Nobody happy - South Melbourne 5 Eastern Lions 2

Come on, Pierce, give us a smile! You're playing for South Melbourne!
Photo: Luke Radziminski. 

It was said a few times after this game, but when was the last time we put five goals past an opponent and yet felt this bad? The playing squad's morale might be the best it's been in years, but the fans I'm blessed(?) to interact with are pretty much all doom and gloom. I mean how else to explain being two rounds in and this already being a must win game? How dreadful, how vile, how... sickening. And I mean literally sickening - when we were 2-1 up, and Lions' had a free kick saved by our goalkeeper Pierce Clark, I felt like I was going to have a massive spew. A good thing that soon afterward Harrison (Harry?) Sawyer completed his hat-trick, and the game was pretty much put away.

Before that there was plenty of entertainment for those who'd made the trip to the club's lone Sunday home game for this season. Chris Irwin scuffed an early chance which by his own admission he should've buried, but we got the opener soon enough anyway thanks to what looked liked a mysterious penalty at the time. On replay, you can see the shirt tug on the player attempting to make the run into the box during a corner, and more importantly, you can see the referee looking right at that shirt tug.

You can argue that it was charity, you can argue that it was soft, and you can argue that those sorts of things happen all the time. And if you argued that, you'd be right, but why should it happen at all? My argument has long been that if officials were stricter with punishing that kind of shirt pulling that it'd get rid of it pretty quickly. Now having seen yellow flag after yellow flag thrown in the NFL for holding, and no obvious reduction in players trying to get away with illegal manoeuvres of that sort, my thinking may be more wish/desire oriented than anything based in reality. But even if punishment doesn't act as a deterrent, it at least acts as punishment, which within the context we're dealing with, is a good enough starting point.

Irresponsible treatment of beer. Photo: Luke Radziminski.

Having taken the lead, we were rocked out of our very temporary complacency by Lions equalising with a free kick that didn't look all that convincingly taken at the time. Even looking at it afterwards, I don't know what happened, and why goalkeeper Pierce Clark seemed to latch on to it so late. We retook the lead very soon after, which only settled the nerves ever so much because, as noted above, Lions took another dangerous free kick, this time well dealt with by Clark. After a false dawn and a premature beer shower for a goal called offside, we eventually pretty much finished this game off with Sawyer's third, like his second goal a header from a corner. And the beer shower for that goal was at least legit.

Responsible treatment of beer.
Photo: Luke Radziminski.

Three first half goals essentially from corners then - one indirectly thanks to the penalty, and two direct, which is the kind of thing we didn't see enough of last year. Sawyer probably has a knack for this kind of thing, but by the Lions' assistant coach's own admission on soccer-forum after the game, the away side put in some terrible efforts at defending set pieces. Good delivery aside, and keeping in mind that scoring from corners is pretty much a lottery at the best of times, I just can't see us being marked that slackly for the entire rest of the season. Still, if any future opponents wish to be that generous, I'm happy to let them oblige.

The second half was pretty much a stroll - except for late substitution Matthew Loutrakis, who got a kick in the face from a Lions opponent - just waiting for that fourth goal to really make sure of it. After that came the fifth courtesy of a showboating team manoeuvre, which highlighted how poor Lions were on the day defensively. To their credit, the away team fought it out, but their lack of quality across the park was obvious for all to see. Not to disparage a club which has done exceptionally well to reach this level - nor to write them off after two games - but who were most of their players? A lot of clubs who make the step up end up recycling at least a few blokes who've been around the Victorian top-flight merry-go-round before; but the only names of theirs I immediately recognised were short-term ex-South keeper Keegan Coulter, and former South trialist and firebrand striker Amir Osmancevic.

