Why in Quetzalcoatl's name are people applauding this?

Ok, so I can get the part about how people are enjoying having their egos stroked, furiously. But take a step back from the initial good feeling, and you realise the guy has next to no clue what the fuck he's on about. Either that or the work experience kid (or more likely one of the uni labor students who work in MPs offices) got into the liquor cabinet.


South Melbourne FC celebrates 50 proud years with a big win

by Michael Danby MHR
Monday February 23, 2009
from Hansard


Mr Danby (Melbourne Ports) (6.53 pm) - On Saturday night I celebrated with my friends at the South Melbourne Football Club the opening of the 2009 season and 50 years of tradition of the great South Melbourne Football Club. I want to congratulate President Leo Athanasakis and his commilla on a glittering event marked by a beginning to the year, with South Melbourne winning the Hellanic Cup, defeating Heidelberg United by 3 - 0. It was a good beginning to the year and I hope the club will have continuing success under its coach, Michael Michalakopoulos.


Now I don't what the fuck a 'commilla' is, but I think it's married to the Prince of Wales. As for 'the event marked by a beginning to the year', I'm not sure that even Kevin Rudd's 'education revolution' can save us from words strung together in such a manner which might make intuitive sense to some clod out there, but will probably leave most people struggling to remember proper English syntax after encountering it. Ahem.



It is very interesting to see the development of the South Melbourne team. Its new captain is a young Turkish Australian called Ramazan Tavsancioglu. My friend, Martin Foley, the Member for Albert Park, and I are working very hard with the S.M.F.C on the refurbishment of the South Melbourne ground - the Bob Jane Stadium - with Victorian Athletics, the Victorian government is undertaking a $74 million proposal for the refurbishment of the whole ground.


Ok, so now the money's gone up from $50 million to $74 million. I take back everything I've said so far, and will say in my next paragraph. Just gimme, gimme, gimme!


Ultimately, South Melbourne deserves its place in the A-League - it will get back there as it must get back into national competition. It is now exclusively hooked up to the local community in training youngsters. It is not simply an ethnic based club anymore and South Melbourne will get its rightful place in the A-League when it is recognised as a more widely based club. When a new round of clubs are being asked to join the A-League, S.M.F.C. should be considered on its merits.


I don't know which youngsters being trained by us he's referring too. Surely not the ones out at Caulfield though. Unless he's talking about one of the junior girls teams... but somehow I don't think so. And where the fuck did he find this connection to the local community? Unless he means himself and Foley. And then he goes into this A-League thing... while we have unlimited space for me to go over this whole thing again, we sadly don't have enough people with unlimited attention spans.

To be fair, the version on the official Hansard transcription reads better, if only because it is not the result of something written by a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, but the sentiments to me are opportunist and typical of the hobnobbing efforts of local MPs within their constituencies. Maybe I've just read too many of Shane Maloney's Murray Whelan books. Or maybe I recall when we had the patronage of an even more prestigious political advocate, who pissed off when we he didn't need us anymore, and an important lesson was forgotten somewhere along the way.

South Melbourne TV is here!

Do you remember last year, when I lamented the lack of coverage of the real local game, yet more so the lack of using what we had at our disposal to do it ourselves? If you don't, follow this link for a reminder. Anyway, it's way overdue. No one knows how long it will last or how often it'll come out. The match footage is a little creaky at the moment. And we so desperately need a tripod and/or microphone. But it's here. It's farken here! SMFCTV! Interviews with fans, players, match footage, done by ourselves. No more waiting for others to pick up the slack! Great work by all involved.

The suit faction is in there somewhere

Yes, your correspondant dressed up for the occasion. Photo by Pavlaki.

Women's Hellenic Cup Result - South 0 Bergers 4

Missed this game so dont know what happened to see such a reversal in the scoreline from their previous meeting where South won 1-0. Disappointing for the girls I'm sure.

