Precipice - South Melbourne 1 Oakleigh Cannons 2

Not much time for anything more expansive or timely this week. We're in a mess. On field, off field. Running out of players. Unable to bring in players. And every day the ordinary supporter feeling more and more helpless, hopeless, and irrelevant. Helpless to help the club, hopeless for a better future, irrelevant to everyone in Australian soccer, including the people running our club

South of the Border, now in its 18th year of once great but now spotty coverage of this club, has seldom been a haven of positivity. Chalk that down to the main contributor. But every week just seems to get worse. What's there to cling on to right now? NSD and the Oceania fantasy. Here's my conspiracy: the club is being run half-arsed on the field this year (no summer training camp, high school reunion recruitment, Danish nepo-baby, etc) so that we save money and/or get relegated so that we can have our youth team in VPL1 next year while the real seniors play in a fully fledged NSD. It's the only thing that makes sense to me, otherwise we are being run so poorly, you wonder what it is we're doing.

Younger, more rosy-cheeked bloggers like Manny - who is doing a bang up job with Blue and White Views - still has the kind of enthusiasm for the battle that I used to have a long, long time ago, searching for ways to improve, offering suggestions. There is his post, for instance, on better and/or more diverse canteen options. Sounds good, eminently sensible, and some of (like loukoumades) that we used to have before. But last week, when a lot of friends and family turned up early to watch the under 23s curtain raiser, there wasn't even any food. I can understand that somewhat right at kickoff. But a lot of people wandered in to the social club at half time, and found nothing. So before we even branch out to other offerings, could we at least have the current offerings available when people are looking for them?

In another post, Manny wonders where the club communications with its members are? We were once at the forefront of social media stuff which, while not a like for like replacement for news direct from the board, at least felt something more than the barebones stuff we put out. A few Facebook posts with results, fixtures, and players birthdays - the bulk of what we get now - is not enough. Manny is right - we need direct, and more frequent communication from the board about the ongoing plans for the club. When Nick Maikousis took over as president, we were promised more frequent member forums, and for a little while we at least had something like that. But now we can't even schedule an AGM, which apart from a moral imperative for a member-based club, is also a legal obligation. You would like to think that people involved in their personal lives in elevated positions in the corporate and legal worlds would have a finer appreciation for that legal obligation, but for some reason the ordinary South Melbourne member is treated less important.

You've got the club's general manager David Clarkson making a brief sojourn into Clarendon Corner last week asking how we can bring people back to the club, but not sticking around long enough to get a thorough answer. Yes, I would love David Clarkson to have the authority to gather that information from the remaining fans and relay that info to the club hierarchy, since we don't really have any other way of communicating it, unless - god forbid - we break open the EGM petition glass. I'm happy to offer an impromptu (and probably unhelpful, doom merchant style) thesis on the subject, but it's not just about me - it's about all of us. Speaking of all us, if you aren't a corporate member, then you basically do not exist to the club outside of match day (unless it's to apparently get banned off the club's socials). I get it, the sponsors are important, and they need their own events. But no room for even one fan table at the jersey night? Also, did you know there was a jersey night? It's a good thing that the Olympic friendly earlier this year doubled up as a family day event, because we haven't had a family day for years otherwise. We didn't even have an informal Christmas gathering last year.

So, again, who and what is this club for? And if the fully-formed NSD doesn't get up, then what? Even if we survive relegation, what are we doing? Sure, go to a game, watch a dreadful refereeing decision put a team already on the back foot even more on the back foot, but focusing on that misses the forest for the trees. How did we get to the stage where one obviously poor refereeing decision could send us down a division? How can Oakleigh have Pierce Waring on the bench, a player who probably would be starting everywhere else, while South fans in the stands are wondering who (with no disrespect intended) each new kid is on the bench? What is the plan? Are we just killing time? Should we wind the club up? It would free up a lot of time on the weekend for me, but I would miss some of the people.

Next game
In a few hours against Port. Oh boy.

Final thought
Anyway, if you want more timely, positive, and good natured South material go to Blue and White Views, also available as a Facebook page.

No community, no shield, only... victory! - South Melbourne 1 Oakleigh Cannons 0

Got a lift to the ground on Friday night, which I am very appreciative of, but... it was also slightly unnerving, in the sense that it was clear we were cutting it very fine in terms of getting to the ground in time for kickoff. It was a bit like going to games with my late dad back in the NSL days, dad being one of those people who always wanted to get to the venue at the very last moment. 

It only occurs to me now, writing this up, that back in 2008 my dad and I gave Friday's driver Johnny a lift home from Olympic Village - 17 years ago! - where does the time go? If you've been with this blog for long enough and are still with this club, that's clearly a rhetorical question. The time went exactly where you left it - at Lakeside, and at assorted Denmark Division 6 equivalent grounds around Melbourne, and occasionally in Lara, Ballarat, and Shepparton.

Traipsing through the car park and making a note that we'd parked in the Itchy Lot, we missed the first minute or so, as we strolled past security at the gate. Yes, there was security doing magic wand searches at the entrance, which I felt was overkill - but if they're going to hire them, they might as well keep them busy, I suppose. They attempted to amuse themselves by cracking a few jokes, like pretending that they were also checking to see if people were bringing in alcohol in their bottles.

This fixture was brought into being roughly ten years ago, in an attempt to hype the upcoming NPL season, and to also do some fundraising for charity, Given that it was free entry, and that there was no sign of any charity partner for this match, I'm not sure where the "community" aspect of the evening was. Given that the game was not live streamed, I'm also not sure where the "hype" aspect of the game was either. There was a trophy on offer, but somewhat poetically, it wasn't even a shield, but rather a cup, prompting the age-old philosophical question of when does a bowl become a cup?

Having to deal with all those lies on top of each other was obviously a harrowing experience, and then there was also the ordeal of having to watch a game that meant something (there's a trophy on hand!) and nothing (it's no league grand final) at the same time. Football Victoria have tried to do things with this concept, including shifting it into the middle of the league season, but the idea just hasn't captured the imagination of the Victorian soccer public. It's a broken record by now, seeing as how I've already delegated saving the competition and Victorian soccer as a whole to them alone, but maybe only Preston can save this idea by qualifying for it next season, whatever next season looks like.

As for the game itself, it's a good thing it wasn't live streamed. It wasn't horrible, so far as pre-season matches go, but it was violent, and the referees seemed largely indifferent in trying to get the teams to tone down the kung fu even a little bit - and when they did, the officials must've thought that Oakleigh were the Kansas City Chiefs, and Joe Guest and friends were various versions of Patrick Mahomes, and that if anyone should be punished it should be the opposition for being so mean to the teachers' pets. Don't break apart this clumsy analogy by asking who Taylor Swift is in this example.

We amused ourselves in the outer by reminiscing on olden days and characters, chanting the odd chant, and trying to figure out where Joe Guest's accent was from (which led to the listing of village English rugby league teams). So, standard pre-season fare.

Next game
Port Melbourne away on Friday night to open the season proper.

Crummy Old Danish watch
But let's be genuine for a moment. 90% of the reason I attended this match was to see the man, the myth, the legend, Gustav Møller (the Danish footballer, not the Swedish writer/director) in action, and to practice my pronunciation of mid front rounded vowels. Now I didn't necessarily expect Møller to get a start, but surely they'd give him a solid run at some point during the game? Friends, they did not. The fact that Møller was subbed on after 85 minutes suggests that we're not going to be seeing much of him, at least not in the early part of the season. 

It would be madness to think someone who's barely got on the park during pre-season will be our main guy up front. But we've been mad before with players who haven't done a proper pre-season - remember old mate Billy Konstantinidis? I wonder how good Gustav is at giving behind the play gut punches? When Møller was on the field, he didn't really get a chance to do much - he won a header on the right wing which may have led to something, but otherwise the game was at a stage where Oakleigh had to chase an equaliser, we were looking to kill time, and his talents were reduced to being another body on the field.

What this suggests is that Nahuel Bonada will likely be the main guy up top for at least the earlier part of the season, which I am not opposed to, especially if it means we change our style of play away from "kick it to the big guy". Here's hoping that Bonada can get some decent service from the midfield, and some protection from the opposition thugs who are going to inevitably try and break his legs.

Delicious Doorstop watch
Harrison Sawyer got to play for a whole minute the other week in the A-League, his first appearances in Macarthur's senior team since late November. Today he played a whole 25 minutes. Someone asked me at Bundoora if it was true Sawyer was going to be released, and might we be looking to get him back. I have no idea on that, and have heard nothing to support such a suggestion.

