It begins... Gold Coast City 0 South Melbourne 6

Drawn against this mob again. No Brad Norton, in Spain for whatever reason, and what looked to me like a weak bench. Sure, they didn't have one of their gun forwards, but they were supposed to be better than the team we played, dominated and still found a way to lose against two years ago.

Talk about anticlimactic.

And if there is one lingering frustration with Wednesday's result in amid all the relief and joy, it's that this is exactly what we should have done to Palm Beach/Gold Coast City two years ago. Give or take one or two players, we had a better team then, but it is what it is, and one should not take for granted what we actually have compared to what we lost.

If that's too many cliches for a Friday morning, consider it a warning for what's about to come. The circus is about to come to town and every idiot with a pathological hatred of us, and every South fan with an axe to grind is going to come out swinging with so much confected outrage and bile that certain sections of the internet may well collapse from under their weight. And that's not including whatever the club decides to put out in the public sphere. Indeed, they've already begun.

Unlike the apparently 300 odd travelling supporters, your correspondent was located in our social club, arriving early enough for happy hour drinks, $7 burgers, and what looked likely to be a less than stellar turnout. Thankfully numbers arrived close to kick off, and the place was fullish albeit comfortable - not many people bumping into each other, if you know what I mean. Fatalist that I am, I had already written us off in this game weeks ahead of time. Contrarian that I am, I still got instantly got nervous once the game begun. Like most of you, I'm only human. The first goal did little to settle my nerves, and if anything it made them worse. The second goal didn't help much either. 2-0 up within ten minutes? Plenty of time to screw that up.

Can I also say that the young lad who announced the fact that we were 2-0 up before the stream had caught up to that fact - I assume he was being messaged from a mate or checking an app - may have thought he was doing us a favour, but he snuffed out the instinctive joy of that moment.

Under the circumstances, the lineup was fine. Michael Eagar was back in the starting eleven, though his absence in several lead up matches continue to confound. Luke Pavlou filled in at left back, but unlike every other time that move was tried and found wanting (including with Liam McCormick), nothing happened, Gold Coast simply failed to exploit that or any other situation available to them, Getting two goals up early helps a lot, but it looked like - and I agree with our resident tactically aware friend - Gold Coast set up absolutely the wrong way to play us.

We had so much time on the ball. It was mad. If there is one thing we are good at as a team, it's feeling comfortable when we are given acres of space. There was no shutting down - Lujic was given more room in this match than he has been all season in the NPL - and everything seemed to roll around in slow motion. Even in that part of the game from about 20-40 minutes, where the match was more even, City did little to make me feel like they had a way of getting back except by accident. Of course we all know that such accidents are possible, and that they can lead to chain reactions, but Jesse Daley's goal finished it off, For once we found the space on the edge of the box, and for once we took that shot. I don't even remember anyone yelling 'shoot!' like they would at a South game; I was already celebrating the goal before it had even halfway reached the net,

The second half was pure farce. Milos finishing off what should have been a much easier goal from four or five shots and passes before that. Stefan Zinni scoring with his first touch after coming off the bench. Millar's icing on the cake, nodding home the header from a tight angle after the City keeper made a mess of his attempt at a chip pass or clearance. 'If in doubt, kick it out' is what the rugby pundits say, and at 5-0 down what harm could there be from just conceding a corner? Each goal was celebrated, but with less gusto as the game wore. The social club descended turned to idle chatter in between goals. The crowd noise from the TV seemed less intense as the match wore on. Do you make a big deal of celebrating putting goals past a team which played like a pub side? Taylor not only made early subs, he made all his subs. That's how comfortable it was.

Reaching this stage of the tournament, albeit via the 'designated mandatory NPL side in the semi-finals route of least resistance' helps ease some concerns, and introduces others. Of those things which have been soothed, the idea that this season was close to being a bust. No league success, no finals success, no post-season success, no Dockerty Cup success, not even a Charity Shield! Well, this has made everyone very happy, because even though in reality we've won squat this year, this is the thing that everyone cares about, both for 'relevance' and the money it'll bring. (Not everyone agrees that merely reaching this stage is a marker of success however).

It has also helped further diminish the notion of failing in 'big matches', especially under the Chris Taylor League Grinder method, so prone - apparently - to getting results in the workaday world of NPL Victoria, but less good at getting the job done in winner takes all affairs. Of course there's been a ton of luck involved with this run, but who I am to argue that it's a well overdue correction for all the luck that went against us in the past. Maybe this run of good fortune will be corrected in due course with some particularly amazing piece of stunning bad fortune.

After the game, we all waited for the result for the other game to be decided, and there was some trepidation that Blacktown City would get up over the Wanderers, something which might end up jeopardising our big payday. Unfortunately for the Demons - the best second tier team in the country across the past decade, maybe more - they couldn't get the job done. Which ended up with us getting drawn at home against Sydney FC, at a date yet to be decided upon.

