Our time is passing, old friend

I suppose we should acknowledge something that happened over the weekend, if only to keep the blog ticking over, and to avoid being accused of glossing over quasi-significant events in Australian soccer history.

For regardless of whether it was something that could actually be claimed outright, courtesy of Sydney FC's fifth A-League title yesterday, South Melbourne is on most objective levels no longer the most successful soccer club in the country.

So as South fans, should we feel sad? Aggrieved? Petulant? Resentful? Argumentative? Aloof? It's really up to you I suppose. Who I am to tell you how to deal with this utterly momentous, yet also inevitable moment? 

And it was inevitable. For most of its 15 years, the A-League has been a competition comprised of an average of 10 or so teams. Furthermore, according to the people who follow that league closely, and whose comments I most frequently come into contact with, in most of those 15 seasons about three-quarters of the teams have been garbage. That doesn't exactly compare favourably with the NSL, which always had more teams in a season, and of which it could be said only five-eighths of the teams in any given year were utter rubbish, leaving out the mess of the 1984-1986 conference system.

Be that as it may, the combination of a small league and a large contingent of non-competitive teams - despite salary caps and salary floors - means we were going to end up here eventually. It could've happened earlier, it could've happened in another few years. You're free to treat it like the SANFL pre-1997 - two very successful clubs with 60 flags between them, and three or four others that couldn't muster ten flags collectively.

For my part, I'm not too fussed. In fact, for someone who cares little for the goings on in the A-League - except for when there used to be crowd shenanigans which exposed everyone's hypocrisies, and the sports business side of things - I was always more annoyed by other things. Namely, the way the A-League elevated what used to be called the minor premiership into a championship in its own right; which also lowered the worth of a grand final already compromised by a finals system which let more than half the league in as if it was the Canadian Football League, and the fact that said finals system gave almost no material benefit to a team finishing higher up the ladder.

Even so, that garbage, no double chance finals system bothered me more because it's the system we've come to use in Victoria. They could do what they like in the big leagues, but if we are to have finals in Victoria, why can't we have something which doesn't render one early false step in the finals for a top side an automatic failure? But I digress. 

I have argued before that merging stats doesn't mean merging narratives. On a raw data level, Sydney FC have won more national titles than anyone. On a narrative level, we haven't been allowed to compete for any of the titles Sydney FC has won; which is not the same as Sydney FC not even being a twinkle in Frank Lowy's balls when we won our four NSL titles. Indeed, for a good chunk of the A-League's history, the narrative was that what came before the A-League was either irrelevant or non-existent.

Which, to be fair, is actually true on both counts. Forget mealy-mouthed and revisionist takes from people involved with dismissing or burying the NSL's history. Except for little checkpoints like this, everything that came before (with the possible exception of some player records) is irrelevant and/or non-existent.

And it's not just on an official level. Someone asked the question on one of our forums, about what our seven pre-NSL state league titles mean in the great scheme of things. And when it came down to it, all I could really think of is, "not much". Yes, they matter to the few hundred supporters who still attend South games. But most of our supporters are either dead, or doing something else with their lives these days. For both the dead and living South fan (and I assume, for the fans of other clubs like ours), the past has long receded in the rear view mirror.

Yes, people may jump on the odd social media post (whether posted by us or by some nostalgia site) and wax lyrical about good old days and whatnot, but that's the totality of the emotional engagement. It's little different to the way people reminisce about 1980s and early 1990s NBL. A few wistful signs while remembering Gaze to Copeland, Bruce Bolden's free throw routine, or Phil Smyth's bald patch, and then on to whatever it is that occupies their attention in the present.

But for those of you that care about the seeming indignity of our situation in a more, let's say... "robust" manner than my trademark morose indifference, there's little reassurance or guidance that I can offer on how to respond to those who would wish to goad you on these matters. I guess you can just hold to the dream of a National Second Division and eventual promotion and relegation; or if you're still an unreconstructed 2005 World Game Forum-style bitter, plan for the death of the A-League within three years, tops. Those of us still here are all in this together, but we're all in it together in our individual way.

An impossible situation - South Melbourne 1 Sydney FC 5

As usual, forgive the unnecessarily elegiac tone.

Yesterday there were people trying to convince me - or perhaps more so themselves - that I looked happy. Some of those people were at the ground, others merely catching a glimpse of me smiling on the Fox Sports broadcast just before the start of the game. Whatever floats their boat I guess. I was with my mates, and it was almost certainly going to be our last game of the season. A long, long season.

My happiness or at the very least not miserableness was the natural response to being at a game of no consequence, no matter how anyone tried to dress it up. The lead up to the game from many of our people was understandable. A chance to capitalise on a rare and imperfect opportunity. Ticket prices set, food organised, and the club even putting out notices about public transport options. The fans made their banners and flags, invited as many people as they thought would come, and kept tabs on the weather in an obsessive manner. I hated the commercial television networks' use of eight day forecasts before this game, and I hate them even more now.

