Suffer for your crimes! - South Melbourne 2 Bentleigh Greens 0

SMFC TV boss and self-styled active support maestro 'Doc' attempts to corral
the monkeys of Clarendon Corner into producing a coherent performance.

There are some weeks where going to Lakeside feels like you're visiting a terminally ill relative in hospital. You spend the week or day or hours leading up to the visit feeling like crap, knowing that the patient feels worse, and feeling worse because you've made it all about you. Then during the visit you make an extra special effort to be cheerful for the sake of the invalid, and it sometimes kinda works if the sun is shining and the team manages to pull its finger out and pull off an unlikely or not entirely expected win. And after having spent your time putting on a brave face and consoling the poor unfortunate soul, you then leave and return to the coldness of the real world. But enough with the cheerful opening.

One way to get by in times like this is to do other things, usually burying oneself work. I do my studies as a matter of course, and I try to find things that aren't soccer related; last week I went to a session at the Melbourne International Film Festival, and I've got three more sessions planned for this week; I read my books; I cultivate my cult on Twitter. And sometimes you need a reminder that the things which seem to happen by themselves every week at South actually require work. After the implied (or is that inferred?) turmoil of the past week or so, it seems that a good deal of the more transient (uni intern) volunteer base disappeared, and things reverted to requiring a bit of old fashioned doing things ourselves.

Thus after having a beer and a so-so burger in the social club, I found myself being called upon to help with the utterly manual task of putting up the advertising boards. This wasn't new to me per se, but it had been a while since I'd done it, and it brought back memories of taking down the signage after a Clarendon Corner vs Original Melbourne 21 game back in the day; of moving rugby posts with George Kouroumalis and a surprisingly athletic George Koukoulas; and moving those toblerone-style ad bags back into the deteriorating though still yet to be gutted social club during our early days of our return to Lakeside.

Tiff Eliadis competes for the header, while Chelsea Blisset, promoted
 from the 18 waits for the spill. Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

At least we had the use of several pairs of hands, and the golf cart with the wagon at the back. And when we weren't focused on the job at hand, which was most of the time, we got a pretty good close up view of the South women in action against Alamein, they of the choo choo song. Despite having a penalty saved - which is what regular women's team watcher Pavlaki said would happen when we got the penalty - we won the game 4-2, putting us five points clear on top with three games to play, and second placed Calder having a game in hand.

Eventually the time came around for the senior men. No Milos Lujic, suspended. No Jesse Daley, gone, maybe, to a better a place. No Michael Eagar, on the bench for reasons unknown. In their place, Leigh Minopoulos, Luke Adams, Tim Mala, and a reshuffle seeing Matt Foschini back in midfield. Would it work? Well the answer is 'sort of'. We got the win, generally looked the more dangerous, could have had another goal or two, and looked by Johnny A's own admission the hungrier and more lively of the two teams. And beating Bentleigh is its own reward, certainly from the players' perspective, what with having struggled against them so much in recent years.

Having said that, as one of our more astute observers of the team has noted, it wasn't just that Bentleigh looked fatigued, but that we also won the ball further up the field. In his post match comments Johnny A noted much the same - errors at the back giving us the chance to punish his team. But that's the risk that a team that likes to knock it around the back always takes - if it's not working on any given day, turnovers will happen much closer to your own goal.

Leigh Minopoulos wheels around to celebreate his second goal.
Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

Of course turnovers close to goal are easier to punish when you have a more mobile forward line, and Leigh Minopoulos - who doesn't always have the best track record when starting games as the principle striker in this set up - had a great game. It wasn't just his opportunistic goal poacher's double, but the way he was able to harass and corral the Bentleigh defense, running himself to a standstill. I've argued before that there is the possibility, if not always the actuality of us being more mobile and unpredictable as an attacking unit when we don't have Milos in the side. This was one of those times when it worked, but it's never a sure thing, and of course no matter how much I love Leigh (my favourite player in this squad) you'd always rather have the bloke who has the incredible amount of runs on the board.

It was free flowing even if it wasn't always pretty; it was energetic where one didn't know for sure how the team would come out to play; and no one really played a bad game for us, including Zaim Zeneli, who came off the bench after Nikola Roganovic seemed to injure his arm during the late stages of the first half. It was impressive even if we were playing against a tired opponent, who were also experimenting a little bit - they played the underdone Nick Ward, who had trialled with us during the pre-season, and brought on Andy Brennan only for the last half hour despite him only playing 60 minutes during the middle of the week.

