, 2017

But it was finally done - the social club was in, and the clock had to go. Your correspondent typically couldn't help however put forward what was at least a faintly mournful post.

It's gone. Just like that.

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) April 7, 2017

On Saturday morning, looking at the blog, I decided to change the look for the first time in years. A bit neater, and a bit of distance between that bloody gadget and the blog. I thought it looked better, but one of our readers suggested something a bit more appropriate for those sneaking in a read of South of the Border during paid office hours. Not having ever had a proper job of any description, I just did what he suggested and changed the text box a bit. If I had the skills I'd convert the whole thing to look like a spreadsheet, but since I can't even manage even a crappy banner for the top, that might be a bit of a pipe dream.

Museum
I thought the museum was well done. The mix of the wall insets with trophies and photo montages, as well the video screens adjacent, looked very professional, but also appropriately reverential. It is a project that is, like many other elements of the social and office spaces, still incomplete, and I hope that it will improve on that front. There were several glass cabinets insets, with trophies, mementos and photo collages. I am glad that the coloured red vee heritage strip photo from the 1960s got prominent positioning, as well as a very good working of the women's cabinet. There are also still things which are in storage, including trophies, the club honour board, etc, which will be incorporated into the final design.

To give a bit of background on production of the museum, so far as my limited involvement was concerned. At some point during the development of the social club project, I had gone on a trip with two members of the South office/media inner circle out to various AFL club HQs to see what they had done with their museums. Some were very good (Hawthorn's - if you have any interest in these things, go see it, seriously), and some were not so good. I wrote up a sort of summary/discussion paper, wondered ever after if anyone had read it, and waited thereafter to see what those in the club tasked with that area would come up with.

Whoever they relied upon - whether their own gleanings from their own research, or from referencing my internal write-up, it's clear that those behind the museum learned the lessons from that sojourn across Melbourne. They've made good use of the limited space available (Hawthorn, for example, has an entire second floor for its museum), and everything looks fantastic. At the very least, it was good to see some of the old trophies in their proper form, having been given a nice clean and polish; they were almost unrecognisable from those I had packed away several years ago.

Those of you who remember the old social club museum may be disappointed with what's on offer, and asking why isn't everything on show. The truth of the matter is, while we had a lot of trophies, many were from one off matches and minor cups. It looked, in its own shabby way, viscerally impressive, but it told no story. That the club has run with the idea of a at least a basic narrative - state league, national league, women's, intercontinental - means that there is a focus on the biggest things we have achieved.

I would hope that what currently exists as a blank wall between the entrance from the futsal court and the museum can be turned into an extension of the museum idea, incorporating at least something about the three predecessor clubs, and perhaps also something about Middle Park as well. It may be a good chance to use even some cursory written history as part of that. We'll wait and see, but so far I am happy with what has been achieved on this front.

On Sunday
I missed the family day on the Saturday, having procrastinated too long at home playing video games, and so I didn't get to experience the social club under the full force of too many people with too many children. Apparently the wait for food was very long.

On Sunday this did not appear to be an issue. I was there pretty early, and while food was not served instantly, it was prepared in a timely fashion for those looking to eat inside. I was less than happy with the meal deal option - with either souvlaki (pork, chicken, or lamb), burger or kransky - because it seemed to be the only way you could order a main meal, in that you couldn't buy a souv, burger or kranksy just on its own. I'm lead to believe that this, and the very concise menu, were only temporary as bistro finds its feet.

The food - I had a pork souvlaki - was of a very good standard, and judging from what other people said about their meals, I did not hear a bad word about the quality of what was on offer. The pricing on the other hand was a bit steep, as it was for booze. And while a drink was included in the cost of the meal, it was for a soft drink. I hope that in future something can be arranged for alcoholic drinks to be included in meal deals, as is often done at pubs.

It is impossible to extrapolate anything from day one (or day three), but the venue seemed to be doing good trade. After the game came its first real big PR test, when the club's social club member priority scheme was put in place for the first time - or at least general member priority. Those without memberships - including one notably young and loud-voiced terrace character - had to wait until those with memberships got in first, and then whatever capacity was left over could accommodate them. Maybe some signage making that fact could be placed outside the social club, instead of having the president stand outside personally vetting people. (though if I recall correctly,

It would also be good in future to know in advance when the social club will be open from, and I have made that known to people at the club - even on their electronic flyers, it'd be a welcome addition. I'm not sure of the scope of the venue to attract people from the local community, but hopefully it is at least able to attract people who attend events held at Lakeside on non-South match days, especially people from outside those who will use the futsal court. Speaking of which, the futsal court itself is apparently already doing quite well during these school holidays in terms of exploiting leveraging our location in an upper middle class part of Melbourne which full of people with high levels of disposable income.