Ruining the line of the garment
Getting my eye fixed and getting new glasses has really opened up a whole new world to me - like noticing Andy Brennan playing with massive holes in the back of his socks. Apparently this trend isn't new, and is an attempt in increase blood flow and avoid cramps. Still looks like shit, though.

Final thought
How can you make a hype video for the new kit featuring notable landmarks from the local area, and leave out the Montague Street Bridge?

Third time’s not the charm (guest post)

 

This post was originally published on Manny's blog.

I’m not sure how many people want to read this, and to be honest, I’m not really sure I wanted to write this. As you probably know, South lost their third grand final in a row to Oakleigh on Saturday. I made the effort to be there and watch the game.

Pre-match and the State Football Centre
I was feeling rather numb about the whole experience even before the game. Having attended South’s last two Grand Final losses, my emotional battery was running pretty low. Knowing that the best case scenario involved 90 minutes of nerve racking direct football meant that I was doing my best not to come into the game with too much expectation.

I drove into the ground with a few mates. It really should have been a few more but a lot of people avoided the match – weary of South’s recent Grand Final record and avoidant of the new facility out in Bundoora. Surprisingly, regarding the latter point, I was actually quite impressed with the facility. Even the parking experience was quite straight forward, with an ample number of spaces available and only about a 10 minute walk needed to get to the venue proper. I think as this venue is used over time, more people will be willing to make it down and we should expect even bigger crowds. However, for elderly and immobile fans, the 10 minute walk I endured would not be feasible, especially in the rain.

Walking towards the gate, a lot of people were leaving from the earlier NPLW Grand Final. Heidelberg had snatched a 3-2 win in extra time and were celebrating as we entered the ground. We picked up a matchday program, which was simple but did the job (except for an error on the Heidelberg team sheet which required a manual fix on every copy). We also grabbed a snack from the kiosk, which is where the facility’s limits really started to break.

We were thoughtful enough to arrive early, so the kiosk line wasn’t too bad, however the toilet lines were terrible even with the ground half empty. Somehow they built the male toilets without any urinals, meaning the lines were about twice as long as they needed to be. The only other food vendors we could find around the ground were also unsuitable for the occasion. A second kiosk had run out of pies, and the Souvlaki kiosk at the end of the stand was overwhelmed with hundreds of people waiting – whether it was to order or for food we weren’t sure, but we didn’t see anyone with a Souvlaki which was a little ominous.

The facility itself was pretty neat. The ground level was fully fitted out with administration areas, a gym and player rooms, whilst upstairs the facility had corporate areas and about 800 seats with a great view of the ground. For crowds under 1,500 the State Football Centre is perfect, anything more, and the thing starts ripping at the seams. The surrounding areas were also well maintained and modern, a big step up from DISC.

We completed our lap of the main ground passing the two worst viewing points available. One goal end lacked any elevated view whilst the outer wing only had a low rising hill. This side also hosted a temporary media gantry. It astounds me that these temporary arrangements are economically justifiable. They look terrible, and offer limited amenity. I don’t understand why so many ground lack the foresight to include permanent media vantage points especially as considering the prevalence of streaming at community sports level. Even larger grounds (Lakeside and Olympic Village) use temporary set ups in the stands which offer suboptimal broadcast experiences. I hope there are plans for a permanent vantage point at the State Football Centre because this current arrangement is unacceptable.

Eventually we made our way to the other major temporary structure and settled in the stand behind the goals to watch the first half. This was a neat stand, but also illustrated the need for more seating at the venue. As the game kicked off, Clarendon settled near us and would go onto chant for much of the first half. This was great, and people in the stand would join in throughout the game. What was less good was the lack of cover, which dispersed the atmosphere and would have left two thirds of the crowd soaked if it rained as threatened.

The match
Maybe if it did rain the result could have been different, but except for quick light showers, the weather remained as expected and so too did the result. In the first half South managed to carve out a few chances and controlled the game, forcing a couple of clutch saves from the Oakleigh keeper. As the half went on though, Oakleigh played their way into the game and carved out more well-constructed chances – a sign of things to come. Except for a strange double substitution at the 42nd minute, South’s half remained uneventful and the score remained nil all.

In the second half South appeared to withdraw into themselves, defending deeper and struggling to get the ball into the box. By this point we were watching from the hill side along the fence which wasn’t the best view of the game. Worse still, Clarendon Corner had moved behind the goals where there was no elevated seating. This killed the atmosphere and I think contributed to Oakleigh’s increasing dominance.

Oakleigh’s goal was a well worked piece, and it was only in reaction to this that South appeared to play with more urgency. However, with Oakleigh now comfortable to sit a little deeper, South struggled to get the ball in the box even with more of the possession, When they did manage to get into dangerous areas the crowded Oakleigh defence denied South any clear shots on goal. Except for clearing crosses, I’m not sure we forced a save out of the keeper in the second half. It was frustrating to watch this and the play eventually sucked the hope out of the crowd, the little energy left toward the end of the game was saved for desperate calls to move the ball forward. The result was known long before the final whistle blew.

Australia Cup
Tight turnaround for the boys as they will face Hume on Wednesday in the Quarter Final of the Australia Cup.. The game will be played away, so if you go down, rug up because it’s freezing up there. The winner will face either Oakleigh or Macarthur in the next round. This means only one thing, I reckon we’re pretty good odds to beat Hume and then lose to Oakleigh in the Semis…

Rumours
Just as the promised Women’s Australia Cup never eventuated, if the rumours are to be believed, the H&A NSD will not come to be in 2025. Perhaps I was naïve to think it would happen but I’ve remained hopeful until now. I am officially now pessimistic about the whole thing. What this means for South is at least one more year in obscurity.

There are also rumours that Esteban Quintas will not return as coach next season, possibly taking a number of players with him, many of which were on contracts tied to NSD participation. In combination this could mean South looks very different next year to what was expected. New coach, huge squad turnover and ongoing participation at State level.

At this point, regardless of the reality, I’d like to thank Esteban for miraculously resurrecting this team. South just a few years ago were on the brink of relegation and despite the Grand Final failures and direct football, the current group has restored a sense of pride in the club in the form of silverware. We have beaten A-League opposition, made it deep into the cups, won a Dockerty Cup and two Premierships. On top of that many Youth players have been blooded at Senior level. From a South fan perspective the last few years have not felt as glamourous as this list of achievements suggests, but certainly from non-South fan’s point of view, the club has been restored as a team to beat.

At this point I’d also like to make a plea to readers to sign up and participate in the Australian Football Forum on Inside Sport, for more rumours like these and even more zany ones.

https://forum.insidesport.com.au/Football/Australian-Football

Puskas Documentary
As well as being advertised at the Grand Final, an official post online confirms that the long awaited Puskas Documentary is complete and will be screening to the public! For now I have only seen a screening posted as part of the Greek Film Festival. The film covers Puskas’ time coaching South Melbourne. Production was stuck in production for an extended period of time while the producers sought funds to pay for archival footage. Well done to all involved and I am excited to see the final product!

https://greekfilmfestival.com.au/sydney/films/view/586

A final word
Interestingly, South joins Rockdale (NSW) and North Eastern MetroStars (SA) on the list of 2024 Premiership Winners who went on to lose their Grand Finals.

Well, it's probably time to give up on the season - South Melbourne 0 Oakleigh Cannons 2

Boy, did this whole outing just suck from almost start to finish. Since I do not live that far away from McIvor Reserve, I didn't think it would be necessary to get to the ground super early (and it's not like there was a reserves game before the seniors), and public transport to that venue being what it is (shithouse), it seemed like a no-brainer to just drive. That was a great idea until your correspondent was obliged by a volunteer car park attendant to park in an exact spot, all while I somehow got into an argument with said attendant about my very poor parking abilities (thank you, bung left retina), and I remembered why I stopped taking driving lessons with my old man back in the day. The upshot of being in that particular spot was that at least one regular South of the Border reader was able to pick out my car from the mass of steel, thanks to the classiness of the stickers on the rear windscreen. 

The trauma of the car park having been overcome soon enough, it was time to wander in and wonder when we would be better off going next door to watch the hockey, a sport I otherwise don't think much of. Turns out, not very long. If you were being kind, you'd say we just had an off day coming off the faux-bye, and that one bad outing (during the regular season) against an accomplished opponent doesn't undo all the good things we've done in 2023. If you were being less kind, you'd basically write off the rest of the home and away season, and just pray for two (or if necessary, three) games in a row of complete arse to get state title no. 11, before we can finally bail on this decrepit league.