Other than that, the biggest issue was the seagulls deciding to deploy missiles in the uncovered parts of the grandstand, forcing people in those areas to retreat further back. If getting crapped on by a bird is the worst thing that happened on Sunday, then the day mus not have been too bad. But not being of those people that received the seagulls' lucky prize, I would say that wouldn't I?s

Next game + and calculations
Kingston City at home, in the final round of the home and away season -- keep in mind that the kickoff time is 3:00PM thanks to the simultaneous start for the final round.

Barring some incredible disaster, we'll finish the home and away season in at least second position. To finish first and secure the national playoff position however, we need all of the following to happen:

• We need to win our game against Kingston.
• We need Bulleen to beat Heidelberg.
• And we need the goal difference tally to work its way into our favour.

The Bergers are playing at Bulleen and the synthetic pitch, but I don't think that will cause them too many problems, and besides which, they only need a draw. The goal difference tally - their +25 to our +22 - is also an issue, but I figure that if the Bergers do lose, than we should be able to make up the difference and more, if things go as we'd like them to.

I can't see it happening, but you can always hope.

FFA Cup news
We have been drawn at home once more, this time against Western Australian side Sorrento. Apart from someone saying that they play a hoofball oriented style of soccer, I know nothing about them.

Goodbye, Jesse Daley?
Apparently been picked up by Perth Glory or their youth team, or maybe not, but who knows for sure? Anyway, so much for Kenny Lowe feigning disinterest in our man.

@PaulMavroudis Poor Intel. Visiting daughter at Melb Uni and watching sons show at Melb Comedy Festival....and managed to squeeze a game in https://t.co/aIQNHYDUZn

— Kenny Lowe (@kennylowe10) April 3, 2017

Or maybe I inadvertently made Kenny aware of Jesse? Heaven help Glory if they're making recruiting decisions based off my tweets. Anyway, I noticed that one of my retweets of a South tweet was retweeted in turn by Daley,

67' Pavlou wins possession, storms into the area and hits the post. #PS4NPLVIC #SMFC17

— South Melbourne FC (@smfc) August 13, 2017

which is odd because I don't remember Daley pretty much ever tweeting anything (it turns out he has a measly 14 tweets). Let's just put it down to being supportive of fellow Queenslander and Brisbane Roar youth team-mate Luke Pavlou.

Good grief
As noted in a rather oblique post (with a link to funny poem by a dead junkie) earlier during the week, there was some chatter doing the rounds about the club being in crisis. I didn't post much more about it then, because I didn't know enough then to go off even half-cocked. Well after a few sessions of speaking to various intermediaries but no one of Capital I 'Importance', what did I learn? Probably not much more than you guys.

The problem, or perhaps more accurately the majority of the problem, stems from the State Sports Centres Trust. The SSCT, which is apparently once again under new management, had decided that rather than stick to the agreement of dishing out our allowance on a monthly basis, decided instead to give us our money as a lump sum... and later in the year. Now that's obviously going to cause cash flow problems, though it's probably a debate for another time as to whether we should be dependent on this cash or whether it should be seen as a bonus.

That saw the Trust withhold our monthly stipend for three months. Anyway, that situation has been sorted out, and the money due paid to us in full. Not that this was done without some damage to confidence in our management, from a public relations point of view at least. And not without the club going through either a forced, half-forced, or totally planned all along restructure of its front office staffing. Two people were let go, and then one of them brought back in a reduced capacity. It doesn't seem from an outsider's point of view to have been done particularly smoothly.

As for the more serious allegations, including players leaving and players not being paid, I'm little the wiser. For the former, as usual one has to wait until the end of the season to see what manifests itself as true. On the latter, I can't say with any certainty how long our players went unpaid for, but the Bentleigh supporting peanut man told me at Paisley Park that it was six weeks, so that seems to be the story which exists outside of the club. Whatever the amount, the fact that the story made it out of the confines of the inner sanctum - when the club has been much better at plugging leaks in recent years - is also of concern.

Anyway, for the time being at least it seems as if the ship has been righted, but there seems to have been a jolt put through the club. And the more serious issues with the Trust, the profitability of the social club, and the bigger issue of volunteer and staff continuity - that is, expertise being spread throughout the club as opposed to being contained solely within individuals - remain problems to be dealt with.