The final crowd of 5,747 was neither disastrous, nor earth shatteringly brilliant. You can blame the midweek slot and the interstate opponent, or the Socceroos and Ange Postecoglou sucking up all the limelight in the lead up. You can blame the impending bad weather, or the $25 entry charge. But maybe after being out in the cold for 13 years in the manner that we have been, this is all that we have left. It's not exactly been like starting from scratch, but at times it hasn't been too far from it. Sometimes it has been worse.

As much as I would love to go to town on Bill Paps and his talk of selling out the ground, the harsh reality of the situation remains. No crowd would've been big enough, no scoreline good enough, no atmosphere electric enough to make the game mean anything more than what it was; we, suffering but still afflicted by pride, having to face them, not Sydney FC specifically, but an entire soccer and mainstream Australian culture that has no place for us except in such rare and strange circumstances.

Take out the financial viability questions because only a few people will ever know for sure whether we could cut it in this state or any at all. Take out even the ethnic equation of things for just a second, because as a club we've largely moved beyond that, with last night being the best example of it so far. From my point of view at least, there was no cringe factor. Yet the experience as a whole was antithetical to the way top flight sport is done in Australia, by which I mean that despite the general professionalism of the way the event was handled as a whole last night, at no point was it slick. It was, to use those words now tainted by hipsters, artisanal, organic, handmade, at times even rustic.

General admission seating and a lack of oppressive security all round helps a lot in that regard, but at no point did the atmosphere at the ground, both before the game and during, feel forced or predetermined or pre-approved. It was, for want of a better term, a boutique experience in the best possible way, different from just about anything you get in top flight sport in this country. That in itself though, much as I would love to see it sold as a highlight and as a strength, as a beautiful point of difference, can only be seen in our era as encapsulating the shortcomings of being small, of not being exactly like everyone else. So it goes.

On the field, pretty soon the gulf in capability was made apparent. This wasn't simply a case of the best team in the country taking on a second division side; they were taking on a second division side from one of eight second divisions, and a side that had played one competitive fixture in about seven weeks, missing one of its more important players. Sydney's speed of thought, speed of movement on and off the ball, and their surer touch was always going to bring us undone at some point. The fact that we didn't completely sit back and try to absorb pressure was admirable, but also more liable to see us punished.

Not that it would've likely made any difference in the long run, but for a team like ours, missing Brad Norton unbalanced the whole thing. Our players were initially overwhelmed by the occasion and the lack of space afforded to them, and they often second guessed themselves. Mistakes that would lead to nothing in our league veered closer to life or death situations here. Nothing unexpected about that for anyone involved, but it's one thing to know it and quite another to experience it. Perhaps if they could bottle those moments where we took the initiative and showed no fear, there may be something worthwhile that we could take into next season.

Our team, like others at a similar playing level - and there's so many of them - is largely made up of those who have reached the A-League but have been discarded by it, and especially those who will never reach its ranks. Often enough, despite whatever gnashing of teeth there may be about lack of opportunity, there are good reasons for this. The players at our level are too slow or too small or not polished enough. It's not for lack of heart though. Matthew Millar is a prime example. Last night he was one of our best, for mine especially in the first half (though others will point to his second half) as he got into dangerous positions on the byline on a few occasions; but the quality in the form of an end product was just not there.

An extended dose of professionalism or even a consolidated second division would improve things, but establishing either is not within my capabilities; at best I'm here only to note the mostly obvious shortcomings of any attempt to establish such things. There is also something to be said for the notion that in FFA Cup games between A-League and state league opponents, the A-League team should be allowed to field two visa players, the same amount allowed to NPL teams as per their ordinary league business. Certainly it's been a thought bubble that a few have simultaneously had on and offline, and I'd be for such a move. Still, one must also acknowledge that even if such a rule was brought in, the calibre of visa player available to an A-League team easily outstrips what's available to a state league club.

It doesn't help either that Sydney's first goal was offside. You need all the luck in the world to get close, and we didn't get ours. 2-0 down at half-time, and despite having looked OK at times, there was no sense that there was any way back. But then Leigh Minopoulos scored that goal, and for the next 20 minutes all things seemed possible.

A mint finish from Minopoulos 👌 Fully deserving of being a @NAB Golden Goal for @smfc tonight! #FFACup #MagicOfTheCup pic.twitter.com/mvHBRVnGB5

— Westfield FFA Cup (@FFACup) October 11, 2017

There was little chance that it could last, certainly not without an equaliser. We almost got there - Millar's long range effort after their keeper was caught way off his line would have brought the house down had it gone in -  but as the match wore on you could see the tiredness not merely creeping in, but storming in. The equaliser didn't come, and we ran out of gas. Some of the goals we let in were especially poor. But what a 20 minutes it was. It didn't all of a sudden make the struggle of the past 13 years worthwhile, but it was enjoyable, joyous even. There'll be plenty of chances next year and the year after and the year after that to wallow in the miserably meaningful; yesterday was about enjoying the absurd inconsequential.