The first half was so, so bad. Like, "half a season ago, before we briefly emerged from our turtle shells bad". There was no pressure on the Oakleigh defenders when they were in possession. Like, zero, nada, zilch. Pat Langlois having to be told by a teammate to at least jog towards the Oakleigh left-back who had the ball. Instead, time and again, Oakleigh were allowed easy passes out of defence, under no duress. A little bit of carrying the ball up the field, a couple of passes, and Oakleigh's very good forward line was provided with ample opportunity to do its worst; luckily for us, they had an off day in front of goal.

You may think Chris Taylor is a great coach at this level, or merely a middling one who happens to know how to use a big budget. On Sunday, it didn't matter, because we forfeited all the initiative to such a degree it wouldn't have mattered who was coaching Oakleigh. If there is one thing I hate about the way our squad plays when it's at its worst, it is exactly that - letting the opposition dictate the nature of the contest by default. Oakleigh want the ball. They want to keep it, recycle it, move it around. We are a counter-attacking team, and that's fine - but without pressing up the field, without actively trying to win the ball back as opposed to just waiting for opposition mistakes, we are not going to have much luck against opponents who aren't borderline incompetent.

That win of ours against Avondale earlier in the season? It was good not because Avondale had a bad day, but because they actually played pretty well. They played well and still lost, not because of dumb luck favouring us, but because we went out there with a positive plan, and didn't just wait for them to gift us goals. But on Sunday, Max Mikkola was all alone on his left wing, looking a lot like Gerrie Sylaidos all alone on his left wing, no forwards to pass to, and no midfield to play with. Ajak Riak, having to go all the way back to midfield to get any taste of the ball. Fifteen shots on target to one by the end, because for some reason on a small ground we decided to have almost all of our ball and personnel in our defensive third.

That we came out in the second half trying to get back in the game with fireworks and big lineup changes reeked of desperation, not method. Of the two new acquisitions, Yagoub Mustafa looked much better than Luka Ninkovic, but neither player was going to be the solution to the underlying problem of philosophy; we came out hoping not to lose, they came out hoping to win. The nature of the performance carries the possibility of having done serious damage to the belief of the playing squad. I don't know what skipper Brad Norton said to the side after he held them back on the field following the final whistle - it probably doesn't even really matter - but that he felt the need to do that should be of concern on its own. Second on the ladder with a game in hand, one bad day at the office shouldn't need more than a quick "well, that sucked, let's shrug it off and move on".

Next match
On Sunday at McIvor Reserve against Hume City. This will be our last "home" match of the home and away season.

Is there a curtain raiser?
No. Once more, the under 21s will be playing their match at 6:30PM, a good hour and a half following the conclusion of the senior match.

Around the grounds
24 hours earlier, three and a bit kilometres west
Finding Duane Reserve in Brooklyn - a ground I'd never been to before - was very much like finding a secret passage in a video game. You inadvertently turn left instead of going straight, follow some winding path which the developers made longer just for the sake of added mystery, and all of a sudden there you are, in a little suburban soccer oasis. Like any good oasis, there was a fresh water supply - in this case, a leaky pipe which made one side of the field muddier than you'd like, and which forced the linos to run along the left-forward wing instead of their usual place on the right. Altona North an old off-shoot of Altona City, formed by some Maltese blokes who couldn't get a game at the latter. Most of their history has been undistinguished, strictly lower league and even more obscure; now they find themselves in a league playing against teams with brief Victorian Premier League tenures, including today's opponent, Altona East, who once went within a game of a VPL grand final. As for the game, the first hour was a grind, but East got on top in the last portion of the game, and ground out a deserved 1-0 win, in glorious Saturday afternoon Melbourne winter light, as I discussed the demographic reasons for the decline of Australia's ethnic clubs from the 1960s to today. Then I did it the next day, again.

Food for thought
After the match I bought a souv. I had to wait a little bit, it cost $15, but it was more than adequate. Not award winning, but more than good enough. It was the kind of experience that makes you wonder about the possibilities about a certain other venue's comparative food offerings.

Final thought
Had a wonderful discussion post-game the other day about music, football, and one particular football book. I hadn't gone back and read this rambling review for some time. I think the book's "end of history" vibe is going to get a challenge soon. The future lasts a long time, and such.

Torn - Oakleigh Cannons 0 South Melbourne 1

Provided with two options, I decided against going to this match, preferring instead to watch it with a friend at their city apartment. A pleasant dinner on Clarendon Street, a nice stroll with only the hint of humming of the Formula 1 cars down the road (the roar of the V8s a different matter), and then a little bit of whiskey along with Altona Magic vs Thunder while we waited for our game to start. 

Here was hoping there wouldn't be the usual kinds of technical snafus when we've tried this before, but what do you know? A big error message saying "forbidden this", and "failed that", and seemingly no way to work around it. And then it started working, and everything was fine again. Well, almost.

One is naturally torn about such wins. In terms of the league season, it's always nice to pick up points. And to win at this ground, where apart from a couple of games against the Bergers, we haven't won against this mob at that place in ten years? I mean, yes, we did "win" here last year in the cup, but this was a tad more legit, in that it was one goal to nil. You know, an actual win, instead of winning nil-nil.

And after last year's grand final humiliation, I suppose we can restore a hint of self-belief about being able to get a result against Oakleigh, including missing several important (to us) players; Schroen, Djiba, Brennan, Norton, and Riak on the bench. And whatever happened to Jack Painter-Andrew Three of the subs being basically kids. In that respect, even with Oakleigh having played midweek, getting the win here was slightly more than nominally impressive. But there's also the other side of it, which is as follows.

Oakleigh had eleven shots on target to two, and eleven corners to one - the one being the passage of play we scored from. Stats of course don't tell the whole story. A shot on target can be a timid long ranger out of desperation, for example. But anyone who watched the game will know that the stats here do tell a story, and that's that this win was pure filth. A 1/10 chance that somehow came good. I don't know how Oakleigh didn't score, how their efforts kept ending up just wide or just high. Who knows how many goal line clearances. Even taking into account our being short-staffed, it was hard to take anything of value from it in the long run.

It was back to the very worst of the bad old days. It looked like we were a team in relegation trouble, not near the top. Kick and rush would have been a dream; kick and hope, something to aim for; a good chunk of last Saturday was pure kick and pray. Poor Danny Kim. Remember Fernando's ill-fated stint at New Zealand Knights, where he watched the ball sail back and forth over his head? Maybe Danny's a good player, maybe he isn't, but we're never going to find out playing like this. But we must be grateful for what we have, and acknowledge that things could be worse - we could be playing dire football and losing, instead of playing dire football and winning.

Next game
Away at Hume on Saturday.

Is there a curtain raiser this week?
Yes, but with a massive caveat - the under 21s curtain raiser kicks off at 3:30, meaning that it will finish over an hour before the scheduled start of main game. Hardly seems worth the bother popping in early.

Vale Jack Dardalis
I should have noted in the last post, but Jack Dardalis passed away last week. I never met Jack, but we all know the legacy - Marathon Foods, major sponsor, forever linked to the club through some of its headiest days, and some of Australian club soccer's greatest moments. What more iconic kit in our history than the solid royal blue Marathon Foods jerseys of the 1991 grand final and the years after that? Another elder statesman of the Greek community passes away, and another element of the past fades away with it.

On the streams
It could be better, it could be worse
Travelling into town on the train, I switched on NPL TV, and saw a snippet of Moreland getting smoked by Hume, and Knights about to have the same done to them by Avondale.

Final thought
Will I get a post up before the cup game on Tuesday?

One game too many - South Melbourne 0 Oakleigh Cannons 5

What a letdown, and yet... I almost expected it. I think many f us did, even if half of that would have been setting up excuses for any possible loss. I don't think anyone was expecting it to be quite that bad, obviously, but still. Losing Harry Sawyer when we did always made something like this a possibility, even if we kept scrounging up wins in his absence. But the game plan largely revolved around two things - a big guy up front, and a big performance from the man between the sticks. on Sunday, we had neither. Conceding two goals from corners to an unmarked player at the back post only made things harder. Putting in our corners short didn't help. The rest was just a result of us chasing the game.

For all the controversy around Oakleigh getting to hire goalkeeper Lewis Italiano, his presence was almost a non-factor. He barely had to make a save until the game was beyond us. It would have been nice to test him, with the ball and without, but we seldom got close. So much of what passed for getting forward for us resembled a bunch of angry kids just getting stuck in and belting the ball long. Composure, spending time on the ball and moving it around, out the window. That's fine in the last ten minutes when you're a goal or two down and desperate, but if it makes up a good chunk of the rest of your day, you're not going to get far. 

