This felt so much like a preseason game that I'm really not sure if anything of value can be said of it. The crowd was small, as you'd expect of a low profile game on Mother's Day. The crowd was also relaxed, maybe relatively more tense up until we actually opened up the scoring, and then nabbed the second, but otherwise, much chatter in our vicinity was taken up arrant nonsense, like how deeply weird Don Scott is, and the crowning highlight, the five minute or so delay in the second half while we waited for someone to replace a malfunctioning corner flag.
It really was that kind of day, one where you appreciate the comfortable wins, knowing that your team is good enough to go up another gear and/or sort itself it out quickly if it needs to. It was good (again) that we did not backslide and go conservative, but coming off the three matches before it, it wasn't our best performance. That's bound to happen, it can't always be at the highest level, but the mentality remained correct. But still, it was messy. Credit to North Geelong for having a go, which is not meant to sound condescending, even though it surely does. They made it harder for us than I expected, and not just thanks to their goalkeeper, who made some excellent saves.
But as much as North Geelong took it up to us as best they could, and even created a couple of good chances, we also made it harder for ourselves with a bit of complacency, and a lot of substandard, and perhaps even showboaty finishing. Lots of guilty parties on that front, not really worth singling anyone out. The game should have been wrapped up much earlier; instead North Geelong got one back almost right on full time, which created a nervy 30 seconds or so.
After the three points, the best part was being able to sub on a few different players, and get some minutes into the legs of a few guys usually on the bench, and give some of the starters a bit of a rest. If there's a time to do it, it's in games like this.
Next game
On the road again, at last, tomorrow afternoon against Moreland City. Please note that this game is at C.B. Smith Reserve, not Campbell Reserve.
Is there a curtain raiser?
Yes. The under 21s take the field at 1:00 PM.
Oof files
The annual police kickaround on Lakeside really seems to be slipping away in organisation. No opponent lined up by or for them this year, after several years of ex-Socceroos taking them on.
Final thought
It's in! / What a tremendous goal! / It's that man again! / etc
Showing posts with label North Geelong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label North Geelong. Show all posts
Friday, 19 May 2023
Flag appreciation day - South Melbourne 2 North Geelong 1
Tuesday, 17 January 2023
Mid-January 2023 digest
Friendlies you didn't know about
Last Saturday morning our senior men played against North Geelong in Shepparton, winning 2-1, Jankovic and Schroen the scorers.
I can't believe it's not the Hellenic Cup
A new pre-season tournament, the Greek Community Cup, begins next week. It's not the Hellenic Cup, I guess because the rights to the Hellenic Cup belong to a separate organisation of the same name.
At any rate, we're in Group One, with Altona East PAOK and East Kew Olympiakos. Group games and the quarter finals are 70 minute matches. All matches are at Partridge Street Reserve, Lalor.
We play on Thursday (19/1, 7pm) against Altona East, and on Saturday (21/1, 1pm) against East Kew.
I have no idea if the souvs at Lalor are any good, or if there even will be any souvs on offer.
Remember Carl Piergianni? He was a tall central defender type who was on holiday in Australia circa early 2017, when we picked him up. It didn't quite work out; he wasn't quite fit, which only made his lack of pace worse, and he headed home (without heading in any goals from corners, as promised by the YouTube montage) and resumed his career in England's lower reaches; first at Salford City, then Oldham Athletic, at the latter under the management (for a brief time) of Harry Kewell.
Old mate Carl is now captain of Stevenage (currently sitting second in League 2). And they're doing OK in the FA Cup, having just knocked off Premier League side Aston Villa 2-1 at Villa Park, with both Stevenage goals coming late in the game, including the winner from a bloody short corner. Our man is looking quite slim, too, Carl and Stevenage will face Championship straggler Stoke City in the fourth round, and South of the Border wishes them all the best.
Not quite as good you remember, perhaps
But it's not all sunshine and smiles for ex-South people playing abroad. Harrison Sawyer, NPL Victoria's golden boot winner in 2022, hasn't been having the best time of it in the Indian Super League. After an OK start where he provided a couple of assists (read, headed the ball on from a cross or throw-in), Harry's Jamshedpur adventure hasn't gone quite to plan. He's been coming off the bench, and his team has barely won a game all season. Still, Sawyer came off the bench and scored in his team's 2-1 win over East Bengal, just Jamshedpur's second win of the season. It'll be interesting to see what Harry's next move is after this - the ISL season is short one - just 22 rounds - and it ends at the end of February.
Thursday, 15 March 2018
Summary of March 2018 AAFC roadshow Melbourne edition
Introductory remarks
Derisory as I am of the idea of promotion and relegation in Australia, attending the Association of Australian Football Clubs roadshow event in Melbourne last Thursday seemed like a no-brainer. This meeting was meant to be held in Sports House in Albert Park, but a text message received while I was on the train up there said that a burst water pipe had necessitated the relocation of the event to the South Melbourne FC social club.
Of course. What else could they have done at such short notice?
Nursing my gin and tonic I had not intended to tweet much about the event, but rather take some brief notes on my phone (I'd not bothered to bring pen and paper as I do for say, South Melbourne AGMs), but after getting a polite request and checking that I had enough battery left on my phone, I decided to give it a go. I did note that Shouty Mike was also in the room, and though long since blocked by him on Twitter, I guessed he would tweet at least some of what was happening on the night, so there's always that if anyone wants an alternative view of proceedings.
There were also summary notes taken by freelancer/interested onlooker Matthew Galea, if one cares to go back far enough in his time-line, and there has been a positive overview of the night by journalist Jonathan Howcroft on Football Nation Radio. Also on Football Nation Radio is an interview with Tom Kalas.
Through my limited internet trawling, there appears to have been very little comment made about any of the roadshow meetings outside the Melbourne event. I'm not sure why that is the case - was the roadshow not publicised well enough, or is there just inherently more interest in these matters in Melbourne? One thing which came across during the Melbourne meeting is that there were at least slightly different messages given to different AAFC constituencies. This makes sense because, as I'll reiterate later, each state's experience of the National Premier Leagues, let alone Australian soccer, is quite different from each other.
The crowd built up to about 40-50 people, mostly in casual (non-club) gear, with a few exceptions. I recognised (and learned over the course of the night) that there were representatives present from South Melbourne (Andrew Mesourouni and Leo Athanasakis), Northcote, Heidelberg, Goulburn Valley Suns, Bendigo City(!), and North Geelong, but not much more beyond that. There were some non-club representatives - that is ordinary fans, and one bloke from local Greek media who I see around a lot but don't know the name of nor who he works for - but otherwise the audience seemed to be mostly committee members of various NPL teams.
It is interesting that more ordinary fans didn't show up. That being said, AAFC only has a couple hundred more followers on Twitter than I do (I have no idea about their reach on Facebook), so maybe this was actually about as good a turnout as one could expect. Indeed, we were told on at least a couple of occasions that the Melbourne meeting had the biggest attendance of any of the AAFC roadshow sessions up until that point, with only Newcastle yet to come. Why was that the case? I suppose it helps that Victoria has one of the larger NPL setups in terms of numbers of clubs, at over 30, and more NPL teams means more people likely to turn up.
(As an aside, when AAFC representatives were asked who were the Victorian NPL teams not under the AAFC umbrella, it was noted that Whittlesea Ranges and Sunshine George Cross were among them. Ranges I could understand, I guess, from their Victory/sponsor connections - though Moreland Zebras/Victory man Joe Mirabella was in attendance on the night - but the Georgies one has me a bit stumped to be honest.)
There's also a continuity in recent times in terms of Victorian clubs getting together to fight the establishment, namely, the (mostly) united front by leading and aspirational clubs against Football Federation Victoria's original NPL framework. Indeed, two of the key figures in that campaign - Tom Kalas and Nick Galatas - are now key members of AAFC. There's probably other factors for the larger turnout too, like the more obvious seething antipathy in Victoria for Football Federation Australia compared to other states, which would extend to the general distrust of New South Wales' dominance of Australian soccer. Neither do Victorian clubs, even the powerful ones, have anything like the facilities (on field or off) of the wealthier New South Wales clubs. Add in existing under the Aussie rules hegemony, and I guess everyone feels a bit more vulnerable than they'd like to admit.
(As another aside, FFV president - and according to one source, also currently acting FFV CEO - Kimon Taliadoros was absent, due to a competing engagement. FFV had some representation at the meeting in the form of Gary Cole, recently hired by FFV as "Manager, Football Strategy and Special Projects". While an FFA representative attended AAFC's Queensland roadshow meeting, it was speculated out loud that FFA were not likely to attend a Victorian meeting due to the hostility they were likely to receive from members of the audience.)
Representing AAFC on the night on the front table/panel of sorts were Dean Hennessey, current Pascoe Vale technical director, ex-coach and TD of a few places; Tom Kalas, ex-South Melbourne board member, interim AAFC chairman during parts of 2017 and frequent spokesman for the group; Nick Galatas, South Melbourne chairman until very recently; and AAFC chairman Rabieh Krayem, one time Northern Fury chairman. Oddly, of those four only Krayem offered any significant contribution to the night's proceedings, with Krayem at times sharing the stage or delegating proceedings to AAFC treasurer Christo Patsan of Northern New South Wales.
From then to now
The evening began with an address by Rabieh Krayem, giving an overview of AAFC's progress and success up until now. He outlined the reasons for the establishment of AAFC, a summary of AAFC's rise to (relative) prominence, and noted the ongoing unity of AAFC member clubs. This theme of unity was returned to throughout the night, out of a certain degree of truth no doubt, but also in its own way acting as a polite reminder to AAFC member clubs that anything which would undermine that unity would be detrimental to their collective aims.
But as with so much of what AAFC is about, it's about adding a positive spin to everything that they do; thus extolling AAFC's ability to unite so many disparate soccer clubs, and celebrating an unprecedented collective effort in "putting football ahead of self-interest". This was reiterated by comments such as the unity of the AAFC clubs apparently confusing FFA. Added to the repetition of the need for continued unity were the virtues of focus and patience; not everything would happen at once, and the keenness for reform from NPL clubs needed to be properly directed.
(And while really not important from the fact of its obvious implausibility, it is worth noting that there was also the odd call from the floor - with slightly more than muted approval from the guests in attendance - that if FFA and everyone else didn't want to get a second tier up and running, that the clubs should just breakaway and form their own competition. This idea had cold water poured on it from AAFC panel members, but it does highlight that there are very diverse views and attitudes to Australian soccer matters within AAFC's constituency.)
The most left-field proposal on the night...
Was AAFC's desire to hold an annual junior tournament for AAFC member clubs. The age range would be 13-16, for both boys and girls teams, with the event held in a single location. The annual extravaganza would also include conferences and seminars. Aiming to start in April 2020 - one assumes over the Easter break - this is a logistically bold, perhaps even insane proposal. It would require accommodating thousands of travellers (kids, parents, coaches, support staff), would cost a lot of money to organise, would require a lot of grounds, and all sorts of other things which someone like me who has never organised or been involved in such an undertaking could possibly think of.
Credit for the scope of the idea, but its scale is such that I'd love to see how this would all come together. Reading online, this idea was a hit with the Canberra people in particular.
FFA Congress progress
Another one of the key issues was the status of reform to FFA's Congress. FIFA and the AFC representatives had recently been in the country and left again, and looking in from the outside it appears that not much has changed. Naturally those involved closer to the action have a better idea than us mere plebs. In terms of AAFC's hope of getting a seat on FFA's reformed Congress, it all seemed to depend on who was speaking for AAFC. Krayem said that Victoria was the only state federation which was for AAFC having a vote on FFA's Congress, while Queensland was happy for AAFC to have observer status.
(A non-AAFC source later told me that most state federations were happy to let AAFC have observer status, until such time as AAFC could "prove themselves", whatever that means. I assume it means in part holding itself together through what will be the much more difficult phase of actually getting some of its grand schemes up and running.)
Krayem was hopeful but cautious about whether AAFC would get its seat in the FFA Congress, but Nick Galatas, making one of his rare contributions during the evening, piped up to say with uncharacteristic confidence that AAFC will get there. This belief is based on the support that AAFC believes it is receiving from FIFA and the AFC; they certainly aren't being made to feel welcome by FFA and the A-League teams, and probably quite a few of the states. This international support gives AAFC a kind of leverage that forces their inclusion into discussions.
The issue of representation
Every state and region is going to be different when it comes to its soccer experience; in fact, this is a problem that cuts across almost every aspect of Australian sport, that rather than anything resembling a uniform and universal sporting culture, we are instead a nation of micro-sporting cultures. One thing I didn't note earlier on about the make up of the audience was how overwhelmingly male it was. I don't think there were any women present at all. Intentional or not, it is not a good look for an organisation that will need to argue that its attempts to reform Australian soccer also include the best interests of women and girls, and not just high level senior male players. Indeed female football was very much an afterthought to the entire evening's proceedings, with AAFC talking heads mentioning little about the topic, and the questions from the floor referencing nothing about women's soccer at all.
This is a serious issue, and I don't doubt for a second that those representing AAFC don't take it seriously. However, apart from the issue of optics - never mind female participation and professional pathways being the zeitgeist of Australian sport - the lack of any almost any reference to the female side of the game plays right into the hands of those who would oppose AAFC solely on the accusation that the group was merely a front for a collective of culturally regressive ethnic clubs who had been unable to keep up with the times. And to be fair, some of those accusations would not be too far off the mark. The room was made up of at least some clubs who represent conservative or traditional ideas of what soccer is about in Australia on this and other issues. Related to those clubs would be those who, like South Melbourne perhaps, espouse a cautious modernism in its approach to women's soccer.
