Blocked by Mike artefact Wednesday - 1960s Ladies membership card

This is a post I had tucked away for a long time, which I just kept pushing back for some reason.

I came across this item back on this date in November 2018. It was posted on Twitter by my erstwhile nemesis SMFCMike, (and if you don't have a nemesis, are you really living?) though of course because I was blocked by Mike at the time, I didn't actually see it until Ian Syson tagged me in to a discussion Mike had started on Twitter about this matter, though of course I couldn't see what the original post was all about.

To see the post, I had to do that stupid thing back then where you would just jump onto Twitter by logging out of your account, thereby bypassing the block. And what did I get to see for my troubles? Well, I got to see a rather nice historical artefact, a South Melbourne Hellas Ladies Membership from, I assume, some time after 1966 and probably before 1972, though I'm guessing this is from the late 1960s.

We don't know how much a ladies' membership cost, but check out the stamp: "Hellas Soccer Club Melb, Vic." - which shares a quality of nomenclature with an old pennant of the time, as noted in this post,

Ode to Joy - South Melbourne 5 Port Melbourne 2

Look, one utterly brilliant performance, one magical night of attacking football, should not make up for some of the utter dross we've had to put up with (and yes, I know we're in second place). I've been duped by grand romantic gestures like this before. How about that Gully game from earlier in the season? Or the 3-2 win away at Bentleigh last year? My brain tells me to be wary, that we'll be back to the usual way too defensive stance very soon; but my heart wants to do its own thing, to believe that I can love this team, that it has changed its ways.

(In some respects it also reminds me of our win over Oakleigh at home in 2007, and not just because of the score line - but also because of the same kind of vibe that night, including the cherry on top final goal - that we could do some good things if we wanted to. Then the season started falling apart again a couple of weeks later.)

After the AGM the other night, a board member said to me that he hadn't seen me leave a game smiling like that for a long time. Think about that - we finished top of the table last year, and have lost only one game in the league so far this season - but still, it didn't make me as happy as it should have. Sure, I can be a hard taskmaster and an all round curmudgeon. But I think what I felt is what a lot of you have felt - that while it was good to win, that at some point the whole enterprise should also aim to be joyful. 

(something, something, the game is about glory; something, something, it is about playing with style)

People work all week; the players train. I imagine a good chunk of our players also work, maybe at jobs that are psychologically fulfilling or perhaps not, but probably unlikely to provide the opportunity of being able to express themselves individually and collectively (on an admittedly small scale in this case), in a situation where they can bring joy to themselves as individuals and as a collective, and to those of us watching them. Yes, we take it seriously. But it's also a game. If the players don't have the freedom to express themselves within that context, if we as fans aren't provided the opportunity to be entertained, then doesn't it become just another version of work? And that's me saying that as person who kinda likes their job.

In a previous life I was a hack academic, and it's probably unwise to retrace your steps and go back to what you wrote years ago; but I can perhaps at least look back at some of my old work and see who I quoted. Ken Inglis said "by studying a people’s ceremonies of leisure one may get closer to understanding them", which makes immediate sense to me. If you turn leisure into work, is it still leisure? Inevitable as any form of organised sport may be to being cast as part of Brohm's "prison of measured time", are we not as least partly obligated to try and not make it as bad as he said it was? What about Pieper's rejection of the view that leisure should be a reward for work; that a Sunday or lunch break should not merely be reduced to a device by which someone can be called upon to work once more.

But I'll stop here before I start quoting Proudhon. The performance from both sides on Monday was a credit to the game of soccer. Both teams sought goals, it's just that one was better at seeking them than the other. When Port's Dor Jok scored a cracker to bring it back to 4-2, South fans applauded the goal. Sure it's easy to do that when you have a two goal buffer, but it's no crime to admire excellence, even if it comes from your opponent. When Andy Brennan stormed up the field and smashed home the final goal of the game, in retro 2015 Brennan style, it near on brought the house down. That's as it should be. 

I understand that not every game is going to be like that. And I understand why not every game can be like that; I don't expect the team to score five goals every week. But I do have the expectation that we should look like we want to score that many every week. Not just because we are South Melbourne (though why not have that as a reason), but also because scoring goals is fun. The intent to move the ball with purpose was evident all night; players were also willing to run with the ball and create space for teammates. How good to see Riak working his arse off, but with actual help from his teammates. How good to see the fullbacks repeatedly get up the field. How good to see every midfielder looking to receive the ball, or to win it back from the opposition. How good in general not to see the team (especially Lirim) camped on its own 18 yard box when it's not needed.

How good is it when people see something so good, that they can't wait to come back? That was my favourite part of the night. People seemed genuinely excited by what they saw. There was no feeling of "oh, we were lucky to win that game". No, the feedback was we deserved to win that game, and that we could've scored more goals, and not just from our usual set piece routines. The long throw and corner goals aren't the problem. They were never the problem. They're not the problem for other teams when they score from those situations. The problem was that we were seemingly intent on creating nothing else. So, yes, two long throw goals on Monday night, but also three goals from open play, from counters, from winning the ball in midfield, from pressing Port up the field, from the full backs getting up the ground and putting good crosses in. And scarcely a player on the field for us that I could criticise.

(and how close did Morgan Evans look to putting Brad Norton out of a job?)

Some were quick to attribute this performance to Esteban Quintas being forced into watching the game from the stands, thanks to receiving a third yellow card during the course of this season thus far. I think that's unfair. He still trains the team, he still picks the team, and his mere absence from the touchline shouldn't negate all the work he puts in. It does help when you get most of your players available again from various absences. It helps when you play against a team that plays open, passing football, which makes them vulnerable in certain ways that other teams are not. Indeed, it's probably no accident that our best two performances in 2023 have been against Gully and Port, two teams with not the best of defenses, and who also like to attack and knock the ball around.

But something was different. There were passes and moves that had not been seen much this season. There was a hunger in the side all across the field, and not just desperation on our own 18 yard box. Who knows what switch was flicked, why it all clicked into place the way that it did, and whether we'll get to see more of it. But please, more of it, because it gives me joy, which is the whole point of this endeavour.

Next game
Altona Magic at home on Sunday afternoon. I am looking forward to it.

Is there a curtain raiser this week?
Yes. The senior women take on Alamein, kickoff at 1:30PM

Room for improvement
Would have been even better if we could have bought a drink outside the social club.

Our other senior team
I had not seen much of the women's team this year, and what I had seen hadn't filled me with much optimism. It all looked a bit clunky. But I had a free afternoon last Saturday, and for whatever reason their game against Box Hill United had been moved to McIvor Reserve, not a long drive for your correspondent. I was wondering whether there would be any food, and as I was driving to the ground I went past Edwards Reserve, where the Melbourne City (Argentinian variant) reserves were in action, and thought about stopping there for a moment, to see what their canteen had to offer.

But I drove on, and saw a decent enough turnout at McIvor Reserve, and a functioning canteen. Not a great souv, mind you, but passable under the circumstances of being hungry. I'd checked earlier to see if the women's under 19s were playing the curtain raiser, and they weren't, so I didn't get to the ground too early, only to find out upon arrival that the men's 21s team had just finished their game. 

The ground was in excellent condition, though the grassy areas around the perimeter could do with a good mow. Also, it's possible that because it was just the women playing, but the lack of scaffolding and /or an appropriate elevated position to film and commentate the match from was not a good look. Credit to Joey Lynch doing a professional job at ground level while staring into the sun for a couple of hours.

I probably should have brought a hat instead of a beanie, and possibly applied some sunscreen because it was a lot warmer than I expected. Or maybe I should have just stayed in the shade. Anyway, it was a cracking performance from the senior women, who dominated proceedings up until they scored midway through the second half, and then let Box Hill fight their way to the end; the visitors probably should have equalised, but that's what goal line clearances are for. Before all that, we were being scuppered by a huge amount of offside calls.

But late fade-out aside, I was pleased and pleasantly surprised with how the women played - it was smooth, attacking, attractive football, and the only thing that annoyed me about is that I only wished that the men's team could do something similar. Wish granted!

More room for improvement
There was an ice cream truck at Yarraville. If we can't get beers outside at Lakeside, can we at least get a Mr Whippy van to turn up? Or bring back the loukoumades!

Final thought
Still buzzing.

About time - Oakleigh Cannons 2 South Melbourne 1

Because our resident transport infrastructure reader likes to know

The trip from Sunshine to Huntingdale was quite good. Train into the city not too crowded, because the vast majority of the footy crowd would have taken earlier services than the one I was on. From the city, the Cranbourne/Pakenham lines have such frequent services you don't tend to worry about missing one train, because another will arrive soon after.