After the Sydney goals rained in and the margin blew out, I got tired of chanting and of having an obstructed view thanks to hands and flags and people standing on seats, and worst of all, the score of opened umbrellas, so I went down to the concourse area. As the rain kept coming down, I got a good view of Clarendon Corner, the only full bay left in the ground, singing, chanting and enjoying themselves. What surprised me most though was how many people throughout the ground stayed to the end. The result was done, the weather was stuffed, there was no good reason for pretty much anyone apart from the usual people to stay. Yet they stayed.

That rain was something else. I guess we all knew that there was going to be heavy rain on the night, but I can't remember a Lakeside game that had a storm like that for some time. It was initially blown in from the north, chasing a lot of people out of the southern stand around to the northern side. Then the wind changed and moved it around so it blew into the northern stand. The running track threatened to turn into a lake, but the ground itself seemed to hold up well. Most surprisingly perhaps, our boys seemed to handle the conditions better than the Sydney players, especially during our best period, with even long passes to the wings being perfectly hit on several occasions.

All I wanted from the night was that we would avoid embarrassment on the field and off it. In my opinion we managed to avoid both, if not comfortably then by enough. Oh, and we scored a goal. Leigh Minopoulos, the player that gives me the most joy of any player in this team, wrote himself into a little bit of South Melbourne and Australian soccer history. Almost 18 years ago, John Anastasiadis bundled home the first Australian goal at a Club World Championship. Last night Minopoulos became the first player to score for a state league club in an FFA Cup semi-final. They're trivia questions that no one outside the dedicated few of us will be able to answer, but that's part of the story, too.

What to do with our good fortune
There's an episode of The Simpsons - atypically, I've forgotten which one - where the kids of Springfield are lined up outside the Noiseland Arcade, being shaken by a bouncer/security guard to see if they have enough loose change in order to be allowed inside. One hopes that the overpriced souvlaki (just like a proper top-flight stadium experience, as one wit noted), the $25 entry price for most patrons, and the $10 charge for social club members in direct opposition to the promises made by this board, have all raised enough money to pay off our debts to players, as well as current and former employees, with whatever's left over going towards paying off the loan the club took out to finish off the social club.

South of the Border off-season mode begins
There'll be awards no one cares about, and the usual periodic round up of news. There'll also be an AGM to discuss. And book reviews. I also have some other business to take care of and finish, so don't expect too much from me unless something dramatic happens.

Missed it by that much
There was some chatter out there that we had signed Gold Coast City striker Sam Smith. Smith, a 27 year old Englishman who didn't play against us in the FFA Cup due to injury, has instead re-signed with Gold Coast City.

Thank you
To the bloke who noticed that my keys had fallen out of my pocket during the second half.

Final thought
The season is finally over, thank goodness. See you all back in a few weeks time for the start of pre-season.

Odds and ends leading into our FFA Cup semi-final

There's news things which I could link to, but you're all pretty tech savvy individuals, so this is more of a filler piece, with some general advice about what to expect on Wednesday.

If you believe such things, ticket sales have been going pretty well for our FFA Cup semi-final, at about 3,000 pre-sales. That augurs well for a decent crowd, which will depend somewhat on what kind of hype (if any) will be built in the remaining few days, and if the relatively fine weather we've been having holds up.

At any rate, whatever the specific crowd number will be it's fairly certain that it will be one of the bigger crowds at Lakeside for a South game for many years, and thus there will be some common sense which will need to be applied on the night.

For starters, the car parking situation around the ground will likely be atrocious. So either get there early if you can, park further away, or seriously consider taking public transport. The no.12 tram goes right past the ground, while the no.1 stops two blocks away, on Clarendon Street or Moray Street. You could even take the no.96 down to MSAC.

Apart from pre-purchasing your tickets online, getting to the ground a little earlier should (though I make no promises on this) make all the difference with regards to getting into the ground in a timely manner. Whether you're new to Lakeside or have merely forgotten what it's like to have more than 200 people turn up to one of our games, it's worth remembering that our people have a tendency to turn up to games at the latest possible moment. I assume both gates will be open, which should make things easier.

Our regulars of course know this, but it's worth noting for 'occasional' and new visitors, that Lakeside is a non-smoking venue.

In terms of food and drink, if you're not a social club member, you may find it difficult if not impossible to get into the social club on the night. I am told however that there will be other food and drink stands open around the ground, and that these will be under operating under the auspices of the club. It also seems there will be a loosening of the up to now very tight liquor arrangements. All this is part of a hoped for general improvement in what South can offer on a match day.

I don't know if there will be any significant range of merchandise. If you're into that kind of thing, you know the drill already: bring your wallet, bring your credit cards, and hope that there's enough stock to satisfy your longing for stuff.