(Albeit a modernism as yet untested by what happens when the female program's principle advocate, in South's case Gabrielle Giuliano, moves on. The matter of cultural and club continuity has always been at the forefront of women's soccer.)
At the same time, apart from your different flavours of ethnically derived conservatism and cautious modernism, you have clubs which exist outside those frameworks, and those which go across several demographics. So while there are clearly clubs in the AAFC movement with a chip on their shoulder about FFA's treatment of ethnicity, there are also those clubs for which ethnicity is not even close to being at the top of their list of complaints. Then there are the clubs from regional areas. The ambitious clubs who have no NSL history. The clubs from states and regions which have never had national representation of any sort, and no obvious development pathway for their talented kids. All of these groups are being presented by AAFC as a unified collective with a common purpose, and not as the motley collection of clubs that this group actually is.
And it's not all smooth sailing. There was some discomfort from the floor about some of the decision making and negotiating processes of AAFC, namely that it does not consult as much as it could or should with its member clubs about key issues.
(I'd also add in the strange and sometimes unprofessional social media antics of AAFC. I think they'd be better off sticking to a conservative online approach - discussing only their affairs, and avoiding clogging up their timeline with stuff outside their immediate remit of being a representative organisation for second tier clubs. At present their social media efforts lack focus - probably operating on the whim of whoever's in control of the relevant social media accounts - while also coming across at times as petty. They need to at the very least get an off-the-shelf social media policy.)
But for the time being, in those narrow schemes where people actually pay attention to any of this stuff, AAFC is winning. It's winning the ideological battle because it is presenting a positive outlook for Australian soccer (even while often talking down present day Australian soccer); it's winning because its opponents have been successfully portrayed as out of touch and stagnant. And whatever the flaws with its social media/PR game, AAFC has also succeeded in having its public face, its front office if you will, obscure whatever disquiet and misgivings clubs under the AAFC umbrella have.
We are all in this together, but for how long?
A word on the "NSL conspiracy"
There are some few pushing the line that AAFC and all of its associated antics are merely a front for getting ethnic NSL clubs back into the national soccer system. At the most extreme end of that argument is the accusation that AAFC is a front specifically set up to get South Melbourne Hellas back into the Australian topflight.
Such thinking (whether directed at ethnic NSL clubs or South Melbourne more specifically) requires two pre-existing notions in order to get off the ground. First, it requires the ethnic NSL teams having the necessary political, financial and grassroots clout to re-emerge from their otherwise terminal decline and irrelevance to Australian soccer (a terminal decline and irrelevance diagnosed by their detractors no less). Second, that these clubs would have the capability and competence (again, both of which their detractors claim these clubs lack) to establish and sustain such a complicated and unwieldy campaign in order to get back into the national league system. Needless to say, I find such conspiracy thinking beyond laughable. Truly, it is at the level of the conspiracies cobbled together by the so-called "bitters" of Australian soccer over the past decade and more.
Whatever else AAFC's faults, or the disagreements one may have with the aims of AAFC, it has been established and managed to succeed beyond the limits placed upon it by its detractors and opponents for a number of reasons. We have already mentioned the support AAFC is receiving from FIFA and the AFC, however much that support may be overstated by AAFC representatives. It has also managed to keep its broad constituency together for longer and greater ends than many people expected. Just as importantly, in an Australian soccer situation which reeks of stagnation - especially with regards to FFA and the A-League - AAFC is putting forward the boldest and most optimistic view of what Australian soccer could become. Whether their approach has gained any traction with people outside those few interested in the narrow field of Australian soccer politicking is almost beside the point; within the demographic that does care about such things, they come off looking more often than not like the good guys.
Something rather obvious that gets missed however is that AAFC exists to represent clubs which exist in a rather strange and hitherto unprecedented "between space" in Australia's football chain of command. The NPL clubs play under the auspices and control of their respective state federations, while at the same time participating in a system largely designed by the national federation. While in cases like Victoria, NPL clubs are able to perhaps organise well enough to exert a measure of influence over the running of their state federation - and thus alter elements of their own NPL environment more to their liking - they have no ability to act as a collective to put pressure on the body which set up the NPL framework in the first place, that being FFA.
Because of this bizarre operating system, no state operates NPL in the same way. When one person from the floor of the Melbourne roadshow complained (fairly enough) about A-League teams having more visa players at their disposal when they play FFA Cup matches against Victorian NPL teams, Krayem noted that when Victorian teams played against Queensland teams in the same competition, that Victorian teams had a PPS cap of 200 compared to Queensland's 170. Meanwhile other states have no restrictions on visa players. Not all of this is FFA's fault, and the clubs themselves - certainly in the case of the Victorian NPL - are also to blame for the mess that NPL has become.
But the point is, while ethnic ex-NSL clubs may be best placed to push for national second tier participation, they are not the only ones doing so. Neither are all of the former ethnic powerhouse NSL clubs best placed to take advantage of any changes. The goal here clearly is to start a competition which adds value across the country, and not just in forgotten suburban pockets of Melbourne and Sydney.
But still, what is it that South Melbourne Hellas is trying to do?
(I included this section because Leo Athanasakis asked what I thought was an unusual question, on the matter of potential A-League expansion and NPL/second tier queue jumping. While this was directed at other A-League consortium bids, I felt the queue jumping element could have - and indeed already has - been directed at South itself. Also South of the Border is a South Melbourne blog, so you know...)
When the campaign against FFV's original NPL model was begun by Green Gully and Melbourne Knights, South Melbourne - represented on this issue by one Tom Kalas - notably took a different tack, preferring to remain what it called "in the tent", believing that it could effect change more effectively from within the system rather than fighting against it from the outside. Then, like magic, South gradually changed its position to the point where it (and to be fair, a whole bunch of other Greek clubs) somehow became the leader of the movement against FFV and its NPL model.
Among those clubs who care to remember that this happened at all, there is understandably distrust and resentment about how that all played out; that the more obnoxiously regressive clubs on all sorts of issues who stuck their necks out on principle (however misguided that principle may have been) only for a bunch of Greeks to come in and take all the credit for getting not just a solution to the NPL impasse, but credit as being the leaders of a re-found boldness for clubs to stand up to the post-Crawford federations for their rights.
Me, I liked the fanciful idea that I invented that it was all coordinated; that certain clubs that had a more uncompromising ethos when it came to rejecting forced modernity would do the initial head kicking and grunt work, allowing more palatable alternatives - ie, us - to come in and finish off the job.
But the truth is that ever since it was compelled to vacate its position in the Australian topflight by the forces which took over Australian soccer, as well because of its own decrepit state, South Melbourne has had one distant goal in its sights above all others: to get back into the big-time, as soon as possible, and by any means necessary. So we bid for the second Melbourne A-League licence under the Southern Cross gimmick, losing out to Melbourne Heart. We tried to buy out the then failing Central Coast Mariners, under a scheme which may have included keeping some games in Gosford for however long it took for people to realise it was a stupid idea and just have all our games in Melbourne. Then we tried buying out Melbourne Heart, and failed there too. Currently, we've thrown our hat in the ring for the zombie A-League expansion process which may not even have ever existed.
They say that you miss all the shots you don't take, and when it comes to failed attempts to get into the A-League, no one's taken more shots than South. And yet, for whatever reason, South has never been at the public forefront of AAFC, other than by proxy association. To its own members, South has played AAFC and promotion-relegation issues as low-key affairs, preferring to put up a wait and see approach. The emphasis has always been on first and foremost getting into the A-League under its own steam (even if details of those attempts provided to members are sparing), and not through wholesale reform of Australian soccer's league structures.
And yet in most recent times, those paying attention to the social media contributions of especially our president Leo Athanasakis indicate a shift in our prior reticence to openly support a promotion-relegation model. Such a shift leads easily to the allegation from within the AAFC tent and from promotion-relegation fellow travellers alike that South Melbourne is not really ideologically committed to the principle of promotion-relegation; rather, South Melbourne is only committed to whatever South Melbourne believes will get it back into the topflight soonest. And if that happens, the rest be damned.
While not serious enough to threaten the unity of the AAFC revolutionary project by itself, it's the kind of fissure that people will need to keep an eye on; when persistent calls are made about unity and its virtues, any deviation from that ideal invites the possibility of infighting and sniping.
Community, authentic, grassroots, corporate, franchise, elite. Words like these and many others can be useful in describing the cultural schisms that afflict Australian soccer. Used carelessly however, instead of clarifying the ways in which Australian soccer is divided, these words serve mostly as an act of self-justification.
By any measure, FFA and the management of several A-League teams have treated NPL teams poorly. There are countless examples of this, some of which were given on the night. But it's possible also that NPL teams are seen in a similar light by teams far lower down the food chain.
Claiming the moral and ethical high ground is a dangerous business. Anyone making claims for their own purity of support of the game is on dangerous ground. Resorting to the kinds of rhetoric which filled up forums a decade ago, and which paints simplistic pictures of an "us and them" which does not actually exist, is a tactic fraught with issues.
The focus should be on the actual examples of disrespect given by the top tier towards everything below it. Emotive language which loses sight of that should be avoided.
Final thought
During the aftermath over the next few days, it was funny to see the same info I'd received from different parties via Twitter DMs and text messages - sometimes intended for clarification, sometimes intended for further dissemination - make its way out to the public domain via other trusted vessels. It was like a proxy social media battle in the broader war for hearts and minds, except that I don't think anyone but the already interested even noticed.
Derisory as I am of the idea of promotion and relegation in Australia, attending the Association of Australian Football Clubs roadshow event in Melbourne last Thursday seemed like a no-brainer. This meeting was meant to be held in Sports House in Albert Park, but a text message received while I was on the train up there said that a burst water pipe had necessitated the relocation of the event to the South Melbourne FC social club.
Of course. What else could they have done at such short notice?
Nursing my gin and tonic I had not intended to tweet much about the event, but rather take some brief notes on my phone (I'd not bothered to bring pen and paper as I do for say, South Melbourne AGMs), but after getting a polite request and checking that I had enough battery left on my phone, I decided to give it a go. I did note that Shouty Mike was also in the room, and though long since blocked by him on Twitter, I guessed he would tweet at least some of what was happening on the night, so there's always that if anyone wants an alternative view of proceedings.
There were also summary notes taken by freelancer/interested onlooker Matthew Galea, if one cares to go back far enough in his time-line, and there has been a positive overview of the night by journalist Jonathan Howcroft on Football Nation Radio. Also on Football Nation Radio is an interview with Tom Kalas.
Through my limited internet trawling, there appears to have been very little comment made about any of the roadshow meetings outside the Melbourne event. I'm not sure why that is the case - was the roadshow not publicised well enough, or is there just inherently more interest in these matters in Melbourne? One thing which came across during the Melbourne meeting is that there were at least slightly different messages given to different AAFC constituencies. This makes sense because, as I'll reiterate later, each state's experience of the National Premier Leagues, let alone Australian soccer, is quite different from each other.
The crowd built up to about 40-50 people, mostly in casual (non-club) gear, with a few exceptions. I recognised (and learned over the course of the night) that there were representatives present from South Melbourne (Andrew Mesourouni and Leo Athanasakis), Northcote, Heidelberg, Goulburn Valley Suns, Bendigo City(!), and North Geelong, but not much more beyond that. There were some non-club representatives - that is ordinary fans, and one bloke from local Greek media who I see around a lot but don't know the name of nor who he works for - but otherwise the audience seemed to be mostly committee members of various NPL teams.
It is interesting that more ordinary fans didn't show up. That being said, AAFC only has a couple hundred more followers on Twitter than I do (I have no idea about their reach on Facebook), so maybe this was actually about as good a turnout as one could expect. Indeed, we were told on at least a couple of occasions that the Melbourne meeting had the biggest attendance of any of the AAFC roadshow sessions up until that point, with only Newcastle yet to come. Why was that the case? I suppose it helps that Victoria has one of the larger NPL setups in terms of numbers of clubs, at over 30, and more NPL teams means more people likely to turn up.
(As an aside, when AAFC representatives were asked who were the Victorian NPL teams not under the AAFC umbrella, it was noted that Whittlesea Ranges and Sunshine George Cross were among them. Ranges I could understand, I guess, from their Victory/sponsor connections - though Moreland Zebras/Victory man Joe Mirabella was in attendance on the night - but the Georgies one has me a bit stumped to be honest.)
There's also a continuity in recent times in terms of Victorian clubs getting together to fight the establishment, namely, the (mostly) united front by leading and aspirational clubs against Football Federation Victoria's original NPL framework. Indeed, two of the key figures in that campaign - Tom Kalas and Nick Galatas - are now key members of AAFC. There's probably other factors for the larger turnout too, like the more obvious seething antipathy in Victoria for Football Federation Australia compared to other states, which would extend to the general distrust of New South Wales' dominance of Australian soccer. Neither do Victorian clubs, even the powerful ones, have anything like the facilities (on field or off) of the wealthier New South Wales clubs. Add in existing under the Aussie rules hegemony, and I guess everyone feels a bit more vulnerable than they'd like to admit.
(As another aside, FFV president - and according to one source, also currently acting FFV CEO - Kimon Taliadoros was absent, due to a competing engagement. FFV had some representation at the meeting in the form of Gary Cole, recently hired by FFV as "Manager, Football Strategy and Special Projects". While an FFA representative attended AAFC's Queensland roadshow meeting, it was speculated out loud that FFA were not likely to attend a Victorian meeting due to the hostility they were likely to receive from members of the audience.)