There was a spell from after about the 15 minute mark where things weren't so bad, but the rest was largely a mess. When Max Mikkola left the field with concussion, after receiving an elbow from the eventual man-of-the-match that everyone seemed to miss at the time, that was pretty much it. No Sawyer, no Mikkola, no Andy Brennan, and having to make to do with the woefully underdone Jai Ingham for a much larger part than we should have ever done.

The worst part was that Oakleigh played the kind of soccer that South fans would like to see us play. On the ground, attacking football. Look, I get it - it was a one-off game, one loss, and these things tend to even themselves out over the entirety of a season. Thus we finished well clear on top of the table, a reward for consistency (however flukey you want to consider it), and had every right to feel ike we had been the better team over the year. But this is Australia, and for the most part we do finals. There have been times when that has been to our favour,. This time, it wasn't.

So, with the game being a bust, one then turns to the only other matter of interest, which was the match day experience, which left a bit to be desired. Considering a good chunk of people were coming from parking at Northland - and your correspondent from public transport also at Northland - only having the main Catalina Street entrance as an entry point was crap. I got there early enough that the queue wasn't an issue for me, so I can't comment, but I didn't bother trying to buy any food or drink, because that seemed chaotic throughout the entirety of my time there.

Quite why a drinks table wasn't set up at the southern end of the grandstand is really for Heidelberg to know, and the rest of us to guess at. And despite all the welcome improvements to the venue of late, quite why a PA system that works across the entirety of the venue isn't in place seems like the kind of thing that could rectified sooner rather than later.

In any event, there was a very healthy crowd of South people, augmented by Heidelberg fans, others neutrals, and Oakleigh friends and family, in that order. Someone put out the nice round number of about 4,000 people, which was good considering the negligible Oakleigh presence, lousy kickoff time, and especially lousy weather. It rained people. It rained before the game, during the game, and after the game. It rained light, mediumm and heavy. The ground held up, and there was enough shelter for everyone.

Now imagine that same weather at City Vista, or some similar venue. Really, you don't have to imagine it, because this is Melbourne, and it rains sometimes, and the weather doesn't even care if you have a major sporting event on. Quite why or how Football Victoria personnel couldn't figure this out is something for those with more intimate access to FV operational conduct to consider. 

Atmosphere wise, considering how poorly we played, it was quite good. The grandstand had a festive feel, as you'd hope for such occasions. Matthew Foschini copped his share of grief, and he sought to give it back. You could almost hear a pin drop when Oakleigh scored, really, but that's just the way it is when you get outside the big four or five in Victoria (South, Knights, Bergers, Thunder, Preston). Losing to an opponent with fans that can appreciate it hurts differently to losing against an opponent with negligible support. You're cheering for your team of course, but you're cheering against a phantom when you play these kinds of teams.

You become overly reliant on pantomime villains, worrying about focusing too much on pantomime villains, and in the case of one person, letting it all blow up Ned Flanders post-hurricane style after bottling it up all season long. We lost, it sucked, we try to do better next season in the same sucky league, while we wait for a new league that may or may not be less sucky, and which may end up being made of all these old teams we used to play against on the old days anyway. If you wanted a more psychologically healthy hobby, you'd do that instead.

Shambles to shambles, farce to farce - South Melbourne 1 Green Gully 0

This Federation! This competition! Every week there's something new. In especially good weeks, you may get several bits of nonsense all on top of each other. And if you've been very good, the Victorian soccer farce fairy might even bless you with the gift of multi-farce in grand final week. This week has been one of those glorious occasions - and we still have grand final day itself yet to come. The way the events transpired, Football Victoria comes out looking like an organisation that did not seem to have a Plan A, let alone a Plan B.

I can't help but think this is all South Melbourne's fault. If only we had folded in 2004 like we should have. If only we had not won the 2006 grand final that Oakleigh didn't qualify for, thanks to their legendary choke. If only we hadn't won the 2015 Dockerty Cup final at Lakeside against Oakleigh. If only we hadn't won the 2016 grand final n home turf against Oakleigh. If only we'd smiled and said "please sir, can I have some more" whenever Oakleigh inevitably came for another one of our players, in their vain and ongoing attempt to be us. If only we had sucked just that little more than we have managed to over the past 17 years - not quite as bad as Melbourne Knights, but somewhere in that ballpark - then there wouldn't be an issue at all.

Can you imagine anyone caring about all the things that happened this week, had it been an Oakleigh vs Green Gully final instead? Sure, there might've been some fuss-kicking, but it's probably fair to say that had Gully qualified for the grand final instead of us, the grand final double-header would have been played at Lakeside, Lewis Italiano parachuting into Jack Edwards Reserve onto the corpses of Oakleigh's seven or eight eligible goalkeepers would have been grumbled upon mostly by a handful of Heidelberg fans, and there's no chance that federations and clubs would feel the need (at implied gunpoint, in some cases) posting notices reminding people not to take recourse to abuse on social media.

But we mucked things up making the finals, then by winning the minor premiership, and we especially mucked up last week by defeating Green Gully despite much inconvenience. Within the first 20 minutes, the referee missed (apparently due to an unfortunate angle) Ben Djiba having his leg snapped by a Gully defender. The we had Andy Brennan go off with a groin injury. Twenty minutes gone, and two of five substitutions gone, and two of the three (not including half time window), substitution making slots gone. And yet, somehow despite this - and despite having to take off substitute Josh Wallen early, because had a yellow card, and who'd want to (hypothetically) play with ten men for 50-60 minutes deep into injury time in the event that Wallen got sent off - we got through.

Sure, we were the better team for most of the game, but my goodness was there also some arse involved. Morgan Evans had a solid game replacing Djiba. Alun Webb's outside-of-the-foot winning goal, past a wrong-footed and blindsided Gully goalkeeper, looked magical live, and much less magical on replay. I haven't even dared look at the last ten minutes of the match, where we sat back to hold the lead, and saw one cross after another flash across the face of our six-yard-box. I don't even really want to think about long throws, or no Harrison Sawyer, or as some (including this pseudo-reporter) have put it, getting this far with basically no midfield. I'll say this of this team - one thing it hasn't lacked for all season is heart. Normally that shouldn't be enough to get you this far, but here we are.

You won't die wondering this year. "Swoop the ref" has
 already been crowned South of the Border's chant of the year.
I will not be taking any further questions on this matter.
Photo: Luke Radziminski.

So on Sunday evening, having won our way into our first grand final since 2016, we were faced with the absurd situation that no-one knew where we were going to play the grand final, or when. To be fair, the warning signs were there even in the lead-up to the finals, when media pass holders received an email to apply for grand final access, and there was no detail about when or where the grand final would be played.

Normal people had perhaps assumed that as per the most recent grand finals prior to the Covid cancelled seasons, that'd we end up at AAMI Park. But as the finals series wore on, it appeared less and less likely that would happen. Uncertainty about if/when Melbourne Storm would host an NRL finals match was certainly something to consider. Cost too exorbitant to hire, especially in the event that South didn't make it, especially against an equally marquee opponent? Also sensible to take on board. Where else could they play it? Knights Stadium, with its pitch troubles? Olympic Village, with its lighting troubles? Anywhere else, with its everything else troubles?

It was a surreal moment when post-match some South fans threw out as a suggestion - completely in jest - Caroline Springs George Cross' ground in Plumpton, I mean, it was just a joke. It was also surreal seeing South championship winner, former Football Victoria president, and current Football Victoria CEO Kimon Taliadoros being corralled in our social club by several people, all asking the same question: where is the grand final going to be played? And all he could offer with certainty was "not Lakeside". Which, despite all the rumours going around, seemed to be the most certain detail once we'd qualified for the final. 

That only serves to reinforce the conspiracy theory that our winning the game on Sunday was the worst thing that could've happened to FVs grand final plans. You can almost guarantee that had we lost, the grand final would have been held at Lakeside, and pretty much no-one would have complained. But we had won, and our opponent would be Oakleigh, a long-term grumbler on being made to play cup finals and grand finals against South at Lakeside.

So Lakeside was out. And night fell, and no announcement had been made. And then the next morning, and still no news. Until finally the announcement came. City Vista! With 280 odd seats, limited shelter, and no elevation around the outer. City Vista, with its small car-park and poor public transport connections. 

