About four years ago - reminiscence of Langerak's brief VPL stint

Dean Anastasiadis got injured in round four against Green Gully. On came a skinny kid by the name of Mladen Tosic who, try as he might, was never able to convince the coaches, the fans or even his fellow defenders that he was the right man for the spot between the sticks.

So for the second half of the season, in came a young lad by the name of Mitch Langerak, a Queenslander on loan from Melbourne Victory. He made mistakes, to be sure - the worst of which was letting a harmless grubber of a cross by Henry Fa'arodo go through his legs for a tap in and the win for Richmond on a dispiriting Friday night. But he also showed enough in his aerial exploits, dubbed by Ian Syson at the time as either 'solid as a rock' or 'safe as houses' - I can't remember which, but it's the sentiment not the wording which matters - that even I was making uncharacteristically bold predictions like 'future Socceroo keeper'.

The years and keepers have come and gone at South in our VPL era. Deano came back after his injury and apocryphally kept Neil Young out of a job; Nick Jelic filled in for a game or two, as did Andy Sfetkopoulos; Tommi Tommich was awesome on short notice at the tail end of 2008, and then fell in a heap the year after; and the still young Stefaan Sardelic has pinch hit over the past few years without being able to nail down the starting keeper's spot.

The Agitator leaves his mark on the scoreboard

But for whatever intangible reason none of these guys excited me like Mitch did on a cold and rainy Sunday in June at Chaplin Reserve, against a dogged Sunshine George Cross outfit. It was a hard fought 2-0 win, well earned in the mud by the players, as the South fans huddled together under umbrellas not always their own on the hill at the Anderson Road end, and scoreboard shenanigans by one of our stalwart fans kept us amused as we fought off the onset of frostbite.

But just one of the enduring memories of that game was our old foe John Markovski, who was coaching George Cross at the time, doing his by that stage almost compulsory act of subbing himself on against us. When the home side won a free kick within Markovski's range, there was just that moment of dread. Loathe his as we do, he still had a phenomenal left foot shot - he hit a volley as sweetly as he would have done in his prime, but Langerak made the save, and was re-christened 'Mitso' by the faithful.

Billy Natsioulas fights for the ball.

It was a glorious day all round, back in the day when there was still a sort of VPL  camaraderie amongst South fans before we divided ourselves into innumerable factions; when Gate 1/HFC faction splitting was the height of our worries; when some people still thought we were a shoe-in for the second Melbourne A-League spot when it opened up; when a few wins against some of that season's strugglers, which included the aforementioned game, had us run into a bit of form halfway through the year before the Victory game and the subsequent collapse into an inconsistent heap, whose misery was only occasionally punctuated by moments such as this.

This morning Mitch 'Mitso' Langerak made his Bundesliga debut for the ladder leading Borussia Dortmund away at Bayern Munich. Dortmund won 3-1, their first win away at Bayern in 20 years. From all reports, Langerak had a good game, including making one great reflex save against Mario Gomez. Four years on from what for most football fans would rightly be viewed as a game between two also-rans of Australian football, a young man brought in almost as a last resort to try and solve a goalkeeping crisis at Lakeside is one step closer to achieving his potential. Now, as then, I have every confidence that he will fulfill his promise.

Just when you thought it was safe to go to Frankston...

... you could very well see Deano playing this week! For you see, current South number 1 Tomislav Tomich has been called up to the Victory for three weeks to be their number 2, while their number 2 and one time South number 1 Mitch Langerak replaces their number 1 and one time South benchwarmer except for five games Michael Theoklitos. Got it? Good. Anyway, I reckon they should give th gig to the kid from the ressies Stefan Sardelic, seemed to know what he was doing the few times I've seen him, Which is more than can be said for the rest of the under 21 squad unfortunately.

Preston overcome the odds - South Melbourne 1 Preston Lions 2

Today saw a big disappointment in South. According to past results and recent history, it looked as if South had a really good chance at winning. We went into the game confident. Preston with their new coach Markovski who could spice things up a bit, but nonetheless it was looking good for us. O'Dor was still out though, serving his second game for his suspension, but he still made the effort to come and watch the game along with Mitchell Langerak (Former South keeper who was on loan from current team Melbourne Victory).