Representing AAFC on the night on the front table/panel of sorts were Dean Hennessey, current Pascoe Vale technical director, ex-coach and TD of a few places; Tom Kalas, ex-South Melbourne board member, interim AAFC chairman during parts of 2017 and frequent spokesman for the group; Nick Galatas, South Melbourne chairman until very recently; and AAFC chairman Rabieh Krayem, one time Northern Fury chairman. Oddly, of those four only Krayem offered any significant contribution to the night's proceedings, with Krayem at times sharing the stage or delegating proceedings to AAFC treasurer Christo Patsan of Northern New South Wales.
From then to now
The evening began with an address by Rabieh Krayem, giving an overview of AAFC's progress and success up until now. He outlined the reasons for the establishment of AAFC, a summary of AAFC's rise to (relative) prominence, and noted the ongoing unity of AAFC member clubs. This theme of unity was returned to throughout the night, out of a certain degree of truth no doubt, but also in its own way acting as a polite reminder to AAFC member clubs that anything which would undermine that unity would be detrimental to their collective aims.
But as with so much of what AAFC is about, it's about adding a positive spin to everything that they do; thus extolling AAFC's ability to unite so many disparate soccer clubs, and celebrating an unprecedented collective effort in "putting football ahead of self-interest". This was reiterated by comments such as the unity of the AAFC clubs apparently confusing FFA. Added to the repetition of the need for continued unity were the virtues of focus and patience; not everything would happen at once, and the keenness for reform from NPL clubs needed to be properly directed.
Krayem went on to list the three broadest issues which the NPL clubs suffer under and which AAFC hopes to fix:
The Championship/Second Tier discussion
After announcing its initial framework for a second tier model (among other demands) last year (see my take here; or the guest point-counterpoint here), AAFC announced at the roadshow meeting that it is in the process of creating a working model group for the second development stage (out of three) for its second tier/Championship model. The intention is to finish this stage by June, and seeing as how AAFC met its own October 2017 deadline for releasing its original/stage one proposal, we can be optimistic that we'll see the results of stage two sometime in mid-year.
Sceptical as I am about many facets of this plan, one development (or the absence of) I was interested in seeing was whether other relevant Australian soccer parties - federations, players, etc - would become involved in trying to develop a second tier model. And this is where one of the more interesting - and as it turns out, also contentious - parts of the meeting took place. AAFC claimed that it would be working with FFV, Football New South Wales, and Professional Footballers Australia to develop the model; indeed, that those three groups would also provide funding for the necessary research. Apart from the (however vague) political vote of confidence that such a collaboration implies, the news that there would be pooled funding for the working model group caught the attention of a few onlookers both at the venue and among those observing online.
Later on though there emerged conflicting reports about whether FFV had actually agreed to provide funding for the working model group, as opposed to merely providing moral and/or logistical support. In communications I had with different people, from the AAFC side there was insistence that FFV (and even FFA) had committed to funding the working model group, while two sources from the FFV side insisted to me that no financial commitment had been made by FFV. Confusing things further, from the AAFC side I later received "clarification" that AAFC was still in discussions with the different groups about the possibility of funding the working model group.
When combined with the suggestion, made at the Adelaide meeting, that AAFC member clubs would be asked to contribute financially to the working model group, there seem to be mixed messages floating around about how the working model group will be funded.
It's also necessary, not just from a "prove the doubters wrong" aspect, but also from a "putting in a competing framework to the only one that currently exists" aspect. When the NSL Taskforce Report was released many years ago (perhaps the most overlooked document in Australian soccer history, because everyone keeps focusing on the Crawford Report, the latter of which was related to governance, not the league), it had the added heft of being based on the research of the PFA, at the time "the most stable and cohesive institution within the game" according to Joe Gorman. The PFA model is what the A-League was born from, albeit not in its pure form; nothing is ever taken straight the shelf, much like the FFA governance model wasn't a direct lift from the Crawford Report.
The main point however is that long ago the one prominent organisation in Australian soccer that had not been sullied by Australian soccer's reputation of mismanagement and corruption was the only one that came up with a plan, funded by itself. In a moment when confidence in Australian soccer's leading institutions is once again at a low ebb, AAFC has the opportunity to do something similar to what the PFA did in the past, by transitioning from being a fledgling advocacy group to something which has its own intellectual property in the form of a firm plan - not just ideas - about how to improve the game in Australia. In an environment where the best ideas anyone else can come up with to rejuvenate the A-League and by extension Australian soccer are "maybe we should add a couple of teams, maybe..." and "all we really need to do is have an independent A-League" - as if either of those alone would be anything other than short term solutions - a bold, costed, detailed and logical plan would stand out.
If some observers of my Twitter feed were upset by the suggestion that FFV and/or FNSW would use "junior fees" to pursue the dreams of a collection of rebellious/ambitious/arrogant clubs, it wasn't just those people that had their jimmies rustled by information provided during this segment. When a slide was put up showing a comparison of current NPL club costs compared to possible Championship model costs, some in the audience were a bit stunned by the figures of current NPL costs, thinking them too high, especially in terms of wages.
The broad range offered by the AAFC's slide claimed that current player wage bills were up to $800,000 a season; the exclamation from some in the crowd was that most clubs would be paying, at best, half that amount. Along with questions about how AAFC got those figures, reasonable comment was made from the floor that this section of the presentation should have included "bands" of spending to more accurately reflect current spending trends. And I agree that there should have been more detailed information about how many clubs were in different wage spending bands, (as well as other costs) and that this data should have also included a breakdown of these details by state, so AAFC members and interested onlookers could see a more complete economic picture of Australian soccer at the second tier level.
Of course, this means more clubs opening themselves up to the kind of scrutiny that few clubs at this level would be comfortable with, but what price the greater good?
With costs, including wages, obviously rising across the board for a national second tier model, it felt to me for a moment that for some clubs the penny may have finally dropped about how realistic participation in a national second tier would actually be for them. But then the discussion moved on to whether second tier teams would be obliged to spend that much, or whether they'd be allowed to get away with spending a lot less. And therein lies one of the problems to be worked out among those arguing for a national second tier. There is a very broad spectrum of people discussing things like a second tier and associated reforms, ranging from a complete laissez-faire approach to something much more regulated, but which side of that ideological ledger will AAFC's second tier model prioritise?
Among those who criticise the A-League, much of that criticism centres around things like the salary cap, the salary floor, minimum player wages, and the assortment of other measures which see the A-League operate as a cartel like the top competitions of the other major Australian football codes. (This includes what might be called the Rolls Royce model around fan experience, stadiums, etc). Apart from disagreeing with that cartel approach from the position of "it's not how a real soccer economy or system works" or "it doesn't replicate the global standard", the argument also claims that the cartel approach entrenches mediocrity. Teams that struggle on the park have less incentive to immediately do better in order to secure their position in the league; successful teams have artificial barriers preventing them from actually putting out the best product that they can, because they must be kept in relative check with all the struggling teams
Cost is one thing, revenue quite another. Of course a lot of the doubters are wondering where the money will come from, especially as costs increase. While some potential national second tier clubs are reasonably well placed to cope with the wage increases (and some will have the benefit of less travel than potential competitors), there will still be significantly increased costs which will need to be covered. In the discussion which reiterated the preferred administrative model for the hypothetical national second tier, there was also some discussion about pooled revenue and profit sharing. Uneducated as I am about these matters, it nevertheless seems to imply a certain degree of cartel discipline, and thus a step removed from a no-holds-barred spending model. It also says something about the fact that AAFC believes that there will be profit to be shared.
But where someone like me sees problems, AAFC sees opportunities. AAFC is frequently on record with talking about how much money is generated by its member clubs for the Australian soccer ecosystem (some would counter that by claiming that it's mostly generated by the junior fees paid to NPL teams), but also about the limitations placed upon teams outside the A-League because of Australian topflight soccer's closed shop. Almost inevitably, AAFC expects that increased sponsorship opportunities will emerge for teams participating in a national second tier. But aside from that, AAFC believes there is an opportunity to take advantage of a changing media landscape, which for me is code for non-traditional (and non-terrestrial) broadcast media.
Previously, if not from AAFC itself than from people advocating for similar outcomes, the idea (or hope) was that SBS would be a partner of a national second tier, an idea which I never had much confidence would be realised. For starters, SBS's Australian soccer content - indeed its soccer content outside of its lone EPL game a week at midnight Saturday - has now regressed to an almost negligible existence. What could possibly prompt them to spend the necessary funds to show a second tier competition with limited opportunities for recouping any investment? This suggestion, which goes back years before the existence of any tangible second tier movement - and which was originally formulated around showing live state premier league games - has always left me stumped.
Should this subtle rhetorical shift in emphasis - from securing a traditional and established broadcast media partner to a non-traditional equivalent - concern prospective members of a national second tier? It's something that certainly bothers me, but I'm already long gone on the prospects of this thing even working. For those more open-minded on these matters however, it should still be something that they keep an eye on - every cent that The Championship model doesn't get from a broadcast deal is that much more revenue that will need to be collected from other sources to make up for it.
In terms of player recruitment for The Championship, Krayem was adamant that it was "not designed as a retirement home", and that rules would be set up in order to promote younger Australian talent. This was clearly a riposte to the geriatric progression of the A-League, but also perhaps a critique of the NPL as it currently functions with regards to player recruitment. For example, does the luring of players from Queensland to Victoria help Queensland soccer? It may help those individual players by having them play in a higher standard competition, but it also weakens the standard of Queensland soccer. And what does the Victorian appetite for recruiting players from outside Victoria - previously British backpackers, currently Queenslanders and players from smaller states - say about the lack of opportunity given to Victorian players? And in the case of bringing in players from Tasmania, might this actually be much more justifiable? It's a lot to chew on.
Regarding questions from the floor about the transfer model to be used in The Championship, and Australian player transfer reform in general (as part of the now longstanding grievances state league clubs have about their players being poached by A-League teams, including the latter's designated NPL sides), the short and only answer given was that this was something that would be worked on.
The Championship would be a summer competition, with men's and women's components. I was not able to ascertain on the night whether successful applicants for The Championship would need to field both men's and women's teams as part of their participation. (update: see the comments section for clarification) This is an interesting point for how women's soccer exists in Australia. More often than not, the wealthiest soccer clubs in Australia (below the A-League level) are those which have a long tradition of successful male teams, with their female teams, where they exist, being an afterthought. Meanwhile those state league clubs which have historically been most successful at running female teams - often by women themselves and existing in the void left by the absence of a strong senior mens' program - would struggle to find the means to support a grandiose venture such as ongoing participation in a national second tier competition.
There was no elaboration on the matter of promotion and relegation to and from the A-League, or from and to the extant NPL competitions. While perhaps this meeting was neither the time nor the place for an explanation of how the different league layers would be formally linked together, it did leave a gaping hole in the area most casual onlookers (admittedly not in the room, but among those observing online) wanted to know. Krayem said that the NPL would persist; insofar as my understanding goes, this positions The Championship as the mechanism by which Australian soccer begins to achieve a necessary realignment of the its competition hierarchy.
Christo Patsan said that the founding principles and intent of the NPL and National Competitions Review were sound and largely still relevant and worth pursuing. I'm not sure that feeling is shared by everyone. If I was to summarise what I think AAFC want, it is a nationally consistent NPL approach (and eventually second tier) where clubs have the ability to control their identity and destinies. Are the ideals of a consistent framework and the freedom for clubs to do their own thing compatible concepts though?
That the NPL competitions would continue means that there needs to be a lot of work done to sort out how this is all going to come together. I mean, that much is obvious to everyone. Even among the advocates for a promotion-relegation regime however, there are a range of views of how this would work, ranging from a "quasi-cartel, necessary criteria to be met" model, to something much more cut-throat and free-market. At the moment. it also appears that apart from Victoria and New South Wales, most states are only paying lip service to AAFC's aim of a second division. Cue the NSL conspiracy again. Should the Championship become operational, AAFC says its administration would be based in Melbourne, a deliberate challenge to Sydney's dominance of Australian soccer administration.
- Unsustainable NPL model.
- The high costs of junior soccer.
- The limitations on growth for NPL clubs under the current system.
Some of these issues were covered in relative brevity, either by the night's two main hosts, or during the workshop period of the meeting. As best as I can recall, no specific details were offered in terms of fixing points 1 and 2, but point 3 was addressed in detailing what AAFC hoped to achieve as part of its aim to help create a truly national second tier.
The Championship/Second Tier discussion
After announcing its initial framework for a second tier model (among other demands) last year (see my take here; or the guest point-counterpoint here), AAFC announced at the roadshow meeting that it is in the process of creating a working model group for the second development stage (out of three) for its second tier/Championship model. The intention is to finish this stage by June, and seeing as how AAFC met its own October 2017 deadline for releasing its original/stage one proposal, we can be optimistic that we'll see the results of stage two sometime in mid-year.
Sceptical as I am about many facets of this plan, one development (or the absence of) I was interested in seeing was whether other relevant Australian soccer parties - federations, players, etc - would become involved in trying to develop a second tier model. And this is where one of the more interesting - and as it turns out, also contentious - parts of the meeting took place. AAFC claimed that it would be working with FFV, Football New South Wales, and Professional Footballers Australia to develop the model; indeed, that those three groups would also provide funding for the necessary research. Apart from the (however vague) political vote of confidence that such a collaboration implies, the news that there would be pooled funding for the working model group caught the attention of a few onlookers both at the venue and among those observing online.