South crush Bergers 3-0 to claim first silverware of the season

I got there at what I thought would be 15 minutes late, only to see the Lalor-Oakleigh game for third place still being played out. Lalor Florina won that game on penalties, and showed a fair bit for a state 3 team. Apart from the first 20 minutes or so, where Heidelberg did better with the benefit of a squally breeze, South dominated the game at the times it mattered. Zoric's turning inside out of his opponent on the left lead to first goal, with Coveny coming and putting away what last year would have been another wasted opportunity. So 1-0 at halftime.
Second half all over them when we needed to be basically. A Heidelberg freekick hit almost timidly into the wall let to a lightning counter attack, with a two on one situation be being put away with no fuss by De Nittis. After that the game lost much of its edge. South took off some of its key players, and Heidelberg had little clue about how to break down South's defence, but also looked quite disinterested, like being 2-0 down didn't matter at all. Some people were concerned about getting players off with so much time left - truth be told, if we couldn't hold a 2-0 lead with all the momentum and 25 minutes to play, we probably didn't deserve to win it. Heidelberg did end up with one good chance at this stage of pulling one back, but Vassiliadis, who was given far too much time and space on this occasion, had his dipping shot saved onto the post by Tommich. Icing on the cake was Fernando hitting a curling 25-30 metre shot after a slightly comical bit of play where the Bergers keeper was left temporarily stranded outside his area, only for his defence to eventually clear, but a vintage Nando shot ended the contest as we knew it. Or something.

Zoric was man of the match, while Petrovic was subbed early due to obviously not being up to it on this occasion. We kept possession quite well, generally made good overlapping runs, and controlled the tempo of the game. Whoever said Coveny was finished might want to re-think their comments after this game. Heidelberg looked uncreative and flat for most of the game. They have a decent team, but maybe they've been overhyped by a few people. Clarendon Corner was in fine voice for much of the game, even storming the changerooms for a bit. There was no chanting from the Alexander side, and the infamous snake charmer only managed to blast away once on his clarinet. All in all, a good day.

Hellenic Cup final this Saturday against the Bergers

A reminder that trhe Hellenic Cup final against Heidelberg is on this Saturday at the revised time of 4pm (changed from 6pm to accommodate our season launch, which starts at 7:30). That game, and all the other finals including the women's team final also against the Bergers, is at Northcote City's John Cain Memorial Park. This reporter doesn't know yet if he'll be there, but we'll see I guess.

South stroll past Northcote in friendly

There was another Northcote vs South friendly last night, South won 5-0.

Oakleigh 3 South Melbourne 2 Hellenic Cup Youth game

A bit of poor form on my part, but one of our readers posted some videos hidden away in the comments of an earlier entry, when really the site could do with some more colourful things aside from text. The footage below is from a Hellenic Cup youth game between our boys and Oakleigh's.

South Women also through to Hellenic Cup final

I've been a little negligent in this regard but the South Melbourne Women's team have also booked their place in next week's final, after wins against Brunswick City (13-0) and Heidelberg (1-0). In a neat double header of sorts, they'll be playing Heidelberg next week, as will the men's team as well. While the finals matches are slated for next Saturday, there may be a change in the time or even possibly the day (to Sunday) to accomodate us because of our season launch/jersey presentation night which is also on next Saturday. News at it comes to hand.

South through to Hellenic Cup final after bruising win over Oakleigh

South Melbourne is through to the Hellenic Cup final next week after outlasting Oakleigh Cannons with a 3-2 extra time win. South were up 2-0, before Oakleigh leveled the game. Scorers for South were Fernando with one and Coveny two, including the last minute winner. The joy will be tempered though to what appears to be a serious and potentially season ending knee injury to Nathan Caldwell, after he was crudely tackled by former South defender Robbie Wynne.

Vaughan Coveny lobs the ball over the Oakleigh keeper to give South a 2-0 lead. Photo by Pavlaki.

Hellenic Cup semi tomorrow against Oakleigh

Details finally confirmed by someone, thanks Tony. Game is against Oakleigh at 3:30pm at Bentleigh Greens once more.

Hellenic Cup Q/F - South Melbourne 1 Bentleigh Greens 0

Once again I was not there, but apparently Steve O'Dor got the goal for the good guys. Don't know who were up against next or where, but as usual will inform everyone out there in the real world as soon as possible.

Family Day on Sunday

Family Day is on this Sunday, 11am-3pm. Will there be memberships and merch to pick up? I certianly hope so, but going on our past track record I doubt it for the latter. The club will also be collecting donations for the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal.