As for us, it's been only two games, and yet I think we have a pretty good handle on what this South team will be able to do. Certainly not a front-runner, and probably lucky to make finals. Even though you never know what might happen, it's a squad with too much depth to be in serious relegation danger, especially when you have teams like Lions and Altona Magic whose budgets restrict them in what they'll produce. Goodness knows if well be able to produce anything in the middle channel, especially on smaller and narrower grounds - and this is what frightens me - especially if we fall behind. If we manage to go up, and force to teams to open up as they chase the game, we'll probably be the game

Next game
Oakleigh at Jack Edwards on Friday night, beginning our customary run of early season away games. No one's expecting us to win this game, and no one's expecting us to draw, and pretty much everyone's expecting us to get spanked; the idea behind that being, apart from Oakleigh looking good, that we couldn't beat them there even when we were good, so six losses there on the trot will become seven. I'd like to be more optimistic than that, but I'm struggling.


Alternative reality
Why was the live stream initially displaying a backdrop of Central Coast Stadium? For those watching at home, it must've been a confusing affair. I know we did try and take over the Mariners a few years ago, including the farcical proposal to split games between Melbourne and Gosford, but callbacks to gags seven years ago seems a bit of a stretch. What's more, once the stream was sorted out, home viewers had to deal with the commentary stylings of Greg Blake, Australian soccer's one time sort of answer to Aussie Rules' Sam Newman - in the entertainment sense, not the try-hard non-PC gimmick sense.

Mispronunciations of player names aside - and the one person who was upset that Blake referred to South on several occasions as "Hellas" - the audience feedback on Blake's style seemed to be fairly split down the middle. People either loved it, or hated it. While I can see the appeal for some in Blake's schtick, I'm more in the latter mode. But I guess part of the appeal of the NPL live streams for those not of a gambling mindset is the variety of commentary styles - I like Dan Lonergan's energetic style for example, which a few people find too much like listening to footy or horse racing. Still, I wish Blake was quarantined to Heidelberg games.

Claim and counter-claim
I suppose the one good thing about last week's continuing coverage of our alleged wage theft was, if you can frame it that way, that it became so bogged down by claim and counter-claim that even the niche audience that was nominally interested in the story has mostly moved on. And in Australian soccer, there's always something new to latch on to and gawk at.

On an unrelated note, thank you Tony Sage.

But for us remaining South fans, our focus remains resolutely on South. Following on from last week's match report post on the blog, the club released a statement that in the famous words of David Byrne, had both "good points, some bad points". The good points? I guess for me that's mostly in noting that the players are on professional contracts, as opposed to the (implied) pseudo-amateur contracts that other clubs up and down the lower tiers have their players on. There's also the club's support for a more formal process for wage issues between clubs and players.

If you were in a more generous mood than I, you may also say that the club managed to pick up on the vagueness of the allegations made in Tom Smithies' article. An annoying aspect of that vagueness is that it was picked up on by some of our fans, who have pursued the I suppose logical extension of "why don't the players pursue the matters via legal channels"; an idea easily refuted by the fact that lawyers cost money, and for young players especially that's money they don't necessarily have at hand. And considering the relatively small amounts being alleged (admittedly not small to the players themselves), likely to be swallowed up by any legal action.

The bad points? The digressions into the allegations of conspiracy, which plays well to parts of our membership, but makes us look deranged to outsiders. The demand for a journalist to reveal his sources, which I guess someone drafting this press release must have thought was a good idea. The not coming out outright and saying that the club do not owe former players any monies, leaving that as an assumption rather than as a definite statement of fact. The club instead noted that it was "very comfortable with its position regarding all past and current players", whatever that means. I'm not good at reading between the lines.

Anyway, Smithies followed up his first article with another one, which notes that:

... it [Professional Footballers Association] is involved in "a number of disputes with South Melbourne" and that it is seeking the involvement of both FFV and Football Federation Australia after previous attempts "to resolve the matters amicably" had not worked.

Who knows how true this all is, nor who the relevant players are. As much as some of us would like to heap scorn on the committee, it is possible that everything is actually legit. Like the claims by former player Liam McCormick from a couple years ago that he was owed wages - this could all be a result of the current relevant players signing what they thought was simply a standard form with some boilerplate clauses, not realising what they were signing - even though the forms are pretty clear as far as I can tell. Because McCormack decided to put his name to his claim when this issue flared up in 2018, the club - apart from knowing it had the law (technical or otherwise) on its side - clearly felt comfortable in leaking McCormack's player release forms, damaging the credibility of both McCormack and Clement Tito, the journalist who wrote the article at the time.