Later on though there emerged conflicting reports about whether FFV had actually agreed to provide funding for the working model group, as opposed to merely providing moral and/or logistical support. In communications I had with different people, from the AAFC side there was insistence that FFV (and even FFA) had committed to funding the working model group, while two sources from the FFV side insisted to me that no financial commitment had been made by FFV. Confusing things further, from the AAFC side I later received "clarification" that AAFC was still in discussions with the different groups about the possibility of funding the working model group.
When combined with the suggestion, made at the Adelaide meeting, that AAFC member clubs would be asked to contribute financially to the working model group, there seem to be mixed messages floating around about how the working model group will be funded.
So far, AAFC has apparently spent $90,000 on research - originating I assume from a mix of club donations, but principally from the generosity of some of its wealthier patrons. It's an expensive business getting together not just the conceptual framework for your new competition, but also putting together the mechanics of how you claim it will all work.Not doubting Paul but FYI - at the Adelaide stop of the roadshow it was suggested member clubs of AAFC would be asked to contribute to cover this instead. I think it was $500 pa per club up from the token $100 it cost to first register w AAFC. All attending seemed to agree to it.— Mathew Doolan (@mdoolsy) March 8, 2018
It's also necessary, not just from a "prove the doubters wrong" aspect, but also from a "putting in a competing framework to the only one that currently exists" aspect. When the NSL Taskforce Report was released many years ago (perhaps the most overlooked document in Australian soccer history, because everyone keeps focusing on the Crawford Report, the latter of which was related to governance, not the league), it had the added heft of being based on the research of the PFA, at the time "the most stable and cohesive institution within the game" according to Joe Gorman. The PFA model is what the A-League was born from, albeit not in its pure form; nothing is ever taken straight the shelf, much like the FFA governance model wasn't a direct lift from the Crawford Report.
The main point however is that long ago the one prominent organisation in Australian soccer that had not been sullied by Australian soccer's reputation of mismanagement and corruption was the only one that came up with a plan, funded by itself. In a moment when confidence in Australian soccer's leading institutions is once again at a low ebb, AAFC has the opportunity to do something similar to what the PFA did in the past, by transitioning from being a fledgling advocacy group to something which has its own intellectual property in the form of a firm plan - not just ideas - about how to improve the game in Australia. In an environment where the best ideas anyone else can come up with to rejuvenate the A-League and by extension Australian soccer are "maybe we should add a couple of teams, maybe..." and "all we really need to do is have an independent A-League" - as if either of those alone would be anything other than short term solutions - a bold, costed, detailed and logical plan would stand out.
If some observers of my Twitter feed were upset by the suggestion that FFV and/or FNSW would use "junior fees" to pursue the dreams of a collection of rebellious/ambitious/arrogant clubs, it wasn't just those people that had their jimmies rustled by information provided during this segment. When a slide was put up showing a comparison of current NPL club costs compared to possible Championship model costs, some in the audience were a bit stunned by the figures of current NPL costs, thinking them too high, especially in terms of wages.
The broad range offered by the AAFC's slide claimed that current player wage bills were up to $800,000 a season; the exclamation from some in the crowd was that most clubs would be paying, at best, half that amount. Along with questions about how AAFC got those figures, reasonable comment was made from the floor that this section of the presentation should have included "bands" of spending to more accurately reflect current spending trends. And I agree that there should have been more detailed information about how many clubs were in different wage spending bands, (as well as other costs) and that this data should have also included a breakdown of these details by state, so AAFC members and interested onlookers could see a more complete economic picture of Australian soccer at the second tier level.
Of course, this means more clubs opening themselves up to the kind of scrutiny that few clubs at this level would be comfortable with, but what price the greater good?
With costs, including wages, obviously rising across the board for a national second tier model, it felt to me for a moment that for some clubs the penny may have finally dropped about how realistic participation in a national second tier would actually be for them. But then the discussion moved on to whether second tier teams would be obliged to spend that much, or whether they'd be allowed to get away with spending a lot less. And therein lies one of the problems to be worked out among those arguing for a national second tier. There is a very broad spectrum of people discussing things like a second tier and associated reforms, ranging from a complete laissez-faire approach to something much more regulated, but which side of that ideological ledger will AAFC's second tier model prioritise?
Among those who criticise the A-League, much of that criticism centres around things like the salary cap, the salary floor, minimum player wages, and the assortment of other measures which see the A-League operate as a cartel like the top competitions of the other major Australian football codes. (This includes what might be called the Rolls Royce model around fan experience, stadiums, etc). Apart from disagreeing with that cartel approach from the position of "it's not how a real soccer economy or system works" or "it doesn't replicate the global standard", the argument also claims that the cartel approach entrenches mediocrity. Teams that struggle on the park have less incentive to immediately do better in order to secure their position in the league; successful teams have artificial barriers preventing them from actually putting out the best product that they can, because they must be kept in relative check with all the struggling teams
Cost is one thing, revenue quite another. Of course a lot of the doubters are wondering where the money will come from, especially as costs increase. While some potential national second tier clubs are reasonably well placed to cope with the wage increases (and some will have the benefit of less travel than potential competitors), there will still be significantly increased costs which will need to be covered. In the discussion which reiterated the preferred administrative model for the hypothetical national second tier, there was also some discussion about pooled revenue and profit sharing. Uneducated as I am about these matters, it nevertheless seems to imply a certain degree of cartel discipline, and thus a step removed from a no-holds-barred spending model. It also says something about the fact that AAFC believes that there will be profit to be shared.
But where someone like me sees problems, AAFC sees opportunities. AAFC is frequently on record with talking about how much money is generated by its member clubs for the Australian soccer ecosystem (some would counter that by claiming that it's mostly generated by the junior fees paid to NPL teams), but also about the limitations placed upon teams outside the A-League because of Australian topflight soccer's closed shop. Almost inevitably, AAFC expects that increased sponsorship opportunities will emerge for teams participating in a national second tier. But aside from that, AAFC believes there is an opportunity to take advantage of a changing media landscape, which for me is code for non-traditional (and non-terrestrial) broadcast media.
Previously, if not from AAFC itself than from people advocating for similar outcomes, the idea (or hope) was that SBS would be a partner of a national second tier, an idea which I never had much confidence would be realised. For starters, SBS's Australian soccer content - indeed its soccer content outside of its lone EPL game a week at midnight Saturday - has now regressed to an almost negligible existence. What could possibly prompt them to spend the necessary funds to show a second tier competition with limited opportunities for recouping any investment? This suggestion, which goes back years before the existence of any tangible second tier movement - and which was originally formulated around showing live state premier league games - has always left me stumped.
Should this subtle rhetorical shift in emphasis - from securing a traditional and established broadcast media partner to a non-traditional equivalent - concern prospective members of a national second tier? It's something that certainly bothers me, but I'm already long gone on the prospects of this thing even working. For those more open-minded on these matters however, it should still be something that they keep an eye on - every cent that The Championship model doesn't get from a broadcast deal is that much more revenue that will need to be collected from other sources to make up for it.
In terms of player recruitment for The Championship, Krayem was adamant that it was "not designed as a retirement home", and that rules would be set up in order to promote younger Australian talent. This was clearly a riposte to the geriatric progression of the A-League, but also perhaps a critique of the NPL as it currently functions with regards to player recruitment. For example, does the luring of players from Queensland to Victoria help Queensland soccer? It may help those individual players by having them play in a higher standard competition, but it also weakens the standard of Queensland soccer. And what does the Victorian appetite for recruiting players from outside Victoria - previously British backpackers, currently Queenslanders and players from smaller states - say about the lack of opportunity given to Victorian players? And in the case of bringing in players from Tasmania, might this actually be much more justifiable? It's a lot to chew on.
Regarding questions from the floor about the transfer model to be used in The Championship, and Australian player transfer reform in general (as part of the now longstanding grievances state league clubs have about their players being poached by A-League teams, including the latter's designated NPL sides), the short and only answer given was that this was something that would be worked on.
The Championship would be a summer competition, with men's and women's components. I was not able to ascertain on the night whether successful applicants for The Championship would need to field both men's and women's teams as part of their participation. (update: see the comments section for clarification) This is an interesting point for how women's soccer exists in Australia. More often than not, the wealthiest soccer clubs in Australia (below the A-League level) are those which have a long tradition of successful male teams, with their female teams, where they exist, being an afterthought. Meanwhile those state league clubs which have historically been most successful at running female teams - often by women themselves and existing in the void left by the absence of a strong senior mens' program - would struggle to find the means to support a grandiose venture such as ongoing participation in a national second tier competition.
There was no elaboration on the matter of promotion and relegation to and from the A-League, or from and to the extant NPL competitions. While perhaps this meeting was neither the time nor the place for an explanation of how the different league layers would be formally linked together, it did leave a gaping hole in the area most casual onlookers (admittedly not in the room, but among those observing online) wanted to know. Krayem said that the NPL would persist; insofar as my understanding goes, this positions The Championship as the mechanism by which Australian soccer begins to achieve a necessary realignment of the its competition hierarchy.
Christo Patsan said that the founding principles and intent of the NPL and National Competitions Review were sound and largely still relevant and worth pursuing. I'm not sure that feeling is shared by everyone. If I was to summarise what I think AAFC want, it is a nationally consistent NPL approach (and eventually second tier) where clubs have the ability to control their identity and destinies. Are the ideals of a consistent framework and the freedom for clubs to do their own thing compatible concepts though?
That the NPL competitions would continue means that there needs to be a lot of work done to sort out how this is all going to come together. I mean, that much is obvious to everyone. Even among the advocates for a promotion-relegation regime however, there are a range of views of how this would work, ranging from a "quasi-cartel, necessary criteria to be met" model, to something much more cut-throat and free-market. At the moment. it also appears that apart from Victoria and New South Wales, most states are only paying lip service to AAFC's aim of a second division. Cue the NSL conspiracy again. Should the Championship become operational, AAFC says its administration would be based in Melbourne, a deliberate challenge to Sydney's dominance of Australian soccer administration.
(And while really not important from the fact of its obvious implausibility, it is worth noting that there was also the odd call from the floor - with slightly more than muted approval from the guests in attendance - that if FFA and everyone else didn't want to get a second tier up and running, that the clubs should just breakaway and form their own competition. This idea had cold water poured on it from AAFC panel members, but it does highlight that there are very diverse views and attitudes to Australian soccer matters within AAFC's constituency.)
The most left-field proposal on the night...
Was AAFC's desire to hold an annual junior tournament for AAFC member clubs. The age range would be 13-16, for both boys and girls teams, with the event held in a single location. The annual extravaganza would also include conferences and seminars. Aiming to start in April 2020 - one assumes over the Easter break - this is a logistically bold, perhaps even insane proposal. It would require accommodating thousands of travellers (kids, parents, coaches, support staff), would cost a lot of money to organise, would require a lot of grounds, and all sorts of other things which someone like me who has never organised or been involved in such an undertaking could possibly think of.
Credit for the scope of the idea, but its scale is such that I'd love to see how this would all come together. Reading online, this idea was a hit with the Canberra people in particular.
FFA Congress progress
Another one of the key issues was the status of reform to FFA's Congress. FIFA and the AFC representatives had recently been in the country and left again, and looking in from the outside it appears that not much has changed. Naturally those involved closer to the action have a better idea than us mere plebs. In terms of AAFC's hope of getting a seat on FFA's reformed Congress, it all seemed to depend on who was speaking for AAFC. Krayem said that Victoria was the only state federation which was for AAFC having a vote on FFA's Congress, while Queensland was happy for AAFC to have observer status.
(A non-AAFC source later told me that most state federations were happy to let AAFC have observer status, until such time as AAFC could "prove themselves", whatever that means. I assume it means in part holding itself together through what will be the much more difficult phase of actually getting some of its grand schemes up and running.)
Krayem was hopeful but cautious about whether AAFC would get its seat in the FFA Congress, but Nick Galatas, making one of his rare contributions during the evening, piped up to say with uncharacteristic confidence that AAFC will get there. This belief is based on the support that AAFC believes it is receiving from FIFA and the AFC; they certainly aren't being made to feel welcome by FFA and the A-League teams, and probably quite a few of the states. This international support gives AAFC a kind of leverage that forces their inclusion into discussions.
The issue of representation
Every state and region is going to be different when it comes to its soccer experience; in fact, this is a problem that cuts across almost every aspect of Australian sport, that rather than anything resembling a uniform and universal sporting culture, we are instead a nation of micro-sporting cultures. One thing I didn't note earlier on about the make up of the audience was how overwhelmingly male it was. I don't think there were any women present at all. Intentional or not, it is not a good look for an organisation that will need to argue that its attempts to reform Australian soccer also include the best interests of women and girls, and not just high level senior male players. Indeed female football was very much an afterthought to the entire evening's proceedings, with AAFC talking heads mentioning little about the topic, and the questions from the floor referencing nothing about women's soccer at all.
This is a serious issue, and I don't doubt for a second that those representing AAFC don't take it seriously. However, apart from the issue of optics - never mind female participation and professional pathways being the zeitgeist of Australian sport - the lack of any almost any reference to the female side of the game plays right into the hands of those who would oppose AAFC solely on the accusation that the group was merely a front for a collective of culturally regressive ethnic clubs who had been unable to keep up with the times. And to be fair, some of those accusations would not be too far off the mark. The room was made up of at least some clubs who represent conservative or traditional ideas of what soccer is about in Australia on this and other issues. Related to those clubs would be those who, like South Melbourne perhaps, espouse a cautious modernism in its approach to women's soccer.
(Albeit a modernism as yet untested by what happens when the female program's principle advocate, in South's case Gabrielle Giuliano, moves on. The matter of cultural and club continuity has always been at the forefront of women's soccer.)
