Right place, right time - Melbourne Knights 1 South Melbourne 2

Another week, another thoroughly enjoyable contest, provided you watched it through the filter of the netting behind the goals. Well, that's a little harsh. It was actually a pretty good game to watch, better for us having won it, but let us not forget that for a good chunk of the first half, we were on the back foot, and probably should have been behind. 

But we weren't. And then Jack Painter-Andrews, waiting on the edge of the 18 yard box and taking advantage of a poor clearance from a not very good corner, hit it low and hard through the sea of legs for the opening goal. There is nothing better than being behind the goals, even with a big black net in the way, when a player takes one of those low shots from a half-clearance, and you can see the ball going n even before it's crossed the line, with the goalkeeper and his friends on the line helpless to do anything about it; and even better for it being right on half time.

Second half, copped the equaliser, but didn't stop coming and stepping up. And for all of Knights' commendable new found commitment to a short passing game, there was evidence that they are vulnerable when trying to play out of the back. It was evident against Oakleigh the week before, and when the moment presented itself last Friday, we managed to take it. The game of risk vs reward fell in our favour this time.

Leaving the game, I had two thoughts first how nice it was to watch a win in a meaningful league game between these two sides, a game of decent quality, with an ever improving stadium experience, and that we might well meet again in the finals, maybe even in the final; the other thought was how few people had watched the game. It wasn't a poor crowd, but it deserved more than it got. But that's where we are now.

Next game
Dandenong Thunder at home on Sunday.

Is there a curtain raiser?
Yes. Our senior women take on FV Emerging, kickoff at 1:30

Fixture news
Our round 19 fixture against St Albans, originally scheduled for Friday June 23rd, has now been brought forward to Tuesday June 20th. I guess the Women's World Cup must be really keen to get into the stadium.

Congratulations to Ange Postecoglou
What's left to be said that hasn't already been said? Ange's profile is so high now, that every man and his dog have had their say on his latest move. Just as importantly, for many years now Ange has been in the position of when he talks, people listen, and he has significant say on how the narrative around his career now gets played out. It's a long way from Panachaki and Whittlesea Zebras, and this blog being among the few English language places even taking a cursory interest in his years in the wilderness. That's not intended to sound like backslapping for this outlet, only remembering what it was like at the time. Now, even Ange's stint in Patra is being raked over for insights into what came after, as is his time at Zebras.

(both stories, through no fault of the respective writers, lacking input from the man himself)

That Whittlesea stint keeps getting brought up by a lot more people than were actually there, like that White Stripes gig in Melbourne that reputedly only had 13 people show up. I think of that second match at Lakeside between ourselves and the Zebras in 2009. There were many lows in that season for Zebras, but for Ange personally that one might have stung an little bit more, coning back to the scene of your then greatest accomplishments, and copping four (and should have been more) with one of said four being scored by a 37 year old who you were coaching a decade earlier.

But that puts it all a bit too simply, even neatly. I see some Spurs fans, as did their Celtic counterparts a couple of years ago, bring up Ange's background (not from European football) and age (now 57), and ask what's he done and why has it taken so long? And it's like, can you even comprehend the footballing distances and barriers - the mental, the psychological, of reputation - that any Australian coach has to overcome to get even close to being taken seriously in Europe? The fact that Ange even got close, considering those obstacles - and the prejudices of those who make decisions at that level - should be right up there with whatever other qualities he has as a manager.

I mean, at his first peak in 2000, coaching in the World Club Championships, the team he was in charge of was fobbed off (by people from the home of the "romance of the cup" no less) for containing tax advisors and petrol pump attendants. Never mind that the petrol pump attendant had a solid decade at a leading Greek club behind him. A decade later, he's coaching against ex-opponents, ex-teammates, and even players like the petrol pump attendant whom he coached, in no man's land. Now he's in the same league as Manchester United. My disinterest in anything above this mess we're in right now aside, I can at least admire the accomplishment of even getting close.

Vale Rale Rasic
Of the three men who have coached both South Melbourne and the Socceroos (Rasic, Arok, and Postecoglou), Rasic had by far the shortest South stint. Brought to South in late 1982, Rasic lasted just 13 matches of the 1983 NSL season, with a muddling record of four wins, three draws, and six losses. Others who were there at the time can perhaps shed some light on what went wrong, because it seems like the pieces were there for the side to finally win a league title; indeed, the team went on to finish in fourth place, just a game and a half behind champions St George. Unfortunately, Rasic's biography doesn't give away much on that period of his career, preferring to let sleeping dogs lie. The club would have to wait one more year to finally break its national league drought under Rasic's replacement Len McKendy, while Rale would win the 1987 NSL title with a dominant APIA team.