And in the end, that's what it comes down to. I can understand the concerns of those who wanted something bigger and more expansive, but it is not designed for the 13 odd days where we play at home - it is designed for the other 352 days when we are not playing games there. That most of us will be there on one of those 13 days however means our judgements will be based around that experience, even as the financial security and hopefully prosperity that the other 352 days will bring to the club will be the main focus of the social club. It will take some getting used to. Some may never get used to it. I understand that. I'm going to try and make the best of the situation.

In all seriousness
My warmest regards to any board member past or present who had to work on this project at any time. So far as I can remember, neither the clock nor any of my comments were ever intended as a personal attack on any of you - I get it though if you were annoyed or hurt by either of those however. At least now I can start hammering you for the social club as it is, and not about when we'd actually get it.

Hidden benefits of the social club
The game outside was streamed live into the social club's screens. Apart from being convenient in terms of not missing much of the action if you decide to stay indoors because of the weather or want to beat the half-time rush for food, if you happen to be one of our more combustible supporters, you can use it as a time-out space - as it may have appeared to occur during the game on Sunday.

Subscription feature
Succumbing to further audience requests, I've added a gadget which allows you to subscribe to alerts for new posts via email. It's a little thing on the right hand side of the site.

SMFCBOARD IS DEAD
The owner of the forum finally had enough. Full obituary Thursday or Friday or something like that.

Around the grounds

Restricted view ticket
I had intended to to go Lakeside for 'family day', but procrastination caught up with me. Thus we (me and three other blokes) agreed to attend Moreland City vs Brunswick City. After an energetic first half there was no score, because neither team could shoot properly. Moreland took the lead through old mate Trent Rixon, but then Brunswick, who had done nothing in the second half, got level via a penalty and then took the lead with ten to play. Almost all the second half was watched from a a ridiculous vantage point (see right) because of the weather. Campbell Reserve's sight lines are bad enough on a good day; when it starts pouring down, there's nowhere to hide, and fewer vantage points to watch a game from. At least we got to see Moreland's equaliser for 2-2 because the player scoring the goal happened to be in that one part of the field where we could see him score a goal. In the 92nd minute, the home side pinched an equaliser. One felt bad for Brunswick, even though they had not really done enough to earn their lead despite scoring two goals. One felt uneasy about Moreland winning the game, even though on the balance of play they deserved it. But maybe that's the complimentary plastic cup of scotch talking - a complimentary plastic cup of scotch I suspect was earned because of only half playful hostile questioning of a member of the Victoria Patriots A-League bid team. And I don't even really like scotch.

Final thought

@a_jukic @PaulMavroudis @smfc @NGWFC Speaking of replays, anyone get me threading the needle through the shot put net? Best kick I have done all year.

— Marko Stevanja (@Mstevanja) April 10, 2017

Small sample size - St Albans 0 South Melbourne 2

In the week leading up to this game there was the threat of storms both literal and metaphoric. Instead we got unseasonable warmth and a tough win by South to momentarily ease the pressure incurred by picking up only one point from its first four games, and not scoring for three consecutive matches.

The tight confines of Churchill Reserve, an effect amplified by the high fences around the ground, give a side out of form - and especially players not willing to go all in - little room to hide.

There's not much room to hide for spectators either, with the sun beating down, and a mixture of complicated sight-lines forcing people into the sun there were some novel improvisations - one old bloke who I assume had forgotten his hat took to grabbing a fallen branch with some leaves to shield his eyes from the sun.

(Being on the other side of the media gantry of a group of vocal Dinamo fans who ran the gauntlet between performing a chant to the tune of Kelis' 'Milkshake', to the desperately old and unbelievably and exponentially awful 'I'd rather be an Abo than a Greek', was also aesthetically and morally unpleasant. At least their heckling of Chris Taylor overshadowed most of what could have been mustered up South's fans.)