At the same time, apart from your different flavours of ethnically derived conservatism and cautious modernism, you have clubs which exist outside those frameworks, and those which go across several demographics. So while there are clearly clubs in the AAFC movement with a chip on their shoulder about FFA's treatment of ethnicity, there are also those clubs for which ethnicity is not even close to being at the top of their list of complaints. Then there are the clubs from regional areas. The ambitious clubs who have no NSL history. The clubs from states and regions which have never had national representation of any sort, and no obvious development pathway for their talented kids. All of these groups are being presented by AAFC as a unified collective with a common purpose, and not as the motley collection of clubs that this group actually is.
And it's not all smooth sailing. There was some discomfort from the floor about some of the decision making and negotiating processes of AAFC, namely that it does not consult as much as it could or should with its member clubs about key issues.
(I'd also add in the strange and sometimes unprofessional social media antics of AAFC. I think they'd be better off sticking to a conservative online approach - discussing only their affairs, and avoiding clogging up their timeline with stuff outside their immediate remit of being a representative organisation for second tier clubs. At present their social media efforts lack focus - probably operating on the whim of whoever's in control of the relevant social media accounts - while also coming across at times as petty. They need to at the very least get an off-the-shelf social media policy.)
We are all in this together, but for how long?
Unity and patience are the virtues preached, but old habits and attitudes die hard. The nature of soccer in Australia has been, at least since after the migrant lead boom, one of self-interest and self-preservation. (The A-League has been the notable exception to that.) The pursuit of excellence (in all its forms) applies first to your club, and good luck to the others trying to catch or keep up.
But at one point during the meeting Krayem made the salient point - the kind of comment that can deflate a room full of fighting optimists - that "what may be good for football may not be good for your club". Amid the positivity and reinforcement of what it is that AAFC is trying to achieve, it's a message that cuts through, and it's certainly a message that we will look back on if and when a second tier gets up and it's not to everyone's liking.
Of course what the common good is insofar as Australian football goes depends on who you ask, and I'm in no good position to answer that. To me it's at best a nebulous concept, one that's been tainted because more often than not it's been used as a weapon rather than as the vague ideal that it is. For whatever it's worth, I don't think Krayem used the "good of the game" argument here in any sort of malicious way, more as reiteration that even within this group of (for now) united clubs, there would be winners and (at least relative) losers from AAFC's plans.
But at one point during the meeting Krayem made the salient point - the kind of comment that can deflate a room full of fighting optimists - that "what may be good for football may not be good for your club". Amid the positivity and reinforcement of what it is that AAFC is trying to achieve, it's a message that cuts through, and it's certainly a message that we will look back on if and when a second tier gets up and it's not to everyone's liking.
Of course what the common good is insofar as Australian football goes depends on who you ask, and I'm in no good position to answer that. To me it's at best a nebulous concept, one that's been tainted because more often than not it's been used as a weapon rather than as the vague ideal that it is. For whatever it's worth, I don't think Krayem used the "good of the game" argument here in any sort of malicious way, more as reiteration that even within this group of (for now) united clubs, there would be winners and (at least relative) losers from AAFC's plans.
A word on the "NSL conspiracy"
There are some few pushing the line that AAFC and all of its associated antics are merely a front for getting ethnic NSL clubs back into the national soccer system. At the most extreme end of that argument is the accusation that AAFC is a front specifically set up to get South Melbourne Hellas back into the Australian topflight.
Such thinking (whether directed at ethnic NSL clubs or South Melbourne more specifically) requires two pre-existing notions in order to get off the ground. First, it requires the ethnic NSL teams having the necessary political, financial and grassroots clout to re-emerge from their otherwise terminal decline and irrelevance to Australian soccer (a terminal decline and irrelevance diagnosed by their detractors no less). Second, that these clubs would have the capability and competence (again, both of which their detractors claim these clubs lack) to establish and sustain such a complicated and unwieldy campaign in order to get back into the national league system. Needless to say, I find such conspiracy thinking beyond laughable. Truly, it is at the level of the conspiracies cobbled together by the so-called "bitters" of Australian soccer over the past decade and more.
Whatever else AAFC's faults, or the disagreements one may have with the aims of AAFC, it has been established and managed to succeed beyond the limits placed upon it by its detractors and opponents for a number of reasons. We have already mentioned the support AAFC is receiving from FIFA and the AFC, however much that support may be overstated by AAFC representatives. It has also managed to keep its broad constituency together for longer and greater ends than many people expected. Just as importantly, in an Australian soccer situation which reeks of stagnation - especially with regards to FFA and the A-League - AAFC is putting forward the boldest and most optimistic view of what Australian soccer could become. Whether their approach has gained any traction with people outside those few interested in the narrow field of Australian soccer politicking is almost beside the point; within the demographic that does care about such things, they come off looking more often than not like the good guys.
Something rather obvious that gets missed however is that AAFC exists to represent clubs which exist in a rather strange and hitherto unprecedented "between space" in Australia's football chain of command. The NPL clubs play under the auspices and control of their respective state federations, while at the same time participating in a system largely designed by the national federation. While in cases like Victoria, NPL clubs are able to perhaps organise well enough to exert a measure of influence over the running of their state federation - and thus alter elements of their own NPL environment more to their liking - they have no ability to act as a collective to put pressure on the body which set up the NPL framework in the first place, that being FFA.
Because of this bizarre operating system, no state operates NPL in the same way. When one person from the floor of the Melbourne roadshow complained (fairly enough) about A-League teams having more visa players at their disposal when they play FFA Cup matches against Victorian NPL teams, Krayem noted that when Victorian teams played against Queensland teams in the same competition, that Victorian teams had a PPS cap of 200 compared to Queensland's 170. Meanwhile other states have no restrictions on visa players. Not all of this is FFA's fault, and the clubs themselves - certainly in the case of the Victorian NPL - are also to blame for the mess that NPL has become.
But the point is, while ethnic ex-NSL clubs may be best placed to push for national second tier participation, they are not the only ones doing so. Neither are all of the former ethnic powerhouse NSL clubs best placed to take advantage of any changes. The goal here clearly is to start a competition which adds value across the country, and not just in forgotten suburban pockets of Melbourne and Sydney.
But still, what is it that South Melbourne Hellas is trying to do?
(I included this section because Leo Athanasakis asked what I thought was an unusual question, on the matter of potential A-League expansion and NPL/second tier queue jumping. While this was directed at other A-League consortium bids, I felt the queue jumping element could have - and indeed already has - been directed at South itself. Also South of the Border is a South Melbourne blog, so you know...)
When the campaign against FFV's original NPL model was begun by Green Gully and Melbourne Knights, South Melbourne - represented on this issue by one Tom Kalas - notably took a different tack, preferring to remain what it called "in the tent", believing that it could effect change more effectively from within the system rather than fighting against it from the outside. Then, like magic, South gradually changed its position to the point where it (and to be fair, a whole bunch of other Greek clubs) somehow became the leader of the movement against FFV and its NPL model.
Among those clubs who care to remember that this happened at all, there is understandably distrust and resentment about how that all played out; that the more obnoxiously regressive clubs on all sorts of issues who stuck their necks out on principle (however misguided that principle may have been) only for a bunch of Greeks to come in and take all the credit for getting not just a solution to the NPL impasse, but credit as being the leaders of a re-found boldness for clubs to stand up to the post-Crawford federations for their rights.
Me, I liked the fanciful idea that I invented that it was all coordinated; that certain clubs that had a more uncompromising ethos when it came to rejecting forced modernity would do the initial head kicking and grunt work, allowing more palatable alternatives - ie, us - to come in and finish off the job.
But the truth is that ever since it was compelled to vacate its position in the Australian topflight by the forces which took over Australian soccer, as well because of its own decrepit state, South Melbourne has had one distant goal in its sights above all others: to get back into the big-time, as soon as possible, and by any means necessary. So we bid for the second Melbourne A-League licence under the Southern Cross gimmick, losing out to Melbourne Heart. We tried to buy out the then failing Central Coast Mariners, under a scheme which may have included keeping some games in Gosford for however long it took for people to realise it was a stupid idea and just have all our games in Melbourne. Then we tried buying out Melbourne Heart, and failed there too. Currently, we've thrown our hat in the ring for the zombie A-League expansion process which may not even have ever existed.
They say that you miss all the shots you don't take, and when it comes to failed attempts to get into the A-League, no one's taken more shots than South. And yet, for whatever reason, South has never been at the public forefront of AAFC, other than by proxy association. To its own members, South has played AAFC and promotion-relegation issues as low-key affairs, preferring to put up a wait and see approach. The emphasis has always been on first and foremost getting into the A-League under its own steam (even if details of those attempts provided to members are sparing), and not through wholesale reform of Australian soccer's league structures.
And yet in most recent times, those paying attention to the social media contributions of especially our president Leo Athanasakis indicate a shift in our prior reticence to openly support a promotion-relegation model. Such a shift leads easily to the allegation from within the AAFC tent and from promotion-relegation fellow travellers alike that South Melbourne is not really ideologically committed to the principle of promotion-relegation; rather, South Melbourne is only committed to whatever South Melbourne believes will get it back into the topflight soonest. And if that happens, the rest be damned.
While not serious enough to threaten the unity of the AAFC revolutionary project by itself, it's the kind of fissure that people will need to keep an eye on; when persistent calls are made about unity and its virtues, any deviation from that ideal invites the possibility of infighting and sniping.
The question of heart and soul
I tried to write and re-write this section a number of times, never to my own satisfaction. So I'm going to try to keep it short and sweet.Community, authentic, grassroots, corporate, franchise, elite. Words like these and many others can be useful in describing the cultural schisms that afflict Australian soccer. Used carelessly however, instead of clarifying the ways in which Australian soccer is divided, these words serve mostly as an act of self-justification.
By any measure, FFA and the management of several A-League teams have treated NPL teams poorly. There are countless examples of this, some of which were given on the night. But it's possible also that NPL teams are seen in a similar light by teams far lower down the food chain.
Claiming the moral and ethical high ground is a dangerous business. Anyone making claims for their own purity of support of the game is on dangerous ground. Resorting to the kinds of rhetoric which filled up forums a decade ago, and which paints simplistic pictures of an "us and them" which does not actually exist, is a tactic fraught with issues.
The focus should be on the actual examples of disrespect given by the top tier towards everything below it. Emotive language which loses sight of that should be avoided.
Final thought
During the aftermath over the next few days, it was funny to see the same info I'd received from different parties via Twitter DMs and text messages - sometimes intended for clarification, sometimes intended for further dissemination - make its way out to the public domain via other trusted vessels. It was like a proxy social media battle in the broader war for hearts and minds, except that I don't think anyone but the already interested even noticed.
Sunday, 9 July 2017
Warriors, come out to play! North Geelong 1 South Melbourne 5
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| They tried to make me move from my spot, and failed miserably. |
Despite needing to make a u-turn along the way, we got to the ground early enough to enjoy lunch (delicious but slightly undersized raznjici roll, overpriced and poor excuse for a cheese burek) and the second half of the under 20s game. Unlike the senior match, which was second place and against second last, this was first (them) vs second (us), and good on the boys for rallying from behind to win 4-2 and take top spot with a game in hand. More importantly, the style of football played by our boys was so good that the opposition coach - a rather excitable fellow, if we're being honest - was moved to praise them as the best team in the league, and the best ball playing team in the competition to boot.
We watched the referees warm up, marveled at them having to ask which of our staff was the South Melbourne coach, and then waited to see which side we'd be kicking to in the first half. Having picked our viewing spot and in no way apologising for it, not even now, the senior game was about to start and I felt unusually confident that we'd get through pretty easily - probably because I've been reading too many Ante Jukic reports about how ordinary North Geelong have played this season, and especially in recent weeks. The inclusion of Marcus Schroen for Leigh Minopoulos didn't phase me - I figured it was all part of the rotation policy, and that Schroen's more physical style might suit the dodgy surface a bit better.Check out this OUTRAGEOUS BACK FLIP goal celebration by Lionel Masudi following his outstanding goal in our Under 20s yesterday. pic.twitter.com/a0htk2vtEi— South Melbourne FC (@smfc) July 9, 2017
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| One of the great attractions of visiting Elcho Park is finding yourself in the presence of this homage to the wonderfully stupid cult classic 1979 film 'The Warriors'. Photo: Gains. |
But Schroen's second goal early in the second half more or less put paid to this contest, and even though North kept coming, the gulf in class was too great. Schroen got his hat-trick, allowing Milos Lujic to be subbed off early for Stefan Zinni, as well as giving Tim Mala and Bhardi Hysolli some game time. Depth is just one of the differences between the haves and have-nots of this league, and we're fortunate to have some. The highlight of the afternoon was undoubtedly Matthew Foschini getting forward and scoring our fifth goal of the afternoon, and just as notably his first for the club in his nearly sixty match stint - which he celebrated with gusto. He then somehow sent a header from inside the six yard box over the bar.
I think everyone felt we could've, and perhaps should've come out of this game with an extra goal or two, but we also came close to conceding on a couple of occasions, so the four goal win is not a letdown by any stretch of the imagination. With regards the race for top spot, the Bergers managed to edge past the Knights 1-0 this afternoon, so we're still three points behind - but at least we made up some of the goal difference we gave up last week. We're now on +21 to Heidelberg's +23.