Second to last thought
I haven't paid as much attention to the senior women's team as I should, but if anyone can make sense of this what's going in this NPLW Victoria season as a whole, you're a better person than I am. Seems to be a case of get to the finals however you can, hope you have enough of your good players left, and then just pull a name out of a hat to decide a champion. Chaos league.

Final thought
The Futbol24 app is now for the tip.

Remembering Tommy Docherty, someone I don't remember

Former South Melbourne Hellas coach Tommy Docherty died on the last day of 2020, and while I don't usually do any sort of deep-dives (or even shallow dives) on the passing of former South people, Docherty's tenure at South has always intrigued me, as does that time in South's history.

I mean, even putting aside the decline of our collective Hellas and general soccer memory, that whole late 1970s and especially early 1980s period - at least the bit prior to Len McKendry turning up and sorting things out - seems to be glossed over by our supporters.

And that's understandable. because unlike our dominant 1970s state league performances, South's first few years in the NSL were hardly a runway success. After all, we did finish last in 1979, and only avoided relegation because of a certain degree of administrative shiftiness, for which Sydney Olympic has never forgiven us.

That loss of collective memory isn't helped by the acute lack of footage from those early NSL years, but that doesn't completely explain why that South era doesn't get remembered as well as other similarly unsuccessful eras. It's not helped either by 95% of our supporter base (give or take one or two percentage points) disappearing into the aether.  

Oh, sure, there are moments and players from that era that people like to bring up, like Malcolm 'Supermac' Macdonald's guest stint, and the extended presence up front of former Liverpool star Alun Evans. 

But in general it seems to have been a period of time when the club chased a lot of big name players, paid very big transfer fees, and got little reward for these endeavours. When that approach failed, the club continued to repeat the same process while wondering why the team wasn't improving. Stop me if you've heard this story before.

That's certainly a simplistic retelling from someone who wasn't even alive then. Nevertheless, from what I can tell, the signing of Tommy Docherty as South coach midway through 1982 was typical of the club's thinking at the time. Instead of pausing and perhaps trying to figure out the root problem, the committee would invariably try and throw more cash at the problem in the hope that money alone would solve the club's unbefitting lack of success.

Enter Tommy Docherty. The Scotsman was a former player of some accomplishment, and had coached a variety of teams in England, most notably Manchester United - whom he had gotten relegated, then promoted; then won the FA Cup with them in 1977, upsetting Liverpool; and then found himself sacked soon after, when his affair with the wife of United's physiotherapist came to light. 

After a couple of short stints at Derby County and Queens Park Rangers, Docherty coached Sydney Olympic in 1981, though he soon returned to the UK to help his former club Preston North End - for whom he had played over 300 games - get out of a relegation scrap. For whatever reason Docherty's coaching stint at Deepdale didn't last, and so he hit the road again looking for new opportunities. 

And that's how he ended up back in Australia. Docherty was in the country in May of 1982 to promote a soccer skills program or some such over a five week period. During this time, South approached him to take over the club for those five weeks in his spare time, with an option to coach out the rest of the year. 

Despite big spending on numerous "name" players, under incumbent coach John Margaritis, South had played disjointed, inconsistent football, was apparently suffering from poor player morale, and was entrenched in the bottom half of the table midway through the season.

Docherty took over the coaching reigns from round 14 onward, with Margaritis stepping aside from the position of head coach while remaining within the coaching structure; that was an arrangement that would last little more than a few hours, with Margaritis quitting soon after introducing the players to their new coach. 

It's a little bit odd to think that a well-credentialed senior coach like Margaritis would agree to such an arrangement in the first place, and sure enough the man himself must have realised quite quickly that it made no sense. Certainly several pundits at the time, including Rale Rasic (who in just a few months' time  would succeed Docherty as South coach), agreed with the unusualness of the affair.

With training at the time only three days a week, Docherty was able to live large to a certain degree, supplementing his soccer income with radio and television appearances, and one also assumes his regular newspaper columns. One report from The Guardian in 2000 suggests he was making more in Australia from his combined coaching and pundit work than he would've made as a manager at a top English club at the time.

Being an affable and gregarious walking quote-machine, Docherty was good for publicity, but it's arguable that he was much good for South on field. Some players, like Charlie Egan, seemed to relish his fellow Scots' style, but other veteran players soon found themselves on the transfer list. And it's not like the team's results improved all that much, although Docherty's preference for attacking football at least probably made things more interesting.

After five weeks of mixed results, Docherty returned to England to take care of pressing legal and financial matters - namely the matter of a court summons over maintenance arrears due to his first wife, Agnes. During that time, Mick Watson acted as caretaker coach. On his return, Docherty coached out the rest of the season, made tentative plans for 1983, but his contract was either not extended or was bought out by Olympic.

And it's his second stint at Olympic which is perhaps his most notable legacy in Australian soccer, as some of their fans tend to give him the credit for building the squad that would go on be a regular competitor for titles in the 1980s. 

