Me interviewed on Behind the Game podcast

A week or two ago I did an interview with Brogan Renshaw, founder and host of a podcast called Behind the Game. I had no real idea what it was going to cover (and afterwards we both relaised we hadn't ta;lked about my research into soccer and literature), and after doing the interview I was afraid there were going to be too many pauses, but it actually turned out OK. The interview goes for almost 50 minutes, or if you really can't be bothered just read the gist of what we talked about below.

It's early days yet for this podcast, so there's perhaps a few too many Western Sydney Wanderers people attached (and I even recommended one to Brogan to interview) but the more recent interviews tend to drift away from that, and I think it'll be a series worth keeping an eye (or ear) on.

• Woe is me for being an outsider (no credibility as a soccer person).
• How I got into South.
• Feeling part of the community.
• Attempt to marginalise myself as much as possible (Eurosnobs, pay TV).
• A-League inclinations (or the lack thereof), and double standards in expectations.
• Bitterness (parlance, emotion and being outside the conversation).
• More marginalisation (backing myself in a corner).
• Brogan tries hard to find the right words.
• How the hell does a club like South get back to the top under the current regimes (political and cultural)?
• Fondest soccer memory.
• Least fondest memory (OK, maybe more than one, and the dangers of 'what ifs')
• Betraying my father, betraying Heidelberg, dodging a bullet.
• Why do I still go to South games? (regrets, you'll only go in for your mates)
• Old Soccer/New Football (throwaway line my arse).
• Who's paying for the current marginalisation of the old soccer?
• The healing process. (hint: it's bullshit)
• National Club Identity Policy (as if I wasn't going to talk about that)
• Blogging! (Why?)
• Success and pitfalls, style vs service.
• The damn audience.
• Friends and enemies.
• Information control and the Whole of Football meeting (you can also hear me opening and closing a bottle of water at some point here).
• The Greek national team (meh), the Socceroos (I don't want to be meh) and the Asian Cup.
• Eddie McGuire.
• What does the future hold for South?
• The end.

Tom Pollock's NCIP/ethnicity in Oz Soccer radio documentary

Tom Pollock, Swinburne media student and MFootball/Melbourne Knights media man about town, recently interviewed a bunch of the usual suspects about ethnicity in Australian soccer for a uni project. The piece goes for about 20 minutes, and includes contributions by myself, Melbourne Knights vice president Pave Jusup, and historians Ian Syson and Roy Hay.

I will be on radio tonight

Unless it gets cancelled, at 9:00pm tonight, along with Dr Ian Syson I will be a guest on the Play Off The Park programme on SYN 90.7FM. The themes will include (or so I've been lead to believe) stuff to do with the history of football (I assume the host means soccer) in Australia, why the game does not belong, and maybe even some stuff about my PhD thesis. It'll be my first appearance on radio since I spruiked for Offset back in 2009 on Triple R in my role as managing editor. So, if you've never met me and want all your suspicions of what my voice sounds like confirmed (and consequently react like this), tune in, or wait for the podcast to come out.

Social Club Artefact Wednesday - 3AW ads on cassette

Another shoddy photo. I found a whole bunch of these audio cassettes in what was ostensibly the social club's 'multimedia room', which also doubled up as a bit of random storage space, where several things were dumped and then pretty much forgotten about.

For the uninitiated, this room was reached through the door that was to the side of the projector screen, next to the 'stage'.

Digression - there's always one
On a side note, one of the things I find in that room was some kind of IKEA-esque foosball table, in that one had to assemble it with one of those dinky Allen keys. Of course during our 'downtime' while packing away the social club stuff, me and Steve from Broady did assemble it - I was seriously surprised that it actually had most of its parts, because the box it came in was completely fucked - and we ended up playing several games.  Now I'm no crack foosball player, but I kicked Steve from Broady's arse every single time, principally because of my decree that we play by 'foosball gentleman's rules' that is, not allowing seven year old style spinning maneuvers.

I think the table ended up in our players' locker room during the late stages of the Gus Tsolakis era. I have been told that the players quickly lost the balls that came with it, and when Chris Taylor came in, his hardline approach to fun meant that the table ended up getting thrown out of the change rooms. In the end, it was probably for the best that it ended that way, but I'm kinda annoyed at myself now that I didn't take any photos of the little table that love built.

Back to the main show
Curious to find out what content these cassettes had on them - there were no dates to denote what era they were from - I managed to find a battered radio with a cassette player, plug it into one of the available wall sockets hoping not to fry myself and burn the whole joint down, put one of the cassettes in and pressed 'play'.