This time none of these players has come forward, and thus it makes it harder for the club to just come out and use the same tactic, assuming that the relevant players have in fact McCormacked themselves, and assuming that the club is even sure who the relevant three players are. And surely a journalist with the seniority and experience of Smithies wouldn't make such a rookie error as Tito did, by trusting the word of the players without corroborating evidence.

What's strange and slightly counter-intuitive about this situation is that the real, original, and genuinely noteworthy story - Chris Taylor's win at FIFA, pending an appeal from us - has receded into the background. Taylor's successful (so far) litigation is, without knowing what's owed to anyone else that may be owed any sum of money, by any stretch of the imagination a much more tangible and newsworthy event than the (so far) small sums allegedly owed. Like the Avondale senior team wage spreadsheet leak from last year, this story offers a peek into the kinds of money being paid to run a senior team at this level, the kind of detail that mug punters almost never get to see. In that sense Smithies' article, which on some level appears to be an (understandable) opportunistic follow up story pushed by representatives of the ex-South players who allege they are owed money, is a much messier and "he said-she said" kind of situation.

As for fan responses, they seem to have generally fallen into three categories. Those who've used the story as an opportunity to bash South, and occasionally by extension the proposed national second division and/or ethnic clubs; those who have sought to defend the club, mostly South people but not always, seeing a witch-hunt and conspiracy against South, and occasionally by extension any notion of a national second division and/or ethnic clubs; but there's also a third faction, made up only of South fans - and most of whom seem to be on smfcfans.net - which while not completely trusting media reports on these matters, also do not trust the board and are unwilling to give the board and its version of events the benefit of the doubt. For them, having lost most of their faith in the trustworthiness of committees, it's going to be a long way back before they believe anything that comes of a South committee person's mouth.

If You Know Your History is back
Mine and Ian Syson's little radio show on Football Nation Radio has resumed for 2020. This year we're on Tuesdays at 8:00pm, but you can always catch up with whatever is we've been doing by checking out our blog.

Final thought
Wild scenes when one of Ian Syson's sons has been to a South game more recently than the old man.

Life During Wartime - Oakleigh Cannons 1 South Melbourne 0

It was a week that started off badly, and ended much, much worse. In between those things, there was a soccer match of a moderately pleasing quality, at least in the first half.

The whole of the ball? Impossible to tell. Oakleigh goalkeeper John Honos
 manages to scoop out Liam McCormack's effort on goal, to the satisfaction
of the official - which is the end, is all that matters. Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

Oakleigh came into the game with players the calibre of Goran Zoric, Dimi Hatzimouratis and Shayan Alinejad sitting on the bench. It also looked like Adrian Chiapetta and Steve Pantelidis had played in the 20s game beforehand. Meanwhile for South, there was no Brad Norton (injury), no Nick Epifano (still suspended), no Kristian Konstantinidis (suspended for six months), and no Leigh Minopoulos (work commitments). Added to that was Marcus Schroen coming back from injury, and not looking exactly right, and things looked grim from the outset.

And yet we almost pinched the lead, after an error by John Honos in goal for Oakleigh saw Liam McCormack's (necessarily rushed) shot from range hit the crossbar. From a distance it looked like it was going miles wide or over, only to fall at the last second - but not by enough. McCormack also had the misfortune of having his header near the goal line scooped off the line - or from behind the line - by Honos, denying him a goal and South the lead. It was rather reminiscent of McCormack's late effort against Avondale earlier this season, where he was denied dramatically by Chris Oldfield.

They were our best chances for the game. Not that we didn't get into dangerous areas - especially in the first half - but that killer cross or final ball let us down - which is as much a sign of poor confidence as it is skill. For their part, even though they hadn't won a league game up to that point, Oakleigh's confidence was very high, and they had shots rattle off the bar from range as well as shots cleared off the line. Overall, Nikola Roganovic had the more serious interventions to make of the two goalkeepers.