But the real bonus was my first time catching a new HCMT. Very spacious inside. Seats a bit stiff and a bit too upright, probably designed by eminent posturologists, so slouching isn't quite as easy. So many screens to look at with relevant information. Doors take a bit of getting used to. Overall, a pleasant experience. It's also easy to forget that Skyrail was even such a big deal.

Anyway...

In amid all those games where next to no one gives a stuff, here was one of those games where next to no one gives a stuff, with the addition of a few neutrals, and the host club wheeling out its entire junior program to buttress numbers. I'm not criticising Oakleigh for doing that by the way, because pretty much everyone pulls this stunt at some point during the season - and what better time than a non-Orthodox Easter Monday public holiday coinciding with school holidays to do it?

It did however accentuate the vibe that the game itself was somewhat of a sideshow. Oakleigh may as well have hired a ferris wheel, merry-go-round, and petting zoo to entertain the crowd, because there was that much distracted and idle chatter during the match that it may as well have been an exhibition game. Even Clarendon Corner, which was otherwise engaged with the match, was nevertheless reduced to the status of a rump state, not even able to scare away children and their parents from the far end of the grandstand.

Even the taunting of former players like Tyson Holmes and Matthew Foschini was more about pissing off the person in our midst who didn't want to give oxygen to the fact that there were former players of ours out there. Still, at least Oakleigh's updated logo means that Foschini no longer has to kiss a badge with a cartoon cannon shooting a soccer ball when he wants to be a smartarse towards us.

For those that did pay attention, I think the match was a bit of a fizzer. Undefeated (and more attacking than in recent memory) South coming to Jack Edwards to play an in-form Oakleigh set this up for something much better than what was actually served up. Which is not to say that it was a bad game, and not to say that it lacked action - but rather, that neither side put its best foot forward either in attack or defense. 

Just as importantly, there were no definitive answers about which team was actually the more likely to kick on from this game with an enhanced reputation. Both teams will probably make the finals, and they may well meet each other there, in which case we'll have a final answer about who was the better team out of the two; or at least the luckier.

And if you enjoyed the game and thought that it was actually rather good, that's fine too, but you're probably watching a lot more lower league stuff than I do these days.

Oakleigh had the better of the first half, and we had the better of the second. All three goals scored were in part due to soft defensive errors. Oakleigh opened the scoring when South's defenders seemed to dawdle at just the wrong time and place. South equalised when Marcus Schroen hit a shot from the edge of the box that went underneath the goalkeeper, like me trying to field in Super Mega Baseball 3. Then an unmarked Daniel Clark got hit by a rather ordinary corner at the near-post, which gave Oaks the 2-1 lead, and eventually the win.

I will say this though - there were things in the first half in the way that we played that I was concerned about. Oakleigh - by which I mean, Chris Taylor - like to play channel football, figuring out where the specific weak point is, and putting most energy into dismantling that. On Monday, especially in the first half, that weak spot was the Bermuda Triangle between right-back Ben Djiba, right-winger Andy Brennan, and defensive midfielder Lirim Elmazi. Elmazi in particular was struggling with whether to come or go, and it caused all sorts of problems on that side of the field.

But maybe I say this mostly because this was the predominant action that was right in front of me during that first half.

Second half was better from us, but how much of that was that due to Oakleigh deciding to sit back and take the chance that we wouldn't do anything of note? And yes, I get the irony of making it seem like it was possibly a smart tactical decision from the home side, when every time we've done it this year it just comes across as stupid. As it happened, we had enough of the ball, enough territory, and enough set pieces - which have been outlandishly good to us so far in 2021 - that only our inability to put in a decent ball for 90 minutes prevented us from creating meaningful chances to score.

Oddly enough however, I didn't find myself too disheartened with the loss. Bad crossing, wonky defending, and some questionable substitutions and team selections - what exactly are the circumstances where Jai Ingham is fit enough to start one week, and not the next? - only served to demonstrate to me that we're within the championship discussion. That's not the same thing as saying the competition is of a particularly high standard; only that I see us being more than competitive for the rest of the season, bar some streak of outrageous fortune.

I mean, it could happen, but those of you playing the "eight more points until we definitively avoid relegation in 2022" game, should probably enjoy it while you can.

Next game

Altona Magic at Paisley Park on Anzac Day. 

Look, women's matches! Two of them!

The new era of senior women's soccer continued last Saturday our in the 'burbs, with South taking on Alamein. I watched this on the stream, and I have to say that the best thing about the game was the commentator. Even if she was a bit new, and struggling a little with the names, she was also unafraid to be critical of elements of the game - namely how much time the ball spent out of play.

As for the match itself, it appears we are all going to have a be a little bit patient with the new regime. Anyone looking for the overloaded glory hunting teams of recent years will be disappointed. I don't know if we're actually going to go with our own youth, or just more young players from wherever we find them, bit clearly there's going to be an adjustment in expectations.

Among the players who have remained, some would have been fringe players in the past, carried by the stars. Now they've got to lead, and if the results and quality of play aren't where they need to be yet, that's just the way it is. Playing short, simple balls, instead of resorting to kick and chase will be a good start. Getting more than forward into position will be a nice addition. 

Which is not to say that we were completely outplayed by Alamein, and in the end, it was only the one goal that separated the two teams. But the home side had that extra bit of polish across the board, and you could hardly begrudge them their win.

Much better - though there was no stream to verify the totality of the effort - was the team's 5-1 cup win on Tuesday against a lower league Moreland Zebras side that apparently featured former South players Alex Cheal, Laura Spiranovic, Jess Au, and Lisa De Vanna. Maybe experienced players carrying a team isn't always what it's cracked up to be.

Final thought

The venue switch for this match means that our scheduled 2021/2022 six pointer against Oakleigh won't happen until later in the season. Not that anyone cares about this, of course.

2022 fixtures are out

A long time ago now, it didn't used to be this way - but nowadays Football Victoria does a consistently excellent job of getting its fixtures out before the arrival of a new year. You can see our fixture here.

Of course in these pandemic times, who knows how long any of these fixtures will stay in their allocated slots, or whether they'll get played at all. 

But let's assume that everything somehow ends up going smoothly, here's the gist of the fixture as it relates to our senior men's team. What days are our home games on? 

NPL match days

One Thursday night home match, our opening round game against Heidelberg. Four Friday night home matches, with two of those in the early part of the season. Eight Saturday evening home games, all with 6:45PM starts. 

The Thursday and Friday home games will all be standalone affairs - no reserves curtain raiser, as was mostly the case in 2021 for Friday night home matches. All eight of our home Saturday games will have an NPLW match as a curtain raiser, expanding the experiment that the club has been tinkering with for a little while now.

Home and away, seven of our matches will be on Friday nights, while the majority of our matches will be on Saturdays, with most of those being night games. That marks an interesting shift away from Friday nights, a situation which had reached saturation point when five games would be played on the same night. 

For fans of old fashioned Sunday soccer, you'll have three away games - St Albans, Heidelberg, and Avondale on the final day of the season.

FFA Cup rounds

If my understanding of Football Victoria's 2022 calendar is correct, it looks like cup rounds for all matches involving NPL teams will be midweek affairs, scheduled initially around NPL rounds 6 and 7. Usually an NPL team's first match in the tournament would be on a free weekend allocated for this purpose, but not in 2022 it seems. 

The final of the Dockery Cup is scheduled for the weekend between rounds 24 and 25, which is otherwise designated as a catch-up round.

Easter complications

In 2022, Catholic/Protestant Easter is on the weekend of April 16th/17th. We have a home NPL/NPLW double-header on the Saturday night of that holiday weekend, which is no big deal for us.

The big deal is the following weekend, with Orthodox Easter coming through to create fixturing chaos for everything below Australian soccer's top tier. 

Somewhat strangely, on Orthodox Easter Saturday we are scheduled to play away at Altona Magic; a club which, like us, has a heavy Orthodox Christian contingent withing its supporter base. 

Usually the fixtures are arranged to try and avoid having any team with a predominantly Orthodox supporter base from hosting games on Orthodox Easter weekend. 

An early Saturday evening time slot seems like an OK compromise, outside of the solution Oakleigh are adopting of playing on the Monday after that weekend, or playing on the Saturday afternoon up against most state league fixtures. 

I somehow can't see Heidelberg sticking with its scheduled game on Sunday afternoon, but that's not our concern.

The grand prix

What is our concern is the scheduling of the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix, and the chaos which sets in for us every year as preparations for the event see us go on long streaks of away games, and which flings us far and wide looking for training grounds.

The 2022 Australian Grand Prix is scheduled for the weekend of April 7-10th. We're, sensibly, playing away that weekend, but have NPL/NPLW double headers scheduled for the weeks immediately either side of the race. Can we really believe that we'll somehow have almost minimal disruption to our schedules from this event?

One more thing

I can't see anything on the Stadium Trust's calendar for upcoming events at Lakeside. Usually local athletics has its big events in mid-to-late February, which occupies entire weekends and scuffs up the playing surface a bit, usually requiring repair and resurfacing works.