Some of us have been around long enough to remember the 2013 preliminary final at the neutral SS Anderson Reserve in Port Melbourne, and what a magnificent occasion that was: lines out the door, crap sight-lines, rain pissing down with next to no shelter. Some of us are also able to recall the 2016 grand final at Lakeside, and in particular its shambolic organisation. Limited ticket booths and that slow Ticketmaster printing mess. People not getting in until 20 minutes after kickoff. The outer stand not opening until the second half. Not enough food vendors. The crowd being let in for free because of the gate shambles. 

Some of the people who made the City Vista decision were literally in charge the day they realised too late that they should've opened the other grandstand for the 2016 grand final. Instead of remembering that farce, they decided to play the 2022 grand final in a phone booth. What about the elderly, those with children, those who are unable to stand for long periods of time - hell, what about short people? A venue chosen purportedly in part for its accessibility - unlike some other options, it has four changerooms, which can accommodate both the women's and men's finals - ironically excludes almost every other class of soccer person.

Even as a relatively tall, able-bodied person, I can't say that I would want to watch a match of this importance at a venue like that. Judging by the highlights videos that Essendon Royals made from their away games there, the only elevated part of the non-seated areas is the media tower. And you've also got those big, black benches like Hume City have, which also obstruct views, and those big black fences at each end. 

While things have changed over the past couple of years for me and my sojourning around Melbourne's grounds, I still like to think that I generally make an effort to get to far-flung and below par amenity wise grounds. I think my record on that speaks for itself. And yet, the decision to play this match at City Vista was so insulting, so degrading, I made the choice early on that I would not go. I'd watch the game in the social club, or at a mate's place, or at home. I'd rather not do that - I'd rather be at every game we play, especially this one, supporting our players -  but at some point even I have to think about my own sense of dignity. Others were torn on the matter of whether to attend or boycott, and I had no quibble with that. But it's fair to say that regardless of whether you were planning to go or not, the reaction to the announcement of City Vista as the grand final venue was intense.

What a way to start grand final week. The original
 announcement on Facebook had attracted tons of
mostly negative commentary before the deletions
 started; and then it was locked completely. 

And it wasn't even just South fans having a go. No one loves a crisis (and a whinge) more than Australian soccer fans, but it's been years since I've seen this level of engagement with Football Victoria's social media efforts. Like most social media efforts at this level, most posts enter the world while barely leaving a footprint in the digital engagement snow. Here though, it got to the stage where there were so many people voicing their frustration, that a Facebook post promoting the first local grand final in three years had to lock comments. Just about the only people defending the decision were a couple of George Cross supporters. I feel sorry for the people running the social media for FV. They're the ones being asked to put lipstick on one hell of a pig. This should be the week where they get to do some of their best work; yet they've been relegated to deleting comments to shield an incompetent and unaccountable board from their incomprehensible decision. 

So FV couldn't promote the final. South Melbourne couldn't promote the final. Even Oakleigh weren't promoting the final. This wasn't just because of the backlash, but also because even after having announced the venue and timeslot, and having announced the time that tickets would be available for purchase online, no tickets - not even a link for those tickets - were available at that designated time. 

One hoped that the radio silence was because alternatives were being thrashed out. It's hard to admit when you've got it wrong, especially with everyone hammering you - but there was still time for FV

to fix their mistake. Take the social media outrage on the chin, and just do what was best for the game. Show some leadership. Maybe even make a display of that core value of "openness", and explain how we got here, and how we're going to move forward to a better solution.

Somewhat incredibly, that's (kind of) what happened. 

Football Victoria put out a press release announcing a change of venue for the double header from City Vista to Olympic Village. It even explained that AAMI Park was ruled out due to expense, and that Lakeside was ruled out because it would not be a neutral venue. Fair enough. But surrounding those brief explanations about why two grounds weren't used, there was also some extremely salty prose on why City Vista, and why that was actually still a good decision. And that justification basically comes down to the venue having four changerooms, better accommodating the men's and women's matches, making sure that "the player, officials and sponsor experience would be exceptional."

The fans appeared to have been nowhere in FV's consideration of choosing a venue. What's quite astonishing about that is that it reveals a belief within Football Victoria that they doubt that there'll be much of a crowd to a first NPLMVIC (and even NPLWVIC) grand final day in three years. It's one thing for fans to moan about the state of local soccer crowds but it's quite another for the organising body itself to come out and say that a venue with 280 seats (many of which will have their sight-lines blocked from people standing on the fence line), no meaningful elevation, no shelter, big black benches, and big black fences at each end, would be more than adequate. 

Either that, or Kimon's comment in our social club following the Gully match - that they had no idea where the grand final would be played, except certainly not at Lakeside - was absolutely true, and that they made the City Vista decision on the run. Honestly, I don't know which would be worse - that FV were going to play the grand finals at City Vista all along, and only pretended to not know that in advance; or that they had no plan of what to do in case Lakeside did not present itself as an option, and then had to get their PR crew to write retconned guff about how City Vista was the perfect venue for such an occasions, if only it wasn't for the pesky fans demanding that they be allowed to enjoy the day, too. 

And even though Olympic Village is an improvement, it still could have been better. Pave Jusup, president of Melbourne Knights, noted that his club had offered Knights Stadium to FV weeks in advance of the finals, and that the problematic pitch would have been prepared with due care for the day. The lack of changerooms which apparently ruled out Knights Stadium, with its 4,000 seat covered grandstand, plentiful parking, and elevated terracing, did not rule out Olympic Village. One could gripe about not making the "perfect the enemy of the good (enough)", but the persistence in playing both men's and women's finals on the same day is an obvious part of the problem.

Given that they apparently had no plans about what to do either way, it doesn't make sense as to why FV didn't just choose to play the NPLW grand final on a different day, as a standalone fixture. They've done it before, and it was fine, good even. They could even have played it at the City Vista venue that they apparently think so highly of. That way you could also play the men's 21s grand final - which also includes South - at a venue with only two changerooms, but also one that can accommodate fans in relative comfort. The decision to play the NPLW and NPLM grand finals on the same day at a venue with only two changerooms, also means that there will be incredible delay between the two games. The men's final will now start at 6:30PM on a Sunday. If there's extra time and penalties, with all the post-match awards guff it might not even finish until 10:00PM. People have work the next day. Kids have school the next day. If we win, we can't even celebrate it properly.

As if everything else wasn't farcical enough this week, FV decided to crash a fuel tanker into the flaming rubble of grand final week, by finally making a public announcement of journeyman goalkeeper Lewis Italiano's eligibility to play for Oakleigh. He has been allowed to arrive at Jack Edwards well after any and all transfer windows have closed, but apparently because all of Oakleigh's (four, or six, or eight, or whatever it is) other eligible goalkeepers are not fit enough to play, well they were allowed to sign him. Was Heidelberg allowed the same dispensation for their goalkeeper availability issues? Do the medical certificates all check out that, over Italiano's last three or four weeks at Oakleigh, not one of the other keepers has come good?

I really want to see the hospital records, or the death certificates, whichever may be relevant. I want to know which of Oakleigh's keepers is in hospital due to gigantism caused by abuse of brain and nerve tonic. I want to know which Oakleigh keeper is lying on the barroom floor having come off second best in an argument about who was England's greatest prime minister. And I certainly want to know which Oakleigh keeper Chris Taylor sacked, because said keeper wouldn't shave off his sideburns.

Such antics are not without precedent in Victorian soccer, and yes, there are rules which make allowances for replacing keepers. Your correspondent recalls late in the 2012 season, when Bentleigh Greens lost their on-loan keeper Lawrence Thomas back to Melbourne Victory with three games left in that home and away season. Thomas was replaced by Griffin McMaster, who up until that point of 2012 had been busy playing in a hopeless Moreland Zebras side. McMaster came in for Thomas, was part of a team that scraped into the finals (at our expense), and got knocked out against an Oakleigh side who featured some bloke called Lewis Italiano; that Oakleigh side went on to lose the grand final to the rocket flare powered Dandenong Thunder side coached by Chris Taylor. 

Which just goes to show how pathetically small Victorian soccer is, and that we need more Queenslanders just to open up the family tree which seemingly more resembles a stump. And yes, Oakleigh also have a bloke who played in a championship with us eight years ago (and against in our loss in 2015), and another bloke who played in a championship with us six years years ago. 

Anyway, history lessons aside, there's now a venue and a time, and those of who can go, should. But my goodness, I am expecting the worst. Not just on field, where I expect our luck/charm/whatever to come wanting, but off it, too. Kimon Taliadoros has already copped it online, but so has FV president Antonella Care - who just so happens to be the spouse of one Aki Ionnas; the long time and well known - and already not very much loved among South fans - power-broker of Oakleigh, whose management of that club over the past 17 years has had more than the whiff of trying to become a pseudo-South Melbourne.