The last time St Albans were in the Victorian top flight was 2011 - and having just been promoted, they went straight down. In that sense they were both the best and worst opponent we could have faced given our current predicament. At least we got them early before the ground got chewed up by overuse. Apart from some timid attempts on goal, South at least came out in a determined fashion, bossing the majority of the game against a side already likely to go down.

St Albans goalkeeper Chris May cuts a forlorn figure as South Melbourne
celebrate Milos Lujic's goal. Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

The out of form and moon-boot wearing Marcus Schroen was out, after having picked up an injury during the Heidelberg game last week. He was ostensibly replaced by Leigh Minopoulos. Luke Pavlou was dropped to the bench, replaced by the more attacking Jesse Daley for his first starting appearance, with Luke McCormick taking up the central midfield role.

Former skipper Michael Eagar had his kit with him, but did not start, with the coaches preferring to keep Luke Adams and Carl Piergianni as the central defensive pairing. More importantly, Kristian Konstantinidis started the game, replacing Tim Mala at right back. Konstantinidis may have started more games this year - or at least, one would have hoped he would have - were it not for him missing a large chunk of the pre-season because of an overseas holiday. His inclusion yesterday provided a bigger and faster option at right back, as well as a welcome attacking option on the right hand side.

Jesse Daley, making his first start for South Melbourne, had an impressive
match on the right side of midfield. Photo: Cindy Nitsos. 

Jesse Daley was good. He was  a menace down the right hand side during the first half, and while he fell away a little bit during the second period - an obvious lack of match fitness affecting him - he was probably our best on the day. At the very least, his corner taking was consistent enough to suggest that he may offer a solution to our longstanding problem on that front. Keep in mind though that it was one game, on a small ground.

Leigh Minopoulos was quiet in the first half - though to be fair, the ball did not often go out to the left during the first 45 minutes - but came into his own during the second period, being dangerous along both the wing and along the byline. And although some of Leigh's shots were poorly directed, he managed to ice the game with a stunning long range goal.

VIDEO // Check out this long-range belter by @LeighMinopoulos against St @albans_st today! #PS4NPLVIC #SMFC17 pic.twitter.com/Xd2NRLfTFE

— South Melbourne FC (@smfc) March 12, 2017

It was pleasing that one of our players not only found enough space outside the box to take a shot, but actually followed through with it. The quality of the finish (keeping in mind that Leigh is the only South player to score from open play this season; yes, yes, small sample size) overshadowed some of the poor finishing during the rest of the day.

It would have been nice had that goal been scored ten or twenty minutes earlier, which would have eased the nerves a bit and prevented our supporters suffering irreversible heart damage. I suppose we should be grateful we got it anyway. In any event, no one's getting carried with a win like that, against the only team that was lower on the table than us. St Albans struggled for most of the game, and look like they're going to struggle for the rest of the season especially away from the tight confines of Churchill Reserve. It's a good thing that St Albans butchered two golden chances either side of our goal in the first half - a better team (not us, at least not at the moment) would have put those chances away, and the game would have been different. Otherwise, Dinamo rarely threatened.

There are still concerns for us. Through passes were often over hit, as they have been for most of the season thus far. Even given the smaller dimensions of the ground, those adjustments weren't made - though to be fair, we seemed more daring and accurate when sending long balls to Lujic. There were times, too, where we lost our shape and composure in midfield for periods of time that were quite noticeable. There were still too many instances where poor communication saw clearances - both on the ground and in the air - made  in such a rush that possession was gifted back to the opposition.

We got more numbers in the box than we have most of this season, but still too often Lujic would have to wait for support to arrive. Lujic's finishing is off, but he did well to win the penalty. Some or even all of these issues are par for the course at this level, but the point is to cut down on them as much as possible. While there were two or three standouts on the day, most of the rest of the team can't be said to have reached any great heights. A late collision with a St Albans player saw Nikola Roganovic on the ground for a long a period of time, but he played out the match.

I'm not prepared to throw these three points back into the ocean, mind you. It was a win that couldn't have come any sooner for us.

Next game
We enter the FFA Cup this week. We have been drawn against NPL 2 side Eastern Lions. The game has been scheduled for this Saturday as:

Saturday 18th March, 4:00PM, South Melbourne vs Eastern Lions, John Cain Memorial Park, Thornbury

It is part of a double-header which includes Northcote City vs North geelong kicking off at 1:00PM.