It might rain on Wednesday, it might not. If it does, the best places to be will be under those small parts of both stands which provide shelter. If it starts getting windy, that sheltered areas is diminished further, If you're out in the outer, bring an umbrella or poncho. Fox Sports will apparently be filming from the northern stand, which will reduce the capacity of that stand by a little bit.

If you choose sit in the bay in which Clarendon Corner locates itself, especially in the rows immediately behind them, you're more likely to have an obstructed view. Clarendon Corner will be standing and they will be waving flags and arms and such. If you are sensitive to swearing for whatever reason, this might also not be the best place to locate yourself. A good thing then that the whole venue will be open, right?

If you are not a regular in Clarendon Corner, but choose to stand in there on the night, there's some pretty basic protocols. If you're going to stand right in the middle, you should do so on the understanding that you will be expected to chant. If you're not a big chanter, stand somewhere to the edges. No flares. Don't be a dick. Pretty straightforward.

There will be no segregation at the game. I don't know if Sydney FC fans will bothering to turn up in such numbers as to be creating any sort of organised atmosphere. My advice for those of them that want to congregate somewhere is to take up a spot in the northern stand or on the terracing behind the goals. As for any other Sydney fans attending, sit or stand pretty much where common sense says you should. Most of us don't bite.

One hopes that the atmosphere will be jovial and relatively lighthearted. Of course we South people want to win this game, thought realistically our chances are fairly remote. Hopefully the boys can do well enough and have enough good fortune so as to at least make a game of it. If things go bad, it's not a reflection on us specifically, but mostly on the stark inequities of the situation as a whole.

That's not much as far as inspirational speeches go, but that's never been my bag anyway. For those able to enjoy South matches, enjoy it. For those who have more trouble enjoying games with any measure of importance, you know best how to deal with it.

In other news...
Not unexpectedly Nick Epifano won our best and fairest award for season 2017, at a low key awards night last Saturday in the social club. How low key? Pretty much no one outside the players and committee knew it was on. Natalie Martineau took out the equivalent women's award.

FFA Cup semi-final date set

By now most of you will have come across the news that our FFA Cup semi-final against Sydney FC has been set down for Wednesday October 11th at Lakeside. That's just two weeks away!

As noted in FFA's press release, this date was not originally one of the two options on the table - they being the 18 and 24th or some such - but due to Lakeside availability issues, we've been planted onto an earlier week.

Good news on two fronts then: first, that Nick Epifano won't miss the game due to overseas travel, and second, this whole thing will be over just that little bit earlier. Unless we win, of course.

The not so good news... it gives the club a week's less time to prepare. It's going to be difficult to sort out the ticketing situation, catering for a possible function, allocating space in the social club and everything else that goes with a marquee fixture like this on a skeleton crew.

What I hope for is the following:

• Members to be granted free entry as stipulated on the membership brochure.
• Everyone else - especially bandwagoners - to be fleeced to within an inch of what's allowable, and hopefully beyond what's ethical.
• Both gates open for regular punters to enter and exit the venue.
• The social club being open only to social club members, especially if the futsal court is not going to be converted to a public space for the event.
• No half 'n' half scarves.

Apart from that, we wait for the ticketing details to be sorted out, and occupy ourselves with other things during this netherworld of being neither in season or out.

It begins... Gold Coast City 0 South Melbourne 6

Drawn against this mob again. No Brad Norton, in Spain for whatever reason, and what looked to me like a weak bench. Sure, they didn't have one of their gun forwards, but they were supposed to be better than the team we played, dominated and still found a way to lose against two years ago.

Talk about anticlimactic.

And if there is one lingering frustration with Wednesday's result in amid all the relief and joy, it's that this is exactly what we should have done to Palm Beach/Gold Coast City two years ago. Give or take one or two players, we had a better team then, but it is what it is, and one should not take for granted what we actually have compared to what we lost.

If that's too many cliches for a Friday morning, consider it a warning for what's about to come. The circus is about to come to town and every idiot with a pathological hatred of us, and every South fan with an axe to grind is going to come out swinging with so much confected outrage and bile that certain sections of the internet may well collapse from under their weight. And that's not including whatever the club decides to put out in the public sphere. Indeed, they've already begun.

Unlike the apparently 300 odd travelling supporters, your correspondent was located in our social club, arriving early enough for happy hour drinks, $7 burgers, and what looked likely to be a less than stellar turnout. Thankfully numbers arrived close to kick off, and the place was fullish albeit comfortable - not many people bumping into each other, if you know what I mean. Fatalist that I am, I had already written us off in this game weeks ahead of time. Contrarian that I am, I still got instantly got nervous once the game begun. Like most of you, I'm only human. The first goal did little to settle my nerves, and if anything it made them worse. The second goal didn't help much either. 2-0 up within ten minutes? Plenty of time to screw that up.