Of course, some people have different interpretations of all these things. It's not that I'm going out of my way seeking a middle path, only that there seem to be very adamant people on both sides of the ledger about how things actually played out and how things should be interpreted.

Trivia Night!
There's a trivia night being hosted at the social club on Friday 25th August. It's been so many years since the club hosted one of these, so I'm looking forward to it. My table (Secret Seven, if I recall our name correctly) did not do well at the last one, and the one before that I hosted in lieu of a sick board member. Oh, and there was the famous women's team trivia night in 2007 (pre-blog days) which my table (Team Cindy) did win, but at which I had to stay behind after everyone left the pub because the West Coast-Collingwood final went into extra time. My other appearances at trivia nights were a Melbourne Uni political interest club night (Shane Warne Appreciation Society; I was the only one in the very large room who knew the answer to who the only English pope was) and another Melbourne Uni one, this time a fundraiser for left-wing student politics. My team (PPPC, don't ask) would have won if they had more than two sport questions.

Anyway, it's not about winning or losing, it's about spending time in the social club among fellow South fans, putting more money into the club, and having a good time. Though if I don't win, I will probably have a big sook.

Around the grounds
Penance
15 years ago - or thereabouts - Altona East (coached by Chris Taylor!) and Preston played off in the Victorian Premier League finals. Fast forward to 2017, and Altona East is just about to drop out of the Victorian third tier into the fourth after several dodgy escapes; meanwhile Preston is pissing money up against the wall for goodness knows what reason considering they let Altona Magic get a five or six game head start. But Preston are still in better shape than they were about three years ago when they only brought about 20 odd fans to this same fixture; this time they brought a lot more, and a couple of banners and a drum. As for myself: I dithered about going to the Altona East vs Western Suburbs game the week before, and decided to skip it and go to the supermarket and the 'Pies game in the evening instead. Not exactly sterling behaviour in a crisis. I inadvertently made up for it during this game by ending up helping out at the gate for about an hour and a half. Not that I deserve an award for this example of accidental atonement of sin, and besides, it helped impair my view of a pretty ordinary game. An early goal in each half settled this otherwise mediocre contest in Preston's favour. Next week I'll be at Melbourne International Film Festival watching anime instead.

Final thought

Stingy amount of tomato sauce, further evidence of an @smfc budget crisis? #ps4nplvic pic.twitter.com/GeddJz2NTC

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) August 13, 2017

One (more) thing that was bothering me

Despite having largely overcome the seven year ordeal of not having a social club, South Melbourne Hellas continues to face many obstacles in its day to day existence. These obstacles include, but are not limited to:

• The arcane machinations of state and national soccer bodies
• A now seemingly permanent second tier status
• Media obscurity except in the most unusual and desperate of situations
• The assimilation/absorption oriented nature of Australia's Anglo-Celtic centric form of multiculturalism
• The club's own intermittent or frequent (your call) bouts of incompetence
• Modern difficulties of managing work/life balance
• Neos Kosmos, Neos Kosmos English Weekly, Ta Nea
• State Sport Centres Trust
• Winter
• A-League hooligans
• Opposition sides
• Negative bloggers

But there is one group above all others whose actions - or just as often, lack of action - has hurt the club more than anyone. What's more, compared to everyone and everything else, this group tends to slip under the radar.

I am talking of course about that broad collective which contains former and especially latent South Melbourne Hellas supporters. Now, most of us have dealt with the defiantly former South fan, and their myriad of mostly retrospectively contrived reasons for no longer supporting us. Frankly, I'm not in the mood to deal with those folks right now. But the latent as opposed to merely treacherous fan tends to fly under the radar. Oh, we talk about them a little bit - more so in the past - when we need them to perform one of two symbolic functions.

The first of these functions sees reference made to The Great Lost and Wandering Tribe of Hellas when we talk about all the fans that will come back to Lakeside once we re-enter the A-League. The second instance is when we talk about their absence as it affects us in our guise of misery inducing second tier status. 'If only a quarter (or similar number) of the 6,000 odd regulars of the NSL era who have left us would come back, we'd be better off in so many ways on and off the park' is the somewhat mangled mystery meat combination lament.