Some people are discussing whether those who have purchased memberships will be allowed free entry. My information is that while we are the nominal 'home' team for our fixture, as it not a home controlled fixture at Lakeside, a South membership will not get you free entry into this game.

Ticket prices for this round of the cup are set at a maximum of $8 for adults.

This week's game will be also be streamed live on Facebook by the club.

Social club update
Things seem to be progressing at a fair clip now.

Not long to go now :) @smfc pic.twitter.com/HQqUKvXrBi

— Tony Margaritis (@sthmel) March 10, 2017

On the other hand...
While we're on the road for seven consecutive weeks (and probably eight with the cup match) to start the season, the AFL gets to use Lakeside to continue trialling its bollocks short format AFLX concept.

Did you allow this @smfc? pic.twitter.com/9qmUiJj22Z

— Savvas Tzionis (@Savvastzionis) March 11, 2017

Even taking everything else into account (grand prix, possible desire to make full use of completed social club), it's not a good look.

Caption Competition
If any reader can come up with a better caption than West of the Quarry's effort, I will purchase them a drink of their choice at our next game.

When your 'push' for the A-league goes that little bit too far.. pic.twitter.com/LBAPWvDN7f

— West of the Quarry (@wotq53) March 13, 2017

Do they do that every week?
I wonder - do non-Greek teams in Victoria pull out the lamb gyro every week, or do they save that up for visits by Greek teams? I might have to do a more scientific study of this, but it does seem to be the case.

Nonsense verbalised thought bubble of the week
When players are obviously not communicating properly on the field, the call will invetiably come from the coaches and supporters yelling 'TALK!'. I know I've done it. But is talking enough? Would it be better to yell 'CONVERSE!'? Isn't what we're really asking for a 'MEANINGFUL EXCHANGE OF COMMUNICATION OF IDEAS, AND THE APPLICATION OF THOSE IDEAS INTO EFFECTIVE PRAXIS!'? Frankly speaking, I'm not sure talking is enough.

The women's NPL team made it two wins in a row, coming from behind to
beat Calder United 4-2 out at Keilor. I really should have gone to this match
instead of the Altona East game. Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

Around the grounds
The search for the mysterious Spicemarket goes on
Tossing up between watching the South women and a trip out to Paisley Park, I chose the latter. Ah, regrets. The fixture was an FFA Cup tie between Altona East and Rosebud Heart. The game was held on Altona Magic's side of Paisley Park, because East's side has had its surface relaid, and a new fence installed. This was not much of a game - Rosebud (newly promoted to State League 4) ran out of gas after twenty minutes, and East (grimly hanging on to life in State League 1) are dreadful. It took East until early in second half to score (a shot rebounding off the post into the path of a striker facing an open net), not that they looked much like scoring before that. When East got their second (shallow cross to the near post headed in a by diving player), I thought that would open the floodgates. It didn't. Rosebud managed pulled a goal back with about five to play (lobbed shot over stranded keeper), but couldn't muster enough energy to pull another one back. So in summary, East for relegation for sure unless something amazing happens - which could be as simple as Bendigo coming last in NPL2, their senior team folding, and therefore whoever finishes second last in State League 1 North-West might get a lifeline. How's that for optimism?

Final thought
After all that, we're still in the relegation zone, by virtue of being in the playoff spot.

Kids, you noticing all this plight? Avondale 1 South Melbourne 0

Even if one acknowledges the limitations of the competition, one doesn't necessarily see the sense in just kicking it for the sake of it. When required, one tries to find the good and defend the competition from those who try to classify it as merely park football. After all, we (mostly and/or usually) don't play in parks anymore!

There are good teams in this league, who can play good football, and in general the style has improved from the dark days of 2011 when Ian Dobson's brutish Green Gully side were the benchmark; when two thirds of the grounds were minefields, sand-pits or mud-heaps by round three instead of round fourteen.

In this game, played on a decent surface, with a non-bothersome breeze, we had two worthy combatants. One team was the reigning champion. The other team was the only one left with a chance of having a perfect record after three games. And yet what they dished up was utter, irredeemable garbage.

Now I know that South Melbourne has problems, and we'll get to those. But first things first - that was putrid. The first half especially was so unwatchable you couldn't even enjoy it on an ironic 'so bad it was good' level. It was just bad. 

