It could always be worse (and some people seem to wish that it was) - South Melbourne 1 Essendon Royals 0

Zac Bates shows of his balletic prowess. Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

It really was a no-win situation. Given our erratic performances so far this year, our unsettled match-day squads, our coaching change, and our inability to score with any regularity, there are few if any South fans who are optimistic about our chances of progressing to the national stage of this tournament.

However that didn't mean that people were necessarily keen on losing this game; at least not until the last 15 minutes or so, knowing that actually progressing through to the next round could summon a worse fate, in the form of a more severe mauling against a more capable opponent.

Or even worse, distracting us from what looks like being another season battling to avoid relegation.

If we found a way to lose this game, the loss would've been rightly called a disgrace. If we'd won it comfortably, it would've been written off as achieving the bare minimum against a lowly opponent, again rightly so. In its own way, it was reassuring that the team managed to find a third, worse option than either of the preceding two: scraping through on a goal courtesy of a long-ball, and a header by one of our defenders placed into the path of another of our defenders, who slotted home like he was an actual striker, and all of that helped by the Royals defenders deciding they didn't need to track back.

So what kind of result would have placated our fans on Friday? Against a state league 1 opponent at the bottom of their division - and with no 'name' players, with the exception of Melbourne Knights also-ran striker Chris Talajic - probably nothing short of 4 or 5-0 win. Well, that didn't happen, and thus we are miserable.

This miserable state was enhanced not just the failure to second, third, and fourth goals, but also by the performances of some players. Giordano Marafioti got a start, looked dangerous at times (as he should against a state league 1 team if he's serious about this whole NPL business), but failed to take advantage of two very good chances in the first half; one from point-blank range, and another where he was one-on-one with the keeper. At under 20s level, missing those is less of a crime, because playing for South under 20s means you're going to get a heap of those chances; in the seniors, not so much.

Brother Pep was brought back in from the cold after two weeks away from the senior squad - due mostly, if one believes to the rumours, to a poor attitude on the training track - and failed to deliver. His lack of a right-foot was highlighted again, and even as one of his few prominent defenders, I can't help but think this is as good as we're going to get from Pep. He's been tried on the left, the right, and up front, and for the most part nothing has worked, and only some of that can be put down to playing in unsettled formations and unfamiliar positions.

Worst of all, after being benched around the hour mark, Pep proceeded to spit the dummy and march down the players race instead of taking his place back on the bench. So, that's probably someone we can chalk down as exiting the club come mid-May when the mid-season transfer window opens.

But who to put in his place? Well, we could do worse than Zac Bates, who showed a bit when he came on to the field (yes, it was only against a bottom of state league 1 club), but his speed was terrific at least, and he didn't look emotionally cooked after an early season spent injured and on the bench. Ben Djiba also continued to look good at right-back, as well as continue to provide the perplexing spectacle of an actual South Melbourne youth team player starting in the side (and not returning to the club to do so after several years away elsewhere) and looking competent.

More perplexing, and hopefully no serious ramifications come from this, was Kristian Konstaninidis being benched after an hour. One would've thought that KK could use all the game he could get, but he was subbed off to the confusion (and some disgust) of a few people, not least KK himself. Someone in forum land is saying that the substitution occurred because of a lost-in-translation moment between player and coach, and hopefully because we did win the game, that the misunderstanding is smoothed over, because we need a left-back desperately in lieu Brad Norton's absence with injury.

For all the angst about the performance, the Royals rarely threatened our goal. There was a goalmouth spill which was eventually cleared, and a sharp header straight at Roganovic. Then the Royals threw everyone forward towards the end, as you would expect. We hit the woodwork two or three times and missed some very gettable chances, which made things more difficult for us, as it has for most of this season. There was even a moment where it looked like we might get an unlikely penalty, when a Royals defender assumed a ball had gone out and thus rushed to hand it to his keeper (who was the Royals' reserve keeper, who had a solid game), only for there being the possibility that the ball had not actually gone out. Soon enough the officials decided that no player could have possibly been that stupid, and normal service resumed.

Anyway, because we could not find a second goal, we spent the last five minutes cowering in the corner. Not that there's anything wrong with that - it's what you should do when you're in front, and trying to secure the win - but it was unedifying within the context of having to do that against a side ranked two divisions below us.

The hyperbolic reaction to the win would be to say that the squad is at best a mid-tier state league 1 side, but that's why you don't rush home and post straight away. For those of us who haven't quite yet obliterated the quaint desire to see their team win games no matter how aesthetically coarse the method, the win was appreciated, even if the performance still left a lot of questions left to be answered.

As always, it could've been worse! Other NPL clubs lost or barely scraped through against similarly or even less credentialed teams than the Royals. Of course no one cares about those other NPL teams and their near or actual failures, because they are not carrying South Melbourne cultural baggage. It's the price we pay for continuing to support Australia's has-been soccer club.

Hat report
There were new, limited edition hats and caps available at the merch stand, for those who care about such things. Some of them were trucker hats. Not being a trucker, it didn't seem right for me to buy one. Plus I already have my pompom beanie anyway, and who cares if the temperature is pushing 30 degrees in the middle of April.

It was good to see Nikola Roganovic come out with a hat in the second half - not only is that sun-smart, but it also helps avoid situations like this. More confounding was Gerrie Sylaidos' choice of head-wear. By now we are all familiar with the fact that he wears a sort of light beanie during games, usually a white one. But what was the deal with the navy/dark variation used in Friday? It was very warm out there, and we all know that dark colours absorb light and/or heat much more than light colours do.

Music report
Well, after complaining that last week's stadium music, once again we had some variation of the Queer as Folk soundtrack. And then at half-time, we had some variation of a Triple M All-Time Greatest BBQ/Driving/Drinking songs compilation. Is that an improvement? Yes, I suppose so. If you're wondering where exactly I hope my complaints about the stadium music selections end up, it's with the soundtrack to SimCity 3000 being played over the public address system in all of its light-jazz, proto-vaporwave glory.

Next game
Dandenong Thunder away next Saturday night. Since the match falls on Orthodox Easter Saturday.