Unlike the deliberately and self-consciously trendy infidels who now support 'other' teams and who boast about their disloyalty towards South, the latent fan is harder to find. You may find an elder gentleman sitting at a barber shop, kafeneio, or perhaps in a cemetery. But there are also younger and more tech savvy variants who are easier to find by use of a simple device: the posting of South Melbourne Hellas pictures or videos of our glorious NSL teams and players. Do that on Facebook and to a much lesser extent Twitter, and watch them metaphorically scurry out from underneath the proverbial fridge, only to disappear once the business of South Melbourne Hellas as it exists now comes to hand.

Now I can empathise with these people. The NSL was undoubtedly awesome, especially if you were a South fan. You watched one of the league's most popular and successful teams, which played in one of the competition's better stadiums, and the club you supported carried about itself an air of invincibility and cockiness that likewise added a spring to your step.

But nowadays the club is - as this blog has talked about in far too much depth - something you no longer recognise or wish to recognise as the club you spent so much time, money, and emotion supporting. Your heart is broken by seeing South become re-associated with clubs that it had left behind. Watching the club play every second week in industrial zone paddocks, and every other week from behind the running track, is a torture the now latent fan cannot bare.

[Let's also not discount the problem of your mates or relatives no longer coming to games - it makes motivating oneself for the grind that much harder if you had a social group you were involved with and which is now no longer interested. People attract people, a crowd attracts a crowd, but once you slip underneath a certain critical mass, attendances, interest and relevance can dissolve very quickly.]

And let's not get started on the standard of play! So they stay away, and cloistering themselves at home, or at the footy, but especially in the soft, warm cloak of nostalgia. Meanwhile, those South fans still attending games rationalise the behaviour of latent fans as soft, or weak, or even as irresponsible. Me, I probably think all those things and more when I think about these latent Hellas fans, but at the heart of the matter, I understand the compulsion to stay away. I don't agree with it, but believe me, I do understand.

The same issues that keep those types away don't just magically disappear for those of us that still do attend. Every car trip into a suburban outpost, every long multi-modal and poorly serviced public transport trip to some ground that doesn't have an elevated view or even a concrete terrace, every loss to a team that five minutes ago was playing three or four divisions lower - all of it takes a toll on those still going to games. The flip-side to that is that there is also a camaraderie among the fans, especially those that do the business week in and week out; there is joy, there is comedy, and there is also victory, compromised as it may be by our circumstances.

So because I understand their reasoning, when I see these latent fans reminiscing about the 'good old days', I don't jump in and judge them. It doesn't do any good, and is certainly not likely to get them to come back. I'd rather set the example via my own attendance and this blog, where I contribute to the general South experience in order to do my small bit to keep the club as a going concern.

Recently however on Twitter, there was a passionate but also hilarious discussion on South's A-League bid shenanigans, especially some of the very loose handling of facts by certain members of the bid team. During that discussion, one of these self-confessed latent Hellas fans - one notable not only to myself but also to others for his tendency to only talk about South as a historical instead of ongoing concern - accused some South fans who were discussing and disagreeing with the conduct of South Melbourne's A-League bid team as exhibiting 'disreputable' behaviour.

One assumes this scalding (and for that writer, also quite uncharacteristic) epithet was directed to persons like myself, and possibly to folk like T. Arvanitis of Murrumbeena, who posted what was otherwise considered a very worthwhile bit of commentary on South's A-League bid media strategy on this blog. My normal response to such a provocation would be to remain in character, play a straight bat, and ask a question along the lines of 'disreputable how?'.

Instead of doing that - maybe because it was getting late and because tolerance to latent fans had worn thin - I responded with a hastily cobbled together response (including a choice typo) which played the man and not the issue. One could see it as giving back what I'd received, but it still felt a little unbecoming. The response to my riposte was to accuse me of having an agenda, whatever that meant to the particular person making that accusation (there was no follow up explaining what my agenda may be).

I don't know how he read something so sinister into my Twitter oeuvre, but if I were to admit to having an agenda, as a South fan it would be: to go to as many games as possible in order to support the team; to add a dry, curmudgeonly wit to the general atmosphere; and to lend my assistance to the club where I reasonably can. As a blogger, my aims are to do what I've always done: to provide a source of South news, opinion and assorted nonsense that is independent of South's official media channels; to increase the level of South fans' interests in the club's off-field operations; and to present a different public front to non-South fans about what this club is about. Sometimes this will compliment the club's efforts, and sometimes they will take an oppositional tone.