During the game I pitied those who had to pay to get in, until I remembered that the reason I didn't pay to get in was because I've invested so much into this project. One could almost pity the players, were they not getting paid very, very well to be very, very bad. Some had been A-League players. Many had spent a good decade in this league. Some had aspirations of breaking out and upwards.

Almost all of them utterly, utterly hopeless.

[I could've throw some more 'utterlys' in there for emphasis, but I need to save those up to torment Ian Syson in a future thesis chapter draft. That's a little poisoned in-joke you don't need to concern yourselves with.]

To refer to some of the abysmal sequences of play as pinball would be an insult to those who have mastered the realm of the silver ball. To note that, at times, the fact that 20 players were bunched together chasing the ball like it was an under 10s game, would be an insult to children everywhere - the kids would at least have better touch.

It was a half in which Avondale, not for lack of talented players, could barely muster any meaningful possession in their attacking half. Meanwhile, South's rare moments of attacking half competence were undone if not by poor passing, then by players in their prime not understanding the basics of the offside rule.

In the second half, things were a bit better, but like last week our domination of possession amounted to nothing. Another maddening goal conceded, which brings to mind, apropos of nothing, some interesting questions, such as:

If we can't take proper set pieces, how do our defenders learn to defend set pieces at training?

and

If we can't defend set pieces, how do we know those attacking set pieces we try out in training are working?

Even when Leigh Minopoulos came off the bench, his best chance to do something was scuppered by Milos Lujic passing inside instead of out. There were some bad offside calls, too, but were they the difference between us winning and losing? Not in any meaningful sense.

After Avondale scored, the game opened up as we committed numbers forward and the nominal home side had another couple of chances to seal the deal. In the end, they didn't need those - they only needed goalkeeper Chris Oldfield to pluck out our one (very late) effort on target from almost underneath the crossbar and tip it over the bar for a corner.

There are those who say that all this - our one dimensionality, our inability to mount meaningful attacks from set pieces, our inability to properly deal with set-pieces - was all there last year, and that when push came to shove in 2016, we managed to hit form, ride our luck and change things enough to get by and win what is still called a championship in these confusing times.

If that's the case, how have we gone about strengthening and improving over the off-season? So far, it has been, with the exception of Luke McCormack, to only use our new players out of necessity, and not it seems out of desire - maybe they're not ready yet? If that's the case, that's a concern for a pre-season that started sometime in November.

Defensive issues aside, set piece issues aside, one man up front issue aside, tactics and matters of personnel issues aside, we don't even look like scoring from every mediocre team's best friend - the counterattack. The only positives that people seem to be clinging onto from this game was Jesse Daley, who came on as a sub, managed to hit two decent corners late in the game. You've got to start from somewhere I suppose.

From the 'what was that all about?' files
There was an unusual post-script to this game. After the match finished, Avondale goalkeeper Chris Oldfield decided to get smart with those South fans situated behind his goal - albeit from a considerable distance away.

It was unusual in that, apart from one or two misplaced smart-arse comments about Oldfield's short lived tenure in the A-League - misplaced because, duh, it's not like South's actually made it to the A-League - there seemed to be much less hostility directed towards him than one might have expected.

Much more hostility was being directed towards the team and the officials. I'm not sure what set him off.

The time spent marveling at the genius of how humankind launched hundreds of tons of steel and fibreglass into the air, and what's more, did it with some measure of grace
On a lighter note, it has been reasonably enjoyable watching the under 20s so far this season. They played their game on the weekend on the outside pitch at Somers Street. Because of this, no fewer than five different people asked me upon their own arrival whether we were playing on that ground, confusion added to the fact that Avondale were running the gate the car park entrance rather than the usual stadium entrance. The South 20s butchered a lot of chances during the time I was there, but managed to get a deserved 2-1 win. Of note was the relatively close proximity of Avondale parents to South parents, and the impassioned support for both teams - most notably from a couple of women still dressed in their work clothes, which happened to be air stewardess costumes. People did momentarily wonder whether there was some sort of sponsor gimmick going on, but the banal reality is that they had parachuted down to Knights Stadium which makes sense because, as far as public transport goes, incoming flights to Tullamarine are probably your best option when traveling to Somers Street.

Next game

Saturday night away to the Bergers. Oh joy.

People's Champ in trouble?
That melee after we pulled a goal back in the Community Shield loss at Kingston Heath a few weeks ago? There had been allegations made that Nick Epifano had spat at someone, and it looks like the matter is coming to a head at the tribunal this week. One suspects that if he's found guilty, he'll be out for a while.