Final thought
I was out and about on Saturday morning trying to fix the gaping existential hole in my life by purchasing some music on compact disc (it didn't work), and after discussing the merits of El Perro Del Mar's self-titled album (it's ace in its depressive interpretation of '60s girl groups) and the Manic Street Preachers and Richey Edwards' disappearance, the store's proprietor noticed my South Melbourne hat. Well, that led to a discussion about second divisions and such, and also about Western United, which said shopkeeper said he would support because he lived in the area - until such point as I made the pithy comment that he'd have to be driving to Geelong and Ballarat until Western United built their ground, if indeed it ever got built. Hardly the most thrilling story, I know.

Some thoughts on Joe Gorman's 'The Death and Life of Australian Soccer'

The book is out now, and is widely available at chain
  and independent booksellers. It's also available as an
 ebook. The paperback retails at about $32 in stores

Warning: this piece contains some minor spoilers. Also, it's not really a review, more of a very ragged meandering through the book's themes and other stuff, partly because I can't hold together a coherent narrative to save myself, but also because I was told (probably rightly) that I couldn't really review a book I was in. Also I've been writing this while holed up at home because I've been sick.

Before I begin there are two clarifications that I need to make about this review. The first of these is for those of you who have not read yet the book, to keep in mind that your reviewer and an element of his writings and ideology is a part of this book, used as a vehicle for explaining Gorman’s thesis. The second point is that I have read this book before; not only in the discussions over several years with Joe which have helped inform and influence it – though to be absolutely clear, what is presented here is very much Gorman’s own argument, based on his own thorough research – but especially its draft form which was a little longer but otherwise near enough to the finished product.

The point of that preface is to say the following: I admit that I was almost in tears reading what would become this book the first time around, and having read it in its completed form now, I grieve again for what has been lost so far and for what will likely be lost soon enough. I also felt that it would upset people, especially on our side of the bitter/new dawn ledger, because unlike in his journalism Gorman does not go out of his way to appease our sensitivities especially regarding our future prosperity and relevance. As for the people on the new dawn side, if they get upset at anything in this book, they always have the comfort of being able to revel in Australian soccer now being designed in their image.

For whatever optimism a follower of one of the 'old' clubs might hope to elicit from this book, it is quickly dashed by its opening gambit. Yes, the book’s title tells us this will be the case. Yes, we know the National Soccer League is already doomed, having seen it die (or be murdered) first-hand. But the opening section, in illustrating the before and after of Marconi’s rise and fall in as stark a form as possible – the classic documentarian’s technique of juxtaposing images of a paradise turned into a ruin – there is no getting away from the pall which will only darken over the course of The Death and Life of Australian Soccer’s 375 pages.

The book covers much more than the NSL, by looking at what came both before and after it. Rather than seeking to confine itself to the 27 year window of the NSL in isolation, the book seeks to tackle much bigger fish. Gorman’s main questions are the perennial ones. First, how did ‘ethnic’ become a dirty word in Australian soccer? Second, why has Australian soccer internalised its hatred of ethnicity in this way? These are the nagging questions for both soccer and Australian society at large. They are important for what happened after 2004 in Australian soccer, and the rhetoric put out that the 'problem' of ethnicity was meant to have been solved once and for all. For Australian society at large, the question is at what point should the rights of migrant communities (especially non-English speaking ones) to have self-determination and control of their own affairs be curtailed.

Though ethnicity has been the perennial question in Australian soccer, and by extension in academic analyses of the game, in recent times new ideas have been pushed toward the middle (especially by Roy Hay) about how the structural flaws of the game's governance were as important as ethnicity to the game's historical woes, and that these structural flaws are an under-appreciated element of the Australian soccer story. Gorman’s book then tilts the scales back to the ethnic question, but in a more sophisticated way than has often been done before. Previous discussions have often been superficial, couched in terms of the self-interested politics of the game itself. Gorman seeks to address the matter of ethnicity as it manifests in Australian public culture independent of soccer, at the same time as it becomes a dirty word within soccer.

We arrive then at the core problem of ethnicity and how Australian society should be organised. Should different ethnic communities be allowed a measure of self-determination, or should they be expected to assimilate? If it is the former, how much freedom should they be allowed? Can they have a presence in national affairs in a scheme and style which does not acknowledge the assumed cultural, economic, and political centrality of Anglo-Celtic Australians, and perhaps even seeks to challenge that dominance? In no other sphere of Australian life has the dominance of Anglo-Celtic culture been challenged in quite the same way as it has been in Australian soccer thanks to its often unrepentant ‘ethnic’ quality. For a game already considered to be foreign to Australia, the ethnic takeover of the game – within the governing bodies, but especially in just sheer numbers on the hills and terraces – doomed the sport to a unique kind of obscurity, one where it was simultaneously popular among its constituent communities and yet invisible to mainstream Australia.

(And in that regard, I am only interested in discussing Australian soccer from after 1945, and if Ian Syson wants his pre-1945 stuff to be included in this debate he should hurry up and publish his book on the matter.)

There is no way Australian soccer can fight back from this position under an overtly ethnic format: not in its early 1960s glory days, not by the late 1970s when the NSL was formed out of fear, not hope, and certainly not through the withering and erratic decline of the 1980s and 1990s. While the formation of ethnic soccer clubs could have been seen as migrants making a commitment to Australia in a different way, instead it was seen as an anti-Australian maneuver. This is an understandable view to take from people outside the game, but the problem was that people within the game also saw it this way.

In some respects this story can only be told by an Anglo who was not a follower of the NSL. Everyone else is too close, and likely being ‘ethnic’, only able to see the issue from the inside. Gorman’s point in the early part of the book that he and his dad, otherwise committed soccer people, only went to one NSL game is the perfect (or near enough to perfect) vehicle for exploring this issue. It presents a change from Gorman’s usual work in his journalism on soccer. There he was obliged to obliterate or obscure himself as a narrator in the great journalistic tradition, giving off the vibe of neutrality and getting his politics across by choosing which quotes to use and from whom. That gave Gorman an always plausible get-out clause should any interview subject say anything particularly egregious or objectionable or outright insane – an unusually plausible possibility in Australian soccer. Here instead we have a reassertion of Gorman’s own character, playing the role of the de facto Anglo representative.

Goodness knows that putting it like that reveals the situation's deep seated problems of anthropological neutrality, but I've never done any undergrad sociology units, and the sociology books (both pro and anti sociology) I've scavenged over the years have mostly remained on my shelves.