Very strange people: Nike Cup Final - South Melbourne 0 Calder United 3

To begin with, how we got here.

While everything strictly local football was cancelled several months ago, Football Victoria decided to persist with closing out at least some of its competitions with a winner in 2021. So as with the Dockerty Cup for the men, won by Avondale a couple of weeks ago, the women's knockout cup also forced through an outcome and title winner, courtesy of two semi-finals last week, and a final yesterday.

Last week our senior women played against Bulleen at the Veneto Club in one of those semi-finals. Because it was at the Veneto Club, and because it was on at a somewhat lousy time of day, and because it was screened on YouTube, I took the not altogether reprehensible, perhaps even soft, decision to watch the game from home.

What was less excusable was not writing about the game, but that's the state of South of the Border these days, the blog that continues its trajectory of becoming exponentially slacker.

That game against Bulleen was a strange one. I get the urge to at least get something out of this awful situation, but the competition came across as farcical when most of the remaining teams were hampered by some or many regular senior players being unavailable due to competing A-League Women commitments. I can't speak for the other three teams, but South reputedly had around about ten players unavailable because of this. Add to that the lack of training and match conditioning, and you end up pretty close to conducting glorified pre-season matches.

But I guess that's how much people in this country love soccer, that everyone pulled together to get this tournament over and done with, in order to salvage something from 2021. Last week South utterly dominated the early stages of their game against Bulleen, couldn't put them away at first, let Bulleen back in the game, before finally rolling over the Lions for a comfortable 5-1 win. I'm rather ignorant of who's playing for South's senior women at the best of times, but even by those standards there were a lot of names that I was unfamiliar with.

It wasn't a particularly fluent performance, but why be harsh under the circumstances? Still, it didn't fill me with much confidence that we'd beat Calder in the final; but seeing how it was a final, and it was at the comparatively easier to get to venue of CB Smith Reserve, and what with there being a much more family friendly kickoff time than the semi-final, I decided to go to the game to support the team. That, and it probably wouldn't kill me to be a little bit more social, though who knows what disease you'll catch if you dare leave your house these days.

There was some chatter on our forum that a bunch of Clarendon Corner people who never go to any women's games would actually go to this game, but the likelihood of that happening was always very remote. As things turned out, it was probably for the best that they didn't turn up - there was no need for two sets of supporter groups taking away from the spectacle and the still generally positive, non-aggro vibe of a women's soccer match. Having one such set of self-absorbed fans at the game was more than enough. 

When your attention span gets shorter by the day, you forget things which on reflection you actually kinda knew at one point. As with everything, it's easy to blame the pandemic, but I think I can be forgiven for forgetting that Calder United now has some affiliation with Western United as part of the latter's eventually getting an A-League women's team, to the point of Calder adopting Western's colours. I'm not even sure if it was just a new away kit, because most of the obviously legacy Calder fans in the crowd still sported the team's usual navy colours.

With Western United and Calder being affiliated, the Western Service Crew - a Western United supporter group - rocked up with a megaphone, a drum, and a banner or two. Parking themselves to the left of the grandstand, they hoisted up a hastily made banner with "NO LICENCE" written on it. It was petty and stupid, and didn't have much to do with the game at hand or with Calder, but that's football fandom for you. 

Being behind the goals at the opposite end of the ground, it's a wonder that either side's fans bothered to try and abuse each other, what with the wind swirling around as it was, especially in the first half. Thank goodness the ground at least looked in amazing condition compared to the Dockerty Cup final's potato field from a couple of weeks ago. The wind was blowing across the field mostly, and if it was favouring either end it was the one that we were kicking to in the first half, but we couldn't make the most of that advantage, and went into the break at 0-0.

I reckon the game was pretty much lost right there for South, and the second half kinda showed that. Our small gaggle of regular and regular-ish watchers of the South senior women moved around to the other end for the second half. We copped a couple of goals early enough in the second half - the second of which was an absolute belter of a finish - to pretty much be out of the game. Hitting the crossbar from about eight yards out at 2-0 down was the icing on the cake unfortunately. For whatever it's worth, though we were generally outplayed, I didn't think that we were bad. Indeed, I thought we were better yesterday than the previous week, but Calder were better drilled and had that bit more experience and polish. 

It's not great to lose a final, especially of a competition you haven't won yet, but hopefully at least some of the players out there for us got valuable experience, and some knowledge about what it's like playing senior football. 

Now that we've got all the cliches about incremental personal improvement and grudging acknowledgment of a superior opponent out of the way, it's time to get into what you're really here for - reports of επισόδια and/or φασαρίες. After our earlier mentioned gaggle moved behind the southern goals, a portion of the Western Service Crew moved around to the western side of the ground next to the Calder benches. Maybe they realised eventually that their "no licence" banner (eventually joined by a "no cup" banner) wasn't visible to the cameras at home, what with the game being filmed from the grandstand and not the outer side.

This group then also began directing chants our way, about us, most of which were nonsensical and not really worth responding to. "You're not singing anymore" - well, we hadn't been singing at all. "Who are ya?" - well, like Bodie said to Marlo, "you know my name". And dumbest of all, "what have you done". I mean, you can slander South Melbourne Hellas about all sorts of things, but not having done stuff, or won stuff? Of course, when your focus is on chanting things about SMFCMike, maybe you don't have the best interests of the women's team you're allegedly supporting at heart.

(the less said about their first half rendition of the Great Escape theme when the game was still 0-0, the better)

Anyway, security and Western United officialdom got themselves in all sorts of a tangle trying to figure out what to do about that group and its banners. As the game was winding down, their group wandered around behind us en route to rejoining their mates on the grandstand side of the ground, some of them decided to get mouthy and dawdle instead of continuing to shuffle on; harsh words were exchanged, and a small child belonging to one of the Western United fans began crying. All in all, a rather unedifying, unnecessary, and rather avoidable experience.

The game done, it was time go home, except CB Smith only seems to have one exit - or at least one that anyone bothers to open. Blue Thunder Kosta had the players race closed lest (I assume) any members of South's media team, office bearers, ordinary fans, and one itinerant blogger, decided to go out with a surprise attack on the celebrating Western United supporters. When the gates to the players race were eventually opened, we all managed to walk through to the exit without hitting anybody, so kudos to us I guess. 

News to tide you over during the lockdown

Weekend's matches cancelled

I'm sure you're all already on top of this. This Sunday's senior men's match against St Albans has been postponed, due to the current lockdown. Tomorrow's highly anticipated match between South's senior women and Bulleen has also been postponed.

Close contact

The senior women ran into a little trouble on Wednesday prior to their scheduled cup match against Casey Comets, when it was found that a player in the match "had been identified as a secondary close contact through an exposure site". By agreement of the two teams, the match did not go ahead.

New fixture date no. 1

During the week the date and venue for our Dockerty Cup semi-final tie against Hume was set. The date is this coming Wednesday, July 21st, and the kickoff time 7:30PM. Unfortunately, the neutral venue chosen was Kingston Heath Soccer Complex. I was 50/50 on whether it was going to be worth the bother. Now with the lockdown extending until Tuesday, one has to think that this fixture may also be altered. For the time being though, let's assume that it will go ahead.

New fixture date no. 2

Our FFA Cup round of 32 fixture against Melbourne City has been given the match date of August 29th. Unusually, this is a Sunday and not a weeknight, in line with the powers that be seeking to try and branch out from the usual midweek timeslots. Even more unusually, the August 29th date already had a fixture set for it - our round 26 match away against Bentleigh. You may recall that round 26 is the final match of the home and away season, when all fixtures are meant to kick off simultaneously. I'm sure that all involved will figure it out.

Vale John Anderson

Three time state championship winner John Anderson passed away during the week. The Scots midfielder won championships with South in 1964, 1965, and 1966. He also represented Victoria and Australia; the latter included being part of Australia's first World Cup qualifying campaign. Tony Persoglia has written a good summary of Anderson's background and accomplishments on the Football Victoria site.

Vale Chris Christopher

Former long-serving committee member Chris Christopher also passed away during the week. Christopher was president of the club in 1987, but he will likely be best remembered for making a large loan to the club in 2004 which, along with a contribution from the late Tony Toumbourou, helped stave off the club's death from the Australian Taxation Office. 

Vale Michael Christodoulou

Not directly South related, but this week also saw the passing of Michael Christodoulou, aka the Bentleigh peanut man. A fixture at Victorian soccer grounds for decades - at NSL, state league, and A-League - Christodoulou was always good for a chat, and was one of its more well known characters. His death probably brings to an end the era of the local soccer nut-sellers; the others have also passed on or retired, and I can't see anyone emerging to take their place.