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| Yes, it's true: Joe Gorman, South of the Border's 4th or 5th biggest fan, has a book coming out about Australian soccer, the NSL, multiculturalism, and why promotion/relegation in Australian soccer will probably never happen. It's also got curmudgeons, and is out on July 31st via UQP. |
Away to Melbourne Knights on Friday; or in other words, just an average Friday night out for me in 2017. The Knights are still in relegation playoff danger, but it's a 'derby' and they've seemingly turned a bit of a corner the last couple of weeks. The squad rotation and horses for courses approaches used in recent weeks might be in for an interesting time - one would expect Eagar to come back into the side, but Schroen's hat-trick - even if two of those goals were from a couple of yards out against lowly opposition - do in theory at least provide somewhat of a selection headache.
Upcoming fixture news
It's some time away yet, but our round 24 match away to Pascoe Vale has been moved from Friday July 28th to Saturday July 29th. The kick off times have also been adjusted, with the seniors kicking off at 7:00PM, and the under 20s at 5:00PM. These changes have been made to better accommodate our FFA Cup match against Edgeworth Eagles.
So they added a marketing person, how cute
After laying dormant during the the bulk of the last three and a bit months - coincidentally the best three and a half months of our season - South's A-League bid machine is kicking back into gear. While one could get upset, this was to be expected - after all, we're approaching an FFA Cup national stage date, and so you've got to make hay while the sun shines.
Before we move on, I am aware that by using that metaphor for this situation, I'm ignoring the advice of George Orwell in his famous essay 'Politics and the English language' to come up with new metaphors which are relevant to the age we live in. There's obviously a property developer adaptation to 'making hay while the sun shines' that would fit in beautifully, but since I'm lousy with metaphors at the best of times, I'm going to leave it up you, dear readers, to suggest it in the comments section. I can't do all the work around here.
Anyway, the gist of the article is that the extant A-League bid advisory committee will become the inaugural board of a South Melbourne bid in the event that it is granted an A-League licence. That means that the current A-League bid advisory committee made up of:
- lawyer Bill Papastergiadis (current South Melbourne Hellas board member)
- property developer Gabrielle Giuliano (also a current South Melbourne Hellas board member)
- property developer Louisa Chen (South Melbourne's current major sponsor)
- and consultant Andrew Thompson (former federal sports minister)
- 'marketing expert' Michael McEwan (recently added to the bid team)
- who is going to pay for this?
- what will be South Melbourne Hellas' stake in this?
- who or what is going to run this, and do we - South Melbourne Hellas members - get to have any say in the matter?
The bid team remain deliberately vague on these and other issues - understandably so within the context of not showing all your cards just yet. Suffice to say though, that for those who had hoped that a wholly or even majority owned South Melbourne A-League franchise was possible, this seems to put another dent in those aspirations. Those people will have to either try to find a way of doubling down on the promotion/relegation and second divisions angles, or do some rationalising along Port Power/Port Adelaide Magpies lines.
Looking further ahead, it will be interesting to see if members of this bid/possible future South Melbourne affiliated A-League team board other than Papastergiadis and Giuliano will turn up to the AGM to answer questions from the membership - that's if those other members of the bid are members of the club I suppose. The best thing about all this is A-League expansion could be pushed back until 2019/20 - so we could be dealing with this stuff for even longer. Not that any of that matters.Intermittent poetry corner (vale Fay Zwicky)
The Australian poet Fay Zwicky died the other week, which bears no relevance to South Melbourne whatsoever. But permit me, dear reader, to bumble along in digression as I am sometimes prone to doing on South of the Border, in writing about a particular poem of Zwicky's.
Before there was the Heavy Sleeper's guide to the 2014 World Cup on Shoot Farken, there was Fay Zwicky's poem 'World Cup Spell'. I can't say I'm much of a poetry buff - ask Ian Syson, he reckons I kill just about any poem I read out loud - but I know what I like when it comes to poetry, and I like this one.The Homeric epithets are used playfully, rather than in Homer's purpose's of repetition and fitting into his rhyming and mnemonic scheme - and why not? This is a short poem about a peculiar kind of solitude experienced within a shared global moment, not an epic being transmitted down the years by bards to a largely illiterate people relying on oral traditions.
The 'hollow anglo saxon silence' is a my favourite line, though it must be looked at in very specific terms - 'anglo-saxon' here meaning Australia, not England. It's a lament and a snapshot of the cultural obliviousness (more likely, and less judgemental) or perhaps even wilful ignorance (less likely, and more judgemental) of mainstream Australian culture. That's my take on it anyway, and the angle I find most relevant to my thesis work - that, and the poem's combination of sport and art, which are uneasy bedfellows at the best of times in our culture.
Some might latch on to the blend word 'mediababble', and doubtless there's scope to wring out meaning from those five syllables, too. But that's for others to do; not 'the great curmudgeon, exploring his own misery'. As far as neo-Homeric epithet in-jokes go, that's a pearler.
Around the grounds
Life in the Forbidden Zone
Trekked out to Port Melbourne on Friday night for Port vs Pascoe Vale, a game of some importance to the finals race - Port trying to close the gap with a late run, Paco trying to consolidate their place in the six and put some distance between themselves and the chasing pack. I used my media pass to sit on the otherwise forbidden outer side, next to the Dodgy Asian Betting guy. A game can be both mediocre and entertaining at the same time. There were some crude tackles early on, but credit to the referee for pulling out the yellows when the received wisdom (which I loathe) is to let everyone have two or three cracks at each other first before punishment is due. I'm sure I've complained about this before in here, but I've never understood the tendency for leniency on the basis of 'it's still early in the game' - haven't most of these players been playing for a minimum of ten years already? Surely that's enough time to learn that a studs up challenge is of equal wrongness in both the 5th minute and the 95th minute? Oh, 'but it will ruin the game if you send someone off early'. Maybe the relevant player shouldn't be such a dropkick so early in the game then?
Anyway, as ordinary as this game was, Port had the lead early and were the better of the two sides a by a slim margin Then one of their players got a second yellow card on the half hour mark, and Port didn't get close to scoring for the rest of the game. Pascoe Vale scored three times in the second half, which apart from earning them three points also helped calm down Pascoe Vale coach Vitale Ferrante, who had spent most of the game up to that point abusing his players. And while I don't agree with his conduct (while acknowledging that it had its own comedic qualities), somewhere in there was buried an interesting point - at what stage are senior soccer players in Australia expected to have the ability to organise themselves on the field? In a packed and noisy stadium, the coach's instructions struggle to be heard even at short distances; meanwhile at a suburban ground with at most 100 onlookers, a coach with a big voice is able to effectively yell and direct every single one of his players in real time. In Australia the difference between the two playing experiences are literally one step removed. So when do Australian players learn how to sort themselves out on a field independent of constant reinforcement from a coach? Isn't it a bit late by the time they turn fully professional?
Final thought
Thanks to Foti for giving myself and Gains a lift to and from the ground.
Tuesday, 11 April 2017
Nothing to write home about - South Melbourne 2 North Geelong 1
After the joys of experiencing the social club, and then watching the women's team steal a win (5-4 over Bulleen) right at the death thanks to Lisa De Vanna, the only thing which could have ruined Sunday would been the men's team finding a way not to pick up all three points. Credit to them though, they gave it a good shake.
No Nikola Roganovic, who missed through injury, replaced by Zaim Zeneli for a rare league start. Carl Piergianni maybe called out as a scapegoat for the defensive implosion last week, replaced by Michael Eagar. Jesse Daley was out also after a hard week trialling in Perth, and coming back with the flu. Thank you very much Kenny Lowe.
We started off pretty well, even took the lead, and then did what we do best and that's let the other team back into the contest. Now after being mauled 8-0 the week before against ten men no less, one guessed that North Geelong might come in with a bit more desire and discipline, and that's what they did, but they also moved the ball around better than you might expect a team on its knees to do so. I'm not saying it was great, but it did threaten to be effective, and some of our shenanigans around the back line wouldn't have discouraged them.
For our part, at times like these we are often our worst enemy. It was rainy and windy and all of that made things harder, but you'd think the way we played the conditions that it was the first time we'd eve seen conditions like that. Not one low hard shot at the keeper, or low hard skidding cross, which would have spilled loose or been bundled in for an own goal. Of course North Geelong scored in more or less that manner - a low hard shot parried back into play by Zeneli (even taking into account the conditions, a continuing weakness of his), and tapped in for the equaliser.
After that the team snapped out of their lethargy, but it took what looked like a controversial penalty at the time - not for the foul itself, but on the question of whether it was in the box - to get us over the line. Not many around where I was standing thought or realised it was in the box except for Gains, and he only thought it was in the box because he actually pays attention to the game. Certainly the North Geelong cohort towards that end of the ground were very disappointed in the decision, but the video proves the referee was right. as I noted yesterday in the aftermath.
Overall, it was a pretty lousy performance, but we got the job done, and since avoiding relegation is our main this year, it was an important win in that context.
Next game
At home on Easter Monday against Melbourne Knights. When it comes to the fixturing of big events, the mainstream Christian churches give FFV and FFA a run for their money, but everyone's lucked out this year because everything seems to have lined up nicely, as it does every few years for (literally) God knows what reason. Though of course there's a blockbuster footy clash on the Monday, for people who are easily distracted. Speaking of which...
The most Melbourne thing ever happened
During I believe what was the second half, all of a sudden over the stadium's PA system there was a stream of the television commentary for the Carlton-Essendon slogfest at the MCG. Good friend of the blog, one Mr Cuddles, who works in the control room working the scoreboard and (ergh) music, often has the footy on another laptop if his beloved (ergh, again) Carlton are playing. Something went wrong at one stage and I believe the whole grandstand then heard Bryce Gibbs going for goal or something like that. As one wit noted, 'there goes our A-League bid', which is for the best anyway.
Let there be banter
North Geelong brought along a decent (and seemingly youngish) chanting group, even if they seemed to be singing a lot of their chants to tunes that Clarendon Corner use, and somewhat less tastefully, one of which used the tune from Mousse T's 'Horny'. They didn't limit themselves to supporting their team however, also throwing in banter our way. 'You're not singing any more' was replied to with 'We weren't singing anyway'; 'Your social club is shit' was replied to with 'Our social club, is better than yours'; their sarcastic calls of 'penalty' were responded to with our own sarcastic calls for penalties. It did get a bit less fun when members of that crew stormed down to the players tunnel/race in order to berate the officials with much wild finger pointing. At least it wasn't us for once.
First impressions of Earth/Social Club discussion in multiple parts
2017 Jersey Night
The 2017 Jersey Presentation Night was the first one to be held in our social club since its (still incomplete, but good enough to start using it) redevelopment. Was it held there also in 2010? I can't remember - I think that was the year I missed the event (and Faith No More at Soundwave) because I was having my wisdom teeth pulled out.
My first impression of the social club space was, like many of you would have found, that it was small. The futsal court utterly dominates the senses. But over the course of the night (and much more so on Sunday) I found that the space instead of being small, was instead intimate, social even.
It was a good night overall, and people there seemed pleased with the social club in general, even with the tight squeeze of the tables to accommodate the (I'm guessing) 200 or so guests. A couple of technical hitches with the audio aside, the presentation of the event was pretty good, and if anything when it went drastically wrong or over time, it was because the audience had to constantly be shushed during the player auctions.
On that front, the real bolters were the Queensland pair (and many of these lots were done in pairs) of Luke Pavlou and Jesse Daley. The women's team as a collective fetched a good price as well, but I've stopped being able to keep track of the amounts raised on the night let alone across the years. I'm not even sure if every player was auctioned off. I can't recall if Liam McCormack for instance was called up or even present. The People's Champ, as is the case every year with this event, was not there.
The food was a bit all over the shop. The delays in getting the main meal out were a bit crap, but I think like of lot of things with the new social club we're all happy to be tolerant while everything settles down. The salads were fine, calamari dull, the roasted pulled meats OK, and the desserts - baklava and galaktobouriko which I invited to scoff from another table - warm and rather good.
The panel session was Bill Papastergiadis going on about the A-League bid; Lisa De Vanna - new signing for the women's team - discussing her career and drive to succeed; and that bloke off that Nunawading mural (not him, not the other one either, yeah, that guy) talking about how he has very few friends and how most of those few friends he has were made at South. Hey, wait, that sounds like a lot of people left at South right now! Or maybe I'm just projecting.
Anyway, after complaining last week about never winning raffles, I still bought ten dollars worth of tickets, and when the draw was being re-done for the small label boutique handbag prize (because no one had claimed to have the original winning ticket) I pointed to a particular green ticket in my possession, told the rest of the table that I was on that I was going to win it, and lo and behold I won the damn handbag.
Now while many of those in the room who know me had a good chuckle, I was not ashamed to collect my prize (though I'd rather have won the tyre voucher), because it's just a handbag of indeterminate monetary value, and I would have found someone to gift it to later on. As it was, I didn't even get to leave with the prize, as I was made a very generous cash offer for the bag, which I accepted. The buyer's daughter is apparently quite happy with my her new handbag, I was happy with the price offered, and I sought to plough that money back into the club coffers as quickly as I could on Sunday, with three-quarters of it already donated to a better cause; namely a rather nice new home shirt - one in which the badges and sponsors are not ironed on or sewed on, but are like, actually part of the shirt.
Anyway, the highlight of the night for me - apart from watching the last two minutes of the Swans-Pies game on someone's tablet - was being seated near the players (who arrived after completing a training session), who at one point were watching themselves on one of the many screens on the 2016 montage being played on said screens, and partook in some playful taking the piss of themselves and each other. Overall, an enjoyable evening which I wouldn't have missed for the world, and yet that's not all that happened that night.
Farewell, old friend (He's bad - but he'll die - so I like it.)