What balances out Gorman's Anglo-outsider perspective more than anything is his framing much of the early analysis through the experience of Andrew Dettre, a man more or less the opposite of Gorman. Where Gorman is young, Anglo and situated firmly in the role of a journalist, Dettre is (by the end) very experienced, foreign-born, and not merely a journalist but also an activist. It is an activism not limited to soccer either; Dettre had grand schemes for Australian society as a whole, and a hope that soccer could be a vehicle for driving that social change. This is an important aspect of the work. Dettre had grand and sometimes contradictory ideas about soccer, but these were tied to grander ideas about what the nation could be. They reflected his own political feelings but also his experience as a refugee and migrant. This intellectual outpouring spanned several decades, pseudonyms, publications, and literary styles. Much as Gorman would wish he could write a biography of Dettre’s incredible life, such a book would never sell. Setting a quasi-biography of Dettre within a biography of Australian soccer therefore makes sense.

But as unique as Dettre is as an Australian soccer intellectual, he did not emerge or write from within a cultural vacuum. One of the things Gorman does here is rescue the Hungarians and their contribution as a collective to Australian soccer from under the weight of the more visible Italians, Croatians and Greeks. (It also takes, or rather I hope it will take, at least some of the heat off those latter groups who often get the entire blame for the failure of the NSL and the 'holding back' of Australian soccer). The Hungarians differ from many of their more well-known rival and contemporary ethnic groups. Their immigration numbers were smaller and centred on two very short bursts of migration. They were also more likely to have been educated, less prone to forming ghettoes, and through St George Budapest, made the sincerest attempts of all the ethnic clubs to broaden their fan base.

But even though they provide much of the intellectual and conceptual heft for soccer and the NSL to move forward, Dettre is not exactly like the other Hungarians. His intellectualism crosses over into an elitism that creates a distance between himself and his audience, including other journalists. The broadness of his thinking, the depth of his feeling, and the scope of his ambition is at times overwhelming. The social marginalisation of soccer further curtails his ability to transform Australian society, and it is no great accident that he has his greatest (albeit qualified) successes when he works for the Whitlam government.

There may be those while reading this book who will attempt to trace what effect if any that Gorman's reading of Dettre's work and speaking with the man himself has had on this book. Gorman may think otherwise, but I don’t see much if any stylistic influence resembling Dettre’s in Gorman’s work. That is unavoidable in a sense, not just for the length and dedication of Dettre’s career to this cause, his intellectualism, and Dettre’s learning English as a second language; but it is also because Dettre was never only looking back but also always looking forward. When Dettre ceases looking forward with any optimism, it effectively marks the end of his involvement with the game. To that end the most visible influence Dettre has on Gorman is in declaring an end to things. In the 1980s Dettre writes obituaries for the game, for the soccer press, and for the hope that ethnicity and soccer might create a pluralist Australia. Here, Gorman writes the obituary to end all obituaries, seeing a sort of end of Australian soccer history. What else is there to write about in Australian soccer, especially in terms of the present anodyne, Anglicised arrangement?

As the book comes to a close, Gorman becomes outwardly sentimental. Not that he has treated everything that has come before as simply a matter of facts, but there is a further disintegration in the veneer of objectivity. Among the tragedies for Gorman is that individuals initially left behind by new football could be reintegrated into the new world, but not the cultural and organising structures that created those individuals. This affects not only those who were affiliated with those past structures, but also those who currently belong to groups which resemble in their self-organisation – mostly accidentally – the structures of the past. If Gorman writes an elegiac 'end of history' for ethnic soccer in Australia, knowing that the Anglo establishment and those who have joined them have quashed any hope for even a minor revival from new migrant communities, he does not fall far from Dettre's late era manifesto.

But it is worth remembering that many of those who ran and followed the ethnic clubs were in some important ways not so different from their mainstream Australian sporting counterparts, in that they were bound to a safe and conformist conservatism, something which must have frustrated Dettre immensely. Because for all the praise (if that's the right word) you can give to the NSL for its diversity compared to other sports, for large periods of time the NSL itself was at best only a narrow multicultural experiment, limited mostly to clubs formed by migrants from central and southern Europe. While on the field it had a truly global diversity, off the field it had limited interest to people not directly connected to the scene. While there were enough people from those constituent ethnic communities to sustain them, this was not an issue; but soon enough those communities started drifting away.

In time the greatest betrayal of the ethnic clubs, if one can use such a provocative term, comes not from their own or the governing bodies' incompetences, nor the disinterest of the general public who had no obligation to follow them, but from those younger supporters who turned their back on their fathers’ clubs. It is a provocative assertion, and I do not believe Gorman is making it as strongly as I am, but there is more than the suggestion that without the intervention of ethnics inside the game towards change, things may not have ended up in the direction they did. The sons of the immigrants left the old edifice to die, either by leaving the game completely or joining in the new world.

This is the most profound demographic shift of them all, and it is my assertion based upon reading this book that it is more important than the hordes of juniors and their parents, the midweek indoor and futsal players, and the silent majority who even now show no interest in local top-flight soccer, preferring instead late nights and highlights packages from overseas leagues. For all the failure of the ethnic clubs to tap into new audiences - including the spectacular failure of St George, who tried harder than anyone to branch outwards - the inability of the ethnic clubs to hold on to their core support is what ultimately dooms them; growth for most of them is non-existent, and even for the best of them only incremental.

Gorman doesn't put all the blame for this on the ethnic clubs - there is much in Australian soccer and Australian society that they cannot control, and the self-loathing of those governing the game also drives people away - but nevertheless the crowd numbers speak for themselves. Without the ethnic communities growing out of their clubs and the ethnic scene, without those supporters jumping across to new broadbased franchises or moving towards mainstream Australian sports (or leaving the game entirely), it would not have been so easy to dislodge the pre-eminence of the ethnic clubs. The desire of soccer to mainstream itself was tied to the desire of migrants to mainstream themselves, a funny thing in itself considering persistent political and media fearmongering about ethnic ghettoes.

(As an aside, one observance and one unrequited desire. The observance is that perhaps summer soccer was the greatest mistake ever made by Australian soccer authorities, because whereas when the various football seasons overlapped people were forced to choose which one they would attend, when there was no overlap it became easy to have one's cake and eat it too. The unrequited desire is for someone to write a book on the cultural history of Saturday morning foreign language schools, which would include reference to being hotbeds of street soccer.)