National Youth League videos unearthed

Here's an absolute treat. Thanks to George Cotsanis (My World Is Round), who acted as the pivot for getting these two videos from former South Melbourne youth team players Tim Schleiger and Mike Lilikakis.

These homemade videos are from South's 1991/92 National Youth League finals campaign. The club had won the title in 1990/91, and reached the final in 1991/92, losing to a start-studded Sydney Croatia team.

The first video contains almost the entirety of the Southern Division preliminary final against Heidelberg at Olympic Park, and closes with some changeroom hijinks and tomfoolery; several of the players became if not quite National Soccer League household names, then certainly Victorian Premier League mainstays. It also includes quick moments with the training and support staff.

The second video is a more manageable 20 minutes or so. This is a bit different from the first tape, in that it is a compilation of South's three finals matches. It includes the above mentioned preliminary final against Heidelberg; the Southern Division grand final against Preston; and the national grand final against Sydney Croatia. This video, narrated by goalkeeper Mike Lilikakis, also includes trophy presentations.

These are remarkable videos for a variety of reasons. First, for the sheer scarcity of footage from the NYL as a whole. Second, for the videos' time capsule quality - the Olympic Park that is no more; the players that would and would not become household names; the cameos by Eddie Thomson and Ferenc Puskas; the Sade background music, and the banter by the players. Third, the reiteration that such  archival material still exists, and that we must cherish it each time we come across it.

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So, some of you may have been seeing the videos I've been uploading to my YouTube channel, which is mostly classic South gear. Well, I hadn't quite exhausted the tranche given to me a few months ago, but I'd done just about all the 1980s stuff... that is until I got given another collection of digitised VHS tapes couple of weeks back. So sure, there's bound to be a lot of crossover between the first set and this one, but this second set also seems to have some 1988 match footage that the previous set doesn't have, and which I have certainly not seen before. This new set also includes little set pieces as well - interviews, gimmicks, and the like - which will be interesting to dig out, because that's not the kind of thing that usually gets uploaded to YouTube. I've also started a little project (which will take time to complete, if I actually do complete it) which will aim to track every South match that's available online, classing them as either "short", "extended", or "full" - but that's for the future.

Boking Accident - South Melbourne 1 Green Gully 1

Dear readers of South of the Border,  I have been given a most precious gift; the gift of an epiphany. I wasn't looking for it, I didn't realise that I needed or wanted this gift, but I was chosen to receive it.

Since South of the Border was launched in December 2007, I believed I had the right to voice my own opinions, whether they were right or wrong, fair on unfair, and untethered to popular or official opinion. 

I now understand that this was a dangerous illusion, a devastatingly heretical one. I now understand that not only were my opinions wrong, but so too was my belief in the right to have my own opinions. I cannot express how much I was crushed by the sudden onset of the reality of my long-running egoism! All the lost years spent agonising about what to think and how to think it and how to express those thoughts, when all I needed to do was to look at the status quo, and just sit back and bask in its perpetual and permanent acceptability; no, its divine infallibility, for whatever happens must by design surely be good and right. 

As recently as last week I was like many of you, criticising people at our club who make decisions, focusing my stern judgments on those who have more than nominal responsibility for where the team has found itself this season. Ladies and gentlemen, I now know that it was wrong to feel this way. I don't blame the coach anymore. It is clearly the players' fault that we are where we are. They're the ones not following orders, or following orders too hard - I'm not sure which anymore. They're the ones who need to weather Spanish insults screamed at them for 90 minutes, and being rotated in and out of the match day squad for reasons they cannot comprehend. They need to play with less flair and intent! They need to comprehend better! It's for their own good! It's for our collective good!

But hold on - what if "blame" is the wrong word, too? What if this has been the plan all along? Maybe apportioning blame to anyone is not good enough or supportive enough of the team either? Forgive me; I'm new at this no longer thinking for myself caper. So instead of apportioning blame, let's start apportioning credit. I credit the coach for where we are now. I pay homage to the quality of his management skills, which see a squad capable of more, achieve less. Credit also has to go to the board. It takes a lot of guts to stand up to so-called reality. It's imperative that we South Melbourne supporters also reject this false reality, and substitute it for the one that management sees. My new and enduring hope is that one day those of us left in the crowd who don't agree with the current trajectory of the team, can squeegee their collective third eye and come to the same conclusion. Only then can we become not the bitter few defenders of a rump state, but rather, the discerning few.

This revelation means that I now understand that the last two months of football have been incredibly adequate. Maybe even more than adequate! Why demand excellence, even relative excellence, when you can accept the sweet comfort of midtable, or wherever we end up? Higher, lower, what difference does it make? What sweet release to now see that we are not in competition with other teams, but only with ourselves and our own expectations; even then, the only worthwhile struggle is to stop struggling. to stop having expectations, so that we can finally and genuinely let go of the infatuation of competing. 

You win this year or the next, or you lose this year or the next, what does it matter? And I don't mean what does it matter in the context of no one caring about this club or this league. I mean what does it matter at all what we do, if concerning ourselves with whether it matters only causes more psychological and spiritual torment? I've been going to games and seeing the anguish on our supporters' faces, and not seeing it for what it is; the agony of trying. So why try? Why not just be? Just go out there and do anything, and let the chips fall where they may. Give up trying to understand, give up the idea that South Melbourne Hellas should be doing better. Acknowledge the genius of the strategy, and acknowledge its genius wherever it leads us. 

Ideas of stature and pedigree? Let them go. Consistency? Throw it to the wind. Fluency? Ask yourself why we should make the effort. Come to the realisation that forwards and backwards are actually the same thing. Learn to love short corners. 

Next game

At St Albans away on Sunday. Now I know many of you aren't quite with me yet on the path to "who gives a stuff" enlightenment so I'll phrase this next section in a way that will hopefully gently start you on your journey. St Albans are struggling, but I don't us expect to roll over them; I expect us to walk alongside them, being neither better nor worse. Why make the opposition feel bad about themselves? We have a great chance to make them feel better about themselves - not so much better because they've managed to beat us, but hopefully at least enough to give them the taste of being able to know what it's like to match it with the great South Melbourne Hellas. And you also wouldn't want to win, because you only really need 26-30 points to definitely (probably) avoid relegation, so anything more than that would just be a waste of effort, and of course win bonuses. So, no showboating please, and absolutely no goals unless we need to equalise to keep our draw tally going. 

Women's news

In all seriousness, despite playing against an obviously inferior opponent, I was pleased with what I saw on the live stream on Saturday by our senior women against Alamein. Granted, Alamein didn't push as high up the field as say, the Bergers did the other week. But I think we moved the ball around well in midfield, and seemed more in control of the tempo of the match, even in those moments were Alamein had a decent spell. Big game at home against Bulleen on Saturday though, to show how far this team has really come.

Final thought

At least the last half hour of the game was kinda entertaining, if you're into that sort of thing. But if you are into that kind of thing, I must warn you, because it's a hell of a drug, and you're going to be chasing that high for the rest of your days if you're not careful.

Hello, Nuna! Dandenong Thunder 4 South Melbourne 1

So, for the transport engineers out there, here was Saturday's method for getting to the game. Both main car parks at Sunshine station closed, so decided to take the bus up to the station instead, thinking I would get a cab on the way back because buses stop by the time I would get back. Instead of getting the bus from my nearest stop (about 50 metres away), I walked up to the next stop (about 300 metres up the road), because my nearest stop is a bit of a mess thanks to extensive road and footpath rehabilitation works.

The wait for the rail replacement bus wasn't more than a few minutes, a stopping all stations effort to North Melbourne. Once at North Melbourne the task was to get on a train to somewhere in the city to change to a Pakenham or Cranbourne service. That didn't take more than about five minutes, getting on a train to Frankston.

Oh yes, there's this thing which still throws me off sometimes, that a train from Werribee towards the city might nowadays come under a "Frankston" designation on the screens, because Werribee trains often run through to Frankston after reaching the city. So I took the Frankston train to Richmond from North Melbourne, and changed at Richmond to a Pakenham service, which again, I didn't have to wait long for. That went pretty smoothly, and then I got to Dandenong Station.

It was freezing, and there was a 20 minute wait for the 901 bus, so what else to do but keep watching the stream of the women's game against Heidelberg at Lakeside. The NPLW can be such an unsatisfying competition to watch because of the lack of depth and its inbuilt imbalances, but the South women this season... I don't know, there's also something annoying about the way they play. It's a bit showboaty, it's a bit pull finger out only when necessary, and more than a bit careless. Heidelberg are an OK team, but we made them look a lot better than they are - at least during the first half - because there was little desire on our part to play meaningful football in the middle of the park.