What kind of preparation can the team do in the meantime? The A-League teams will probably have sorted out their schedules, and certainly closer to the date they'll be in their own season. An A-League youth team perhaps? Our WNPL team? Syria? Everyone on the ground seems relaxed about things, so much so that Chris Taylor is off on holidays for three weeks. That'll mean he'll hopefully miss most of the off-field nonsense that's going to build up. We've had already had Bill Papasteragiadis promise to sell out Lakeside, I assume with a crowd mostly made up of sellouts. To be a little fair, if you talk a big game like we do about ambition and latent and dormant support, you're going to be judged on your crowd. But promising a sell-out already seems to suggest that we're going to be in a for a long few weeks.

Next game
For the men, a home FFA Cup semi-final against Sydney FC some time in October.

For the women, a grand final appearance on Sunday week against either Calder or Geelong.

For me, probably some state league promotion/relegation playoffs on Saturday out at Port.

Hellas Ain't A Bad Place To Be/Highway To Hellas/Hellas Bells
Something strange is happening. There has been a gentle reemergence of a word which we had perhaps thought was banished to the historical vernacular.

"No nerves from Hellas from the start, scoring after 90 seconds."

*head explodes* #FFACup pic.twitter.com/dDEgOQbivD

— Ante Jukić (@a_jukic) September 20, 2017

Of course, the emphasis here is that in the vernacular, it didn't disappear. Our supporters have never stopped calling the club Hellas. Clarendon Corner, its Greeks and non-Greeks, still chant Hellas The club because of modern bylaws and constitutional necessity calls itself a different name - South Melbourne FC - and adapts that marketing angle for most of its social media product. Thus SMFC TV, smfc.com.au, @smfc etc. But the club has never abandoned the Hellas name. There are the retro 1991 style S. M. Hellas shirts. The club's business name is still officially South Melbourne Hellas. Our enemies use the term, and it sits along the short-form 'South' as a term of convenience and easy recognition.

Sure, some people use 'Hellas' out of spite, as 'proof' that we are not a broad-based club, a club not fit for the A-League, not even a club fit for Australian society. But that's for the comments pages of newspapers and the dumpster fires that are internet forums, not the mainstream media. Here's another one.

How this for a headline from a Brisbane Paper pic.twitter.com/lfsX3W4jhW

— Pablo (@pavlaki1969) September 21, 2017

Once upon a time it was absolutely normal for journos and commentators to avoid saying the 'H' word on air, and we became accustomed to it. Nor did we expect to hear it said or written, except in very particular circumstances, usually in the past tense, sometimes searching for the romantic. Of course there were always outliers. The late Laurie Schwab was famously recalcitrant in his disobedience, refusing to buckle down under the weight of governing body edicts to erase ethnicity. More recently, Ante Jukic has dabbled with using the old nomenclatures. But people like that are the minority.

So what do we make of this small, probably unintentional tear in the fabric of the Australian soccer cosmos? My feeling is that it's mostly older people in the journo game, who are out of habit with what to call us because we've been irrelevant to them and everyone else in their world for so long. On the ground, the situation seems to have remained much the same.

You can make us cover that foul word "HELLAS" on our banner but you will never ever stop us singing it,discrimination @ it's best #smfc4life

— Nick Vertsonis (@NickVertsonis) September 21, 2017

But that's Australian soccer for you.

Final thought
Call us Hellas a million times, I don't care; just please don't refer to us as 'Souths'.

Spent - South Melbourne 2 Bentleigh Greens 2 (South lose 5-3 on penalties)

I took a little longer to get around to this post not because of some sort of despair, or anger, but because I didn't know what to say. I did some reading, I went and watched a couple of other games, and yet still I didn't find myself particularly motivated to write this post. Maybe because I had expected we'd lose this game? Sure we'd beaten them in our last meeting and they were coming off a three day break, but that was different. This time around their three day break was not so bad, because they rested a good portion of their squad.

It's actually kind of funny - after beating North Geelong, Melbourne Knights and Hume on the road, the only team we beat in the league was Bentleigh - in fact we won more games in the FFA Cup in that period than in the league. So basically our form has gone out the window, though who knows why... the usual gimmick for the club, at least under Chris Taylor, is to start solidly, slip up in the middle somewhere, and time our best run for the end of the season. Perhaps because we sucked in the middle, had to claw our way back in the middle, and then had the money issues (which some say still exist...), everything's just come to a point where everyone is mentally and physically drained. Or the team is just not that good this year. It's been able to scrape and fight and pinch wins against the odds in circumstances say we shouldn't have.

Milos Lujic has scored a lot of goals, but in the last month or two it feels like the well has dried up a bit. The early part of the season his tally was initially buffeted by penalties, but his four year bonanza had to stall at some point. And the service and style hasn't helped. Players like Marcus Schroen and Matthew Millar have fallen away. Schroen has the ability to turn a game on its head even when he's having a down day, but those efforts seem to few and far between. Millar is the opposite, a workhorse whose turns to shine on Friday night were left wanting no fewer than four times.