The South Melbourne women continued on their winning ways, defeating
Southern United 3-1 out at Langwarrin. Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

While several people have commented that the standard was poor, especially by us, I thought the first half was the most skillful and entertaining half of soccer I'd seen all season. It was open, end to end stuff, with daring play. We relied more on the counter, and looked good until the final ball, and sometimes the one before that - the absence of Norton and Minopoulos on the left being keenly felt.

The second half from our point of view was not as good. What were in the first half long balls sent into space and promising numerical situations, subsided into long balls because of no idea what else to do. Or so it seemed. And then Oakleigh's goal came, from Dean Piemonte in the most frustrating manner possible. Well known for his long range thunderbolts, Piemonte was lining up for such a shot, and with South hearts in mouths, a South defender rushed up to block. Unfortunately, because that defender slid down to make his tackle, Piemonte deftly evaded the challenge and chipped the ball over Roganovic and under the crossbar. It was an outrageous effort, and demonstrative of the difference between one team with four points and another team with four points up to that point.

Our chance to get back in the contest went badly wrong towards the end of the game, when a blocked long range shot inadvertently sent Oakleigh's Nate Foster into space, and threatening to go one on one with Roganovic. Luke Pavlou, playing in the left back role, did well to keep up with Foster, but got tangled up with the star striker, receiving a red card for his efforts. It seemed a very harsh decision on first glance, as if Foster had initiated the contact. The replays have not convinced me of Pavlou's guilt, and that at best it was an unfortunate tangle of legs that was no one's fault.

While giving up chances on the counter in our quest to go forward and try and snare an equaliser, it's not like we didn't have the Oakleigh defense scrambling, pressing right until the end. Last year something may have come off - this year, there's no way it would. It wasn't helped by sloppy attempts at play by substitutes Andy Kecojevic and Gavin De Niese - the latter's late attempt at goal was poor in both execution and decision making, being a very long way out and taken while being completely off balance.

In the current situation, with losses mounting up - especially considering our difficulty to put goals on the board - even well fought losses are little consolation. Suspensions and injuries haven't helped, but if that was all that was wrong with the team, you'd just ride out a difficult period and move on. Some have suggested that playing so many games away has hurt, and while it probably hasn't helped, most of those grounds have been in good nick as befits the early part of the season. I'm wanting to believe that there's a way out of this mess, and that it will come soon - but each week that passes, whether we put in the hard yards or not, sees us fall short, with the exceptions of the St Albans and Eastern Lions games.

My frustration is gradually becoming disconsolation.

The lowest common denominator
After the game, there was the usual hyper-negative banter being made by a small minority that the team 'should take their shirts off' and that they 'hadn't even tried'. Whatever one's thoughts on the usefulness of such commentary, on Friday night it was daft in its own right because the team had clearly busted a gut. It was half a team out there, with Schroen on one leg, down to ten men, fighting until the end. I get that people have different points of view on a game, but I can't for the life of me see how one could come to the conclusion that the team didn't put in a huge effort on Friday night.

Unfortunately, the situation moved on from mere banter to a brawl among our own fans. Despite being in the vicinity, I couldn't tell how it escalated so quickly and after that, who was doing what to whom. There has been discussion about what kicked things off properly and who did what in other places - but I am not going to speculate on that. All I will say on the matter is that apart from being disgusted and distraught watching the scene unfold, I give credit to those involved who tried to deescalate the situation, and those who tried to restrain those who were intent on violence.

Because of the seriousness of some of the allegations, I will not be allowing any comments on this post, nor any further comments on this issue in any other comment section of any post. This is especially so because most people choose to post here anonymously, and I have no way of verifying who is who. If you did witness the events and wish to make your view of it known, the best thing for you to do is contact the club directly and provide a statement.

Next game
After being drawn at home in the FFA Cup against Monbulk Rangers, some of our supporters were looking forward to both a relatively easy passage to the next round, and the chance to see a home game with the newly finished social club as an added attraction.

Then the club decided to reverse the fixture, which will be now hosted by Monbulk on Tuesday at their recently redeveloped ground. That did not go down well with South fans, including the self-appointed nomarch of the South Melbourne Hellas Public Transport Faction.