But to get back to the main point. Yes, it's sad that we have latent fans who for whatever reason can no longer bring themselves to attend South matches. That's their choice, and if they want to define themselves by reminiscence alone, there's not much we can do. Those of us who are still attending games appreciate what we have, not just what we had. So by all means if you're a latent fan, enjoy your fill of nostalgia - but don't go complaining about contemporary happenings at the club on or off-field, or the media's treatment of the club - because if you're not going to games yourself, you should probably reconsider the merits of your indignation.

Ultimately, the club exists for the living, not the dead. It's all in or not in at all. Lastly, it's never too late to come back - others who have drifted away have come back - even I've done it. It's not all bad.

Metamorphosis (in a Robert Manne sort of way)

This is a guest post by one of South of the Border's most frequent contributors to the comments section, Savvas Tzionis. It's an interesting ramble about a very unorthodox journey towards, away from and finally back to South. Cheers, Savvas!

This is the story of a South Melbourne fan who went from being an anti NSL (and by definition, anti-South to some extent) zealot to an anti A-League agitator (by definition, a very much pro South Melbourne fan).

I grew up in Greek family with a Cypriot father who passed on down to me, not a love for soccer, but his passion for the Carlton Football Club, much like his own uncle passed on the passion to him when my father arrived in 1951 as a 17 year old (my father's uncle having arrived in the 1920s.)

Soccer was, and has remained for him, a secondary sport. For me, the 1986 World Cup made a indelible impression on me. It councided with a nadir in the VFL, highlighted for me with the pre game entertainment at the 1986 grand final where John Elliott's Fosters Lager was horribly ubiquitous! Thus the journey began. South games, which I rarely attended, were now part of my ritual. For up to ten years from 1986 to 1994, both Australian rules and soccer were part of my diet, with Australian rules still the dominant partner.

Then in 1994, the once great game of Australian rules quite suddenly lost its aesthetic appeal, and soccer found itself number one. But, concurrently, I was also frustrated by the ethnocentric nature of the sport. The clubs seemed to be run by ultra-nationalists who had no interest in broadening the game's appeal.

I then moved to Sydney in 1998 for a year, and was fortunate enough to time my arrival with the introduction of the Northern Spirit. Those Friday night games were something else. I stood amongst the non official cheer squad (as opposed to the larger 'official' cheer squad on the opposite side), who were a motley group of English, Australian, and Southern Europeans. The English were the leaders, and rightly so, because they had the wittiest lines! It confirmed to me that we were not harnessing the latent interest in the game.

Once I returned to Melbourne, and in the wake of the missed 1997 Iran debacle which stifled the opportunity to grow the game, I drifted away from the sport to the point where I stopped going altogether. There were other external factors, but the deteriorating aura surrounding Australian soccer was of no interest to me. But when the Howard goverment was encouraged to enter the debate, I smelt a nasty rat.

I became a trolling internet soccer forum abuser, accusing the new regime of pseudo racism, and labelling its key element of change, the A-League, as the B (British and second rate!) League. I decided to attend Souths first game back in the State League against our erstwhile rival, Heidelberg. I didn't want to admit it, but it was such a sad affair, in spite of the large crowd, that I never went again (bar the odd Monday night game at Bulleen, near my home) until 2012 when I felt the urge to start attending South games again.

Why? Various reasons. My retreat from mainstream society was manifesting itself in various ways, and coming back to the Hellas fold was one of those ways. I also felt an urge to do my bit to hold on to a bit of the old Greek Australian society, and returning to Hellas was one way of doing this.

Throughout this metamorphosis, I look with chagrin to my attitude towards fans of our rival, Melbourne Knights. In the past, I saw them as the evil beast of Australian soccer; but now I grudgingly respect their steadfastness, and their realistic views of what many people think of 'ethnics', for want of a better word. Perhaps one factor is the modern history of Croatia being under a (albeit relatively benign) communist dictatorship, which engendered a mistrust in 'best intentions', very much a trait of over governance, which the FFA can be accused of.

South Melbourne squad from round 1, 2012, prior to the 4-0 win against
Moreland Zebras. Photo: Cindy Nitsos.