The arrival of Perth Glory showed what was possible in a previously unrepresented market; Adelaide United cemented the idea, because it sprouted from the topflight corpse of Adelaide City Juventus; Melbourne Victory colonised its market in a way no other team has; and Western Sydney Wanderers finished off the job, bringing Australian soccer's migrant heartland over en masse to the A-League. Some would interpret this as evidence of the migrant soccer fans evolving to the next stage of becoming Australians, but it can also be interpreted as them assimilating and subsuming their differences into a larger amorphous whole.

It also does not take into full account those examples where broadbased clubs fail, with my thoughts on this usually going toward Brisbane Strikers. Some of the blame is put onto the notion that it was wrong to expect a league with any ethnic representation to succeed, the comparison being made by Lou Sticca of the ethnic clubs being dirty water that only serves to pollute the clean water of the broadbased clubs. I guess he only came up with this analogy after the clean water of broadbased Carlton SC got dirtied by its association with the dirty water of the footy club. But if there's one thing which comes through, is that as rubbish as the management of most of the clubs ethnic and non-ethnic was in the NSL, it was the ethnic ones which survived and still survive, whereas most of the non-ethnic ones carked it quick smart.

Oh Joe, why not something about Morwell Falcons? There's so many nooks and crannies to discover about Australian soccer, and you talk about Australian soccer moving away from a democratic and meritocratic paradigm, but the Falcons only get passing mention in your book! They came from a town of fewer than 20,000, built a nice boutique stadium and social club, earning their way through the league system while other people - you know who you are - were and still are banging on about some dump called Geelong and when it will get its act together. But I digress.

Then there is the intervention of the players. Many of them were born and raised within the ethnic club system at the game’s most prestigious clubs, and thus they understand intimately the cultural framework of the game. The players become militant after being exploited for too long, and quickly become the best organised, the most professional, and the most ideologically consistent faction in Australian soccer. If there is an argument to be made about structure predominating over ethnicity as a means of examining the fortunes of Australian soccer, it is via the players becoming a new force which disrupts the decades long tug of war between the governing bodies and clubs.

There are plenty of moments in this book which will generate debate. Among them is Gorman’s belief of the sheer folly of promotion and relegation and a second division, asserting them to be anathema to Australian sporting culture. Gorman also says, more or less, that promotion-relegation cannot happen because the A-League was not just an attempt to make a successful sporting competition, but about overturning an entire system of being. Gorman argues that before the A-League was even formed that it existed as a ‘state of mind’, with the idea being that it would transcend, but not reflect Australian soccer; that all the rough edges would be smoothed out, and that the game would be gentrified. For a sport which had spent so long not doing what it was told, this is the ultimate victory or betrayal depending on which side of the side of the debate you come from.

And has not South of the Border talked about the wilful embourgeoisement of the game in Australia? Some of it has been done on an individual level (fees, extra coaching, making little Johnny/Johnette feel special), and some of it has been done on a macro level, for example moving to modern stadiums that the teams cannot afford but which look good. And always linked to that, the attempt to shed any links to the past, including the self-loathing of soccer governing bodies' past and present and their revulsion of being linked with SBS. Not that SBS is an ideal commercial partner for any sport except those like the Tour de France, but much of the commercial limitations come from them being associated with ethnicity and the game's past by sponsors, the 'mainstream' and worst of all, Australian soccer fans.

Under such a framework, finances and commercial viability are almost of secondary concern. Those arguing for promotion and relegation have to not only successfully argue that the idea stacks up financially, they also have to argue convincingly that the current system as it has been set up can and must be overthrown, and that soccer need not follow what the other Australian sports do. Considering how hard so many people have worked to make Australian soccer as much like the other 'traditional' Australian sports as possible, this will be no mean feat. It would be, as Gorman argues here, a case of soccer returning to its old guise of trying to change Australian culture instead of fitting in.

Another lesson to be learnt is that soccer in Australia expects the momentum of goodwill to sustain it, and when it does not, it starts acting reactively. Bursts of interest due to World Cup qualification (now considered a fait accompli process rather than a do-or-die event) or cream of the crop touring teams disguise longer bouts of stagnation. Spurts of heightened interest and engagement do not have the same value as consistency of interest, the kind which sustains the two major codes of football. And while the NSL was certainly not immune to acting haphazardly to its rotting stagnation, neither is the A-League and the current FFA regime safe from its own inability to truly entrench itself among the likes of the NRL or AFL, as opposed to transient competitions like the NBL or Super Rugby, whose teams have little to no local connection and no consistency of feeling, and more precipitously, no communal corporeality. Gorman raises doubts about the meanings of many of the current A-League franchises, implying a soft underbelly which would not be able to survive truly testing times.

I have long argued however that this vagueness can actually be a strength and an appealing quality for many. There is just enough clarity about who these A-League franchises are – usually the team from ‘here’ – and more than enough ambiguity so that ideological and emotional connections are free to be construed in any which way different supporters like. People are free to adopt a level of commitment that for the most part is theirs and theirs alone, and not dependent on a greater whole. And while one could point out the fact that should these entities run into trouble that they would cease existing rather than carry on in a lower league, even though the ethnic clubs have often continued, for most people who care to think about these things they too have stopped existing. 

Gorman is right to suggest that the ability to decide for oneself how committed one is to a cause means that at any moment one may simply choose not to be as committed. A book such as this by its nature is interested in those who are engaged with the game in ways aside from its recreational aspects. Thus you have among the many players, administrators and journalists people like the statistician Andrew Howe, and the late zine editor and agitator Kevin Christopher, whose presence also plays at adding colour to the Anglo spectrum. But it is missing the great mass of people, the silent majority, those who make home economics style decisions - insofar as their decision making is based around the allocation of their limited leisure time and money - about how they will follow the game. While those people are essential to the success of any mass sporting entertainment product, those people do not spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing about what Gorman has long considered the most niche of topics in Australian soccer, discussions which take place in equally niche environments: the abandoned terraces of state league clubs, and the dank corners of #sokkahtwitter. 