Social club update
Always nice to get an update without twisting someone's arm.

We're entering the final phase of construction of our exclusive areas at Lakeside Stadium. Check out the progress so far. pic.twitter.com/l8fEXWbiBK

— South Melbourne FC (@smfc) February 21, 2017

There were some (though not many) more photos on the club's Facebook page.

Don't look at it children!
Meanwhile, at the Festival Formerly Known as Antipodes, South Melbourne has been circulating an A-League advocacy t-shirt, which for reasons of social propriety, we at South of the Border will not reproduce here. Suffice to say, for some of us still actually attending South matches 13 years after our last national league stint, this kind of nonsense is slightly irksome to the senses. Even more reassuring are reports that South's A-League bid team leader Bill Papastergiadis told the audience at the Festival Formerly Known as Antipodes that the FFA Cup is the only thing that really matters for us at this time (not that any of that matters).

Around the grounds
No canaries
Hours after seeing this game, or maybe even the next day, I remembered that I had wanted to see this fixture two years ago, and was foiled by the weather. Oh, how times have changed. Having never seen The Cult edition of Nunawading City play before, this was all sorts of the wrong time to do it for the first time. For starters, they have (out of necessity) deviated from the Master Plan, because relegation is now a very real possibility. Thus they have put in big cash for hired guns, flights and accommodation - though one of those hired guns, Jason Trifiro, was not in attendance on Friday night, possibly due to injury, maybe due to not being able to get a flight of Sydney on time, who knows? Papa Ange was there, or at least some bloke who looked a lot like him. Probably looking for the next Socceroo bolter. While Nuna's team looked young, their opponents and hosts, Richmond, didn't look much older. Mind you, there was a kid out there during wearing number 10 who myself, Mark Boric, and two former Richmond presidents all assumed was the Nunawading child mascot for the day. Turned it was Nuna's captain. Nuna raced out to a two goal lead, but Richmond pulled it back to 2-2, and looked the likelier to go on to win. Not so, however! Nuna's heavily front-loaded team scorched Richmond's brittle defense, and showed that, whatever other weakness they have - and they have plenty down back - that against defensively suspect weak opposition like Richmond they have the firepower to put teams away. Those hoping that Nuna will go down this season may be in for year of disappointment, 

Final thought
A good thing this wasn't streamed to the multitudes at Lonsdale Street like some people wanted to.

You think you've got problems - Bentleigh Greens 2 South Melbourne 1

(standard woe is me opening) Sitting here tonight and trying to type this post up, I am in agonising pain, not wanting to blink or close my left eye for fear of further aggravating an already aggravated and inflamed cornea.

Candidate for photo of the year already. Photo: Kevin Juggins.

(usual rank hyperbole) And yet that is nothing compared to the psychic pain caused by last night's performance by our beloved South Melbourne, who dared to dominate the first 15 or so minutes of the Community Shield against Bentleigh and provide a sense of false hope that we would be a super team in 2017.

(possibly rose tinted reminiscence) How good did we look, destroying Bentleigh out wide, getting into many good positions, winning several corners? We looked like the real deal.

(hackneyed comic attempt at mock relief) Thank goodness then that the dual-action remedy was close at hand - first, the fast acting patented not scoring, and second, the long lasting patented letting the other team back into the game and being outplayed for the next...

(runs out of fingers to count on) up until the 80th minute or so, maybe a bit more.

(mandatory footy reference) Oh, we kept fighting. Prototypical utility player Liam McCormick barreled through an opponent and a teammate at the same time with a reckless challenge, one reminiscent of Cameron Venables cleaning up Gavin Brown at a pre-season intra-club match in 1999 - and didn't Venables' career just take off after that?

(irony and/or coincidence) We finally found ourselves 1-0 down after the bloke we'd been promoting online for his ability to score from headers slipped over and left the rest of the defense stranded

(accusation of obvious corruption) And yet considering their utter dominance of our alternately meek and non-existent midfield, Bentleigh took their sweet time in actually finishing us off. That it had to happen after we had a goal disallowed from what looked like the worst offside call ever so far this year, only for Bentleigh to march up the other end and score again.

(irrelevant statistic) Having become engrossed in self-loathing, at some vague point during the second half someone had the gall to present the faux-insight that we had never led a Community Shield game until the 92nd minute, so that ipso facto, ergo, or even dorkus malorkus, we were still in the game. Terrible,m woeful logic.