You can imagine the commentary that's come out, both level-headed and otherwise, trying to draw connections between Oakleigh being in the grand final and not wanting to play at Lakeside, and getting their wish; by being able to sign a replacement goalkeeper, when another club could not. Just about the only thing that they haven't got is a changing of the date away from tomorrow, which would allow them more rest before (or after) their upcoming FFA Cup semi-final. I imagine that vitriol tomorrow will be much worse which, from a purely angry perspective, I understand. What I don't hope to see is the clu  getting punished because things go too far, especially of things are going badly for us.

I guess the best that I can hope for is that nothing said or chanted tomorrow crosses the lines of targeting someone based on protected category (race, gender, etc). I already expect for any all FV officials to cop a worse reception than Tony Labbozetta did after the 2001 NSL grand final. Maybe the aim tomorrow should be for sarcasm? Instead of chanting "fuck the FFV", how about "we love the FFV"? They couldn't do much against something like that. 

Anyway, all this, and the grand final to come tomorrow.

Awards

Somewhat lost in the kerfuffle over the venue, South picked up a few awards at the Gold Medal night on Monday. Our media team won some kind of award. South fan and photographer Luke Radziminski won the Les Shorrock award for best photo. Harrison Sawyer was officially awarded the golden boot, and finished just one vote behind the two joint winners of the Gold Medal; one naturally wonders what would have happened if he'd closed out the home and away season with us, instead of heading to India.

Our biggest win on the night - and really no surprise - was Javier Diaz Lopez winning the goalkeeper of the year award. That sees Javier join Dean Anastasiadis (2005, 2006), Peter Zois (2010), and Peter Gavalas (2013) as state level goalkeeper of the year prizewinners. 

Final thought
Only just figured out this week that my new job is basically Dodgy Asian Betting commentary, but in a courtroom.

A small, petty man - Avondale 0 South Melbourne 1

Your reporter could have purchased a ticket to the big AFL game that day, but instead did what he almost always does in such situations, and decided to head to the South game, regardless of the circuitous public transport path chosen, and especially regardless of the (as it turned out) even worse than usual public amenities on offer at the football arena portion of the Reggio Calabria Club, which at least in previous times had a half decent/passable canteen. Good luck to the food truck offering prawn twists and other novelty items at outrageous prices for making Lakeside's food offerings seem almost sensible by comparison. It's never a good sign when you don't see almost anyone eating anything at a game.

The worst part of the whole thing is that I got there early enough to catch about 60 minutes of the under 21s curtain raiser, so it was a hell of a long day to spend without consuming other than a can of coke, and a bit of someone's novelty Snickers bar.

For us, this was a dead rubber. A chance to continue working out the immediate future without Harrison Sawyer, while avoiding serious injuries and unnecessary yellow cards. For Avondale, it was basically win or bust, with Heidelberg likely to smash Eastern Lions, and Bentleigh Greens favourites against the all-but-relegated Dandy City. Now there was that one observant person on Twitter who noted that we must really hate Avondale considering that we played a pretty strong starting line-up, and there might be something to that. But otherwise, I think we went in pretty much as expected, minus the odd player here or there that didn't absolutely need to be out there.

And we got the job done. A 1-0 win thanks to an earlyish goal which highlighted a big part of Avondale's slip from preeminence this year; namely some pretty soft defending. I was disappointed that we couldn't add to the tally, especially as Avondale increasingly had to chase the game to give themselves some chance of making the finals; but I was otherwise happy that we seemed to be a bit more assertive overall, looking more like the side from the early parts of the season that pressed its opposition higher up the field. A good outing by Ben Djiba as well, after a few sketchy performances - when he was in the side. 

And, yes, it felt good to not only dispense with Avondale, who have given us a torrid time n recent seasons, but also to stick it up some pretty annoying characters at that club, who sought to target our supporters in prior visits to the Reggio Calabria Club. Yes, pity our poor feelings and all that, but good riddance (for the time being) of some pretty sore winners and now, also pretty sore losers judging by the antics of their coaching staff in the car park after the game. Not that I stuck around for such shenanigans, as I was hoofing it up Brunswick Road to catch a tram that would not properly sync up with the train arriving at Royal Park station.

Still, all the good feelings of the home and away season are now worth not much, as we head into the finals, which means we're either two wins from glory, or one loss from what will be deemed failure. But that's the Australian way I guess, even if New South Wales - the soccer state which loves finals systems more than anyone - is apparently dumping finals next year. Good luck to them for the principle of that move, but damned if I think they'll actually keep first past the post in the long run.

Back in Victoria, we're stuck with finals, which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't this particular finals system. In other respects, things remained much the same, as the top six was made up of five Greek teams, well earning the competition the title of NPL Greece. I mean, look at this for the most recent title winners:

• 2019 - Bentleigh Greens
• 2018 - Heidelberg United
• 2017 - Bentleigh Greens 
• 2016 - South Melbourne
• 2015 - Bentleigh Greens
• 2014 - South Melbourne
• 2013 - Northcote City

I know that it helps that the last two seasons being obliterated means that run wasn't interrupted by Avondale winning the title, but Greek teams have also frequently been the runner-up during those seasons, and have won five of the past seven Dockerty Cup finals.

Next match

Thanks to finishing in the top two, we have a week off this week, and are back again next week. We'll be playing the lowest ranked winner of the first week of the finals. As it turns out, that will be fourth placed Green Gully, who knocked out Bentleigh last night, and are the lowest ranked team remaining thanks to Oakleigh defeating Heidelberg.

The match will be on Sunday 4th September at 4pm. Apparently that's also Fathers Day, though I never took much notice of such things. It was a choice between going up against the AFL finals on the Friday night, the AFL finals on Saturday afternoon/evening, or Fathers Day. I think the club made the right choice. Port, the host of the other semi-final, are going up against the sold out Geelong vs Collingwood game on Saturday.  

The under 21s final will take place after the seniors' game.

Nag, nag, nag

People scoff, but gentle intermittent nagging can sometimes achieve serious results. My nagging is now on record as seeing the restoration of the Dockerty Cup, the production of pompom beanies at South, and perhaps my greatest accomplishment so far, the recent availability of South Melbourne Gunners merch. Does it matter that it's via a RedBubble style outlet with $10 postage? Does it matter that the Gunners gimmick was loathed back when it was introduced, and still remains largely unappreciated now? Not a damn bit. If you can't appreciate the magnificent irony of the early 1980s attempt by Rik Booth and friends to de-ethnicise the NSL and introduce ridiculous gimmick team nicknames, and yet somehow make the South Melbourne Hellas logo even more ethnic, then that's on you. Or you could just buy the re-make of the Hellas World Order shirts, which may be more to your liking.

My Everest

Some people are asking, now that I've accomplished this trifecta, what's next on the nag wishlist? And after thinking about it, I have to say: the abandonment of short corners, which I realise is outside the control of pretty much everyone that pays attention to what I say at South. However, I will note this: last week the team played a short corner. It failed, as most corners (short or otherwise) tend to do, and I didn't even entertain the idea that we would score from it. But it was at least a short corner taken in the right circumstances, with the opposition scrambling to organise itself and not exactly paying attention to what was going on. It's a start.

Absentee Golden Boot

Congratulations to Harrison Sawyer, who despite missing the final two matches of the home and away season due to signing with Indian side Jamshedpur, nevertheless managed to finish the season as the league's top scorer. Sawyer finished on 17 goals, two ahead of Oakleigh's Wade Dekker and Heidelberg's Kaine Sheppard.

On the streams

Hello, hello (and goodbye)
Saturday last I got home in time from the supermarket to watch most of the Moreland City vs North Geelong game. The sums were pretty straightforward, even if I cocked them up twice on the South forum. First-placed North Geelong, already promoted, only needed a draw to be crowned champions. Second-placed Moreland City needed a win to guarantee promotion, and to win the NPL2 championship; a draw would leave them vulnerable to being overtaken by Brunswick Juventus, who were playing relegation threatened Werribee City. Well when I said I got home in time early enough to watch most of the game, I meant that arrived home about twenty or more minutes into the game, with the score already 1-0, and who'd know that that's the way it would stay for the rest of the game? A pretty tight, kinda ugly game, ideally viewed from the ground level camera. North had a couple of good chances late on to take the draw and the title, but didn't.