I can't remember when I first put the clock up. It must have been some time around 2013 or 2014, but who can say for sure without trawling through the archives (actually October 2013, thank you very much to Twitter's searchable archive download service). It was not exactly the most accurate or honest of things. I had as its starting point the end of our last home game at the old Lakeside. That decision was at best only theoretically accurate; after all, people hung around the old social club on that day for a few hours, being either appalled or attempting to justify the carnage of the pitch invasion.
But that wasn't the end either. The social club still got some use from the average South Melbourne Hellas punter. There was a casino night, and there was an 80s themed birthday party for board member Tony Margaritis, which included music by 80s tribute band Powerstryde.
[I didn't wear any stereotypically 80s gear to that party. Collingwood had just won the flag in a replay, and so I was wearing a Pies guernsey, having decided to commit to a friend's celebration and instead of hanging out with the teeming boganity listening to Lionel Ritchie.]
I'd started the clock as a quiet lark, and as a silent protest. People who read the blog - whoever they were - would hopefully have a laugh at the grim situation. As for protest, really, who that was against was less well defined. Was it against the government and their bureaucracy? They probably didn't visit too often. Was it against the board? Probably a bit, but if they could have satisfactorily resolved the issue sooner I'm certain they would have done so. More likely, and typically, it was a protest against the cosmic injustice of the whole thing, and an acknowledgement of the absurdity of it as well.
It took a few attempts to find the right kind of extension, and then to figure out how to fit it in within the blog. Of course, in keeping with South of the Border's design aesthetic of looking like a dog's breakfast, it only added to that overall effect.
After the lark honeymoon period was over, the social club counter gained its own notoriety - first among readers of South of the Border, and later out in the digital realm. Opposition club fans were huge fans, but there was also interest from far flung quarters of what is called #sokkahtwitter, the loose gaggle that could barely be considered a collective that makes up the people who talk about Australian soccer on Twitter. Without going over the top and saying that it was some sort of transcendent Australian soccer phenomenon, among those people who care about such things people knew about it, and kept an eye on it. This is one of the last tweets on the subject of the clock before its demise, which summed up people's feelings on the matter
But then, as its demise came nearer, I also felt sort of strange about that pending end. It had become an essential part of the blog, the most obvious thing, and the only moving thing on here, its metronomic persistence - except in the one case noted above - was soothing. And the hatred I had for it was revealed, as it sometimes was wont to do, to be tempered with a strange appreciation for its toxic attempt at humour.
That wasn't the end of course, as the witty but topical banter kept rolling on.
Museum
I thought the museum was well done. The mix of the wall insets with trophies and photo montages, as well the video screens adjacent, looked very professional, but also appropriately reverential. It is a project that is, like many other elements of the social and office spaces, still incomplete, and I hope that it will improve on that front. There were several glass cabinets insets, with trophies, mementos and photo collages. I am glad that the coloured red vee heritage strip photo from the 1960s got prominent positioning, as well as a very good working of the women's cabinet. There are also still things which are in storage, including trophies, the club honour board, etc, which will be incorporated into the final design.
To give a bit of background on production of the museum, so far as my limited involvement was concerned. At some point during the development of the social club project, I had gone on a trip with two members of the South office/media inner circle out to various AFL club HQs to see what they had done with their museums. Some were very good (Hawthorn's - if you have any interest in these things, go see it, seriously), and some were not so good. I wrote up a sort of summary/discussion paper, wondered ever after if anyone had read it, and waited thereafter to see what those in the club tasked with that area would come up with.
Whoever they relied upon - whether their own gleanings from their own research, or from referencing my internal write-up, it's clear that those behind the museum learned the lessons from that sojourn across Melbourne. They've made good use of the limited space available (Hawthorn, for example, has an entire second floor for its museum), and everything looks fantastic. At the very least, it was good to see some of the old trophies in their proper form, having been given a nice clean and polish; they were almost unrecognisable from those I had packed away several years ago.
Those of you who remember the old social club museum may be disappointed with what's on offer, and asking why isn't everything on show. The truth of the matter is, while we had a lot of trophies, many were from one off matches and minor cups. It looked, in its own shabby way, viscerally impressive, but it told no story. That the club has run with the idea of a at least a basic narrative - state league, national league, women's, intercontinental - means that there is a focus on the biggest things we have achieved.
I would hope that what currently exists as a blank wall between the entrance from the futsal court and the museum can be turned into an extension of the museum idea, incorporating at least something about the three predecessor clubs, and perhaps also something about Middle Park as well. It may be a good chance to use even some cursory written history as part of that. We'll wait and see, but so far I am happy with what has been achieved on this front.
On Sunday
I missed the family day on the Saturday, having procrastinated too long at home playing video games, and so I didn't get to experience the social club under the full force of too many people with too many children. Apparently the wait for food was very long.
On Sunday this did not appear to be an issue. I was there pretty early, and while food was not served instantly, it was prepared in a timely fashion for those looking to eat inside. I was less than happy with the meal deal option - with either souvlaki (pork, chicken, or lamb), burger or kransky - because it seemed to be the only way you could order a main meal, in that you couldn't buy a souv, burger or kranksy just on its own. I'm lead to believe that this, and the very concise menu, were only temporary as bistro finds its feet.
The food - I had a pork souvlaki - was of a very good standard, and judging from what other people said about their meals, I did not hear a bad word about the quality of what was on offer. The pricing on the other hand was a bit steep, as it was for booze. And while a drink was included in the cost of the meal, it was for a soft drink. I hope that in future something can be arranged for alcoholic drinks to be included in meal deals, as is often done at pubs.
It is impossible to extrapolate anything from day one (or day three), but the venue seemed to be doing good trade. After the game came its first real big PR test, when the club's social club member priority scheme was put in place for the first time - or at least general member priority. Those without memberships - including one notably young and loud-voiced terrace character - had to wait until those with memberships got in first, and then whatever capacity was left over could accommodate them. Maybe some signage making that fact could be placed outside the social club, instead of having the president stand outside personally vetting people. (though if I recall correctly,
It would also be good in future to know in advance when the social club will be open from, and I have made that known to people at the club - even on their electronic flyers, it'd be a welcome addition. I'm not sure of the scope of the venue to attract people from the local community, but hopefully it is at least able to attract people who attend events held at Lakeside on non-South match days, especially people from outside those who will use the futsal court. Speaking of which, the futsal court itself is apparently already doing quite well during these school holidays in terms ofexploiting leveraging our location in an upper middle class part of Melbourne which full of people with high levels of disposable income.
And in the end, that's what it comes down to. I can understand the concerns of those who wanted something bigger and more expansive, but it is not designed for the 13 odd days where we play at home - it is designed for the other 352 days when we are not playing games there. That most of us will be there on one of those 13 days however means our judgements will be based around that experience, even as the financial security and hopefully prosperity that the other 352 days will bring to the club will be the main focus of the social club. It will take some getting used to. Some may never get used to it. I understand that. I'm going to try and make the best of the situation.
In all seriousness
My warmest regards to any board member past or present who had to work on this project at any time. So far as I can remember, neither the clock nor any of my comments were ever intended as a personal attack on any of you - I get it though if you were annoyed or hurt by either of those however. At least now I can start hammering you for the social club as it is, and not about when we'd actually get it.
Hidden benefits of the social club
The game outside was streamed live into the social club's screens. Apart from being convenient in terms of not missing much of the action if you decide to stay indoors because of the weather or want to beat the half-time rush for food, if you happen to be one of our more combustible supporters, you can use it as a time-out space - as it may have appeared to occur during the game on Sunday.
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The owner of the forum finally had enough. Full obituary Thursday or Friday or something like that.
Around the grounds
Restricted view ticket
I had intended to to go Lakeside for 'family day', but procrastination caught up with me. Thus we (me and three other blokes) agreed to attend Moreland City vs Brunswick City. After an energetic first half there was no score, because neither team could shoot properly. Moreland took the lead through old mate Trent Rixon, but then Brunswick, who had done nothing in the second half, got level via a penalty and then took the lead with ten to play. Almost all the second half was watched from a a ridiculous vantage point (see right) because of the weather. Campbell Reserve's sight lines are bad enough on a good day; when it starts pouring down, there's nowhere to hide, and fewer vantage points to watch a game from. At least we got to see Moreland's equaliser for 2-2 because the player scoring the goal happened to be in that one part of the field where we could see him score a goal. In the 92nd minute, the home side pinched an equaliser. One felt bad for Brunswick, even though they had not really done enough to earn their lead despite scoring two goals. One felt uneasy about Moreland winning the game, even though on the balance of play they deserved it. But maybe that's the complimentary plastic cup of scotch talking - a complimentary plastic cup of scotch I suspect was earned because of only half playful hostile questioning of a member of the Victoria Patriots A-League bid team. And I don't even really like scotch.
Final thought
No Nikola Roganovic, who missed through injury, replaced by Zaim Zeneli for a rare league start. Carl Piergianni maybe called out as a scapegoat for the defensive implosion last week, replaced by Michael Eagar. Jesse Daley was out also after a hard week trialling in Perth, and coming back with the flu. Thank you very much Kenny Lowe.
We started off pretty well, even took the lead, and then did what we do best and that's let the other team back into the contest. Now after being mauled 8-0 the week before against ten men no less, one guessed that North Geelong might come in with a bit more desire and discipline, and that's what they did, but they also moved the ball around better than you might expect a team on its knees to do so. I'm not saying it was great, but it did threaten to be effective, and some of our shenanigans around the back line wouldn't have discouraged them.
For our part, at times like these we are often our worst enemy. It was rainy and windy and all of that made things harder, but you'd think the way we played the conditions that it was the first time we'd eve seen conditions like that. Not one low hard shot at the keeper, or low hard skidding cross, which would have spilled loose or been bundled in for an own goal. Of course North Geelong scored in more or less that manner - a low hard shot parried back into play by Zeneli (even taking into account the conditions, a continuing weakness of his), and tapped in for the equaliser.
After that the team snapped out of their lethargy, but it took what looked like a controversial penalty at the time - not for the foul itself, but on the question of whether it was in the box - to get us over the line. Not many around where I was standing thought or realised it was in the box except for Gains, and he only thought it was in the box because he actually pays attention to the game. Certainly the North Geelong cohort towards that end of the ground were very disappointed in the decision, but the video proves the referee was right. as I noted yesterday in the aftermath.
Milos Lujic tucked away his fourth goal of the league campaign - all from penalties - and we managed to withstand North's attempts at getting an equaliser, even though it wasn't always pretty. Chris Taylor's refusal to make a sub also confounded many in the ground. The wittiest suggestion as to why that might be was made by Griff of all people, who suggested that perhaps Taylor was under the impression that substitutes were like annual leave, and that he was hoping to roll over unused subs to the next game. Whereas, as Griff pointed out, unused subs are actually more like sick days - if you don't use them, you lose them!@a_jukic @smfc @NGWFC Thinnest of margins, most unnecessary of tackles. It's a cruel game, but sometimes we create our own miseries.— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) April 9, 2017
Overall, it was a pretty lousy performance, but we got the job done, and since avoiding relegation is our main this year, it was an important win in that context.
Next game
At home on Easter Monday against Melbourne Knights. When it comes to the fixturing of big events, the mainstream Christian churches give FFV and FFA a run for their money, but everyone's lucked out this year because everything seems to have lined up nicely, as it does every few years for (literally) God knows what reason. Though of course there's a blockbuster footy clash on the Monday, for people who are easily distracted. Speaking of which...
The most Melbourne thing ever happened
During I believe what was the second half, all of a sudden over the stadium's PA system there was a stream of the television commentary for the Carlton-Essendon slogfest at the MCG. Good friend of the blog, one Mr Cuddles, who works in the control room working the scoreboard and (ergh) music, often has the footy on another laptop if his beloved (ergh, again) Carlton are playing. Something went wrong at one stage and I believe the whole grandstand then heard Bryce Gibbs going for goal or something like that. As one wit noted, 'there goes our A-League bid', which is for the best anyway.
Let there be banter
North Geelong brought along a decent (and seemingly youngish) chanting group, even if they seemed to be singing a lot of their chants to tunes that Clarendon Corner use, and somewhat less tastefully, one of which used the tune from Mousse T's 'Horny'. They didn't limit themselves to supporting their team however, also throwing in banter our way. 'You're not singing any more' was replied to with 'We weren't singing anyway'; 'Your social club is shit' was replied to with 'Our social club, is better than yours'; their sarcastic calls of 'penalty' were responded to with our own sarcastic calls for penalties. It did get a bit less fun when members of that crew stormed down to the players tunnel/race in order to berate the officials with much wild finger pointing. At least it wasn't us for once.
First impressions of Earth/Social Club discussion in multiple parts
2017 Jersey Night
The 2017 Jersey Presentation Night was the first one to be held in our social club since its (still incomplete, but good enough to start using it) redevelopment. Was it held there also in 2010? I can't remember - I think that was the year I missed the event (and Faith No More at Soundwave) because I was having my wisdom teeth pulled out.
My first impression of the social club space was, like many of you would have found, that it was small. The futsal court utterly dominates the senses. But over the course of the night (and much more so on Sunday) I found that the space instead of being small, was instead intimate, social even.
It was a good night overall, and people there seemed pleased with the social club in general, even with the tight squeeze of the tables to accommodate the (I'm guessing) 200 or so guests. A couple of technical hitches with the audio aside, the presentation of the event was pretty good, and if anything when it went drastically wrong or over time, it was because the audience had to constantly be shushed during the player auctions.