Can I also say that the young lad who announced the fact that we were 2-0 up before the stream had caught up to that fact - I assume he was being messaged from a mate or checking an app - may have thought he was doing us a favour, but he snuffed out the instinctive joy of that moment.

Under the circumstances, the lineup was fine. Michael Eagar was back in the starting eleven, though his absence in several lead up matches continue to confound. Luke Pavlou filled in at left back, but unlike every other time that move was tried and found wanting (including with Liam McCormick), nothing happened, Gold Coast simply failed to exploit that or any other situation available to them, Getting two goals up early helps a lot, but it looked like - and I agree with our resident tactically aware friend - Gold Coast set up absolutely the wrong way to play us.

We had so much time on the ball. It was mad. If there is one thing we are good at as a team, it's feeling comfortable when we are given acres of space. There was no shutting down - Lujic was given more room in this match than he has been all season in the NPL - and everything seemed to roll around in slow motion. Even in that part of the game from about 20-40 minutes, where the match was more even, City did little to make me feel like they had a way of getting back except by accident. Of course we all know that such accidents are possible, and that they can lead to chain reactions, but Jesse Daley's goal finished it off, For once we found the space on the edge of the box, and for once we took that shot. I don't even remember anyone yelling 'shoot!' like they would at a South game; I was already celebrating the goal before it had even halfway reached the net,

The second half was pure farce. Milos finishing off what should have been a much easier goal from four or five shots and passes before that. Stefan Zinni scoring with his first touch after coming off the bench. Millar's icing on the cake, nodding home the header from a tight angle after the City keeper made a mess of his attempt at a chip pass or clearance. 'If in doubt, kick it out' is what the rugby pundits say, and at 5-0 down what harm could there be from just conceding a corner? Each goal was celebrated, but with less gusto as the game wore. The social club descended turned to idle chatter in between goals. The crowd noise from the TV seemed less intense as the match wore on. Do you make a big deal of celebrating putting goals past a team which played like a pub side? Taylor not only made early subs, he made all his subs. That's how comfortable it was.

Reaching this stage of the tournament, albeit via the 'designated mandatory NPL side in the semi-finals route of least resistance' helps ease some concerns, and introduces others. Of those things which have been soothed, the idea that this season was close to being a bust. No league success, no finals success, no post-season success, no Dockerty Cup success, not even a Charity Shield! Well, this has made everyone very happy, because even though in reality we've won squat this year, this is the thing that everyone cares about, both for 'relevance' and the money it'll bring. (Not everyone agrees that merely reaching this stage is a marker of success however).

It has also helped further diminish the notion of failing in 'big matches', especially under the Chris Taylor League Grinder method, so prone - apparently - to getting results in the workaday world of NPL Victoria, but less good at getting the job done in winner takes all affairs. Of course there's been a ton of luck involved with this run, but who I am to argue that it's a well overdue correction for all the luck that went against us in the past. Maybe this run of good fortune will be corrected in due course with some particularly amazing piece of stunning bad fortune.

After the game, we all waited for the result for the other game to be decided, and there was some trepidation that Blacktown City would get up over the Wanderers, something which might end up jeopardising our big payday. Unfortunately for the Demons - the best second tier team in the country across the past decade, maybe more - they couldn't get the job done. Which ended up with us getting drawn at home against Sydney FC, at a date yet to be decided upon.

What kind of preparation can the team do in the meantime? The A-League teams will probably have sorted out their schedules, and certainly closer to the date they'll be in their own season. An A-League youth team perhaps? Our WNPL team? Syria? Everyone on the ground seems relaxed about things, so much so that Chris Taylor is off on holidays for three weeks. That'll mean he'll hopefully miss most of the off-field nonsense that's going to build up. We've had already had Bill Papasteragiadis promise to sell out Lakeside, I assume with a crowd mostly made up of sellouts. To be a little fair, if you talk a big game like we do about ambition and latent and dormant support, you're going to be judged on your crowd. But promising a sell-out already seems to suggest that we're going to be in a for a long few weeks.

Next game
For the men, a home FFA Cup semi-final against Sydney FC some time in October.

For the women, a grand final appearance on Sunday week against either Calder or Geelong.

For me, probably some state league promotion/relegation playoffs on Saturday out at Port.

Hellas Ain't A Bad Place To Be/Highway To Hellas/Hellas Bells
Something strange is happening. There has been a gentle reemergence of a word which we had perhaps thought was banished to the historical vernacular.

"No nerves from Hellas from the start, scoring after 90 seconds."