Me having lunch with Joe Gorman somewhere in Ballarat earlier this year
 One of the things which will probably go unremarked about this book is
 Joe's use of literary depictions of Australian soccer. While I can't take credit
 for anything else which appears in this book (except the bits where I get
quoted or paraphrased, which is mostly stuff from here anyway) I will
take credit for introducing Joe to that literary material. Even better though
was Joe using other stuff that he found in Soccer World, including
work by Dettre, former Socceroo Ray Richards, and children's writer
David Bateson. I do hope it prompts people to read that kind of work,
especially David Martin's The Young Wife. Photo: Ian Syson.

So while I may have some qualms about my portrayal in this book, leaning as it does towards an almost untenable miserableness, I can nevertheless understand my being included in this book. Gorman’s interest lies in two types of people; those who were involved with running the game, whether they felt something for it or not; and more importantly, those who have thought and written deeply about the game, whose emotional devotion is much harder to question. But I am wary of being depicted as a victim; partly because if indeed I am a victim, I am not the only one.

In that sense my inclusion in this narrative is validation of two things; that I have thought deeply about the game and written about it in that way; and that I have felt deeply about the game, and that whether I am right or wrong on the matters which I discuss, there is a purity to whatever agenda I may have. That purity of feeling is not exclusive to me though. Still, seeing yourself in print in any format, let alone what is likely to be praised as a landmark book on Australian soccer history, is enough to make one feel a little anxious. It is an anxiety based not just around what strangers will think of you, but also what those who know you will think of you. In my case, the worry is that I will be interpreted (through no fault of Joe's, really) as being the definitive voice of old soccer in its current guise.

The bit where I come into the book has largely gone
unremarked upon so far, except for a friendly bit of
banter relating to my resembling one of those guys who
 loses interest in a band he likes when the band becomes too
 popular. Without arguing too vociferously against such
 a portrayal, because there's probably some latent truth to
it, it did remind me of a bit in Simon Price's biography of
the Manic Street Preachers. When the Manics break through
commercially with their fourth album Everything Must Go,
  their concerts start attracting boorish Oasis and Britpop
listening types in addition to their then loyal and very
alternative audience. Basically the two types can't stand
each other, and eventually the feather boa wearing, zine
writing original fans, who had supported the band through
 thick and thin up to that point, start drifting away.
It's a great book by the way, I highly recommend it.

Lest anyone get ahead of themselves on that front, I have made it clear on many occasions here and elsewhere that I have never sought to claim such a mantle, and that South of the Border has always been about offering a place for any South fan to put pen (or cursor) to paper (or screen). That South of the Border has had limited success in that is beside the point - we have published a diversity of voices, including non-South voices - and have attempted to solicit contributions from the South public, mostly to little avail. So it goes.

Problematic then for me within this analysis is that amid Gorman’s gentle evisceration of Anglo-Celtic Australians (especially those of a pro-multicultural bent) for their refusal to engage with ethnic soccer, the absence of the British migrant is perplexing. It is all the more confusing because of oblique references made to the Englishness of Perth Glory’s Shed – the acceptable kind of ethnicity for many of those in Australian soccer who otherwise wanted to purge ethnicity – as well as noting the flood of British players who were involved in the early parts of the NSL. But British migrants and especially the English, whose numbers collectively outnumbered every other migrant group combined after the war, are otherwise nowhere to be seen.

Likewise those people who ran the clubs and especially those first generation migrants who followed those clubs are also greatly under-represented. Indeed one of my fellow South Melbourne supporters noted upon purchasing the book that I was in the index far more than long time South Melbourne Hellas president George Vasilopoulos. Though it fits in with the way Gorman has decided to tackle his subject, it feels like a massive lacuna that will never be filled. Players, younger supporters, journalists, administrators are all there, as are those who went on to found the ‘broadbased’ clubs during the NSL, but not those who were there at the beginning of the ethnic soccer club phenomenon. Some of these guys are dead, and I suppose that's a reasonable enough excuse. 

But there are still guys who are alive and kicking who probably should have been included in this. For a book that was going to end up with narrative and thematic gaps no matter how much was included, this is a major omission. Ironically, this fits in with Gorman's thesis of the Anglo rejection of non-Anglo culture, in that non-English language news sources and interview subjects are mostly absent from the book. One can't blame that on the author's monolingualism, because one would need reading proficiency in several languages to get across the thousands of column inches; either that, or a well paid research team to sift through the ethnic papers of record.

There are unavoidable issues in the book, based around treating each state and region fairly, the experience of Indigenous Australians, and the story of women’s participation, or just as often, non-participation. As much as there is an ethnic vs non-ethnic issue which dominates our thinking on Australian soccer’s past, there is also a state vs state issue; the experience of the game varies so much between regions, and it is difficult if not impossible for people to feel they have a shared connection. Some of the sojourns Gorman takes to cover this stuff works well – I am thinking here in particular of the Queensland State League section – but others seem occasionally to be tacked on, or not to fit exactly, as if Gorman is trying to cram in as many things as possible. 

To an extent Gorman agrees with this, arguing early on that there is no possibility of writing a point-to-point history of Australian soccer, and he does well to include as many parts of the national soccer experience as he does; but one cannot help but feel that there were times when some states or regions or experiences which were not covered in depth or at all. And since most of the NSL was based around Melbourne and Sydney, it makes sense if more time is spent there.

Even though they are of value and worth including, the parts dealing with women's soccer can only hope to provide a taste of that experience. This is frustrating, because women's soccer, like other women's sports both in Australia and overseas, deals with many of the same issues of assimilation and self-determination; should women's sport work with or separately to men's sport? Does women's sport lose the chance to forge its own identity if its proximity is too close to men's sport? These are questions however for another writer to confront more fully.

The book is as much about what came before and what happened after as it is about what happened during. Therefore it scoots along at some points, while being more detailed in others. There are lacunas which will frustrate people, especially those who feel that their experience or their region is not covered in enough depth. Some people will want more of the specific car crash details of bad soccer governance and outrageous incidents, but the risk is that those will be seen as the main point of the story with the bigger issue of soccer's cultural positioning being lost. Focusing too much on these risks turning any analysis of Australian soccer into a freak show, which is fine for idle internet banter but less suitable for a serious book of history.

Of course the book could be twice as long, even more formidably detailed, and better for it in my opinion. But there is also the advice Stephen Hawking's editor gave him prior to publishing his bestselling A Brief History of Time: namely, that for every equation Hawking would put in, the potential audience would be halved. Thus a book written this way is also more accessible, written not only for the initiated and already interested, but for those for whom the NSL and the world which sustained it mean little more than folklore.