Michael Eagar has ended up on the bench for several weeks, for reasons no one I've spoken to seems to understand... some fans seem to think Eagar is on the way out. Luke Adams and Kristian Konstatinidis have been good, KK more than that when he keeps his feet, but Eagar was one of the players that turned the season around when he returned from injury after our horror start to the season. The other player to contribute to that turnaround was Nick Epifano, but on Friday night he wavered between his best and worst. He was a menace to Bentleigh on the left hand side, but also went missing, regressing to his bouts of low self-esteem. Leigh Minopoulos was handy, but was dragged. He doesn't have the stamina. Jesse Daley came on, and could've done more.

Luke Pavlou came on, a decision which confounded those of us who wanted us to chase the win. Stefan Zinni's pace was never used. Considering that Zinni played a good deal of the pre-season, often as a starter, and considering that we were apparently disappointed to see him leave for his Wanderers stint, upon his return we haven't seen much of him. Where we could've used someone with fresh legs, someone who could exploit a tired opposition and rejuvenate our own spirits, we had old fashioned Chris Taylor caution. Not exactly the kind of thing some of us want to see before a game against the former Palm Beach Sharks.

Both teams ran and then walked themselves into a standstill. We had enough chances to win it in normal time, and didn't. In fact we probably started withdrawing into ourselves around the eighty minute mark, which I can understand if there's going to be a renewed emphasis on attack in extra time, but it didn't happen. At some point during extra time I walked down to the fence. By the penalty shootout I was back in the stand, waiting for us to lose it. We hit most of our penalties well enough, but Brad Norton's was tipped onto the post by the keeper. Every single one of their shots seemed unstoppable, but Nikola Roganovic had also seemingly resigned himself to not saving them. I'm not sure he even got close to any, but that's me and my bad eyes and pall of doom looking at it from a hundred metres away.

The team should not have found itself 2-0 down. It did well to get itself level, and it should've won the game, but nerve and skill failed us at critical moments. Tyson Holmes' goal to open the scoring will be the cause of some angst for our fans for some time. It was probably a handball, it likely shouldn't have stood but the officials didn't and probably couldn't see it clearly. Neither did our players, who are more than happy to call for even non-existent handballs, seem to get up in arms at the decisions. And while Holmes should never have had the chance to even get his head or hand on the ball, neither can we get on our high horse about these things, lest we forget another 2-2 finish and we earned that point.

Though of course that's a logical response to such matters, and there's no imperative for you folk to be held to that standard.

If it feels like I've singled out a lot of people for the loss, that's not the intention. The squad is a good one, it has deficiencies, but so does the rest of the league. The team did well enough to finish second, but under the current nonsense finals system, received little more advantage for doing so than a home game and in this case a short turnaround for our opponent. They should either bring in a fairer finals system - my preference is the McIntyre final five - or ditch the finals entirely. But that's another debate for another team.

It feels odd not having anything to show for this season, having won the championship in two of the past three seasons and a Dockerty Cup in between those. Maybe this will shake things up a bit during the off-season. But of course there's also our...

Next game
Our FFA Cup quarter-final in a few weeks time...

FFA Cup news
Hahahaha, lol, roflcopter etc. We've been drawn against Gold Coast City, the former Palm Beach Sharks.

The match has been scheduled for Wednesday September 20th, 7:30PM at Robina Stadium, Robina - otherwise known as CBUS Stadium, you know, the place we played at the last time we played these guys.

I'd like to have been able to go, but I've got a specialist's appointment the next day. Also, I hate the Gold Coast. But as for the rest of you, start booking your flights and accommodation before the algorithms pick up that people are interested in heading up for the game.

Who knows what form we'll be in by that stage - probably no form, because it will have been 19 days since our last official game, and probably the same in the event that we can't rustle up some local oafs to play against in the mean time.

Gold Coast City will be in much the same position as us, except for playing at home. The prize here is an almost certain lucrative home gate against an A-League opponent, for our boys who lost the corresponding fixture a couple of years ago a measure of redemption, but really it's about the cash. We need the money, we need to show off our magnificent stadium, we need to keep up the delusions of grandeur and relevance.

Speaking of which
I got to the ground before 5:30, but apparently those who got to the ground closer to the 7:30 kickoff faced long queues, with many people not getting into the ground until 15 minutes into the game. Now I assumed that the main gate would be opened, but apparently the club thought it could get away with having two people at the social club entrance. As if charging members for entry wasn't going to piss off enough people! What are the few absolute basics that every club needs to be able to sort out? Cobbling together a senior team; securing a patch of grass to play out a season; rustling up enough cash to pay the refs; having some sort of food service; where necessary, being able to organise orderly entry and exit points if the venue demands such.