(haughty derision) Phooey. As if we could somehow come back from 2-0.

(but here's the twist) We did actually make a game of it, when Milos Lujic managed to pull a goal back with five minutes of regulation time to go. Then some of our players and some of their players started punching on, wasting much valuable time and eventually delaying the finish long enough that I would end up missing the first available train back to civilisation. The People's Champ was in the thick of it, there were yellow cards bandied about it seemed mostly out of a sense of duty rather than a sense of the officials actually knowing what had happened and how to deal with the situation, and eventually the game resumed.

(premature disappointment) Leigh Minopoulos caused some problems as a substitute, and may have deserved a penalty when one on one with the goalkeeper and looking to level the scores. In the end, there was no penalty, no equalising goal, and no chance for us to lose in a penalty shootout. That in itself was bit of a letdown.

(leaving off on a positive) Michael Eagar looked quite good, and Marcus Schroen is playing like he is about to have a monster season. Something to look forward to, if you're the kind of person that needs something to look forward to. Like the promise of a new day, the ordeal itself is enough motivation for me to turn up.

Other things worth noting
The bus stop for the 828 across from Cheltenham station has a new and improved shelter.

Kingston Heath's surface was in excellent condition,

Bentleigh were missing Stipo Andrijasevic (injury) and Andy Brennan (Thailand?).

All things considered, the standard in the first half was actually quite pleasing. It felt like a real game, or very close to it.

This part of the south-east has the strangest try-hard homeboys I've ever come across.

Next game - update
Before our round 1 fixture eventually arrives against Bulleen on Monday week, we'll be playing Mornington away at Dallas Brooks Park on Monday February 6th, kickoff at 7:00PM.

Arrivals and departures (sometimes in that order)
Well, we finally have some closure on who is in the squad, and who is not. There were some surprises and left turns. Stephen Hatzikostas' time at South is over - absent for most of the -pre-season, he's found a new home at Green Gully. Francesco Stella, after being let go 'by mutual agreement', has ended up at Port Melbourne. Stefan Zinni has also been signed up Western Sydney Wanderers for the rest of this A-League season.

Meanwhile, the services of Andy Kecojevic have also been retained for 2017.

As per last time, the following players are known to be contracted for next season and the one after.

• Luke Adams (signed until the end of 2017)
• Michael Eagar (signed until the end of 2017)
• Nick Epifano (signed until the end of 2017)
• Ajdin Fetahagic (signed until the end of 2017)
• Joshua Hodes (signed until the end of 2017)
• Andy Kecojevic (signed until the end of 2017 one assumes)
• Kristian Konstantinidis (signed until the end of 2017)
• Gavin De Niese (signed until the end of 2017)
• Tim Mala (signed until the end of 2017)
• Giordano Marafioti (signed until the end of 2017)
• Liam McCormick (signed until the end of 2017)
• Matthew Millar (signed until end of 2017)
• Brad Norton (signed until end of 2017)
• Luke Pavlou (signed until end of 2017)
• Carl Piergianni (signed until the end of 2017)
• Nikola Roganovic (signed until the end of 2017)
• Marcus Schroen (signed until the end of 2017)
• Zaim Zeneli (signed until the end of 2017)
• Jesse Daley (signed until end of 2018)
• Matthew Foschini (signed until the end of 2018)
• Milos Lujic (signed until end of 2018)

Players who have gone.

• Stephen Hatzikostas, Green Gully
• Manuel Padilla Herero, loan ended
• Chris Irwin to Kingston City.
• Iqi Jawadi, to Oakleigh Cannons.
• Amadu Koroma, to Altona Magic
• Francesco Stella, Port Melbourne
• Mathew Theodore, sabbatical
• Stefan Zinni (to Western Sydney Wanderers for remainder of A-League season)

Social club update!

There's this photo

Almost ready for paint :) @smfc pic.twitter.com/7b9rntjSec

— Tony Margaritis (@sthmel) January 31, 2017

And one from where the pro-shop will be.

But also this!
You may remember that in my AGM summary late last year I made a note of the Swans moving their Melbourne offices into Lakeside. Here's a vague article about that,

Final thought
At least the woman working the counter at the bakery across from Cheltenham station threw in a free donut with my order. At least I think it was free.