Brunswick Juve then allegedly threw their game very late against Werribee, conceding what some have called two very suspect goals, which kept Werribee in NPL2 for another season. Having not seen the late comeback in question, I could not possibly comment on whether the result was indeed suspect, much like I could not possibly comment on Port Melbourne's equally allegedly suspect 95th minute equaliser against Werribee in the final round of 2014, a result which incidentally kept both teams up. But where was I? Oh yes. We'll be seeing North Geelong and Moreland in NPL1 next season, at the expense of Dandenong City and Eastern Lions, neither of whose grounds I was able to get to this year, and in the case of Dandy City, I'm not sorry they and their impossible to get to ground are gone, even if the eually ridiculously located Elcho Park is its replacement.

But what of Moreland City? Their Campbell Reserve ground might be up to scratch (just) for NPL2, but I doubt it will pass muster for NPL1. The thinking seems to be that they'll end up playing out at CB Smith, but good luck with that considering Fawkner, Pascoe Vale, and Brunswick Juve also play out of there. Anyway, while I won't buy into the rhetoric that Moreland City have returned to the top-flight for the first time in 75 years (or whatever the number is), because I'm counting their history from their 1989 merger rather than from their individual constituent parts, we can I suppose talk some history. We last played against Moreland in a competitive fixture in 1962; against Coburg, another merger constituent in 1960, our first season; and we never played against Park Rangers. Still, the fact that the Moreland City family tree does include Park Rangers, it means that next season will see a meeting of distant cousins, in that Park Rangers were born from an early 1940s offshoot of South Melbourne United. Think of it like the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac getting together.

Through the fog

Against all your natural inclinations you try to be kind, you hope to be forgiving, you want to be understanding, and not even from a "what if I was in their place" mentality; just because it's the right thing to do, and there's not much to be gained from being unnecessarily cruel. But the NPL TV product is not up to scratch on so many levels, and while I wish it wasn't so, there's no way of getting around it. Even the things the offering does well, get undone when they're not done well or at all. To wit: the last couple of weeks, NPL Tv's social media (at least on Twitter) has begun sharing goals as they happen. A marvellous innovation, long overdue, but welcome nonetheless. But if you wanted to see last week's winning goal in the Avondale vs South game? Not there. And if you were watching the Oakleigh vs Heidelberg game on a unwieldy stream cast from a laptop to a television, because there is no dedicated NPL TV app even though the host technology Cluch TV app exists, and you wanted to catch up painlessly with the goals ftom the Green Gully vs Bentleigh game on social media, because you don't want to deal with the mobile NPL TV app... well, they weren't on the socials last night either. Sure you could get the goals from the dead rubber Kingborough Lions vs Olympia game, but nothing from last night. So it goes, but damn if it doesn't suck, despite the best intentions of everyone trying to make it work.

Now I will note of this game that it was exciting. It was of a pretty decent standard at times, albeit too fast at times. There were two injury time goals that bailed Heidelberg out temporarily, plenty of near misses, a penalty shoot-out, and lots of shenanigans. And yet so much of the experience was undermined by a stream beset with technical issues - including missing the first part of what turned out to be an anti-climactic shoot-out - and so many bouts of out of focus camera that one felt bad for the people trying to put together the product. 

I never (OK, maybe not never) like to think I go out of my way to be cruel when I criticise, but the quality of the footage stream last night was not up to scratch, I know that it's done on the smell of an oliy rag, but if we are going to offer this service which dissuades people from going to games, the least we can do is make it good. How many times last night was a team streaming towards goal, only for the footage to look like a news segment on some sporting scandal which blurred the images so no player could be identified?

The penalty shoot-out turned temporarily into a radio broadcast, and though it came back eventually,for a moment there I had to use my imagination, like some sort of caveman. The graphics for the scored/missed penalties also got botched, though I suppose luckily for all concerned the shoot-out was over almost as soon as it started.

Anyway, as for the match itself, people will talk about things like Sean Ellis' free kick with the last kick of the game. Me, I'm all about Matthew Foschini acting like a pork chop, in this case trying to start nonsense with the Heidelberg bench after Oakleigh equalised against the run of play in the first half. It was so petty and stupid, and he got the yellow card that he deserved, but it was also disappointing in a different way. Foschini has had his back and forths with us over the past few seasons, but seeing him get it on with the Berger bench and fans, well... I thought we had something special. 

Well, those kinds of antics at least help explain in part why our so called leaders at the time had so much trouble reigning in the excesses of the People's Champ.

Final thought

It's a shocking thought, but it would be nice to win the grand final.

Not dead yet - South Melbourne 1 Oakleigh Cannons 0

The most important news must come first.

So this "painting" the grandstand business, which has been going on for quite some time now, and which has been testing people's patience, especially constituents of Clarendon Corner, who have been exiled from their usual locale while this "painting" takes place. Last week this seeming farce continued, with now just the lower half of that bay cordoned off - as well as sections at the lake end of the grandstand - and setting off the thought bubble that at some point they'll end up cordoning off Row H by itself just out of spite.

However, I got a message from one of the bigwigs last week - always a concern, because any message I get from them these days I assume is going to be bad news, or some form of berating. Sort of like when you get an email saying that you have a message in your MyGov inbox. In this case, the message was educational rather than hostile, which is always welcome. And the message? It's not just painting that's taking place on our stand, but rather extensive restorative work. The stand is leaking in parts, creating a risk of eventual damage from rising damp. The stand is receiving repairs from both on top and from underneath. I am told that the works are proceeding in a piecemeal fashion, partly so they can see how the repairs go on particular sections of the stand, but also because the persistently inclement June and July weather this year has made progress slower than would ideally be the case.

So having informed nearby people of this, our collective thoughts then turned to the future, and the imminent national second division which I am assured is coming next year. Imagine the buzz of the first couple of weeks of this competition, as all sorts of people come out of the woodwork to watch South play Sydney Olympic or some such. A chunk of this almost certainly temporary renewed interest would centre on Clarendon Corner; its numbers would swell, and the increased weight in and around Row H and the lower half of our usual bay would see the stand creak and groan, and ultimately collapse, inuring many, and possibly killing a few. In the event that the club didn't die as a result of this imagined tragedy, the outpouring of grief among the latent and former South supporter network would see the club reborn, as those who abandoned in one hour of need, returned to it in another. The CC martyrs would be commemorated with plaques and memorials; each year on the anniversary of the tragedy, our fans would remember their fallen brethren; and though those most dedicated would no longer be with us, their sacrifice would lead to the rebirth of South Melbourne Hellas. Αδέρφια ζείτε, εσείς μας οδηγείτε and all that.

Or the repairs could just go really well, and the club can continue making us miserable for all the usual reasons, dragging on its interminable existence in this or some other equally interminable competition.

Back in the real world. there was a game to be won, and surprisingly to me, we won it. I'm not anti-winning matches, especially highly anticipated ones, but I must reiterate: I don't trust any of what's happening this season, which makes my enjoyment of this farce of a rather good run in 2022 conditional on us actually winning the championship, whereupon I can retcon all my ramblings into something altogether more positive and assured. 

Not counting last season's penalty shoot-out win in the cup, this was our first outright win against Oakleigh since 2017. Think about all that has happened since then. Three coaches, a failed A-League bid, and two cancelled seasons because of a pandemic. How many people got married, and/or had one or more kids? How many jobs have I had and lost in that time? The only thing that hasn't happened is the national second division.

What these Oakleigh clowns are trying to claim,
 I have no idea. Photo: Kostas Deves.

There were too many close calls for us in the first half, including one ball that sort of everyone just let roll across the face of our own six yard box. Seemingly close but not really, was a low shot or whatever it was from Oakleigh being saved by Javier Diaz Lopex, clearly well in front of not only the goal line, but also in front of the post. Cue some Oakleigh players, but especially Daniel Clark trying to claim that it was a goal. I get that players get excited, but come on guys, have some respect for physics at least.

The second half from us was better, but my goodness, we are still such a hard team to watch compared to some other teams. I know, I know, get the results, grind out the wins, not how but how many. But watching South players panic with the ball anywhere in the defensive third, launching long balls when keeping the ball would be better and no less dangerous, and avoiding playing the ball in the middle of the field as if their lives depended on it. That last thing must surely have been a direct instruction, because it was pretty much all wing play. I've never seen a team of this calibre - in that they are top of the table so late in a season - so determined not to play the ball anywhere near the central channel, until a cross can come in around the area of the six yard box.

It was fascinating to watch in its own nihilistic fashion. If we were going to turn the ball over, we were to make sure as hell that it was nowhere the middle of the field, which doesn't say a lot for what we think of our central midfield combinations. 