Dealing largely with documentary evidence and interviews, the book does not engage much with academic debates. It helps with the book's accessibility, but there were moments when an engagement with other books, such as Ross Solly's imperfect but important Shoot Out would have been welcome, if for no other reason than more explicitly tracing different political party relationships to the game; from Dettre and Whitlam's progressivism, to the NSW Labor Right faction's ethnic bloc backing Tony Labbozzetta (which vanishes when ethnic clubs need the most support), to the Liberals changing the game and its ethnic character into something more like their own ideal of the national character.

But the book does most things very well. It nails soccer's contradictory nature; its tendency for being both ahead of the curve (Dettre/St George/Canberra City/Newcastle KB) but also behind the curve (pretty much everyone in the game at some point). It gets that the conflict of sport has never been just business, especially not in Australian soccer, whose raison d'être was one of primarily self-proclamation and actualisation. It gets the conservatism of the ethnic clubs, and their reluctance to cede the one major bit of power and cultural influence they have in Australian culture, but mostly their desire to be left alone.

Its selection of quotes is very good, from Mark Rudan’s 'it was their job to fit in with us'; the description of David Hill as being to the right of Genghis Khan; the lead up to the 1997 grand final being like 'the wogs against Brisbane'; and Jesse Fink's denouncement of Ange Postecoglou when the latter became Brisbane Roar coach as offering nothing because Postecoglou is 'old soccer'. But even within the structure of the book, there will be quibbles about who was interviewed and why, and I think many of those quibbles could be justified. Remo Nogarotto gets much more time than Tony Labbozzetta. Kimon Taliadoros gets interviewed in his guise as the vanguard for the establishment of the player union movement, but he does not get asked about his later time as South Melbourne general manager, which would have yielded interesting information about South's late struggles to move between its past and an uncertain future. There is almost no mention of Tony Ising, which whether you consider him one of the great prophets or the most unnecessarily bitter man in Australian soccer, seems like a large oversight.

The early reviews have been positive about the book, albeit largely thin on detail. Australia’s most noteworthy soccer historian, Roy Hay, writing his first impression of the book has largely lauded it, with his necessary caveat about the lack of emphasis on the organising structures put in place in the early 1960s. Others have focused on Gorman’s belief that the idea of promotion-relegation and second division is folly, and that there are lessons to be learned from the NSL’s haphazard attempt to implement the former. Adam Howard has gone into much greater depth on that particular matter, arguing the point that while history can provide a guide and a warning, on this matter Gorman has misappropriated the details for his own defeatist narrative.

My stance being well enough known on the promotion/relegation issue, it is not for me to continue a debate I have little interest in, preferring to let that run its own course. But Howard's point about Gorman's apparent defeatist tone is worth picking up on. Because of its sense of finality, and its desire to declare a definitive end to the past, this book leaves the reader without any sense of how things might change for Australian soccer in the future. The history of Australian soccer has been one of constant upheaval, and yet there is an assumption made in this book that that process has ended, at least in ways that we are familiar with.

Recent events in the form of wrangling for control over the game and its future direction have shown us this is not quite the case; and while I do not think that the ethnic clubs are or could be the main drivers of any future change, to present them as likely having no meaningful future is too forceful of an assertion. But that is also very much a personal take, as I would like to think there is hope, however outrageous that hope may seem, and that our resilience in the face of all obstacles could one day yield a new direction. Maybe Gorman refuses to speculate for the sake of speculation, but the lack of optimism in the book rather than creating an empathy (the feeling that we are suffering together) for soccer migrants old and new will likely only engender a hopeless sense of sympathy (feeling bad for someone's plight, but not feeling that their burden is yours as well) .

It is the kind of thing which makes me wonder who is going to read this book, and what wider impact it will have. After all, how many reviewed and discussed the Hay/Murray magnum opus? The discussion on matters of books and history among the soccer community seems intermittent at best, and for the most part these discussions are reflective rather than inspiring a call to arms. It is unfair to demand something else from Gorman here, because while he is at pains to not try and diminish the ongoing survival of the old clubs, he cannot lie and say that they have a thriving existence. The dwindling few followers of the 'prominent' ex-NSL clubs who will read this book will be able to change little about the situation.

To be clear, no one doubts the sincerity of their - our - passion; after all, it takes a certain kind of moral hard-headedness to keep following a state league club in the way that we do. In the epilogue in particular, which finishes with a rewriting of a blog post I made - a post that I know back then struck Gorman as extraordinarily poignant - there is little hope. For those with the intestinal fortitude to keep following the old clubs, that moral certainty is also matched up with what is also a rare sense of duty. While I tend to think in the book Gorman’s tone is more realist than defeatist, those two adjectives when deployed in the way they have been here are not so far from each other. The fields have been sown with salt. There will be people who will rail against that view, possibly ignoring the argument’s nuances, but Gorman is at pains to point out the violent excision of one of Australian soccer's core attributes, its ability to harbour new migrants who bring their numbers, playing talent and novel organisational attributes. Neither is there any hope that another Dettre could emerge. From which community? From which medium? To say what, exactly, and to whom? It is remarkable that an Andrew Dettre even existed in the first place.

Those picking up the book who never experienced the NSL or ethnic soccer in full flight might better understand how we got to now, but soon enough they will probably be back at the A-League, that competition dreamt up not just to rehabilitate soccer in a benign sense, but to cleanse it. If the idea of ‘cleansing’ has potentially volatile and incendiary overtones – especially within an Australian soccer context! - it is hard to argue that this is not what has happened. Damnatio memoriae it may not be, but it is as close as we can get.

My chief concern with the book then is not with its content, which I broadly agree with and which I think has been written very well. Rather it is with what will follow it? Will people merely praise the book, cherry pick certain sections out of it, and then discard its lessons and deeper message about using soccer as a means of understanding Australian society? After all, while it is a book about Australian soccer it is also a book about ‘us’ as a nation. Gorman throws down the challenge to the current generation of soft-headed multiculturalists, but will they engage with this book in the way I believe they should?