Sure, there was the dangerous (and pointless) backline passing around, which attracted pressure for no good reason. But midfield proficiency? It's been a problem for much of the season as far as I can tell, where the all the caution and possession based style of the back third becomes all about booting the ball into space and hoping Melina Ayres (mostly) can run on to a loose ball and smash the ball past a helpless keeper. But where's the midfield panache, the evidence of stylistic and player growth? Hard to see where I'm watching from, but hey, we e3nded up crunching the Bergers 7-0, so everything's good, right?

Finally got to the ground, super early - because if I'm going to hike it all the way to Dandenong on public transport, I might as well get as much football in as possible - and caught most of the reserves game, which we ended up losing 4-2. One tolerable but nevertheless overpriced chicken roll was not enough to ward off the cold, and double-socked or not, there was no chance that my feet weren't going to freeze on standing on cold concrete or on dewy grass. I was disheartened also with a conversation with one of the few former South players that still comes to our games, who wanted to place most of the blame for our recent poor run of results on our injury toll, and none whatsoever on the coaching methodology. Well, we all see the game differently; we're all blind men touching different parts of the same elephant.

Still more time to kill, and not many South fans in sight, because pretty much everyone's given up, possibly for good. Having ditched the Futbol24 app some time ago because there just isn't the space on my phone for more apps, I am nowadays checking up on NPL scores via flicking over briefly onto NPL Victoria YouTube streams. Do I like what I see? Not really. That's because I see good and mediocre teams punish the poor teams in ways that we could not, even when we were "good". So you see Hume cracking four past Eastern Lions, Oakleigh crushing Dandy City, Green Gully smashing Altona Magic - with my three seconds of live viewing of that match being some goal from 30 metres out - and Port crunching St Albans. All very good, very reassuring only insofar that there should be just enough bad teams in this league that they won't all be able to catch up to us in our current mediocre state. 

And then there was Avondale vs Bentleigh, which finished 3-1 to the home side, after they trailed early on. Now, apart from the observation being made that not only does Avondale have good footballers (which costs money, I admit), there's also the fact Avondale also play good football (which doesn't cost any money, really); the kind of football that you'd like to see your team play, whether your side has the kind of resources that Avondale has, or merely half of them. It's a question of attitude, to a certain extent. And I get it - sometimes situations cause you to play more circumspect football, sometimes you need to deploy a more defensive state of mind.

But Avondale, after trailing early on, against what is a defensively suspect but otherwise pretty decent outfit in Bentleigh, amassed 21 shots on goal, and 13 on target by the end of the game. Against Altona Magic last week, a team who had not won a game all year, and whom we trailed (and eventually lost to) 2-1, we could manage three shots on target, over 90+ minutes of football. Against Thunder, we had two timid shots early in the half, to 13 on goal and seven on target from Thunder. Of course numbers don't tell the whole story, because by the end of last Saturday night's game we had more shots on target to Thunder, but that only goes to show that if want to play attacking football that we can. 

Of course the instruction to our players is obviously to play awful, boring, dispiriting football, in the hopes that we will win 0-0; which will only happen if the opposition is stupid enough to play a suspended player. But what we witnessed on Saturday night would have got most coaches sacked. Hell, I would've had the coach sacked at halftime, or even 30 minutes in if that was an option. Apart from a moderately promising opening five minutes, the team spent the rest of the half basically camped in its own half, gifting the opposition possession and territory. Thunder have good some players, they're no mugs, but they're also no world beaters, and yet we could not get possession of the ball in the opposition half. 

1-0 down, and then 2-0 down, both goals coming from corners - which is three goals conceded from corners since lockdown ended - and probably lucky not to be further down. And despite all of that, we continued to try and do the stupidest things imaginable under the circumstances. Down and out, under siege, we invited even more pressure onto ourselves by trying to play out the back from every situation. The goal kicks were the worst of it. Pierce Clark, seemingly not trusted to just belt the ball long under any circumstances, would inevitably play the ball left or right (usually to his left), no further than the edge of the 18 yard box, whereupon usually Brad Norton would pass the ball back to Clark, who would be rushed upon by Thunder forwards who knew exactly what we we're going to do all along, and then good luck hoping that we wouldn't concede.

The lack of situational awareness from anyone on field or on the bench was astonishing. In a game of soccer, there's skill level, there's tactics, and there's psychology. Our skill level is good enough to be competitive against almost any team in this competition, but our tactics are dire, but we've already said that. But our situational awareness is also completely shot. You have an opponent that is fired up, is in the ascendancy, and looking to press high up the field. They want the game to be played at the same high tempo that's benefiting them at that moment of time. So instead of taking the sting out of the game, we try to match that tempo, try to knock the ball around right on our goal line, and keep playing the game on the opposition's terms.

It was astonishing stuff, watching South Melbourne psychologically capitulate to the extent that no matter how many times it failed, that our players would robotically perform Nunawading "Evolution of the Idea" playing out of the back. Sure, there had already been the robotic qualities earlier in the season with our retreats from midfield back to the keeper, but on Saturday night the situation had become deploringly bad. It was, dare I say it, Southern Stars 2013 bad, and I don't use that comparison lightly.  It was a gut wrenching, soul destroying, club destroying spectacle. Two subs made on the half hour mark only served to show that Quintas had got the starting line-up badly wrong, and that he has no switch-up from Plan A (whatever that means in a non hit it long to Harry Sawyer world) to whatever else he might have up his sleeve.

That we came out in the second half in a more positive frame of mind, pulled a goal back, and almost levelled the score was even more dispiriting. Clearly we have the talent on our books to play imperfect, but still generally good attacking football. But let's say for arguments sake that we did equalise. Let's even say for argument's sake that we somehow went on to win the game. That would only prove the point that we are being coached horrendously, and that just about anyone else in this state could do the job better. At this stage of the season, it's barely about personnel anymore. Tactically and psychologically, we are shot. No one out there playing for South is enjoying the game anymore, you can see that at least half the senior squad is beyond fucking miserable. It's been a grind for the whole season, salvaged only by a ridiculously fortunate unbeaten run to start the year, and no amount of Shepparton bonding trips and renditions of Sweet Caroline can make playing this kind of football under this manager feel worthwhile. 

Apparently on 3XY Radio Hellas on Sunday, the sports program read out a message from president Nick Maikousis that Quintas will remain as South coach for the rest of the season. You can read that in classic "he's got the full support of the board" style, which means he'll be sacked soon, but the reality is that we probably can't afford to pay out his contract. Why this is the case when we were told that Quintas' performance was tied to certain KPIs is anyone's guess, but it seems we are stuck with him until the end of this year, unless he falls on his own sword. 

So what's left to do? Hope the players perform a quiet mutiny, by taking over control of training and matchday themselves, completely cutting out management? 

(Big hint to any of our players stupid enough to read this blog - you should totally do this) 

I mean, what could possibly go wrong with such an approach that would be worse than the last two months worth of performances, and the misery you have (and we, the supporters) have been forced to endure?

Next game

FFA Cup qualifier tomorrow night against Oakleigh Cannons at Jack Edwards. A win here gets us into the national stage of the competition, and into the Dockerty Cup semi finals. No one expects us to win though.

Final thought

Big thanks to Johnny for giving me a lift back to Footscray, and to Kartsi for offering to give me a ride back to somewhere approximating civilisation. Then when I got back to Sunshine station on the rail replacement bus at about 10:30, there were no cabs in the vicinity, so I walked the kilometre and a half home. A tiptop end to a tiptop day.

And you may ask yourself: Well... how did I get here? South Melbourne 2 St Albans 0

This game was so easy that it just might make you re-evaluate everything you think you know about soccer. Or perhaps not. 

Just before our game started we were equal on points with Avondale, with the same goal difference, but second overall on the ladder because we'd scored fewer goals. Immediately after kickoff we were top of the league, at least according to the live ladder ("we're top of the league / we're top of the league / check the live ladder / we're top of the league"), and after 90 minutes of play, we were top of the league outright for real, still.

How did this happen? Arguments about the general mediocrity and/or evenness of this league will only take you so far in finding the answer, because even being in an even league, why is it us that's on top? I suppose it helps that we haven't yet played Avondale, Knights, or Bentleigh, but even so... why us? What have we done that's been so remarkable to see us in this position?

We are a hard working team, but surely we're not only the one of those. We appear to be defensively sound in a way that's certainly surprised me, even taking into account Esteban Quintas' penchant for having his team sit back. But we throw up all manner of starting eleven combinations, not all of which (or even most) our very knowledgeable fans would consider our best and likely most effective starting lineup.

But even taking into account that St Albans racked up quite a few corners, they generally sucked. Sure, they had that one shot cleared off the line when they were already 2-0 down, but that was pretty much their contribution to the day. The two goals we scored, while pleasing to us, on further re-watching reveal a pitifully slow response time from the visiting side. Jake Marshall being unmarked at the near post, as the ball was headed back across goal from the far post from a corner? I'll cut them some slack for that one.