*head explodes* #FFACup pic.twitter.com/dDEgOQbivD

— Ante Jukić (@a_jukic) September 20, 2017

Of course, the emphasis here is that in the vernacular, it didn't disappear. Our supporters have never stopped calling the club Hellas. Clarendon Corner, its Greeks and non-Greeks, still chant Hellas The club because of modern bylaws and constitutional necessity calls itself a different name - South Melbourne FC - and adapts that marketing angle for most of its social media product. Thus SMFC TV, smfc.com.au, @smfc etc. But the club has never abandoned the Hellas name. There are the retro 1991 style S. M. Hellas shirts. The club's business name is still officially South Melbourne Hellas. Our enemies use the term, and it sits along the short-form 'South' as a term of convenience and easy recognition.

Sure, some people use 'Hellas' out of spite, as 'proof' that we are not a broad-based club, a club not fit for the A-League, not even a club fit for Australian society. But that's for the comments pages of newspapers and the dumpster fires that are internet forums, not the mainstream media. Here's another one.

How this for a headline from a Brisbane Paper pic.twitter.com/lfsX3W4jhW

— Pablo (@pavlaki1969) September 21, 2017

Once upon a time it was absolutely normal for journos and commentators to avoid saying the 'H' word on air, and we became accustomed to it. Nor did we expect to hear it said or written, except in very particular circumstances, usually in the past tense, sometimes searching for the romantic. Of course there were always outliers. The late Laurie Schwab was famously recalcitrant in his disobedience, refusing to buckle down under the weight of governing body edicts to erase ethnicity. More recently, Ante Jukic has dabbled with using the old nomenclatures. But people like that are the minority.

So what do we make of this small, probably unintentional tear in the fabric of the Australian soccer cosmos? My feeling is that it's mostly older people in the journo game, who are out of habit with what to call us because we've been irrelevant to them and everyone else in their world for so long. On the ground, the situation seems to have remained much the same.

You can make us cover that foul word "HELLAS" on our banner but you will never ever stop us singing it,discrimination @ it's best #smfc4life

— Nick Vertsonis (@NickVertsonis) September 21, 2017

But that's Australian soccer for you.

Final thought
Call us Hellas a million times, I don't care; just please don't refer to us as 'Souths'.

And to think there are some douchebags out there...

... yes, the relevant numpties on the Adelaide United forum, and probably a few yet to come on other bulletin boards - who think we should have been barred from participating in this tournament by the FFA. But being bored, and sorta by accident, I came across this piece, which shows that this offer or opportunity isn't new... and of course Sydney Olympic were allegedly offered an invitation in 2004, but with the end of the NSL, needed like the rest of us to get their shit together. But the point is, to get back to it, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, no?



Singapore Cup invitation seen as bridge to Asia
By Michael Cockerill
December 30, 2004

Four A-League clubs have been invited to participate in next year's expanded Singapore Cup, with Singaporean officials claiming the opportunity represents a gateway for closer ties with Asia.

Perth Glory, Sydney FC, Adelaide United and Melbourne Victory have all been asked to enter the knockout tournament, which carries $120,000 in prizemoney and begins in April. Perth have already rejected the approach, claiming their priority was to prepare for the World Club Championship qualifiers a month later, but the other three clubs are believed to be assessing the benefits.

Football Federation Australia officials, who have made it clear they want greater contacts between Australia and Asia, are known to support the move.

Singapore's 10-team S-League wants to expand its cup competition to 16 teams, and invitations have been sent to countries throughout South-East Asia as well as Australia. A team from Brunei and two local amateur teams have already been added to the 2005 draw, leaving three vacancies.
The S-League's chief executive, How Seen-Yong, said last night that Australian clubs would be a major attraction for local fans, and the competition would be a "good starting point" for developing closer ties with Asia. "We know from past experience [two defunct clubs, the Perth Kangaroos and the Darwin Cubs, competed in the S-League in the mid-1990s and dominated the competition] that the Australian teams would be strong, but we are not afraid to have a foreign team win the prizemoney," he said.

Michael Cockerill endores biffo - on and off field

Apparently Sydney and Melbourne are playing for the 50 millionth time this season. I only bring this to your attention because I want to have a cheap internet attack on various groups. I don't think there's any real point that I'm trying to make, and if I am, it's as poorly as per usual.

Mike Cockerill's article. The relevant part is below.

On the field, it's often been a war. Off the field, things can get even more heated. In cyberspace, and in open space, the fans bait each other incessantly. Sometimes they even hit each other. Pubs in Sydney, and in Melbourne, have borne the brunt. The long arm of the law usually gathers in the culprits. After a few hours in a paddy van, they're out and proud, their brief incarceration claimed as a badge of honour.

This is the way of football the world over. This is the character which defines the A-League's biggest rivalry. There was a time when Football Federation Australia tried to dampen down the fires. Heavy-handed security. Seating arrangements changed. CCTV cameras installed. It didn't work. It was never going to work. Now they have come to realise the emotion driven by the clubs, the players, and the fans, is a strength, not a weakness.