The Death and Life of Australian Soccer is not a hagiography of the NSL or ethnic soccer. For those hoping for a celebratory tome about the NSL, its great matches, players and clubs, this is not that book. Gorman writes that he hopes that in time those stories will be written – but in the meantime he emphasises that something has been lost, and there is some empathy in that emphasis. It is hard to pin down what exactly may have been lost – perhaps it is the large scale generosity of spirit from the true believers, those who literally built their clubs from scratch, not dependent on wealthy benefactors; perhaps it is the chance for a different Australia to be promoted. If Gorman is not exactly channelling the grief of those left behind, he is at least channelling Dettre's disappointment.

So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything

Some things we/I learned/had reiterated last night at the Manics' gig at the Forum. You can guess/decide for yourself which of these falls into what category.

• There are actually a lot of guitar solos in the Manics' repertoire.
• The fact that Sean Moore couldn't play his trumpet solo during Ocean Spray(apparently due to a coldsore) did not take away from James Dean Bradfield's substituted guitar solo.
• Manics fans have been waiting a long, long time, and it showed. In a good way though.
• If you're a Manics fan who doesn't know every single lyric, you're probably in the minority (like me), but it doesn't matter one bit. Just shout out during the choruses.
• Nicky Wire's lyrics have become ever more ludicrous, but within a certain context, it does not matter.
• Being a pasty Welshman who wears a leopard print skirt, eyeliner, captain's hat straight of the Love Boat and has feather boas wrapped around your mike stand probably gives you more right than anyone to have a go at the dress sense of a Sydney audience.
• The way the floor at the Forum shifts and shudders when a band and an audience are jumping around in unison is a great feeling.
• That was one of the best, most friendliest but engaged and active vibes I've experienced at a gig. Why can't they all be so dickhead free?

It does my head in / What happened to the bigger picture?

It's all rather typical and generic. Everyone hates the same things and people. Sometimes different people and things. And sometimes they can even be convinced to change a previously held opinion, all because someone all of a sudden agreed with them, or did enough agreeable things over a period of time to sway that opinion to the other side. Or they get caught up in the emotion and half-eloquence created by someone who washes and learned how to spell.

What I am talking about? Well, in the lesser sense, football fandom and the ongoing Bitter/New Dawner trench warfare, but in a larger sense perhaps, Planet Earth. But there's humour to be found in it, humour and irony and sadness. Les Murray and SBS are despised for being pro A-League and forgetful of the old migrant and other NSL clubs, those that gave them their livelihoods for so many years. They are also accused of being anti A-League and everything that the new regime has tried to make happen. Mike Cockerill has gone from hated to loved, and loved to hated. Michael Lynch from love to hated and hated to loved, and to writing essays defending his coverage and lack of coverage to angry letter writers.

There are those who love the game above all, because without the game there is nothing. And there are those who reluctantly and not love their club above the game, for without clubs, there would only be nations, exhibition matches and park football. There are those from both sides who hate indiscriminately, and from who don't care what the evidence is. And there are those who put forth faux intellectual spins, Hephaestus inspired word and truth smithery. And then there are those caught in the middle. Those who embraced the A-League as their first true footballing love but who can see the Bitter side... and those Bitters who still attend their first love club but have an appreciation of the need to change. And we are forever painted in blacks and whites, ethnics and anglos, Bitters and New Dawners, reactionaries and other reactionaries.

Oh, and everyone being Against Modern Football, even though it's an inconsistent and never the same to two different people mix of terrace romanticism and excuse to bash the fuck out of whoever they feel like, because that's what real soccer support is all about, maaaaaaaaaan.

The broader fantasy land that is Australia, or at least huge swathes of it, says there is only one type of Australia. It is meat pies, it is kangaroos, it is Holden cars. It is Bradman, it is Digger, Aussie, Digger, Aussie, Dinkum and a flag with four foreign nations represented on it and the mistaken belief that we own the Southern Cross, or some neo-Nazi group does, or worse, Melbourne Victory fans. It is asking Asian people how long they've lived in Australia even though they were born here. It's not nearly illiterate factory wogs learning to speak different languages while working. Or babies brought up by neighbours of different ethnicities while you worked. It's not 25,000 at Olympic Park when the VFL was actively trying to kill off VFA clubs.

The NSL was, in its own typically bumbling fashion, so Australian that it was not Australian. It had the broadest range of people, and experiences, and food, and style, and all that tree hugging multicultural crap that we were told was an essential part of being Australia, that after many backward years of racism, the multicultural shift that had made Australia great. No. It was too Australian. Too pluralist, too ramshackle, too independent, too anarchic, too representative of everything the beloved mainstream didn't stand for, neat cul-de-sacs and sunny beaches to send back to the old country which was wasn't (but really was).

I'm sick of the crap and the hypocrisy, but I'm more sick of how it all misses the greater issues that this stuff taps into. That so many in this country have been duped into thinking multiculturalism means everyone acting the same, just eating different food. Reminds me of a line in a song, 'The New World Order is like the EPL; same old shit, just more expensive'. And if you stand a up like a nail, then you will be knocked down. And the Commonwealth Ban has sent me several important messages about my account through email, which is great except for one thing. I don't bank with the Commonwealth. And maybe doing Working Class Writing was a lot of fun, but it also made me even more negative. And maybe I saw or maybe I just thought I saw an old teacher of mine today, who believed in me and encouraged me, but I couldn't be sure it was him so I didn't say anything, and then came to the conclusion that if it was him, he didn't recognise me because of my hat and the fact that I was wearing a band t-shirt.

Which doesn't make any sense of course. And it's really tiring. And that looking at pictures of deepest space, or remembering lessons from Epicurus and Seneca derived from pop-philosopher/entrepreneur Alain De Botton... and thinking about a silly photocopied sheet of paper passed on to me by Mike Baylis who I haven't spoken to in 7 years and will likely never speak to again even though tracking him down is not an impossible task, from Lyle Stebbing, the aforementioned teacher, whose class I wasn't even in anymore because I'd done it the previous year, about existentialism... it changed my life, probably for the better, but it's taken a while for that fruit to ripen on that tree.

Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel? Round 3 - Preston Lions vs South Melbourne

Last Time They Met

I think it was about half way through last year. They won 2-1, avenging their loss at home earlier in the season. The winner was one of those mishit crosses that goes in. Funny that.

Preview
Not that we can't win - we did it last season, and actually haven't lost there since we dropped down to the VPL - but I don't think we will. A good fighting draw is my guess.