But the second goal? It was hardly searing play from us. Neat movement and passing, but nothing obviously devastating. And Gerrie Sylaidos' gently lofted cross to Harry Sawyer? That was pure futsal/indoor/beach soccer shenanigans. Someone in the crowd asked when was the last time we scored from two headers in a game, it being the kind of question which is being asked nowadays because we are unexpectedly not terrible (maybe even "good"). As usual, the answer seems to be not as far back in the distant past as people like to instinctively think, but rather early last year.

My main concern now, in the event that we don't have a mid-season stumble, is that this season will be our own version of The Producers; in that we have gone to the trouble of selecting players and a coach that we thought would not succeed, but which instead will be so successful that it'll send us broke.

The following segment is not a part of Hume's social media antics complaining about the state of refereeing

Aside from the goals and generally non-objectionable play from us, there was one perplexing moment when Harry Sawyer was fouled, and the referee gave what we assumed was a penalty, what with Sawyer having fallen about two metres inside the box. But no, the foul was directed to be taken more or less just outside the penalty area. One can only assume that the referee thought that whatever infringement he thought he was adjudicating had begun outside the box, in which case it is remarkable that Sawyer (even with his height) only managed to come to ground so far inside the box that everyone just assumed that it was a penalty. 

But seeing as how we're all older and more tired, and top of the league and whatnot, no one seemed particularly fussed about the whole matter. It was a very mature response from our fans to the fairly confusing sequence of events, which just goes to show that the club is dead or some such. Where was the outrage? Where was the abuse? Where was me remembering to ask referees assessor Chris Bambridge after the game what that whole thing was all about?

Next game

Friday night away at Dandenong City. No idea how I'm supposed to get out there. Good chance of just watching this on the stream instead. A stranger reader of this blog has kindly offered me and a friend a lift to the ground. So, just in case said reader turns out to be an axe-murderer or some such, let me just say it has been a pleasure writing this blog, and that I've enjoyed hanging out with my South friends on the hills and terraces of Victorian soccer.

FFA Cup news

While nothing has been announced "officially", it appears as if our cup tie against Melbourne Knights has been scheduled for Tuesday May 4th, at 7:30PM, That would put it just three days after our Orthodox Easter Saturday league match against Hume, and three days before we play the Knights again in the league. Get ready for some serious squad rotation is all I'm going to say.

Pulling their finger out (when I'm not looking)

Before I even got to Lakeside - more specifically, while I was on the train on the way to the ground - I was streaming the opening half of the women's team match against their most likely title rival Calder United. We were up 1-0 by the time I tuned in, and I had to skim back to see the, as it turned out, quite lovely goal. We then proceeded to spend much of the rest of the first half being very slack with trying to win back possession, and playing many lazy, corner cutting long balls into space, instead of trying to carry the ball further up field. Infuriating play from a team you know can do better, and even more aggravating when they conceded the goal they should have conceded. South were lucky it was not more than one goal at half-time.

Now, to the second half... I was at the club by this stage, but the televisions in the social club were not broadcasting the women's game (that was only happening on the pro-shop's screen), and by the time that was rectified, our women were up 3-1 or something like that, and apparently kicking arse, eventually winning 3-2. Well, I'm glad for the fact that they picked up their game in the second half, even if I didn't get to see the magic happen until afterward on replay. 

They'll say you'll miss it when it's gone, but what if you won't?

The St Albans game was first of our seven scheduled Saturday home fixtures, and boy didn't it go down like a lead balloon in terms of attendance and fan engagement. There'll be a millions of excuses, ranging from the obvious and valid, to the abysmal and made-up. The bottom-line though is that the attendance figure, whatever it is officially, was poor, and the attempt to try for a Hume City style reverse fixture order in terms of putting on the 21s game second didn't work either, though it may have saved us a few bucks on hiring security and such.

To be fair, Saturday at 5:00PM is an unusual time, falling in between the final whistle of most state league fixtures and the usual Saturday evening NPL Victoria kickoff time of circa 7:00. And we may find that once we get to the point in the season where we actually play our own scheduled 7:00 Saturday night fixtures, that the crowds will sort themselves out, making the adjustment to something than our traditional Sunday afternoon/evening games. ate

One shudders to think how it all might have looked had we not been undefeated and top of the league. Certainly winning a game comfortably to main that maintain that undefeated run and top of the league status did nothing to keep people behind in the social club afterward. Everyone has their reasons for not sticking around of course, but it is a problem for the club if they don't.

I know what's waiting for me at our next home game.

The service was good, however...

One particular absent friend of ours was much better at food reviews than I am; his reviews had more heart for a start, and he had an off-the-cuff genius for these things that people like me can only dream of. But for the sake of documenting the experience in something approaching its totality, we plod on regardless. I had my first taste of the food in the social club on Saturday night, and all I'll say is don't pick the chicken schnitzel burger; go for the regular beef burger or the lamb sandwich equivalent, for which I have heard things ranging from "very good" to "it's fine". It's not that the schnitzel burger is inedible - it is very much edible, I ate it, and have suffered no deleterious side effects from doing so; but the "fun" beetroot coloured bun, above average salady bits, and the chipotle mayo can't completely disguise the fact that the chicken element of said chicken schnitzel burger is not up to scratch, what with it being a variation of every truck stop/school canteen/giant heart-shaped frozen crumbed schnitzel sitting in your local bakery's bain marie that, at best, you know and tolerate. I look forward to trying to some of the other items on the menu, and writing things about them.

Merch murmurs

I am hearing a pompom beanie with a new design is in the offing. Also, the Gunners t-shirt is on its way.

Final thought 

This is just a reminder that I owe the club the cost of the SM Hellas cap that I tried to buy after the pro-shop register was shutdown for the night, but which I was allowed to keep for the time being because people apparently trust me enough to follow through with payment eventually. 

For now, just shut up and enjoy the ride - Green Gully 0 South Melbourne 1

Marching bands, match programs, and a grassy hill that's deteriorating into dirt. These are some of the reasons why you should turn up to away games, instead of sulking at home. I mean, sure, if you have something better to do, you should do that, and more power to you. But watching your team from home when you have the option to go to a game? That's just madness. If one of the supposed (accidental) advantages of not being in A-League is the fact that you can see your team in person every week, why not take up that opportunity?

That's for those people to deal with. On Friday night it had not crossed my mind that with an 8pm kickoff, that there wouldn't be a reserves game. So here's me and Gains making a terrific argument for the experience of turning up to games in person, by getting to Green Gully Reserve about an hour and a half before the game, to find the entrance to the ground locked. What to do, other then try and find the alternative entrance to Gully's social club and bistro, which meant wandering around many doors trying to find the right one, before figuring out that it must the be the entry with the people smoking.

Oh, and how wonderful to be forced to go through the gaming area in order to get to the bistro. I'm sure such an arrangement is down to trying to minimise the amount of entry and exit points due to pandemic protocols; but how convenient that they didn't open the main doors which give you the option of not passing through the gaming room.

Anyway, eventually they did open the gates to the ground, and we were greeted by sprinklers on the field for some reason - because it wasn't like it hadn't already rained in the western suburbs earlier that day. But also, there was a marching band, that wasn't really marching so much as standing most of the time, parked next to Gully's covered shed thing, blasting out the tunes like it was 1885 and the Kaiser was due in town.

Some people on Twitter may have come across my recent footy posting about the music at AFL matches; this was not quite in that level of annoying, as well as my gripes over the selection of music at South games; but at least it was a band and not a recording, and at least they were playing full length songs, even if their repertoire was short. But damn it if there just wasn't anywhere to get away from it without leaving the vicinity of the western side where the food/toilets/drinks/etc were.

It was bloody loud is what I'm trying to say. Hard to hear oneself think, and you know I was missing out on some golden thoughts because of the noise, and even worse, finding it difficult to relay those thoughts to people in my vicinity, who were all desperate for my wisdom. On the plus side, credit to Gully for being one of the few clubs persisting with a (free!) match program, which made it easier to figure out who was who for them, and for reminding us both of the Maltese love for 1950s and 60s tribute acts, and for the existence of ex-South personnel at other clubs - in this case Steve Laurie (assistant coach), Peter Gavalas (physio), as well as the still active Shaun Timmins, Jerrad Tyson, and Melvin Becket.

Much to one person in particular's disappointment, Becket didn't even make the bench for Gully, nor he did he return the greeting offered by his biggest fan. The lesson here being, of course, never meet your heroes. Stranger though was the lineup that we put out, which after weeks of complaining about Esteban Quintas' ultra-defensive set-ups, on Friday night instead looked like something that was 65-80% compiled by the collective wisdom of the South forum.

