The Australia Day Cup - South Melbourne vs Perth Glory, 2004

It's been almost completely forgotten these days, but today marks the 10 year anniversary of what was the inaugural - and sadly also the last - Australia Day Cup match, as staged between South Melbourne and Perth Glory.

South and the Glory had built up a decent rivalry since the Glory's entry into the NSL, as South tended to do with all leading teams of a given era. Unlike the Glory's rivalry with the Melbourne Knights however, it didn't have the spitefulness to it, for lack of a better word.

Indeed it was built on the back of some great games (the midweek game from 1999 at Lakeside is perhaps the pinnacle for South fans), Con Boutsianis' defection/ouster to the Glory after that incident, and the fact that for whatever reason, South had an appalling record in Perth.

It was a terrific game, with a bumper crowd, which somehow finished 0-0; South therefore retained the trophy. The trophy was kept in one of the glass cabinets in our social club, until we had to put everything into storage. The photo of the trophy comes from that packing away period, when I was also taking photos of some of the items.

There were a whole bunch of festivities planned for the day, as well as a lot of effort put in, which you can read about in this preview from the South official site from back in the day. The trophy was even sponsored by SEN 1116. After the difficult years during the 1990s, with the club torn between trying to transition towards a more mainstream identity, while appeasing the conservative elements of the club, my feeling was that days like this were proof that we were gradually making the transition to something that could be the best of both worlds.

It's a pity that we're no longer in the position to continue this fixture, let alone the rivalry. Nor, as one friend noted, were we able to develop the then nascent rivalry with Adelaide United, which also pulled in some great crowds. Another case of what might have been.

It's all so quiet

Been a bit quiet recently on here. That's partly to do with the lack of news, which has been a league wide issue. Guess that's what happens when you push back the season by a month. I've also been busy catching upon OzFootball work I've neglected over the past four years.

Still, they tell me that it's been a punishing pre-season for South's 2012 squad. Hopefully they have something left in the tank by the start of the season.

Farken Pumped, Farken

I might as well type this while listening to Doves' Some Cities - the only album of theirs I like - and before the adrenalin flows out of my system. It's a huge week coming up, but more on that during the other 7 days of what's ahead.

I've been feeling pretty crappy and unsure about my honours thesis, to the point where I've been incredibly slack about my reading - but I've got down to some database wrangling and found some choice cuts and trends. And while I'll have to rethink my angle, at least there's something a little firmer to grab onto.

And it got me thinking about some other projects that have fallen by the wayside. My most recent Ozfootball work is a distant memory. And the fanzine never even got started. And the South Melbourne Hellas online historical compendium got a bit of a run then died before it could even be launched. Even my wikipedia work has pretty much stalled.

And part of the problem is the technical difficuly of putting that stuff together - especially from a novice point of view, especially online. You can gain and lose enthusiasm along the way, but if you're not au fait with the tools from the get go, you'll always be on the backfoot. Especially someone like me, ever so tentative and unsure about every little thing.

And I figured, why can't OzFootball be turned into a wiki? Well, because it would take a hell of a lot of work, and I'm not sure people are interested in converting the data on there to a new, easier to use format. But starting from scratch, it should be possible to revive the Hellas Historical Site myself and a couple of others had a semi-decent stab at.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Of course, we can't hope to do something as awesome and as detailed as that. But we could certainly do something similar. And the fact that the semi-inspiration of this blog, Supermercado, is the major contributor, shows that it couldn't be that hard. Ok, an unwarranted dig, but even if it's me and one other person, I'm determined to make this happen. There's so much of a story to tell.

The truth about Coveny's South Melbourne stats

It has been widely circulated that Vaughan Coveny had played some 247 odd games, and 88 goals for South. The information was collated by myself from OzFootball stats and used for Wikipedia as well. It was brought to my attention by John Kyrou that these stats were incorrect, and that Vaughan has in fact played 278 league matches for us, and scored 97 goals. While I can't quite pinpoint the place where I made the error, my suspicions turn towards not counting finals matches. Happily though, the error has been corrected, and Horsey only needs 3 more goals for his South ton.

Apologies, sorta, for the lack of posting

I know I said I'd have something on the Southern Cross knock back by today, but the things I was working on got so big, and I got distracted also by my OzFootball Futsalroos work, that my view on the whole thing will inevitablhy be dlayed a little longer.

OzFootball - Looking for volunteers

Some of you may have seen this around certain A-League forums, and to those people I apologise, kinda. For about a year now I've been in sorta charge of the OzFootball Club Database. One of the more time consuming aspects of this work is the compilation of statistics to do with match results of seasons and player rosters, as in the examples below.

South Melbourne Player Roster

South Melbourne Match Results

Now, it's all in html, the template is set, and much of the info is available in unsorted or semi-sorted formats in other parts of OzFootball. The hard part is making sure player roster info in particular is accurate, as well as because it's in html, the time required to do it. Now, I've been very gradually doing the South related stuff, and I have people already working on A-league stats, but there's a heap of NSL club sides that really should have their histories, which are also our histories, preserved and presented in a clear and accessible manner.

You will of course be credited and thanked for any work you do. It also gives one a nice warm feeling inside to know that they're part of the solution of 'oldskool' preservation instead of just another person who merely talks about it. As well, the information gathered will also be able more easily transferred to other parts of the site, such as the player stats pages.

If you are keen to do something, send me an email at blackmissionary@hotmail.com, or if you're keen on helping in some other area, contact one of the other people co-ordinating projects. Hope to here from you.

ZOMG! South Melbourne Futsalroo action!

While searching for information on the Futsalroos for Ozfootball - by the way, check out the new improved interface, update your links if you have to - I found this infornation from the 1989 Futsal World Cup. Look how many South players aree involved! Ok, they weren't all South players at the time, some were there, some had gone,

Australia's 1989 Futsal World Cup squad. Were they even called the Futsalroos then? And is that SBS commentator Tim White as coach? Though it's a bit of a longshot, does anybody out there have article, photos, or anything of the our boys in action in this tournament?

1 Jeffrey OLVERE
2 Alan DAVIDSONE
3 Steven JACKSONE
4 Robert HOOKERE
5 Oscar CRINOE
6 Paul TRIMBOLIE
7 Robert DUNNE
8 Jason POLAKE
9 Warren SPINKE
10 Kenneth MURPHYE
11 Zarko ODZAKOVE
12 Ernest TAPAIE

Coach: WHITE Tim (AUS)