Everything else seems optional, and I know that we have particular circumstances which make our situation less than ideal, but one never stops being in awe of how we make things even more difficult for ourselves.

In amid all that...
The WNPL team keeps rolling on. They're on top of the table going into the last round of the home and away season, two points ahead of Calder. We play Geelong at Lakeside on Saturday afternoon. I'd love to have been able to go, but I made a promise to Clifton Hill coach Leigh Tsoumerkas to go see his team at Quarries Park before the season was out, and time just flies when you try and put something like that off.

Apart from matches played as double headers, some of which I watched the entirety of and others I only saw bits and pieces of, I would've liked to have seen more of their games. Most of the women's away games being on the very wrong side of town for me with atrocious public transport connections made things harder, but the one game they played near my place - against Calder in Keilor - I skipped because I went and saw Altona East vs Rosebud in an early round FFA Cup match instead. I guess some part of me knew that it would be the only time I'd watch East win a game all season.

Nevertheless there'll be a finals campaign for the women to get on board with soon, and I look forward to doing so.

'Clog wogs are not real wogs' part 7472902

Look, it was my own fault for looking, and it'll be my fault again when I do the same tomorrow and the day after that
There were some preliminary sketches here about something or other that I was going to post about something I read on Twitter, but I thought better of it and bailed. I might unwisely revisit it someday, if and when I get annoyed by that same theme.

Around the grounds
That's it! If I go, I'm taking you to hell with me!

The fixture was last placed Altona East vs second last placed Westgate. Two mediocre sides who have done their best to undeservedly avoid relegation in the past few seasons but were now this close to going down together. Taking into account possible tribunal decision ramifications and theoretical league reshuffles, the win here for either side would give them a chance to survive at the expense of the other. So of course they drew the game. East went in front twice, Westgate equalised twice. Westgate took a 3-2 lead, but in a classic example of mutually assured orthodox brotherhood destruction, East equalised with about a minute to go. There were great goals and great drama, and in the end a great big nothing result for two very ordinary sides who deserve to go down, and who would maybe even benefit from being relegated, but who may yet survive due to nothing else but arcane post-season machinations.

Strange priorities
Aside from our own involvement, I haven't been a to VPL or NPL Victoria grand final for many years. I missed the 2013 Northcote vs Bentleigh lunchtime at AAMI Park affair. I missed the 2012 Dandy Thunder rocket flare/Oakleigh choke. I missed the 2011 Green Gully win/ Oakleigh Choke. In fact the last time I went to one of these deciders was in 2010, and that was as much to see the Bubbledome as anything. But as for relegation and promotion playoffs, well that's a different story. As long as there isn't an A-League team's youth side playing in the game, I do my best to get along. This year is going to be extra special, because Melbourne Knights are going to be playing sister club Dandenong City in a match to decide whether Knights can legitimately call themselves the most important Croatian club in Melbourne for another year, while simultaneously seeing to it that Dandy City have pissed a lot of cash up the wall. Happy days that this year this fixture will coincide with the grand final day, at Lakeside on Sunday. City won their way to a playoff having finished runner up to Dandy Thunder in NPL 2 East, and proved their league to be stronger than the West side by pretty comfortably beating Moreland Zebras 1-0. You know I didn't even notice that Steven Topalovic was sent off in this game for City? Apart from being a lesson to look up from my phone every so often, it made no difference to the game whatsoever. Dandy City took longer than they should've to open the scoring against a very mediocre opponent, but were rarely under threat themselves. Losing Topa for next week will make things harder. Me, I look forward to an enthralling contest, one which satisfies me so much that I would not feel guilty in skipping the grand final afterwards, like I didn't care about skipping the meaningless Dandy Thunder vs Northcote game held after the City-Zebras match.

Final thought
It feels like the end even though it's not. One day it will be over and perhaps we won't feel that it is.

Agony, of a sort - Palm Beach Sharks 1 South Melbourne 1 (South lose on penalties)

Process (a prologue)
I like to talk about writing, and I especially like to talk about writing this blog. But often times I talk about this in historical terms, or emotional terms, or literary terms, and seldom about the process. Normally I would leave discussion about that process out of a post on a game, but in this case I think there's a reasonable excuse for it.

The structure of the blog has really settled down over the past couple of seasons. There are segments which now take the form of a template I work around. I think about the things that fall outside of a South match day, and put them in first. Usually I leave the relevant South game until last. Sometimes the narrative thread of a week is easy to recognise, and I can come up with something creative and witty. Sometimes that doesn't happen, and I resort to talking more about the game than I feel I probably should.

And sometimes a game just leaves you so drained, that sitting at a computer and trying to resolve it and fix it in print is impossible, Some people who write these kinds of fan blogs, after a loss like that, can find no rest until they pour out their thoughts even if it takes all night. That's not me; as a slow thinker, I need to incubate. And thus if a post sometimes doesn't appear on here as quickly as you'd expect, it might be because I'm busy, but just as likely is that I'm spending my time doing something else, like going back to the Limerick because in my distress at the loss I forgot that I'd taken my bag with me after heading to the pub straight after work. Public transport gives you a lot of time to think.