My initial steps back into the fold were a little timid. My first game back was against the lowly, and destined to be relegated, Moreland Zebras. Interestingly it coincided with South Melbourne Hellas' return to Lakeside after the refurbishment. I barely knew the players. Looking back now, I chuckle that my earliest memory was of Kyle Joryeff scoring twice in that game. By mid season, he was gone! Although I had dived straight in and purchased a membership, I was only attending home games for the first two years. But from 2014, I found myself attending even early round cup games. I think the trigger was the chance to visit the old NSL grounds like Chaplin Reserve to see the once middle strength Sunshine Geirge Cross. I now knew every player (not easy with the high rotation of player lists, a marked, but understandable contrast to the NSL days.) and this was a key reconnection to the club.

My two most memorable matches during this time were the penultimate 2012 game against Bentleigh Greens which sealed our fate for that year, and the 2013 elimination final against Green Gully. Extreme disappointment, followed by an elation I hadn't felt since probably the 1991 NSL grand final. Where this new chapter will take me, is perhaps out of my hands. I would like to think the club, on the back of the return to the newly improved Lakeside Oval and the finalisation of the 40 year lease, has some real foundations in place for a return to better times. The team is finally back where it belongs on top, and I TRUST(!) the Social Club will be ready soon!

A couple of people who I would like to mention is the author of this blog, Paul, whose writings have been one of the reasons I have not only returned, but have taken it up a step, (to quote George Costanza from the Hamptons episode) in supporting South.

And to George, who I met through a mutual friend back in the early 1990's, on the terraces in the outer at Middle Park. Upon returning to SMH, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw him at Lakeside, still attending, 15 years after I last saw him, still attending with his non driving father. His response to seeing me was akin to Mario from Mario's Pizza in the Frogger episode from Seinfeld ... 'Where've you been?!'

He stuck at it, whereas so many of us left.

Social Club Artefact Wednesday - Save Our South T-Shirt

This Friday marks one of the most significant moments in the club's history - as well as perhaps its lowest point - the 10th anniversary of the 'Save Our South' campaign.

A month after being eliminated in the finals of the last NSL season in heartbreaking fashion by Adelaide United, South wasn't just on the ropes, it was down for the count. Despite the windfall of the infamous World Club Championship money just four years previously, we had huge debts and no income stream on the horizon. South was placed in administration. Our players, their contracts declared null and void, all left.

We weren't involved in any competitions,  being blocked along with Melbourne Knights from joining the VPL in 2004 by certain insecure clubs, most infamously Whittlesea Stallions and Ernie Tapai's bloody fridge magnets. I guess the assumption was also at the time that, with the Melbourne licences for the new competition reduced from two to one, that we were a goner anyway.

A rally was organised to save the club, much like many VFL clubs had had to do over the preceding decades. Where thousands were expected to turn up, only a few hundred bothered to do so. I'm ashamed to say that I was one of those many thousands of South fans that did not turn up to that day. Whatever personal issues I may have had at the time, I suppose like many South fans I just assumed that someone else would rock up to save the club. In the end, that's what happened, but only just.

In several ways both tangible and intangible, the legacy of that period still follows us to this day. Tangibly in the sense of having to pay back the Toumbourou/Christopher money, with the attendant hysteria that came with it, or the Lakeside issue still not being resolved. Intangible in the sense that the club's sense of invincibility and self-importance was dealt an incredible blow, both to those who followed our club and those outside of it who reveled in our fall from grace.

But I'm not looking to dwell on that. What I want to emphasise is that we still have a club ten years on, when many thought it was doomed. And I would like to thank all those people, whether they are still with the club or not, who fought for the club on that day, and after that day, to keep it alive. You showed that we can't just take the club for granted, that it has to be fought for, and that duty belongs to all of us.

Confession time, sigh, again, sigh

Despite my lambasting of the Antipodes Festival, I must admit that for the first time in ten years or so, I did attend. This was on Saturday, mind. But it was only to help hand out free passes and such. Now, with a student union politics stint behind me - for the mighty Activate/Pride/Left that wasn't Socialist rich kids or drunk ALP Left kids that worked in Lindsay Tanner's office - I knew how to hand out pieces of paper to people who did not know, nor care, what it was stuck in their hand eight tenths of the time until they'd already wandered.

If you want to read a self-aggrandising pro-Antipodes rant about how to fix up the festival, you should head here. But me, I hate the sea and everything in it, if you catch my drift. Here are some of my highlights, in my just over two hour shift.