(yet Patrick Langlois, part of that midfield combo, was awarded man-of-the-match in the post-game awards ceremony of the Tony Clarke Memorial Shield business.) 

For apparently the eighth time this season (though who's counting?) we scored a goal from a Max Mikkola throw-in. Not much different to the usual pattern here: long throw into the vicinity of Harrison Sawyer, hoping for a keeper mistake, and eventually a goal. Every week I keep asking how long we can keep getting by on these shenanigans, and every week the answer seems to be, "at least one more week". I'm not comfortable with it, but lest I be castigated for being a Negative Nancy, I'm trying my best to just enjoy the ride. The effort is good. The results are good. The method sucks. But two out of three after five years of mostly crud is, for the time being, acceptable I guess.

Next match

Altona Magic at home on Saturday night. Magic have lost their last five matches, and are still in the relegation scrap. We're expected to win, but the last time we played each other should act as a warning not to be complacent. Remember that game, where some heinously profligate finishing from Magic in the first half left us in the game? 

The mathematics

Eastern Lions are now mathematically relegated. Everyone between 9th and 13th is still in a relegation battle, though it'd be a collapse of all collapses if Knights end up 13th. Finals wise, realistically the top three are in, with the remaining three spots to be fought out by four teams. Knights or Thunder could theoretically make it in, but it would take an amazing set of coincidences for that to happen.

More likely is a finals series with four teams and possibly five of the six being made up of the Greek NPL clubs, in which case, why mourn the absence of the Hellenic Cup, when we play in a Hellenic League?

So far as South is concerned, a top three finish is locked in. Three points from out remaining four matches guarantees a top two finish. Eight points from our remaining four matches guarantees first place; seven points makes us dependent on goal difference, assuming Oakleigh wins all four of its remaining matches.

2021 title race almost over, thank goodness

Oakleigh's loss means that the 2021 Bespoke Cup is Avondale's for the taking, as long as they can beat Port Melbourne. If Avondale lose, and we beat Dandy City in a few weeks time, we can finish as a runners up.

New program uploads

Haven't had one of these for awhile. An early 2000/2001 season effort was sent in this week by a reader, filling in a couple of gaps, which I'm grateful for. Highlight is Steve Panopoulos winning the South Melbourne go-kart challenge. I've also scanned and uploaded the 2021 and 2022 Knights and Gully away match programs.

Final thought

Second division

About time - Oakleigh Cannons 2 South Melbourne 1

Because our resident transport infrastructure reader likes to know

The trip from Sunshine to Huntingdale was quite good. Train into the city not too crowded, because the vast majority of the footy crowd would have taken earlier services than the one I was on. From the city, the Cranbourne/Pakenham lines have such frequent services you don't tend to worry about missing one train, because another will arrive soon after.

But the real bonus was my first time catching a new HCMT. Very spacious inside. Seats a bit stiff and a bit too upright, probably designed by eminent posturologists, so slouching isn't quite as easy. So many screens to look at with relevant information. Doors take a bit of getting used to. Overall, a pleasant experience. It's also easy to forget that Skyrail was even such a big deal.

Anyway...

In amid all those games where next to no one gives a stuff, here was one of those games where next to no one gives a stuff, with the addition of a few neutrals, and the host club wheeling out its entire junior program to buttress numbers. I'm not criticising Oakleigh for doing that by the way, because pretty much everyone pulls this stunt at some point during the season - and what better time than a non-Orthodox Easter Monday public holiday coinciding with school holidays to do it?

It did however accentuate the vibe that the game itself was somewhat of a sideshow. Oakleigh may as well have hired a ferris wheel, merry-go-round, and petting zoo to entertain the crowd, because there was that much distracted and idle chatter during the match that it may as well have been an exhibition game. Even Clarendon Corner, which was otherwise engaged with the match, was nevertheless reduced to the status of a rump state, not even able to scare away children and their parents from the far end of the grandstand.

Even the taunting of former players like Tyson Holmes and Matthew Foschini was more about pissing off the person in our midst who didn't want to give oxygen to the fact that there were former players of ours out there. Still, at least Oakleigh's updated logo means that Foschini no longer has to kiss a badge with a cartoon cannon shooting a soccer ball when he wants to be a smartarse towards us.

For those that did pay attention, I think the match was a bit of a fizzer. Undefeated (and more attacking than in recent memory) South coming to Jack Edwards to play an in-form Oakleigh set this up for something much better than what was actually served up. Which is not to say that it was a bad game, and not to say that it lacked action - but rather, that neither side put its best foot forward either in attack or defense. 

Just as importantly, there were no definitive answers about which team was actually the more likely to kick on from this game with an enhanced reputation. Both teams will probably make the finals, and they may well meet each other there, in which case we'll have a final answer about who was the better team out of the two; or at least the luckier.

And if you enjoyed the game and thought that it was actually rather good, that's fine too, but you're probably watching a lot more lower league stuff than I do these days.

Oakleigh had the better of the first half, and we had the better of the second. All three goals scored were in part due to soft defensive errors. Oakleigh opened the scoring when South's defenders seemed to dawdle at just the wrong time and place. South equalised when Marcus Schroen hit a shot from the edge of the box that went underneath the goalkeeper, like me trying to field in Super Mega Baseball 3. Then an unmarked Daniel Clark got hit by a rather ordinary corner at the near-post, which gave Oaks the 2-1 lead, and eventually the win.

I will say this though - there were things in the first half in the way that we played that I was concerned about. Oakleigh - by which I mean, Chris Taylor - like to play channel football, figuring out where the specific weak point is, and putting most energy into dismantling that. On Monday, especially in the first half, that weak spot was the Bermuda Triangle between right-back Ben Djiba, right-winger Andy Brennan, and defensive midfielder Lirim Elmazi. Elmazi in particular was struggling with whether to come or go, and it caused all sorts of problems on that side of the field.

But maybe I say this mostly because this was the predominant action that was right in front of me during that first half.

Second half was better from us, but how much of that was that due to Oakleigh deciding to sit back and take the chance that we wouldn't do anything of note? And yes, I get the irony of making it seem like it was possibly a smart tactical decision from the home side, when every time we've done it this year it just comes across as stupid. As it happened, we had enough of the ball, enough territory, and enough set pieces - which have been outlandishly good to us so far in 2021 - that only our inability to put in a decent ball for 90 minutes prevented us from creating meaningful chances to score.

Oddly enough however, I didn't find myself too disheartened with the loss. Bad crossing, wonky defending, and some questionable substitutions and team selections - what exactly are the circumstances where Jai Ingham is fit enough to start one week, and not the next? - only served to demonstrate to me that we're within the championship discussion. That's not the same thing as saying the competition is of a particularly high standard; only that I see us being more than competitive for the rest of the season, bar some streak of outrageous fortune.

I mean, it could happen, but those of you playing the "eight more points until we definitively avoid relegation in 2022" game, should probably enjoy it while you can.

Next game

Altona Magic at Paisley Park on Anzac Day. 

Look, women's matches! Two of them!

The new era of senior women's soccer continued last Saturday our in the 'burbs, with South taking on Alamein. I watched this on the stream, and I have to say that the best thing about the game was the commentator. Even if she was a bit new, and struggling a little with the names, she was also unafraid to be critical of elements of the game - namely how much time the ball spent out of play.

As for the match itself, it appears we are all going to have a be a little bit patient with the new regime. Anyone looking for the overloaded glory hunting teams of recent years will be disappointed. I don't know if we're actually going to go with our own youth, or just more young players from wherever we find them, bit clearly there's going to be an adjustment in expectations.

Among the players who have remained, some would have been fringe players in the past, carried by the stars. Now they've got to lead, and if the results and quality of play aren't where they need to be yet, that's just the way it is. Playing short, simple balls, instead of resorting to kick and chase will be a good start. Getting more than forward into position will be a nice addition. 

Which is not to say that we were completely outplayed by Alamein, and in the end, it was only the one goal that separated the two teams. But the home side had that extra bit of polish across the board, and you could hardly begrudge them their win.

Much better - though there was no stream to verify the totality of the effort - was the team's 5-1 cup win on Tuesday against a lower league Moreland Zebras side that apparently featured former South players Alex Cheal, Laura Spiranovic, Jess Au, and Lisa De Vanna. Maybe experienced players carrying a team isn't always what it's cracked up to be.

Final thought

The venue switch for this match means that our scheduled 2021/2022 six pointer against Oakleigh won't happen until later in the season. Not that anyone cares about this, of course.