The long and the short of it
There are two games to discuss here, those being the long game and the short game.

The short game is what happened on the field. Of all the things just about any club does, more attention is focused on this part of a club's existence, and yet often with so little and fickle reward. Coaches and players are studied, negotiated with, hired, and then let loose for as long as results stack up the right way, while boards and committees, so used to being in charge, try to resist interfering, though some are clearly better at not interfering than others.

The short game is why the club exists, and is the most tangible, immediate form of a club's existence. Seeing our team on the field is the main reason we become involved as spectators, members, and then as club men or women. The friendships we collect, the history of the club, are all an extension of the 11 players representing us on the field.

And yet that is the part of the game that people have the least control of. A player might get 25 touches, 40 touches, 1 touch, but most of those will see contact of the ball with the boot only momentarily. The coach hopes he has put out the right team, with the right tactics and with the right frame of mind. The board hopes that the team does the bare minimum of what it's paid to do, with some clubs' bare minimums being more ambitious than others. The supporters meanwhile watch on, and either encourage, abuse or both in the vain hope that some of it has an impact on the result.

Last night, some say 400, others 500 (in reality about 70-100), South supporters and sympathisers were up at Robina Stadium to cheer on the team. In Melbourne, there were about 40 odd in the upstairs room of the Limerick Arms, wishing they could be on the Gold Coast, or at the very least in our own social club, but being glad to at least be in a nice room, with good food and decent service. Other South fans who read this would have watched the game at home, and would be hurt by the result as much as anyone.

For those at the pub, as the game wore on, the questions being asked were the same. Why did Nikola Roganovic just not pick up the ball that lead to the penalty? Why were the extra time substitutions brought on so late? Leigh Minopoulos came on with ten minutes to go and looked dangerous from the get go - but the problem, apart from a lack of time to do anything, is that he had no other fresh legs to work off - why Andy Bevin was not brought on immediately following Palm Beach's red card, let alone before that, one can only guess at. If Taylor had so little confidence in Bevin, why not use Chris Irwin, who while also struggling for form has had more game time and shown more than Bevin has?

Brad Norton was excellent, but for mine Iqi Jawadi was our main driver in midfield and our best until he was subbed out for who knows what reason. While not playing against an A-League opponent, his work rate and level headedness showed that he is likely not long for our level. Nick Epifano drifted in and out of the game, as he tends to do. Milos Lujic was not as clinical as he can be. David Stirton, playing wide and away from Lujic, was not as effective as I think he would have been had he been played closer to his striking partner The defence by and large acquitted themselves well, apart from the first ten minutes or so.

If I had to pick out one player who caught the ire of myself and other supporters, it was Jake Barker-Daish, who has struggled to make his mark on the season in almost every game he has played. That's not to say he has been poor, but has he changed the course of many games this season for the better? His selection and retention throughout the entirety of this match said to me that Taylor had put out a side that was more intent on not losing this match rather than going out and winning it. Being the superior team on the park surely meant trying to avoid the scenario that the inferior wanted most - the lottery of the penalty shoot out.

The atmosphere at the Limerick, while very good and upbeat for the most part, slowly turned to frustration at the slowness of our ball movement and our inability to breakdown our opponent. Taylor's lack of subs just made things worse. When Eagar's penalty was saved to end the contest, there was if not silence - the trivia night downstairs made more than enough noise to fill the void - than a gnarling internal agony that could not speak. Everyone knew we had blown another chance on field to get the club some attention and build momentum for that intangible something.

That's how the short game leads into the long one. The long game is about resurrecting the club as a meaningful powerful entity in its own right once more; not an afterthought, not a historical footnote, but something that will shape the future of the game in this country; and to do this not by merely replicating what came before, but taking the best bits of that history and combining with the hard lessons of exile.

So while there was genuine hurt at the result of the game on its own merits, there was also hurt for the progress lost on the long term plans for the club. Whether they are fanciful dreams or not, and that I still think that they are is beside the point, the sense of the lost opportunity is real. Much of the focus has been on this article. On the surface it's another in the long line of pieces which talk us up, sees us talk ourselves up, and then makes for much mirth among opposition supporters which only gets extended when we screw up.

I, too, have many grievances with these articles. As a materialist, I'm not one for dreams and lack of detail. Show me, show the members, the evidence of your success as a board, otherwise it's just idle talk. If we can't progress past the levels we say should progress past, is it not better to hold your tongue? A successful FFA Cup run should not be the measure of whether a team - any team - from outside the topflight gets into the A-League. While I understand that an FFA Cup match at home against A-League opposition, especially Melbourne based A-League opposition, would show some potential for crowds and match day experience and management, it will fall well short of all the other things that a club needs to qualify for an A-League licence.