As for South, even if we don't seem to remember his time here too much, he certainly remembered us. Interviewed on the eve of the South Melbourne vs Manchester United Club World Championship match, Docherty remembered his time at South as requiring more diplomacy in the changerooms than he was accustomed to; he also noted of South's fans that "they were the best winners in the world, and the worst losers"; and that when some supporters threw apples and oranges at him, Docherty would goad those fans by eating the apples and peeling the oranges.

Even a cursory look through the papers of the time (both the mainstream outlets and specialist soccer press like Soccer Action), reveal that Docherty loved football, and was happy to entertain the press and public. In the long-run, South probably would've been better off if he'd taken the job a bit more seriously; still, there's something to be said of his not taking the game and himself too seriously. After all, soccer is a game, and games are meant to be enjoyed, or so I'm told.

First Blanco, Now Rasic

What is FourFourTwo actually trying to achieve with all this stuff?


FORMER World Cup Socceroos coach Rale Rasic has delivered a broadside to the new regime running Australian football.
Rasic believes the FFA are guilty of suppressing Australia’s football history and demeaning the importance of the National Soccer League, past Socceroos sides and the contributions of individuals involved with all aspects of the game for over half-a-century.

Despite recognising the progress made after the fall of the NSL and the establishment of the A-League, Rasic says the lack of acknowledgement and respect for his own contribution to the game epitomises a widespread ignorance of the nation’s football past.

“What happened was logical, it was evolution. It was progress but it happened artificially,” Rasic says of the establishment of the A-League.

Rasic – who was the first Socceroos coach to qualify Australia for the World Cup finals in 1974 – says the migrant culture associated with the NSL has been ignored by Australian football’s governing body.

“We used to have many ethnic clubs, which were the pride and honour of the people who built this country into what it is today; people who kept the communities - large communities - together, without being able to speak the language.

“For them it was impossible to learn the language and assimilate quickly. It is a problem that you still find today with people having problems learning the language and having to stick together within communities,” Rasic added.

“But Lowy’s regime does not recognise any of that. He just walked over and conquered the way he wanted to conquer these people, which is just rude.”

The former NSL Coach of the Year winner and Hall of Fame inductee, says that the FFA is accountable for its censorship of Australia’s football history and for its treatment of himself and other figures from Australia’s football past

“I think the FFA only want to talk about and show certain things," he said.

“Let me tell you that certain things that they did and questions they asked of myself and other coaches and of people who sacrificed themselves and their lives to this country: they treated them like prostitutes.”

Rasic also highlighted the presence of what he believes to be hypocrisy in the policies, actions and establishment of the FFA and what has widely been described as “new football”.

Rasic added: “Frank Lowy was a founding member of the NSL.

“He goes into exile for 24 years and comes back now and says that he can make a better contribution to Australian football than I can? Is he saying that there was no-one else who had contributed to football in this country over the years?”

“There were many, many problems with the NSL but surely we could not only be criticized for the mistakes and errors we made, considering all the good that people like Theo Marmaras did for football in this country..

“Don’t forget one thing: Theo Marmaras brought Australia back to FIFA and we, ten years later, qualified for the first World Cup ever: Theo brought this country to FIFA in ’64 and we qualified in ’74.

“So Theo Marmaras doesn’t deserve any credit? The contribution of these sorts of people is absolutely enormous.”

Despite his apparent disillusionment, Rasic believes that Australia’s football history will eventually be explored.

“I honestly think there is a lot of bullshit under the cover, put it that way. I think people are speechless, people fear something: no-one is saying anything.

“But you cannot ignore history: I tell you, the bubble will burst as soon as people wake up and say to themselves ‘what is going on?’”

“We have to learn to respect the past and look forward into the future."

The 72 year-old claims the respect shown to past Socceroos sides in particular has deteriorated, citing the contrast in the approach by previous body Soccer Australia to honouring past Socceroos before the World Cup Qualifier against Iran in 1997 and the actions of the FFA after the Qualifier against Uruguay in 2006.

“Against Iran we [the ’74 Socceroos team] were paraded around the MCG in a Rolls Royce,” he said.

“Following the match against Uruguay I was asked to contribute about $25 to snacks for a ceremony honouring ex-Socceroos.

“I said ‘Please, don’t insult me.’”

He added: “Essendon and Collingwood have a tradition of 100 years and so does Rugby League. Frank Lowy and his people must get to the roots of our football history and admit that he was part of it, good or bad.

“If the FFA don’t recognise the contribution people have made to football in this country and continue to be ignorant about the history of the game, then they should be ashamed of themselves.”

“I wrote a letter to John O’Neill in his first week of office, congratulating him and saying that I was looking froward to seeing him making a contribution toward football that would take us to the next level.

“I also told him I’m the owner of the biggest museum of football in this country and whether we could meet to discuss the issue in the future.

“I am still waiting for a letter back.”