• Les Papasavas, son of the legendary Sam Papasavas, dropped in for a chat. Him not knowing who the hell I am, let alone that I have a half-arsed South blog (and me being supposedly on a short leash owing to the chaos I can cause - even though it's all fucken justified, farken), it's probably not fair for me to relay the conversation. But apparently we're irrelevant, and we should give up. Or something. I don't know, that's what I got out of the conversation. In my brief 'Form and Content' class last Thursday, someone reacted sarcastically when I said self-deprecatingly that perhaps I'm a bit more cynical about such things (in reference to global trends in television programming - Canadian Ice Hockey Thugs in a pairs figure skating talent show of some sort, used as part of an analogy about in the same way more roads doesn't lead to less traffic - despite everyone's best hopes - more channels and more programming time doesn't lead to better television shows - but I guess you just had to be there).
• People looking at the DVD footage on the television screen, looking at the stall title which was above the small tent, and then asking what it was all about. Even after they'd read their freebie double pass.
• One person took a pass, walked, had a look, then came back and gave back her pass. Well, it's a form of recycling I guess.
• There weren't too many young Greeks, as far as I could tell. Mind you, this was around 2pm to just after 4pm. Maybe they were all sleeping, or styling their hair or something. There were plenty of people of Subcontinental and East Asian appearance, wandering through mostly after having done their shopping.
• I like Thin Lizzy's 'Boys Are Back In Town' as much as the next person, but it's hardly Greek. Even if it is played by a Greek band, or band made up of Greeks or their descendants, and therefore I didn't heed the call from the announcer to be proud of them. 
• Rhodri Payne came past with a housemate carrying a relatively tasteful amount of booze. 
• One random loon came up and had some sort of rant about the game being the most corrupt in the world, and big business and something. While he was glad to have got it off his chest, I'm not sure what difference it makes to the broader argument about whatever he was rabbiting on about.
• Antipodes volunteers - who I assume were Greek, or knew something about local Greek culture - being given free passes and asking where Bob Jane Stadium was. 
• Something about Greeks and fickleness and shit. 

I was apparently quite lucky I didn't spend any time out there on the Sunday. A lot of naff comments, including a variation of one that I hadn't heard for years, about us being Melbourne Victory now. If you were out there at all over the weekend, please feel free to vent your spleens in the comments section.

South of the Border Confessional - Goal Weekly

Confession time again... I have not been a frequent purchaser or reader of Goal Weekly. I took its role for granted, and justified not buying it because I could get most of the news I wanted on the web. But this was the totally wrong attitude to take. Therefore I'm going to make a commitment to become a regular reader of the magazine, in support of the fine work put in by its contributors and staff to provide Victorian soccer fans with regular print news and opinion.

South of the Border confessional

OK, enough is enough.

We all know there are plenty of present day South fans who, because of the stigma attached to it especially on smfcboard, are reticent to admit or are even fearful of admitting that they go to the Victory, either as a fan of the team or game in general, or who go to games semi regularly as a guest of other people, or who once did and have stopped, or any of the myriad possible combinations therein. This closeted approach is a cancer which blinds us to the reality of who is following our club these days. The pretence and the effort required to sustain the illusion is not worth the effort.

It's high time we had a confessional or amnesty for people to come forward, in safety from being mocked or belittled, where they can freely admit to their truer selves. I would love to see this happen on smfcboard - maybe I'll even be the one to start the thread - but to show that I'm genuine about this exercise, I will open myself up to the healing power of confession, in the hope of encouraging others to come forward and do likewise, and lay their conscience and souls bare for the world, to be free of the weight they carry.

I went to the Victory's 3 pre-season games and every home match of version 1. On a couple of occasions I listened to live radio broadcasts of matches. I have never seen an A-League game on tv, though I do not have Foxtel which makes it easier. I was curious, but by the end it was obvious the whole thing was not for me. The only contact I have had with a Victory game since February 2006 was the South-Victory friendly.

In the ensuing years, I have had offers to pay for my ticket, rationales thrust at me as to why I should accept, and I have rejected them with my entire being. That may work for some but not for all. If it doesn't there need no longer be any shame! This is not for those who have never had contact with Victory to get on their highhorses... but I would imagine there'd be very few people who have not dabbled in some sort of potentially 'poulimeno' behaviour along the wide spectrum available. So I say 'Confess, confess, confess!' And have that unholy weight lifted from thy shoulders. You can do it here if you wish, or you can do it in the darkness of smfcboard. But I beseech thee, for yours and South's sake, end the lies of omission now!