Our continued obsession with pointing out our social media numbers has reached so much beyond parody that we're even being mocked by people that aren't Croatians with chips on their shoulder. I have nothing against ambition (OK, that's often a lie, but let's play along for a moment and assume the original statement is true), but doesn't this newly re-found reach for the stars mentality fly in the face of the (measured) hissy fit the club threw earlier this year when David Gallop said that we wouldn't be seeing promotion and relegation for 20 years?

While the board may be proud "the club turns over more than $1m annually and expects to double that when its social club and futsal centre is completed in the next year or so", for many of our fans it's merely an arbitrary number. Meanwhile they're probably thinking, 'good grief, more waiting for an interminably vague date' regarding the social club. They may also get squeamish when they hear the board seemingly push aside our history - after all, most of our history was pretty damn good. The short game? Our history is thousands of those moments, so why cast them aside?

But at least at this stage, that kind of rhetoric is still well short of some of the speculation about giving up our history for an A-League bid which may not even exist. History is a powerful guide, but the future is open ended. You don't need to sell out the past in order to make progress. In that respect, I endorse our president's statement about earning our place rather than it being given to us because of 'don't you know who I am?' style antics. And as hard as it is to hear that the exile from the big show has been beneficial to the club, in many ways Leo Athanasakis is only saying what I've said on this matter for years. That doesn't mean we've got everything right, but based on the way the club was run during the NSL years, would we have survived even a couple of seasons in the reformed topflight?

And while I think there could be better ways of demonstrating our ambition without coming across as overly desperate, the tendency towards ambition for the club is not something to be scoffed at. No matter how we go about our business, especially when it comes to somehow thinking we can get out of this competition, there will always be those outside the club that will doubt and mock us, As much prestige as we've lost in our decade away from the topflight, we still have enough presence for outside people to bother caring about our failures. Perhaps more importantly, there are people who would have once dismissed even the suggestion that we should be given another chance at a higher level, who have changed their mind on the matter.

Now of course the court of public opinion counts for nought, but that could equally be applied to those outside our club who seek to burst our bubble. When it comes to somehow getting out of this situation, it's only in the corridors of power that opinions matter. The key thing to remember about public opinion though, is not to become slavish to it, nor to dismiss it outright, but to figure out who's worth listening to and when. Sometimes (often) our self-delusions need deflating, even if the motives of those performing that deflation aren't not always pure. Sometimes it's also worth getting outside our misery caves and taking some pride in how far the club has come and that people outside ourselves recognise this, while still acknowledging that there are still many things that need to get done, and processes that need to be improved, not least of which is communication with the membership about important issues.

There were even people complaining about putting pressure on the players to perform in this game. Really? I thought this was South Melbourne. The fact that each loss still burns, and each success feels significant means something. It means that we're still a going concern that's worth fighting for. As easy as it is to dismiss those who've left us behind, for some it just be may be the fact that they feel our plight too deeply. What I would say to those people is come back to the club that you clearly care for, and share that experience with your fellow Hellas fans. Supporting South is not something which should be experienced in isolation. This is something understood by both those of us on the Gold Coast, and those at the Limerick.

Next game
The final of the Dockerty Cup, against Oakleigh Cannons. While the game is at Lakeside, the match day is controlled by FFV, and thus your South Melbourne membership will not get you entry into this match. I do not know if an FFV season pass will get you entry.

In good news however, tickets are available online via Ticketmaster, which will hopefully lessen hassles at the gate, though as pointed out by Mr Belias, the $4.20 booking fee will probably put a lot of people off. I suppose it's less of an issue if you use the internet option to buy several tickets, thereby minimising what Ticketmaster gets.

Or you could rock up to the ground early, watch the women's cup final, and avoid the fees and the lines altogether.

Modern heritage
While I would have preferred a solid red vee for the heritage strip - maybe next year - I did enjoy the return of the heritage jersey, as well as the respectful modern take on the design. Shame about the lack of hooped socks, but I get the reason for the omission (as long as it was concerns about a clash).

Another missed opportunity
I apparently made a great quip yesterday, and now I can't remember what it was.

Out of body experience
Watching South live on television was a bizarre experience.

In which I momentarily forget and ignore the fact that there are real people, with real emotions, who are just doing their jobs and what they think is right on behalf of an organisation I don't like. But, and here's the thing, they too made their choice when they hit 'tweet', and thus in retrospective retrospect, I stand by my comment.

@FFACup go fuck yourselves, you patronising cunts.

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) July 28, 2015

Final thought

Real reason South Melbourne is not in A-League: FFA's fear of hooligan strife between South's Social Media Firm and Heart's Green Seat Elite

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) July 26, 2015

Disappointed, embarrassed - South Melbourne 1 Heidelberg United 2

Normally I'd spend the day after a game like that just getting on with the job of writing this blog, but fuck it if I just could not be bothered with soccer at all yesterday. So I went and watched the Collingwood magoos take on Sandringham yesterday instead.