Ben Djiba starting at right full-back, and Luke Adams on the bench. Daniel Clark on the bench (apparently for arriving late to the ground), and Zac Bates starting. Basically, it was the most attacking line-up we'd put on the park all year in the league, and that helped produce what was a pretty open game. Neither side was particularly good at producing quality final third product, but it was entertaining, which was a real change of pace for what we've dished up this year. But for the few hundred people at the game (up on the more usual mere couple of hundred for this fixture), at least they got their fifteen dollars worth in terms of end-to-end action.

It was weird to see a Quintas coached South side actually going toe-to-toe with an opponent of roughly similar calibre. I'm not so confident that it will always work out well, and the second half was in particular was much messier for us than I would have liked. Our midfield, or at least our desire to play through the midfield, disappeared almost entirely. Instead we resorted back to long ball after long ball to Harrison Sawyer, with Gerrie Sylaidos and Bates trying to pick up the scraps. It was invigorating to see Sylaidos and Bates unleashed, given licence to break lines and zip forward, at least in the first half. The second half's long-ball plan worked better than it should have, and I can't see it as a viable long-term prospect, but Sawyer did well enough with little help from either teammates or the officials to set up the winning goal.

He still looks as awkward as the proverbial baby giraffe, but for the time being he's getting the job done. Who knows what will happen if he gets injured, but you'd almost not want to think about it. 

That it took until the 80th minute or so for the deadlock to be broken is down to bad luck and poor finishing rather than a paucity of chances or lack of daring from either side. And then we got a bit lucky with a goal line clearance, but we escaped with a third 1-0 win for the year, and the players got to do their rendition of the dreadful 'Sweet Caroline', which is apparently their thing now instead of the 'Celtic Song'.

Along with the win came injuries both physical (Wallen's arm injury) and to one's pride (Daniel Clark), who seemed not quite as enthusiastic in his play as he usually is, after he had come on as a second half sub. We also continued to pick up yellow cards, and

Next game

Back at Lakeside on Saturday evening against St Albans, who are winless in their last four matches. Please note that the under 21s match will not be played as a curtain-raiser, but rather will be played after the senior match.

FFA Cup draw news

"So you like South vs Knights cup fixtures, eh?"
"Uh-huh"
"Well, have all the South vs Knights cup
 games in the world! Ahahahah, hahahah!

or the fifth round we've been drawn at home against Melbourne Knights. Quelle surprise. Did not see that coming. Here we go again. Fourth time in seven years. What is the point of even tuning in to the draw? You sit there at your computer or hold out your phone, waiting for the draw to start, then you find out that the draw is delayed by an hour and a half due to "technical issues", and then you just end up with this anyway. 

Football Victoria should just make South vs Knights a default fourth round FFA Cup game each year, and that way at least get rid of the pretense that the draw isn't rigged. Just alternate the home team each year. Save on the electricity bill by not having to heat up the balls in the microwave. I suppose we should be glad that we at least avoided the banana skin (on field and off) that would be a game against Preston - unless you're one of these people who want a big pay day - but that's really small comfort. Give me the cruisiest path to the cup any day of the week.

Expect the game to be fixtured pretty close to whenever it is we're supposed to play them in the league.

Rout via (mostly) the right hand channel

Judging by the opening half of their league season opening game against Bulleen, it looks like the senior women are back into overpowered squad domination mode. Which is fine by me, though I wish the audio on the NPL stream wasn't so unbalanced as to come out almost entirely through the right-hand speaker. The women were six goals up at half time, and finished with a 7-1 win. Who knows if this is an aberration on Bulleen's part - they looked a lot sharper in the second half than the first - but this could be a long season for pretty much everyone else other ourselves and Calder if that's the kind of performance we can dish out to a likely finals team. 

Image edited from original photo found on
 Wallen's Instagram page (IG:joshuawallen)

Anyone for a bowl of tea?

Josh Wallen's arm injury, which has required two surgeries, will rob us of one of our better players for several weeks. My guess (and probably yours) is that Luke Pavlou will probably take his place, but it could well be that Marcus Schroen has picked up enough match fitness to be able to start a game, if not quite finish one.

We can rest assured that Wallen is being well taken care of, because clearly the photo on the right was not taken in a public hospital - that toast certainly looks better than anything I've come across in the public system.

Of more concern in this matter is the size of the cup of tea that Wallen is seemingly about to drink while injured. That thing is so massive, you wonder how someone with a broken arm is supposed to safely lift that much hot liquid without spilling it on oneself.  

On the couch/On the streams/In the stands

Here's to getting into arguments with strangers at a game, on the topic of why the team you both support just so happens to suck so very, very much.

Here's to me sitting on level two at the Punt Road End on Saturday night, and somehow ending up next to one of the few people who apparently regularly attends Avondale matches, who himself may have been wondering how he ended up next to someone who still goes to South matches. Don't ask how the topic of soccer came up in conversation, only know that it was the more genial part of the conversation, as we spent most of the next three hours disagreeing about why exactly Collingwood sucked. He repertoire on that front was straight out of 1992, while I was - unusually for me, perhaps - very much in the present. I did check out some of the NPL Victoria stream action at halftime, when it wasn't drizzling so much, by which I mean I was trying to skim through to where the goals were. Certain teams really loving draws this year.

Irksome

I will say this for the Bentleigh vs Heidelberg game, and not much more. It was the first full-length game I watched on a stream for quite some time (though I say that with some frequency), and I still cannot get over the fact that several years down the live-streaming track, and NPL Victoria's offering still doesn't have a instant replay option. And no, I'm not talking about sliding the cursor back a few a seconds yourself, but something that's part of the coverage itself. If they can do it Tasmania, why can't they do it here?

Final thought

We're now thirteen points clear of the relegation zone; or fifteen more points to go as the kids like to say.

2021 senior men's and women's fixtures released

Well, here's something to look forward to, maybe. The 2021 senior men's team fixture has been released, and there are a handful of points worth bringing up.

The first thing to note is that the senior men's running order is pretty much the 2020 fixture repurposed for 2021. There are a couple of minor changes in the early stages - our opening round fixture against Heidelberg will be at Olympic Village instead of at Lakeside; and our round six game against Thunder will be a Wednesday night fixture at Lakeside, as part of a league-wide midweek round.

Everything else appears to be about the same, except for the allocation of South senior men's home match days. And if you like Sunday afternoon/early evening soccer at Lakeside, you're out of luck. In 2020 we were due to play just the one Sunday home game - the Eastern Lions game early in the season - this year, there will be no Sunday home games.

The club has committed to exclusively trying out Friday and Saturday nights, with a couple of exceptions - the aforementioned Wednesday night game against Thunder, and a Saturday 3:00PM kickoff against Hume, the latter of which is an accommodation for Orthodox Easter.

The only Sunday games are St Albans away (naturally), Eastern Lions away (unusually), and Bentleigh away (final round simultaneous kickoff). All up for home games, it's one Wednesday night, four Friday nights, one Saturday afternoon, and seven Saturday nights. 

The senior women's fixture has also been released, and the news on that front is that there will be six NPL-NPLW double-headers on those Saturday evening senior men's fixtures. The women will be relieved at not having to trudge out to Knox or Darebin for their home games.

And that's finally that for South teams in 2019

Photo: Luke Radziminski.

I was unable to attend the women's team semi-final last Saturday because of *reasons*, reasons which the usual ones, and what could be done about it? Not much under the circumstances, but you'll have to trust me that I wish I could've been there.

Succeeding against Calder United was always going to be a tough ask, and I don't think there was anybody who didn't think otherwise. Some people thought we shouldn't even bother, and I get that - know when you're going to get beat, and just go out on a high note.

Still, such courses of action like taking the afternoon off and going to the pub instead might work for lower league men's clubs engulfed in self-inflicted crises, but here at Victorian top-flight women's football such behaviour would be considered uncouth, disrespectful, even unprofessional.

Photo: Luke Radziminski.

So the game, played on a poor pitch, with rain and wind going crazy, went on. Sitting in a local fish and chip shop at about a quarter past two, waiting for my order of flake and minimum chops to get sorted, I checked out YouTube and bloody hell! We were 3-0 down after 14 minutes, to which all I could do was exclaim on Twitter that we were 3-0 down after 14 minutes, which elicited responses ranging from "well, I think we all knew this could happen" to "well, I think we all knew thus could happen, but this really sucks."

Being 6-0 down at half-time meant that no one could see our side keeping the score line under double figures. Miraculously or otherwise, we did, keeping Calder scoreless and even pulling a goal back ourselves. So, the season and even its conclusion were not a complete disaster, and I guess everyone hopes that the young squad will have learned something from the whole experience, and will come back better for it in 2020.

And then it was done to two
Caught bits and pieces of the Moreland Zebras vs Bulleen Lions NPL2 playoff match, while watching Highway Patrol repeats and then 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. This match sucked fr the first half, and since I was watching it on and there were no score or time graphics, it was an ordeal that I did not want to resume until both the standard and the graphical display were fixed.