Holy mass of dead insects

Or, I guess I just wasn't made for these times, again,

Or, a slightly jaded version of what went down at the season launch, with the order of events probably messed up bigtime.


What a night! It was the most awesomest, magical, drunken... hold on, that's actually someone else's story. Let me start again.

I'm being driven to the ground in a board member's car. He's got recent AC/DC playing at a decent volume, and though my fingers gently mimic their dinosaur rhythm section, that music's not really my forte. Neither is the Greek music put on, but it's his car, he can play what he wants. And it's not like everyone can get pumped up by listening to Manic Street Preachers 'Mausoleum'. So us people with a more defiantly miserable taste in music sometimes just have to make do. But it's more about the company than anything, which was as usual was quite enjoyable. Especially in regards to a phone call made which we can't elaborate on sadly, for fear of alienating and offending one of our regular readers with its delightful wickedness.

So we get to Lakeside, and we park the car through the side gate, making us like bigshots. After repeatedly being called "Proedre" (president) by South's groundskeeper Argiri over recent months - which was added to in its bizarre backhanded compliment fashion by certain alleged South of the Border fanboys, but that's a story for another day, maybe when I figure out where sincerity ends and irony begins - but it does make you feel like someone important. But by doing it that way, I missed out on walking along the candle lit path in the social club... the right way at least.

After some squandered time which I'll never get back standing around doing not much, I went into the office where people were putting the finishing touches on slides and rundowns... but it was probably best that I leave that area, and so I did. Eventually people start arriving and we chit chat and eat finger food. There's certain stunners there you'll know you'll never see during the season, and the same old diehards who are pretty much always there. And then we get called finally to go in, an hour after we're supposed to have started. Greeks. Go figure.

Seating for 300, with apparently 296 of those spots filled. Walking through the spaces between tables is tough, but manageable. The television screen is at one of the rectangular complex, near the players tables, and the majority of the Clarendon Corner crew here tonight as well those who might be considered mere associates of said crew were at the extreme opposite end of the marquee. Not sure which cake eating boffin came up with that arrangement or why. I pop the sticker in my pocket... more than one person makes the mistake of sitting on their programme and membership brochure.

Speeches are made, and videos are played, choc full of corn which has its fans but not everyone can survive on a diet of pure polenta. And so we were served what I suppose they called the first course, the appetizers, a selection of dips and antipasto on which there was little room to place on our overly crowded tables, and therefore nigh to impossible to fully enjoy. No matter. Soon it was time to tug at the heartstrings some more, by asking people to buy a membership. While I can admit the fact that there were plenty of wives and girlfriends there last night there who wouldn't necessarily turn up to a game, surely everyone else would have or would soon purchase one anyway. But you probably can't take anything for granted anymore... a lesson learned the hard way.

Rama, Horsey and probably Stevie O'Dor were called up to don the three heritage strips we'll apparently be wearing this year. The thinking behind it was that we were celebrating or acknowledging the triumvirate which made South Melbourne Hellas... and everyone lapped it up. Except me, because I'm a trainspotter and I know the truth, or about 95% of it anyway. Hellenic were represented by a striped jersey, United by their amnesiac red 'V', and Yarra Park by ostensibly the main strip we'll be wearing this year which is copy of a 1983/4 Buffalo Cup jersey. So what did happen to the Yarra Park Aias jersey? I'm betting they just didn't know what it actually looked like. Hell, apart from the alleged colours, I don't know either. What were those colours? Yellow and black. Probably best to move on right now.

Time to auction off the players. The auction was split into two parts, with defenders and goalies first and the midfielders and forwards second. Smfcboard purchased Shane Nunes for a lazy gorilla, and bumped up the prize probably on a few players. After a bit of a break - was that when we had the main course? I'd been hanging out for that since lunchtime, and unfortunately I didn't get the chicken. I got veal , which was ok, but the question on every hungry person's lips was, where was all the food? The serving sizes were that modest, and sure the food was good, but seriously, where was it all? And don't get me started on the deserts. How was I supposed to eat my pannacotta without a spoon? It took about 15 minutes to get one, while I sat and watched my little chilled delicacy slowly warm up.

Now where were we? Oh yeah, the auction. The second part saw higher prices, with Fernando winning the title for highest pricetag, somewhat surprisingly perhaps with Horsey back at the club. Every player was given their shirt by a former player, who was asked to say a few words, but usually declined. Jimmy Armstrong told a Scottish joke, Jim Pyrgolios had a spiel in Greek (pretty much the only Greek spoken in an official capacity on the night - interpret that as you wish), and Ulysses Kokkinos was introduced as the Hugh Hefner of Australian football. The hearty welcome for him made me feel uneasy. How is it possible that a convicted cocaine trafficker and shameless user of women can be so loved, but Con Boutsianis be so reviled?

Former President George Donikian got his chance to hold court once more. Seeing him previously outside the tent, I was struck by how much less he looked like George Donikian in person than on television, if that makes sense. His speech inspired most, but I thought he rambled on too long without really any distinguishing remarks. His groupies didn't seem to mind though, one telling me how much she loved that man. It's about the closest we came to celebrity on the night. One wonders which semi-famous people will crawl out from their rocks when the anticipated really big 50th anniversary bash happens. And with the raffle, silent auctions, and constant and infuriating noise of people talking over the speakers, that was pretty much it.

The highlight for me was. Rama getting named as captain. It's a deserved accolade, which also showed to all those people who have already made their minds up about this issues, that perhaps we're not the ethnic enclave they think we are. In the programme provided his ambition was not to play A-League, improve as a player or go overseas; it was to earn the respect and admiration at South that player like Trimmers are held in. While the eras are different, and he doesn't have the skill, the fact that he wants to achieve his goals here, that he wants the responsibility of being captain is tremendous.

I got to hold the Hellenic Cup trophy, which is nice and heavy. There's a photo of me and one of the local larrikins somewhere out there in the digital realm. What is it with people acting like dickheads in the city these days? In the cab on the way home some dickhead deliberately struck the driver side mirror. You could see him lining up the shot. What was the point of that? Maybe I need to be like everyone else and drink more, than it'll all make sense. I had one glass of wine and people's heads turned. You may be surprised to learn that I had a good time overall. And this morning I had a 25 minute spell on my $5 exercise bike, while everyone else was fucked up. So there.