As best as I can remember, rather than anything revolutionary, they were simply ads promoting our next home game, backed by Frozen Tears' South Melbourne theme song. If memory serves me correct, they were from around the 1998/99 season. Functional kind of work, but an interesting one for historians of the game, especially those people interested in the marketing used by clubs during the NSL era.

The South Melbourne Hellas Hymn!

Everyone knows about Frozen Tears' legendary mid 1990s club song. However, fewer people know about the Hellas Hymn, a Greek language club song I'm guessing dates from some time in the 1980s, or perhaps really early 1990s.

I must apologise for the poor audio quality on this track - the mp3 was inherited from someone else several years ago, and I really should have insisted on them making a better copy. Then again, you may argue that the distortion on the track only adds to the cheesiness of the affair. Suffice to say, this is not my cup of tea. But if anyone has anyone details about this song and how it came about, or even if you just want to say that you remember it, drop us a line in the comments section.



The photo of the chipped case was taken during an inventory of the social club (recognise the table?) a few years ago, when I was asked to help pack away our club's valuables so the club could get started on the social club redevelopment. I think that was sometime during the Bronze Age.

I believe that Heidelberg also had their own Greek language club song (they also had a Frozen Tears song of their own - or was that for Collingwood Warriors?), and from memory, it was actually OK.

12 Days of NSL Talkback - Zeljko 5

We wrap up this series with one last Zeljko talking about crowd fudging

12 Days of NSL Talkback - Zeljko 4

Zeljko thinks that Culina isn't as good Postecoglou

12 Days of NSL Talkback - Zeljko 3

Zeljko discusses issues at the Melbourne Knights with regards to community integration.

12 Days of NSL Talkback - Zeljko 2

This time Zeljko complains about Socceroo selection

12 Days of NSL Talkback - Zeljko

To finish off this series, we now present the first of five Zeljko calls.

12 Days of NSL Talkback - Doug

Doug thinks the game needs more characters

12 Days of NSL Talkback - Dave

Even more Collingwood Warriors stuff... and Joe Simunic

12 Days of NSL Talkback - Gunther

More stuff about Collingwood Warriors

12 Days of NSL Talkback - Gary

Gary talks about his trip to Israel to watch Maccabi Haifa

12 Days of NSL Talkback - Dragi

Here, Dragi talks about the tremendous comedy act that was the Collingwood Warriors

12 Days of NSL Talkback - John

What kind of soccer will Eddie Krncevic's team play? And does Red Star play from behind?

12 Days of NSL Talkback Radio - Daniel

A Melbourne Croatia/St Albans fan uploaded these some time ago. Some of these are pretty funny. This first one is not too funny though, and is in quite poor taste, being the day that some of our fans attacked the Adelaide City bus, with Angelo Constanzo being the most notable victim of the broken glass.

Someone quite mean once suggested to me...

...that I needed a life outside South. Now that person obviously hadn't paid attention to my bookshelf picture that's crammed with books and papers and stuff, almost all of which has naught to do with South, and doesn't include all the other books and shit lying around my house. Ok, so maybe I should get a life outside South and books. But what about my music? There are a fair few CDs in the rack behind me, and a fair few mp3s and stuff on the laptop, and even more CDs in my swiveling CD rack. Ok, so maybe I need to get a life outside South, my books, my music, my occasional trips to the cinema with my bro, barracking for Collingwood - which is quite hard when one is at South every weekend - and hanging out with all these people you don't know because they don't come to South. Maybe I should get a life outside all those things mentioned above, and quit playing board games too and avoid going to the Melbourne International Animation Festival. Just to please you, see?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, there's over 600 posts on here. Most are to do with South, of course. Some aren't. There's a bit of a hint in those posts, if one cares to read between the lines, that no matter how infatuated I may seem with South, there is more to my life than that... and the fact that other stuff gets short shrift here is no accident, because this is a South blog after all, and I reckon I'd get even less people hitting their bookmarks if it was a Paul Mavroudis blog. If however, one wants to listen and learn about some of what I do in my weekday life, tune into 102.7 RRR at about 12:15pm today, because I may may be making an in studio appearance on the wonderful Aural Text program to plug Offset 2009 and try and get a few more submissions for it. Here's hoping I both get on air, and that it turns out a lot better than my Nearpost gig, which when all is said and done, sadly didn't turn out that great. And I still haven't got my copy of the entire interview.