Throwing away the game like that in the way that we did was a travesty. Not just because it was against Heidelberg, but because undermanned as we were, we managed to look far better than we had in several weeks. Lujic looked like a threat again, Hatzikostas and Jawadi looked good in the middle, even if our back line was a mess. And even though some of our players had absolute nightmares of games - Lakic will surely never play that badly again - there was enough improvement in attack to say that we may just have turned a corner. Oh, Leigh Minopoulos, how did you miss that sitter when you came on? Oh Andy Kecojevic, why couldn't either of your two wonderful freekicks have snuck into the inside of the post instead of ricocheting off it and out? Where was the game sense in the last five minutes? I mean sure, go for the win, but don't throw away the point you've worked so hard to earn!

Then again, considering the shenanigans that happened off the field, I don't know how much I would have enjoyed the win anyway. The behaviour of some of our fans was nothing short of disgraceful. The flares were just the start of it. Despite the pleas from older heads in the week leading up to this contest not to light them in the ground, the calls went unheeded from at least one person.

I should be clear on my position on flares. Firstly, I don't like them from an aesthetic point of view - they smell, they sting my eyes and throat, and I think they look childish and pathetic in comparison to excellent chanting and the colour brought by many and diverse flags and banners. Secondly, the legality of releasing flares is less of an issue to me than the fact that because they're banned at soccer games in Australia, each one lit by one of our fans costs the club money. Now whether you like the board or not is immaterial to this discussion - I'm thinking here of the efforts of the volunteers and staff who bust a gut trying to get a team on the park each week and putting on a professional and well organised show. Thirdly, if you're gonna be a dick and light a flare, at least have the balls to hold it up instead of scurrying away. As for the tosser who threw the flare over the fence, thank goodness you didn't hit the running track. Frankly, if you're so into flares that they take precedence over the enjoyment of the match itself and the efforts of the people working hard to keep the club going, you'd be better off going to watch the gas flares at the casino.

'Lisa, maybe if I'm part of that mob, 
I can help steer it in wise directions.'

Of course there was also the typical sarcastic dropkick reaction of 'oh no, flares, how scary and wrong' - but it's not about the flares, it's about what they represent - a disregard for the club and your fellow supporters. But if only flares were the main problem from Friday night, we could all possibly put it down to some sort of immaturity, and that over time the kids would learn as the older Clarendon Corner heads had to learn.

Unfortunately the flares had to play second fiddle to some younger supporters stealing a banner from the Heidelberg active contingent. On a certain level, I can tolerate accidental stupidity, but planned stupidity - and the banner stealing certainly did seem like a planned affair - that's much less forgivable. This of course kicked off a sequence of events which saw Berger fans rush over to get the banner back and/or remonstrate, and then saw some push and shove after the match. Whatever anyone thinks of the South - Bergers rivalry, it is not a violent or angry one. Being both Greek-founded and supported clubs, many of us know and have known friends an relatives from both sides of the ledger. In the days when people went to more than one game a weekend, South fans would go with their Berger mates to their games, and they would reciprocate.

As for the Berger fans who apparently tried to storm the corporate areas after the ground announcer's 'eggs on toast' jibe, get over yourselves. It's not like he called you Bulgarians or something equally stupid.

Without wishing to absolve the guilty parties in any way, nor appearing to join the 'boys will be boys' crowd, security's efforts on the night were poor. The separation of the two sets of fans at the end of the game, the lack of an obvious presence around Clarendon Corner after some members of Enosi 59 had already lit flares before the match on Clarendon Street - surely Blue Thunder have been around these leagues and clubs long enough to have got even the basics right, but alas that was not the case.

Lest this tirade be taken as a slur against every person in Enosi 59 or their hangers on or supporters, it's not. There are good guys in the group, who've added to the atmosphere at games, and I've been more than happy to have a chat with those guys. Someone who should know better made the allegation recently that I am anti-active and pro picnic support. My response then, as it is now, is that I'm not against active support - I'm against dickheads whether they're chanting types or sitting down and enjoying the game on their own terms types. I'm still of the opinion that being a dickhead is not a genetic condition, and if that is the case, being a dickhead must therefore be a personal decision - and I've yet to meet someone who likes a dickhead.

The problems that pale in comparison to the other issues but which are still worth a mention

There's been an older guy turning up recently to the bay that Clarendon Corner uses who's been using a tabla drum. Some a re for it, some are against it, but I don't mind, it adds to the atmosphere and the guy can actually play. On Friday night though for some reason upon entering the ground, I noticed that he was singing along to a karaoke version of 'Livin La Vida Loca'. He also had Lefteri's trumpet tune hooked up to his sound system on wheels. to which many of the longer standing Clarendon Corner people objected, on the grounds (justifiably I think) of artificiality. Whether or not current trumpet player Bruno is at a game and/or willing to play the trumpet (and on this occasion he was), putting the sound effect on like that while well intentioned is just one step closer to taking away the fan made aspect of supporter groups, and that as such Stathi's vocalised version of the trumpet tune has more heart and character than a pre-recorded tune ever could. The situation seemed to resolve itself.