The boys will be boys line - again. Is anyone surprised? Maybe we as a sport, maybe just in this country, maybe a select part of it, but an important part, actually want there to be this kind of thing, just quietly. Reminiscences of violent incidents past - off field ones, unless you count pitch invasions as on field - there's often an unnerving twinkle and glaze in the eye of the storyteller. A sort of fondness for the taste of blood, whether it was experienced firsthand or merely observed and absorbed vicariously. The attachment to the danger and vitality of youth, and its neglect of middle aged common sense.

Of course, we shouldn't completely disregard or downplay our own failings. When people get into soccer fights, self identifying as members of one ethnic group fighting against another, it doesn't leave other people with much room to negotiate a different description - whether they want to or not. And while it may suit those who despise soccer and foreignness to pin the blame on foreigners and a foreign game - it may suit the patricians of our own sport to also pin the blame on ethnicity as the defining factor behind violent soccer incidents - and when it's gone, as it is now in the A-League, there is a layer removed, there is a certain level of clarity, and a wistfulness, and perhaps even an end to some of journalistic hibernation as the bears of the winter come out for the spring, and perhaps the sensing of an opportunity to, just quietly and very carefully, endorse what polite society and the PC Brigade don't want them to.

Personally, I think it's a stupid stance to take, no matter what beliefs I may have held, or irrelevant slogans I may have chanted as a lonely teenager back in 1996. The violence on the terraces and in the backstreets, whether ethnic or mainstream, drunk or sober, is just stupid - an easy statement to make from the safety of my ivory tower, I know. But that doesn't matter, really, if the turnstiles continue to click over at a decent rate, and fully grown men with respectable jobs and much more popular authority than I will ever be able to muster have the opposite opinion.

You know, like, whatever

Last week we here at South of the Border deliberately ignored the Battle of La Trobe Street stoush where several Victory fans/keyboard warriors attacked the Duke of Kent Hotel because some Sydney FC fans were drinking there. But along came the winner for biggest genuine New Dawn comment of the year.

The rivalry goes back many years, when emotions between former National Soccer League clubs sometimes turned ugly. Many hardcore supporters of clubs such as Sydney Olympic, Marconi, Sydney United, South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights stuck with their clubs when the A-League began. Some were put off by what they saw as a ''manufactured'' league with no tradition. Many made the transition and the Victory and Sydney FC also drew in thousands of new supporters. However, a small number of agitators are unwilling to move with the times.

David Sygall, you're an idiot. But then again, he's only following the template set out years ago.

A Sydney fan, a Glory fan and a South fan don't walk into a bar

Despite what many think and try to enforce as the only available discourse(s) on the New Dawn/Draining The Pond era, if people are willing to look for the complexities within, and have people willing to discuss them, even if we disagree, we can still learn a fair bit. What am I saying exactly? That on Saturday evening I had some great discussions about Australian soccer, the plight of Perth Glory which or may not be karma, inter and intra A-League club politics, and how you can earn 100k a year working at McDonalds in northern Western Australia. Which makes one reflect upon why that level of conversation/dialogue is seldom if ever carried out on a forum, and why the Sydney FC forum contains people, who though I may disagree with them, far more often than their Victory couterparts at least seem to come from a point of view of actually knowing about stuff that happened in the bad old days as opposed to merely repeating haphazardly what they learnt at NSL-hating school.

Blame Canada! Blame Canada! They're not even a real country anyway.

Now I don't want to harp on it, but then again, when the shit hits the fan these days, and it's been four long years of being absent from the big stage, how much more can the NSL get blamed? For so long the proponents of the A-League and the new way of things have said that we are not the same, that there is no relation. And when the going gets good, and the crowds are big, and the sponsorships roll in, and the rivers are made of chocolate, it's all due to their good work and isn't lovely that we've moved on form the bad old days of the old NSL.

And yet, when violent acts occur in the stands in the A-League - and they have occurred with such an alarming frequency considering the 'main cause' was removed - then one has to wonder what perhaps is the real problem. And maybe, just maybe, it was never really an ethnic thing, because that's gone now. Perhaps it was just the usual and sadly most common reason for it all, a bunch of probably drunk, well 'ard thugs, who view getting into a bit of biff at the soccer - or the cricket - as part of the experience.

But that problem can't be dealt with until there is acknowledgment made that the common denominator is not ethnics tensions but mostly young men on the piss who don't object to violence. But if that acknowledgement is made, then as a consequence all sorts of other inferences will have to be made. That the pigeonholing of NSL-era violence more than a touch of a racist and xenophobic dimension to it. That the fist shaking of so many years was not at what is now edging closer to boys being boys, but rather at the horrible ethnics and their foreign game. But I don't see that happening in the near future, or even a distant one. The FFA and media will refer back to the bad old days, and the ones responsible for the argle barhgle and their looking the other way contemporaries will smile and say, at least it wasn't ethnic.