The first half was really close, seeing a stronger Preston than usual and them trying very hard to prevent us from scoring. There were quite a few chances, but not much action to write about, and we saw a 0-0 end as we went to the break. Early in the second half we saw a goal for Preston scored by an almighty free kick by Michael Bosevski, leading to Armenian being brought on and Adem Tavsancioglu off in hope of a goal like Hamlet's goal against Oakleigh but to no avail. The next 15 minutes saw us trying to pull ourselves together and really get an equalizer at least, in which we did when we hit 70 minutes and a nice cross was sent in for Nathan Caldwell to hit a beautiful header into the net past Acevski who made every effort to get it but was in fact too slow for the speedy shot.

Another 15 minutes later and we had Preston's sealer from Tony Sterjovski, which I believe was tapped in after a missed chance and a clearance although I could be wrong. This lead to Goran Zoric and Sam Poutakidis going off and youngsters Robby Wynne and Antonio La Verde coming on. The last 5 minutes saw a million pauses in which we failed to get that last minute chance on goal. The end saw the little of the Preston fans behind the goals celebrating with the players and the rest of them leaving as did the South fans. The fans side of things wasn't big at all. All out we had a few hundred supporters max, not a big crowd at all.

All throughout the game, we played fairly well but Preston really lifted for this game and it showed. There were 2 spots where we had disallowed goals for offside too, and as usual, we had a typical FFV ref who let every handball go whichever the team.

Aw well,
'Til next time ;)

Rama's goal disallowed for offside:

One last bit of 2007 clearing out

At around about this time every year, people and pundits all over the place start making predictions they will never go back and have a look at. Most say it's all in good fun, but really it's just a dreadful waste of time. Therefore South of the Border will buck the trend and avoid making any list predictions for the coming season whatsoever. It's a hard habit to kick, and South of the Border stands in solidarity with all those who suffer from this disease. What I will do however is hand out way overdue awards for last season. Seeing as this blog did start last year, and the new season hasn't started yet and we're still catching up and all, it's totally allowed.

• Player of the year: Ricky Diaco. The bloke sadly lacked consistent support, but even then he showed he was a class above most of the year. His free kick against Oakleigh is already legendary, but his in-close work was a joy to watch, particularly his skinning of defenders on the byline.

• Youth player of the year: Mitchell Langerak. Young keeper, came in with an unsettled defence, and did a more than decent job. While he still has problems with low balls and coming off his line, his aerial work and his ability in marshaling the defence were very impressive.

• Goal of the year: Ramazan Tavsancioglu against Whittlesea Zebras. Yes we lost this one 3-2, but I cannot do enough justice to the brilliance that was Rama's goal, so I'll let George Kouroumalis' poetry do the rest:

South equalised moments later, with what can be described as a contender for goal of the season by Ramazan. He produced a strong defensive tackle, reclaimed possession of the ball and began to dash up the right hand touch line. After stepping past one defender and spinning past another, he hit a speculative and intentional 35 yard rocket towards the goal, with the ball swinging and dipping into the top right hand corner and over the fully-stretched Gerohristodoulou, sending the South fans into blue delirium.

• Best performance over a whole match: The home win against Oakleigh 5-2. The 2^nd half in particular was an absolute joy to watch. These two teams have turned it on repeatedly in recent times, but that game will be hard to top. Diaco's free kick was merely the cherry on top of a great contest. Sadly South never reached that level of play for the rest of the season.

• Best period of play during the season: The first 20 minutes or so against Heidelberg at home in round 1. Despite the goalkeeping fuck-ups, the team was that shit hot that even the most boring and relentless cynics proclaimed it as an excellent NSL-era standard. Perhaps if we'd won that game things would have gone differently.

• Best away game: Sunshine George Cross. It was rainy, windy, cold, slippery but the dedication of the fans that day (and the win of course) made it totally worth it.

• Best call on the terraces: After we re-took the lead against Oakleigh one wit said, "Hey Turnbull, you didn't even get to finish your smile". Concise, precise, and understated.

• Chant of the year: Colombo's chant at the game against Preston. The police were doing nothing to move the Preston fans from outside the perimeter fence, as they have the power to do so, much to the annoyance of the South faithful. Can't remember the exact way it went, something like "I thought we were major events, why are the skops behind the fence..." there was more to it, of course, but it had this ramshackle rhythm to it that was just off this planet.

Don't forget, Family Day on tomorrow. Jersey Presentation night on Friday. Round 1 away to the Bergers on Sunday week. All which of which hopefully mean the end for now of these time killing pieces.