Crowd
700-800

Crisis at the canteen
Our crowd counter was disappointed that the canteen was no longer willing to serve the Fantastic brand cup noodle, because 'it would take too long to boil the water'.

Celebrity watch
George Calombaris was in attendance.

Next game
Tuesday night at home against a Green Gully side fresh from thumping Bentleigh Greens 4-0 - Bentleigh's first league defeat of the season.

FFA Cup news
We've been drawn against Queensland side Palm Beach, with the match to be played on the Gold Coast. The game will be at Robina Stadium, to be played on Wednesday 29th July at 7:30PM.

Being South Melbourne, the most important club in Australia, our game will be one of those broadcast by Fox Sports. I assume this means that we won't be having our own highlights up on youtube or on the SMFC TV show on Aurora. For those unable to be there in person, I assume some fans will gather at a pub somewhere to watch the game, and I'll let you all know where that will be should that happen. That's what happens when you don't have a social club.

There's also this:

South are marking their return to the big time by wearing their heritage strip of white with a red V, the colours of South Melbourne United, one of the three teams that merged more than 50 years ago to form the current club

Juniper Hill's home uniform.. Julius
Stoker is the club's games record
holder with 314 league and cup
appearances. The design was created
to my spec by 'paquebot', owner of
AS Uijeongbu 07, five time Korean
champions/

which as always has proved divisive on historical, cultural and aesthetic grounds. My stance on the matter is pretty clear, and dare I say it, progressive, rather than conservative (which I've nothing against) or reactionary (you know who you are). I'm not in favour of dislodging the blue and white of the home strip, but I reckon that the heritage strip should be made the permanent away strip. But then again, I am one of those people who likes the aesthetics of the heritage jersey, shorts and hooped socks combo, as well having what I see as a historical wrong being rectified.

The concerns however that it's being used a gimmick have some validity. Here's hoping that it's not just a one off event, and further more that the red vee is tasteful (as per the image adjacent) and not like some of the really huge South Melbourne United ones or heaven forbid, St George-Illawarra Dragons.

Actually, on reflection I may just be a rampant ideologue on this matter myself - after all, I did get a more a talented person than myself to customise my Hatriick team's home uniform to resemble the South Melbourne Hellas heritage strip. On that front, if it were at all possible, I'd also love to see the use of the 1966 Bristol Rovers style jersey, which is also a pearler. Then again, I once argued for QPR style hoops, if the right kind of sponsor could be found to augment the jersey.

Nick Epifano cuts Dundee United trial short

Unfortunately due to family reasons I've had to return back to Australia . Thanks @dundeeunitedfc for the experience- until next time 👍

— Nick Epifano (@Nickepa07) July 2, 2015

Also apparently done his hamstring, not sure of the severity. He was apparently in attendance at the game on Friday.

Speaking of South Melbourne United
While using Trove's newspaper database while doing some research on a project I'm working on, I came across an article from 1936 which talked about that club's very early days, and their application to use the Port Melbourne Football Ground - by which I assume they mean the venue commonly known as the North Port Oval. This is intriguing to me not just for its South Melbourne connections - and why did South Melbourne United form separately from the South Melbourne club that was already in existence? - , but also because of the fact that Port Melbourne as a district was, to my knowledge at least, virtually unknown as a soccer playing area. South Melbourne, Albert Park, Middle Park, St Kilda, South Yarra and Prahran all had lasting and consistent representation either as clubs or venue locations, but Port Melbourne is conspicuous by its absence in the records.

Upon further investigation, it appears that Royal Caledonians had a made an attempt two years earlier to get access to North Port, so it wasn't a new phenomenon. At a meeting to discuss South Melbourne United's application, one councillor said if it went ahead it would be 'the end of the Port Melbourne Football Club', an extraordinary claim to make considering that South Melbourne United had not even fielded a senior team yet. The councillor who stood against South Melbourne United's application was one JP Crichton, a long serving members of the municipality, many times mayor, and on at least on one occasion president of the Port Melbourne Football Club. Self-interest and self-preservation perhaps? Port Melbourne had finished two games clear at the bottom of the VFA ladder in 1936, but surely they couldn't have been that scared of soccer, being part of an Australian Rules club that already had such a storied history? I haven't yet been able ti find any further details of what happened to United's application, but it is an interesting story for both ground usage buffs and South Melbourne soccer history buffs - had United settled down in Port Melbourne, the events which lead to our club's founding some 24 years later would have been quite different.

Final thought
Don't go too hard on them on the blog he said. I gave him my best attempt at an affected death stare, but maybe he had a point.