But once one calmed down one could, even if only begrudgingly, see why the club had done this. My guesses are:

1. Avoid mucking up carefully laid social club launch plans. 
2. Get the game out of the way.
3. Get the Peoples Champ's five game spitting suspension over quicker.
4. Have one day where the team don't have to look for a training venue.
5. Goodwill gesture to lower league club.

It's not an ideal situation for our supporters, but if this is the worst thing that happens this year, we'll be counting ourselves lucky.

This week's annoyances - wobbly kickoff times
The Oakleigh game started twenty minutes late. I do not know why it started twenty minutes late. What is the point of having a scheduled kickoff time if it is going to be wantonly disregarded? This is of course especially bad for people like me who depend on public transport to get to most matches, and for whom a delay of such magnitude can lead to cascading delays in getting home. it's also not the first time this has happened this year, with me personally experiencing significant delays at five games already this season. Twice at South games (Heidelberg and Oakleigh), twice at Chaplin Reserve, and once yesterday at Castley Reserve. I don't understand what's made this most basic of requirements an issue all of a sudden in 2017.

This week's annoyances - the passive offside rule

Just get rid of it completely and go back to the hard and fast offside rule. This newest interpretation of passive offside is a nightmare for everyone involved.

The dialectics of terrace banter

Former South championship player Iqi Jawadi was playing for Oakleigh, which created debate among some as to whether he should be booed or not, including whether he was worth it. The situation was resolved by people booing him and then shouting 'worthy!', which seemed to be the best solution.

'Bumgate' - Konstantinidis banned for six months

Kristian Konstantinidis has been banned for six months for sticking his finger up a St Albans player's arse. That means his season is effectively over. I don't know if the length of the punishment is warranted - how do you even make a judgment on something like this? - but comparing it to a bad tackle or a fight or any one of the many other things that may happen during a match doesn't help clarify things.

Apart from losing one of our most important players due to a completely unnecessary act - one which I think most would struggle to justify - I have been disappointed by another aspect of the fallout, and that has been the targeting by some of our fans of Dion Fountas, the photographer who captured the moment. The justifications for targeting Fountas have been bizarre. A match photographer takes a photo of something that happens during a match, a match being played in front of hundreds of people - and somehow he's been targeted under some nonsense idea of censorship, and even been threatened with being banned from Lakeside.

Mind you, many of those same people targeting him now were happy to make use of Fountas' photos from the Victory game last year, praising him for taking and uploading his photos. Those same fans were happy to send videos to the commercial networks of the Victory hooligans. The same thing has happened in regards to radio broadcasts of games. When MFootball narrated the Victory incident, and made it abundantly clear to the audience that it was Victory fans at fault, our fans were stoked. But if the shoe is on the other foot, will some of us take umbrage of coverage of our own bouts of misbehaviour? Is it the act that is the problem, or merely the perpetrator? If it's the latter, it becomes hard to legitimately take the moral high ground on anything afterwards - you've effectively made it an issue of self-interest or self-preservation.

Aside from all of that, the idea that it was a brain fade by Konstantinidis doesn't seem right to me - this doesn't seem to be the kind of thing you do on a whim. If it was, he was horribly unlucky to be caught in the act in the only time he had ever attempted the maneuver. Of course, when the story was published by some major media outlets, the comments went through the roof. Probably not the kind of metrics the club was looking for though.

Social club news
Put it in your diary: 2017 SMFC Jersey Night, April 7th, 7:00PM. Venue...

THE SOUTH MELBOURNE HELLAS SOCIAL CLUB.

Contact the club directly if you wish to go. If you can't make it or choose not to, there'll be a family day the day after.

Around the grounds
An orange ticket for the man with the orange hair.
Westgate's pavilion is being torn down and replaced with a new one, so in 2017 they're playing their home games at Castley Reserve, which probably hasn't senior soccer for a very long time. Nevertheless, it's good for me, because it's within two minutes walking distance of my place. Yaraville took a 3-0 lead into the break, and looked to be cruising past a borderline inept Westgate. The second half saw Yarraville take its sweet time finishing the game, waiting until Westgate had pulled two goals back before making sure of it with a 4-2 win. I didn't win the raffle.

Final thought
This was one of those weeks where I regret having part of my self-esteem attached to the fortunes of this club.