Hellenic Cup Quarter Final Tomorrow

After some confusion - which is not my fault because they had the fixtures all wrong, and I was merely seeking clarification - South Melbourne will be taking on Bentleigh Greens at Bentleigh Greens at 6:30pm, Thursday 12th. Let's hope it goes a bit better than last year's attempt, where we were knocked out at 1-0 at this stage by the same team.

2009 squad announced

This is the 2009 squad... as announced on the official website. Sfetkopoulos is a goalkeeper, signed from Altona East and is quite solid, having seen him numerous times out at Paisley Park. Foschini is a youngster from from Oakleigh/Victory youth, and a signing confirmed from a while back. I'm not quite sure who Torrens and Payne are, but Radojicic has been impressing in trial games apparently. Some number changes as well with De Nittis going to no. 10 from no. 9, Tommich to 1 as you'd expect, Petrovic(h) loses his no.8 to Horsey, and a probably a few others I've missed. The number 16 vacated by Tansel Baser is still vacant, and the question of who's going to be captain is still up in the air. Will Coveny or Rama get it? You'd think Vaughan would have to be the favourite at this stage, and that Rama will have to wait another season at least for the honour. 

1. Tomi Tommich 
2. Shane Nunes 
3. Rhodri Payne 
4. Steven O’Dor 
5. Con Blatsis 
6. Eddie Cetkin 
7. Nic Curtis 
8. Vaughan Coveny 
9. Joseph Youseff 
10. Gianni De Nittis 
11. Yusef Yusef 
12. Sam Torrens 
13. Francesco Stella 
14. Ramazan Tavsancioglu 
15. Fernando De Moraes 
17. Stiven Mrkela 
18. Danni Radojicic 
19. Goran Zoric 
20. Nathan Caldwell 
21. Stefan Sardellic 
22. Matthew Foschini 
23. Sebastian Petrovich 
24. Andrew Sfetkopoulos

South Melbourne 12 Moorabbin 0

South now through to the quarter finals, against who I don't know, but probably on Thursday at the same location. Since I wasn't there today, let's do something else to pass the time. According to the wikipedia entry, the word Moorabbin is believed to have come from the Wurundjeri Aboriginal word for resting place. There used to be a fully fledged Moorabbin soccer club called Moorabbin City, but they sadly went broke several years ago. There also used to be a Moorabbin Football Club, whose death can directly be linked to its ground being taken over by the St Kilda Football Club. Man, when they had cake in the boardroom that day I was there, the smell was just unreal. I should have asked where they got it from, because it looked so good. Just when you think you're entertainment spending is set to take a break, Elbow announces a sideshow. There goes another $60, when I eventually purchase a ticket. At least it doesn't interfere with soccer this time.

I love chocolate cake

After several months of speculation, South of the Border has been informed by a distant relative of William Felt, that Vaughan Coveny, 247 game South veteran and member of the back-to-back and World Club Championship sides, is coming back to Lakeside for the club's 50th year. A fan favourite, Vaughan is also just 12 goals shy of completing his league ton for Hellas. With the defensive line being shored up and a plethora of injured midfielders coming back, Coveny's signing would be the icing on the cake, providing valuable experience and firepower up front. Time to break out the Horsey plakat again? Well, not until the brainstrust in the rich chocolate cake with fresh cream boardroom at South say it's true. Any minute now... 

Left: Vaughan Coveny in happier times for the club, donned in the heritage strip adopted for a game or two in 2004. Below: A cake likely resembling the one that South Melbourne boardmembers enjoy during important club meeting. Not pictured is the fresh cream which can be doled out at a diner's pleasure, nor the sweet, intoxicating aroma of high quality cocoa. 

Result from last night's Hellenic Cup game

South Melbourne 1 Kingston City 0, Caldwell goalscorer.

South Melbourne 7 South Hobart 0

Pretty average performance overall. South Hobart strated off ok, fighting well, but fell away more and more as the game went on. Kati wildscenes at the scoreboard end, plenty of chants and stupidity. We're going to miss you Southpole you kreas!

Hot rumour! South set to make major player announcement!

Stop whingeing about being hot for a second and listen up. This has just come through on the wire. A source known only as 'deepthroat' has told South of the Border that South Melbourne Hellas is expected to make a major player announcement by this weekend. While I can't reveal my source(s), I assure you they are very reliable, so hold on to your hats people, something big might be about to happen.