Eventually this is what happened, and I rejoined the action at about 10 minutes to go in regular time, with Zebras up 1-0. And then Bulleen equalised from a penalty.

Bloody hell, we were *this* close to avoiding Monday night football in 2020. https://t.co/2DvLG5cUhS

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) September 10, 2019

Worse, the Bulleen Lions Twitter account soft-trolled me and my loathing of Monday night soccer by liking my tweet, and further salt was rubbed into that wound when the Lions took the lead and won the game via another penalty. Bulleen now go into the relegation-promotion playoff against Dandenong Thunder on Sunday, which in all likelihood I will attend, and hopefully report on.

(NPL)Woah! South Melbourne 2 Heidelberg United 1

This about as late a match report as you can get. How 2019.

I finally, finally managed to get out to another game for our women's senior team. And lest anyone doubt my resolve to do so, yes it helped that this game was on a Sunday - but having to negotiate a very annoying double rail-replacement (radial and city loop) service should demonstrate that while I'm hardly on my way to being top-dog in the South Melbourne Ladies Active Supporters, I do at least try and get out to a few games where possible.

Before the senior women could get started, there was the matter of the under 19s, who were soon enough trailing Heidelberg 2-0, and not looking too good. Soon enough however our 19s worked their way back into the game, and stormed over the top of the visitors, winning 5-2. The thing I most remember though was the melee which nearly kicked off into a full-on dust-up after a bad tackle. It's not the kind of thing I see in women's soccer too often - usually there's a much more obvious "compassionate/duty of care style reaction" to fouls and injured players, so it was interesting from a sociological perspective, even if undesirable from a sporting one.

Photo: Luke Radziminski.

The equation for the senior women was pretty simple - win, and they'd make the finals. Any other result, and the Bergers would get in instead. Even prior to the game, there was the less than ideal situation of not having replacement keeper Shannon Flower available, and having to put in Sascha Lypiridis from the 16s for her senior debut. There was also no Sofia Sakalis, who was injured.

Our women started off well enough, looking threatening and creating some good chances. We really should've gone 1-0 up with one particular sequence of play, where it seemed the universe was conspiring against us. Then the rain and the wind came, sending the ball girls, Our Resident Cockney, and I think eventually even Heidelberg Harismidis running for cover. It was during this burst of mother nature's wrath that Heidelberg scored, whipping in a corner that went straight in, thanks in no small part to the wind swerving it in. Let that be an argument against women's teams resorting to short corners.

Second half, and you just had that feeling that despite getting on top of the game well and truly - apart from rare moments - we just weren't going to score. And then Leia Varley sent home a long range free kick into the top corner levelling the scores, and then my feeling was that we wouldn't manage to get another goal, and the season would end on this bitter disappointment - that despite the improvement we'd shown from the 5-1 loss against the Bergers, and then the 1-1 draw, that we'd be left to rue the sorry 1-1 draw against NTC.

Yes! Photo: Luke Radziminksi.

The clock ticking over to 93 minutes, in the media control room I buttoned up my jacket, put on my beanie, and got ready to go down into the social club. Then we got a free kick too far out for a shot, and though I'd hoped in a perverse way throughout the 90 minutes that we'd steal the game and the finals place from the Bergers at the absolute death, I didn't really believe that we would actually do it. But then the ball was sent into the box, the Bergers' keeper committed to getting to the ball without getting anywhere near it, a flicked header from Kelsey Minton sailed over the top of everyone and into the back of the net for the win.

The team's reward for making it to the finals? An elimination final against Calder United, this year's standout team, at Keilor Park Recreation Reserve this Saturday (ie, tomorrow) at 2:00. Calder have beaten us comfortably four times this season, three times in the league and once in the cup. While I'm not ruling out an upset, it's really very much a nothing to lose game for us.

2020 SMFC senior squad roster as of 06/09/2019
For teams still aiming for success in 2019, the season has not ended yet, but that doesn't mean our club can't get on the front foot and start announcing squad members for next year - in this case, Brad Norton, who I think we'd all have been surprised if he wasn't around next season.

For any other player on our list, it would perhaps be odd to do a re-signing announcement now without having officially named the coach, but it's Braddles, so there's nothing to see on that front. Not too long afterwards Marcus Schroen was announced as having re-signed for two more years, and the public response ranged from the relatively cheerful to those pencilling in the death of the club.

Leigh Minopoulos is the only absolutely confirmed 100% out so far, having announced his retirement prior to the end of the 2019 season. The future of Kristian Konstantinidis doesn't exactly look too promising, so there'll be umming and uhhing about that for a little bit. Meanwhile striker Billy Konstantinidis was on Football Nation Radio yesterday talking about exploring his options in the Indian Premier League.

In terms of coaches, the two names thrown up - by desperate and/or hopeful South fans more than anybody else - have been secured by other teams. Regular South Melbourne watcher and local resident Scott Miller, currently coaching at Langwarrin in NPL2, has reputedly been signed on there for another season. 

The other name belonged to ex-South player Nick Tolios, most recently of Kingston City, who have just been relegated down to NPL 2. Tolios had long been rumoured to be heading towards the Bentleigh head coaching job left vacant mid-year by John Anastasiadis, and surprisingly, Tolios has ended up at Kingston Heath on the eve of the Greens' finals campaign. Ever seen a coach get a team relegated and win a championship in the same league in the same season? Not me, but we're two weeks away from that happening.

Signed

• Brad Norton
• Marcus Schroen

Played with us at the end of 2019 but who knows about next year

• Tom Aulton
• Keenan Gibson
• Peter Skapetis
• Nick Krousoratis
• Perry Lambropoulos
• Kostas Stratomitros
• Gerrie Sylaidos
• Luke Adams 
• Manny Aguek 
• Ben Djiba
• Amir Jashari
• Giuseppe Marafioti 
• Jake Marshall
• Will Orford
• Nikola Roganovic 
• George Gerondaras
• Zac Bates
• Andrew Mesourouni
• Josh Dorron
• Melvin Becket

Exploring options in India

• Billy Konstantinidis

Maybe retiring

• Kristian Konstantinidis

Out

• Leigh Minopoulos (retired)

Just take the damn survey for the sake of your old pal Paulie 
The wording here is confusing to me, because I thought I was on a Football Victoria Historical Committee already. Anyway, Football Victoria has released a survey about which direction the organisation should take with regards to its historical commitments:

Football Victoria history survey

At the moment Football Victoria's historical committee (of which I am a member) has a role largely limited to oversight of things like the Hall of Fame and Life Member approvals - the survey asks whether Football Victoria should be doing more, and if so, what kind of action people in the soccer community would like Football Victoria to take.

If you could take a few minutes out of your day to fill in the survey, that would be great. If you're uncomfortable using your real name, you could always fudge that bit. Not even sure why they're asking for it.

Throwing stones from glass houses
It was a big week in footy, with some disgruntled person setting up an anonymous Twitter account and publishing document details allegedly derived from the contracts of two current Avondale players, as well as snippets of Avondale's week-by-week payment spreadsheets.

After the initial post, where the leaker had posted the contract details for Kiwi Avondale player Scott Hilliar as well as an extract from an early season portion of the payment spreadsheet, it looked like the account was locked or shut down. Soon enough however it was back up, posting details from Japanese star Tasuku Sekiya's contract - including his wage - as well as posting a spreadsheet extract from the middle of the season.

While there were some legitimate grumblings about breach of privacy most of the attention on this leak of sensitive information naturally centred upon Avondale's spending, which based on the spreadsheet snippets would be up toward the $700,000 mark.

(and for the record, while some questioned the legitimacy of the published extracts, believing them to be fake, I think the level of detail - see for instance Liam Boland receiving a sizeable monetary bonus around the time he reached 15 goals - as well as the publishing of player signatures, suggests that the documents are all too real.)

Around the grounds, those with more insight into the Avondale back office were wondering about the identity of the leaker and their motivations, while others wondered about the tax and regulatory implications, which the leaker had also emphasised as rules that Avondale had broken. I'm more of the opinion that it's the players who are probably in bigger trouble, assuming that there is actual Australian Tax Office investigation and that the players involved didn't manage their tax affairs probably.

Prurient interest aside in terms of seeing behind the curtain of semi-pro player payments, there was the unfortunate but predictable spectacle of some South fans forgetting the lessons of "be careful what you mock, lest you become it", and instead of just slowing down past the bingle on the side of the road, decided to get involved. Why, when our club is so often the subject of similarly prurient well/semi/and un-founded speculation?

Cue some minor blow-back from a former youth team coach and a former a technical director of ours, the latter of whom provided some rather unflattering comments on his time at South Melbourne. These comments were later deleted, I assume under some legal duress. It's going to be another fun off-season.