On that front, the real bolters were the Queensland pair (and many of these lots were done in pairs) of Luke Pavlou and Jesse Daley. The women's team as a collective fetched a good price as well, but I've stopped being able to keep track of the amounts raised on the night let alone across the years. I'm not even sure if every player was auctioned off. I can't recall if Liam McCormack for instance was called up or even present. The People's Champ, as is the case every year with this event, was not there.
The food was a bit all over the shop. The delays in getting the main meal out were a bit crap, but I think like of lot of things with the new social club we're all happy to be tolerant while everything settles down. The salads were fine, calamari dull, the roasted pulled meats OK, and the desserts - baklava and galaktobouriko which I invited to scoff from another table - warm and rather good.
 |
| What's-his-name was at the jersey night on Friday. Photo : FourFourTwo. |
Anyway, after complaining last week about never winning raffles, I still bought ten dollars worth of tickets, and when the draw was being re-done for the small label boutique handbag prize (because no one had claimed to have the original winning ticket) I pointed to a particular green ticket in my possession, told the rest of the table that I was on that I was going to win it, and lo and behold I won the damn handbag.
Now while many of those in the room who know me had a good chuckle, I was not ashamed to collect my prize (though I'd rather have won the tyre voucher), because it's just a handbag of indeterminate monetary value, and I would have found someone to gift it to later on. As it was, I didn't even get to leave with the prize, as I was made a very generous cash offer for the bag, which I accepted. The buyer's daughter is apparently quite happy with Anyway, the highlight of the night for me - apart from watching the last two minutes of the Swans-Pies game on someone's tablet - was being seated near the players (who arrived after completing a training session), who at one point were watching themselves on one of the many screens on the 2016 montage being played on said screens, and partook in some playful taking the piss of themselves and each other. Overall, an enjoyable evening which I wouldn't have missed for the world, and yet that's not all that happened that night.
Farewell, old friend (He's bad - but he'll die - so I like it.)
I can't remember when I first put the clock up. It must have been some time around 2013 or 2014, but who can say for sure without trawling through the archives (actually October 2013, thank you very much to Twitter's searchable archive download service). It was not exactly the most accurate or honest of things. I had as its starting point the end of our last home game at the old Lakeside. That decision was at best only theoretically accurate; after all, people hung around the old social club on that day for a few hours, being either appalled or attempting to justify the carnage of the pitch invasion.
But that wasn't the end either. The social club still got some use from the average South Melbourne Hellas punter. There was a casino night, and there was an 80s themed birthday party for board member Tony Margaritis, which included music by 80s tribute band Powerstryde.
[I didn't wear any stereotypically 80s gear to that party. Collingwood had just won the flag in a replay, and so I was wearing a Pies guernsey, having decided to commit to a friend's celebration and instead of hanging out with the teeming boganity listening to Lionel Ritchie.]
I'd started the clock as a quiet lark, and as a silent protest. People who read the blog - whoever they were - would hopefully have a laugh at the grim situation. As for protest, really, who that was against was less well defined. Was it against the government and their bureaucracy? They probably didn't visit too often. Was it against the board? Probably a bit, but if they could have satisfactorily resolved the issue sooner I'm certain they would have done so. More likely, and typically, it was a protest against the cosmic injustice of the whole thing, and an acknowledgement of the absurdity of it as well.
It took a few attempts to find the right kind of extension, and then to figure out how to fit it in within the blog. Of course, in keeping with South of the Border's design aesthetic of looking like a dog's breakfast, it only added to that overall effect.
After the lark honeymoon period was over, the social club counter gained its own notoriety - first among readers of South of the Border, and later out in the digital realm. Opposition club fans were huge fans, but there was also interest from far flung quarters of what is called #sokkahtwitter, the loose gaggle that could barely be considered a collective that makes up the people who talk about Australian soccer on Twitter. Without going over the top and saying that it was some sort of transcendent Australian soccer phenomenon, among those people who care about such things people knew about it, and kept an eye on it. This is one of the last tweets on the subject of the clock before its demise, which summed up people's feelings on the matter
That notoriety was both fascinating and dispiriting. Yes, all of our fans wanted the issue of the social club resolved. For the pleb fan, this was because we just wanted our social club space back. For the board members, it was because so much of the future prosperity of the club that they were and are responsible for was still attached to it. But for me, there was the added condition of 'I just want to get rid of this damn albatross'. I hated it. When one day late last year I think it was, it mysteriously broke and showed the (all things considered) wrong time, I had to go back and manually fix it.after tonight one of my favourite things in Australian soccer will be gone @PaulMavroudis pic.twitter.com/KRWt0d7Pf0— Joe Gorman (@JoeGorman_89) April 7, 2017
But then, as its demise came nearer, I also felt sort of strange about that pending end. It had become an essential part of the blog, the most obvious thing, and the only moving thing on here, its metronomic persistence - except in the one case noted above - was soothing. And the hatred I had for it was revealed, as it sometimes was wont to do, to be tempered with a strange appreciation for its toxic attempt at humour.
On the day of the jersey night, I had mostly overcome my ten day bout with illness. The plan on the day had been settled. I'd go to a free lunch in Fitzroy and the Jersey Night after that, with hopefully two hours in between to get to a computer at uni in the city in order to quietly remove the social club count-up clock. (Blogger's back-end management processes work very badly in my phone's browser). But I got waylaid for several hours in the late afternoon by drinks in Brunswick Street with an assortment of characters known and unknown. By the time I managed to extricate myself from the situation, I was overdue at Lakeside, and the clock was still running.Actually, I don't care about the social club any more; I prefer having the counter instead http://t.co/og2YmAy6wx— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) October 16, 2015
So, while getting playfully heckled online and at jersey night was fun for about two minutes, I really wanted to just get the damn thing off the blog. So after asking the evening's media operator whether I could borrow his computer to just dump it quietly, discreetly, the situation was engineered - admittedly with my agreement - that at a suitable point in the evening, we would film the process. And thus at some point late in evening, around 11:30 or so, the farce of an amateur blogger deleting a bit of html off a website was filmed and uploaded to the world.
— Tony Margaritis (@sthmel) April 7, 2017Several years ago when people were discussing how we should inaugurate the opening of the social club, I'd mentioned this as a possibility, but there was no planning for it until the night itself. Usually South of the Border likes to steer clear of anything resembling an official connection to the club, but late in the evening, with the room half emptied, and with the wife of a South of the Border reader (you can hear her in the video's background) heckling her partner, everything seemed to fall into place. Thanks to MC David Henning for his kind words and nimble speech.
That wasn't the end of course, as the witty but topical banter kept rolling on.
— Name cannot be blank (@jgrb) April 8, 2017But it was finally done - the social club was in, and the clock had to go. Your correspondent typically couldn't help however put forward what was at least a faintly mournful post.
On Saturday morning, looking at the blog, I decided to change the look for the first time in years. A bit neater, and a bit of distance between that bloody gadget and the blog. I thought it looked better, but one of our readers suggested something a bit more appropriate for those sneaking in a read of South of the Border during paid office hours. Not having ever had a proper job of any description, I just did what he suggested and changed the text box a bit. If I had the skills I'd convert the whole thing to look like a spreadsheet, but since I can't even manage even a crappy banner for the top, that might be a bit of a pipe dream.It's gone. Just like that.— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) April 7, 2017
I thought the museum was well done. The mix of the wall insets with trophies and photo montages, as well the video screens adjacent, looked very professional, but also appropriately reverential. It is a project that is, like many other elements of the social and office spaces, still incomplete, and I hope that it will improve on that front. There were several glass cabinets insets, with trophies, mementos and photo collages. I am glad that the coloured red vee heritage strip photo from the 1960s got prominent positioning, as well as a very good working of the women's cabinet. There are also still things which are in storage, including trophies, the club honour board, etc, which will be incorporated into the final design.
To give a bit of background on production of the museum, so far as my limited involvement was concerned. At some point during the development of the social club project, I had gone on a trip with two members of the South office/media inner circle out to various AFL club HQs to see what they had done with their museums. Some were very good (Hawthorn's - if you have any interest in these things, go see it, seriously), and some were not so good. I wrote up a sort of summary/discussion paper, wondered ever after if anyone had read it, and waited thereafter to see what those in the club tasked with that area would come up with.
Whoever they relied upon - whether their own gleanings from their own research, or from referencing my internal write-up, it's clear that those behind the museum learned the lessons from that sojourn across Melbourne. They've made good use of the limited space available (Hawthorn, for example, has an entire second floor for its museum), and everything looks fantastic. At the very least, it was good to see some of the old trophies in their proper form, having been given a nice clean and polish; they were almost unrecognisable from those I had packed away several years ago.
Those of you who remember the old social club museum may be disappointed with what's on offer, and asking why isn't everything on show. The truth of the matter is, while we had a lot of trophies, many were from one off matches and minor cups. It looked, in its own shabby way, viscerally impressive, but it told no story. That the club has run with the idea of a at least a basic narrative - state league, national league, women's, intercontinental - means that there is a focus on the biggest things we have achieved.
I would hope that what currently exists as a blank wall between the entrance from the futsal court and the museum can be turned into an extension of the museum idea, incorporating at least something about the three predecessor clubs, and perhaps also something about Middle Park as well. It may be a good chance to use even some cursory written history as part of that. We'll wait and see, but so far I am happy with what has been achieved on this front.
On Sunday
I missed the family day on the Saturday, having procrastinated too long at home playing video games, and so I didn't get to experience the social club under the full force of too many people with too many children. Apparently the wait for food was very long.
On Sunday this did not appear to be an issue. I was there pretty early, and while food was not served instantly, it was prepared in a timely fashion for those looking to eat inside. I was less than happy with the meal deal option - with either souvlaki (pork, chicken, or lamb), burger or kransky - because it seemed to be the only way you could order a main meal, in that you couldn't buy a souv, burger or kranksy just on its own. I'm lead to believe that this, and the very concise menu, were only temporary as bistro finds its feet.
The food - I had a pork souvlaki - was of a very good standard, and judging from what other people said about their meals, I did not hear a bad word about the quality of what was on offer. The pricing on the other hand was a bit steep, as it was for booze. And while a drink was included in the cost of the meal, it was for a soft drink. I hope that in future something can be arranged for alcoholic drinks to be included in meal deals, as is often done at pubs.
It is impossible to extrapolate anything from day one (or day three), but the venue seemed to be doing good trade. After the game came its first real big PR test, when the club's social club member priority scheme was put in place for the first time - or at least general member priority. Those without memberships - including one notably young and loud-voiced terrace character - had to wait until those with memberships got in first, and then whatever capacity was left over could accommodate them. Maybe some signage making that fact could be placed outside the social club, instead of having the president stand outside personally vetting people. (though if I recall correctly,
It would also be good in future to know in advance when the social club will be open from, and I have made that known to people at the club - even on their electronic flyers, it'd be a welcome addition. I'm not sure of the scope of the venue to attract people from the local community, but hopefully it is at least able to attract people who attend events held at Lakeside on non-South match days, especially people from outside those who will use the futsal court. Speaking of which, the futsal court itself is apparently already doing quite well during these school holidays in terms of
And in the end, that's what it comes down to. I can understand the concerns of those who wanted something bigger and more expansive, but it is not designed for the 13 odd days where we play at home - it is designed for the other 352 days when we are not playing games there. That most of us will be there on one of those 13 days however means our judgements will be based around that experience, even as the financial security and hopefully prosperity that the other 352 days will bring to the club will be the main focus of the social club. It will take some getting used to. Some may never get used to it. I understand that. I'm going to try and make the best of the situation.
In all seriousness
My warmest regards to any board member past or present who had to work on this project at any time. So far as I can remember, neither the clock nor any of my comments were ever intended as a personal attack on any of you - I get it though if you were annoyed or hurt by either of those however. At least now I can start hammering you for the social club as it is, and not about when we'd actually get it.
Hidden benefits of the social club
The game outside was streamed live into the social club's screens. Apart from being convenient in terms of not missing much of the action if you decide to stay indoors because of the weather or want to beat the half-time rush for food, if you happen to be one of our more combustible supporters, you can use it as a time-out space - as it may have appeared to occur during the game on Sunday.
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Succumbing to further audience requests, I've added a gadget which allows you to subscribe to alerts for new posts via email. It's a little thing on the right hand side of the site.
SMFCBOARD IS DEAD
The owner of the forum finally had enough. Full obituary Thursday or Friday or something like that.
I had intended to to go Lakeside for 'family day', but procrastination caught up with me. Thus we (me and three other blokes) agreed to attend Moreland City vs Brunswick City. After an energetic first half there was no score, because neither team could shoot properly. Moreland took the lead through old mate Trent Rixon, but then Brunswick, who had done nothing in the second half, got level via a penalty and then took the lead with ten to play. Almost all the second half was watched from a a ridiculous vantage point (see right) because of the weather. Campbell Reserve's sight lines are bad enough on a good day; when it starts pouring down, there's nowhere to hide, and fewer vantage points to watch a game from. At least we got to see Moreland's equaliser for 2-2 because the player scoring the goal happened to be in that one part of the field where we could see him score a goal. In the 92nd minute, the home side pinched an equaliser. One felt bad for Brunswick, even though they had not really done enough to earn their lead despite scoring two goals. One felt uneasy about Moreland winning the game, even though on the balance of play they deserved it. But maybe that's the complimentary plastic cup of scotch talking - a complimentary plastic cup of scotch I suspect was earned because of only half playful hostile questioning of a member of the Victoria Patriots A-League bid team. And I don't even really like scotch.
Final thought
@a_jukic @PaulMavroudis @smfc @NGWFC Speaking of replays, anyone get me threading the needle through the shot put net? Best kick I have done all year.— Marko Stevanja (@Mstevanja) April 10, 2017
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