Fully Sik Night Out At Gully Bro

So Melbourne Victory had a praccy game against Green Gully on Monday, one of those teams with not even a latent, disloyal or just plain forgetful supporter base to boast of. Perfect for the Victory, if only so some of their more hotheaded supporters don't get too excited by being in close proximity to supposed opposition fans and misbehave by lighting a few flares and such, as was seen in last year's South-Victory friendly. Wrong.

General estimates say there were over a dozen flares lit. Some would be impressed by this tally, but not me, but that's more to do not being impressed by flares in general rather than the number lit. Sidestepping the pro/anti flare issue within an oldskool/new school framework for just a sec - because as my mate Psile has found out during some of his patented forum research, no one really cares to be honest - apparently the flare show, and the attached negative chanting about the FFA, was meant as some sort of protest. Protest against what you may ask? Surely they should all be grateful that the FFA is running such a tight ship, and soccer - sorry, football - is now sailing into the bright blue waters of the future, having dispensed most effectively with all the evils that were plaguing the local game - in simpler terms, the NSL/ethnics clubs were scurvy, and the FFA has delivered a truckload nutritious limes full of Vitamin C and everyone's feeling absolutely chipper.

Anyway, so despite everything going absolutely gangbusters, just like they wanted, it turns out that some Victory fans aren't completely happy with he current arrangement after all. They're pissed off with the FFA not allowing them to do whatever they feel like, or even some of what they feel like. Apparently there's all these rumblings abut stanbding, chanting, 'atmosphere' and 'supporter culture' that they're all very annoyed about. Something also about 'Home End Memberships', which seems self-explanatory at first but is probably something really complex and almost certainly evil.

So in the interests of a free, public, and secular education, let me explain it to them in terms they hopefully understand. The NSL was bad. It had flares, violence, and people who were not welcoming of others. You said this yourselves. You were pleased that there was a new regime and a new league which would get rid of all that, and which would bolster soccer's standing in the commumity, and it has, remakably so. You know this is true because you have been telling the doubters and oldskool recalcitrants whenever they dare to post something contrary to the glorious New World Order. Of course, in order to succeed, the new regime had to crush everything that had come before. And it has. And you were glad.

But what's this? Now you're against corporate football? You want to stand on terraces? You want a certain air of volitility to exist? So what you're now saying is, what you wanted to get rid of was not all those things like violence, flares and all those things which you said were holding back the game, but rather making sure that it was merely transposed to an Anglo-Celtic friendly/dominated environment, where the full display of other cultures was gone, and there was only the appearance of people who looked dififferent. In essence, wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?

When the FFA was set the task of creating a new 'successful' competition, there were a number of options it could take. One stood out as what not to do - what had come before. One also stood out as what should be done - the AFL. The AFL over the past 30 odd years in particualr has destroyed the once vibrant supporter culture which existed in Victorian Aussie Rules, and reaped the untold benefits. So cheersquads are only a fraction of the size they used to be, colour and dynamacism in the outer are at best AFL and sponsor approved, and at worst negligible anyway, and teams are indistuinguishable from one another, except for the colour of their guersneys (no wonder why AFL fans make such a racket about that - they don't have much else left do they?). The money rolls in, attedances and memberships are at record levels, and therefore eveything's just peachy. The A-League is more or less the same thing, with the benefit of a clean slate the AFL would die for.

So rather than being ungrateful and petulant sods, you should probably just buy your season ticket, official merch, Foxtel subscription, set your home page to www.mvfc.com.au, and bask in the glory of getting what you wished for. Or else build a time machine and go back to when the NSL was still semi-viable and support that instead. It's probably time for me to shut up. Because no matter how long I go for, nothing will come close to the summation of the so called protest by Jubai1 off the main Sydney FC forum, who has certainly put it best.


Meanwhile in FFA towers:

FFA Suit 1: "So, Basil, where are we with those Northern Terrace chaps in Melbourne, any progress?"

FFA Suit 2: "Well, Sir Edward, negotiations have taken a turn for the worse, I'm afraid."

Sir Edward: "Not hostage taking surely?"

Basil: "No Sir Edward, a number of them attended a trial match against Green Gully and, well, they......um.."

Sir Edward: " Come on man, don't stand there blubbering like a Marinator, out with it"

Basil: "Well, they lit flares and sang rude songs about us"

Sir Edward: "Good Lord, are there no depths to which they'll sink?, these scoundrels and ruffians"

Basil: " It appears they have no shame sir, whatever shall we do?"

Sir Edward: " What can we do? Their damnable tifo culture is just too powerful, we have to give in to their demands, what do they want?"

Basil: " I have a list here.... um,....I think we might need a translator, It seems to be in foreign, are they foreign?, something about 'fully sik' whatever that is"

Sir Edward: "Just give them whatever they want, before they start chanting about us again"

Basil: "Yes, Sir Edward"

Sir Edward: "Now, more importantly did you get our Wallabies tickets? That Lote chap's a bit dusky for my taste buy by Jove he can play, eh Basil?"