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

Is anyone here not a doctor? - South Melbourne 1 Oakleigh Cannons 0

Before that incident midway through the second half with Oakleigh goalkeeper John Honos and Perry Mur and Gus Tsolakis and Aki Ionnas and Lakeside's security and seemingly whoever else happened to be within a ten kilometre radius, this was just another action-packed and fiercely fought contest between these two sides who are apparently rivals.

Now for South fans, our ego will not allow us to think of a club such as Oakleigh as being a rival in any form, let alone being close to the magnitude of our genuine long-term rivalries, but it's no secret that for many that stoic front is just that. As for Oakleigh, we all know exactly how much stock their players and top brass put in beating us, and it must kill them that they haven't beaten us at Lakeside since 2006. Indeed, I think I can still hear their whinging about the 2015 Dockerty Cup final and the 2016 grand final being played at Lakeside echoing off the hills.

That's not to say the game was of some startling quality either before or after this match's key flashpoint. South had recalled Milos Lujic and Nick Epifano from injury, while David Barca Moreno and Leigh Minopoulos were dropped to the bench. It was a mistake riddled affair from start to finish, which is not to say that it was not entertaining. But from the moment Matthew Millar found himself with just Honos to beat but pushing his shot into the post (and boy did those inflatable apples cop a beating for that miss), the game was about trying to find the worst ways to botch play in the final third.

Oakleigh relied on long range shots, and the occasional floated ball into the box which the South defense had more trouble than usual clearing. Oakleigh's best chance in the first half also came early on, when Giuseppe Marafioti found himself with just Nikola Roganovic to beat, but slammed the ball into the oncoming keeper. For South's part, it looked we were too willing to give Oakleigh time on the ball and the freedom to play through the middle. Meanwhile, we were still able to create counter attack opportunities, but were rarely clean enough or quick enough to make them count - one three-on two-opportunity in particular

Marcus Schroen, who has failed to consistently reach the heights of his barnstorming 2016 finals series so far this season and struggled particularly in this match, was subbed off at half time for Stefan Zinni. It was a good move, with Zinni's pace causing Oakleigh's defense all sorts of problems; though yes, one has to admit that the end product in the final third overall remained less than satisfactory.

At least we were more willing and/or able to prevent Oakleigh from roaming free in the midfield. We had better control of the ball, and pressed higher up the field. This led to the slightly odd tactic employed by Oakleigh of having Honos bomb the ball long to his forward line, hoping to find a mismatch or a mistake of some sort; but for the most part the South defense handled this strange tactic with ease. It was a strange tactic to employ in the frequency that the chose to use it, because Oakleigh have some good ball playing mids and forwards, and abandoning their ability to play out from the back seemed to run counter to that.

The most annoying thing by some margin for most of the match was the refereeing of Perry Mur. Usually one of my favourite officials, he had a bit of a stinker. The worst decision of the lot was early during the second half, when Lujic was released through on goal and was wrestled down by Steve Pantelidis. With Milos having won the battle of strength to get the inside lane on goal, there was no reason for him to suddenly stop when he did. It looked about as clear a foul as you could get, with the only question being whether Pantelidis would get away with only a yellow card. But Mur waved play on to the incredulity of the South crowd and match commentator Teo Pellizzeri.

The game's key incident however occurred midway through the second half. Zinni found himself streaming in on goal with only Honos to beat, but instead of shooting decided to go around the keeper. Honos managed to prevent Zinni going around, in the process collecting a stray boot in the face for his troubles. This led to Honos receiving treatment at first on the ground and eventually off the ground on the sideline. One could understand and forgive some more time than usual allowed for this, given that Honos is a goalkeeper, but the situation rapidly got out of the hand as the delay increased to about eight minutes because of some of the most midrange farcical antics I've seen at a South game in these here state leagues.

Oakleigh substitute goalkeeper Billy Akritidis waits to come on, as John Honos receives treatment on the sideline.
Photo: Peter Psarros.

It seemed pretty clear that from the length of time it was taking to see to Honos that he wasn't right and should've been subbed off. Indeed the substitute Oakleigh goalkeeper had not only warmed up but was waiting at the halfway line ready to come on. Then for goodness knows what reason and under goodness knows what authority, Oakleigh's general manager and South Melbourne fan favourite Aki Ionnas came on to the field to sort the situation out. I don't understand under what authority he was there, nor how he was allowed to stay there for as long as he was - among his I'm sure many other glorious attributes, I've never heard of Ionnas having any medical credentials. Did he have a media pass which would give him access to that part of the field? If that's what he used to make it as far onto the field as he did and into the middle of the situation, it would still be highly irregular, because he was not listed as part of the official Oakleigh match day personnel, as you can see below:

This is an extract from Oakleigh's team sheet yesterday - sourced from the full length original posted on Oakleigh's
 Facebook page -which lists all the officials for the day. Notice that Aki Ionnas' name is conspicuously absent. 

His unnecessary interference caused quite a scene. The eight minute delay led at first to annoyance and then anger in the stands. As the South players variously stood around and sat on the ground waiting for the situation to be resolved, some sort of argle-bargle took place in the middle of the grandstand between supporters of the two clubs. From a distance, that situation - apparently mostly between old men - was resolved without it getting completely out of hand, though the Clarendon Corner chant - 'for once it's not us, for once it's not us, Clarendon Corner, for once it's not us' - failed to take off as it should have.

Ionnas' interference has also been described by some people as being negligent with regards to player welfare. Surely it's the doctor's or physio's call first about whether an injured player is healthy enough to safely continue playing; and that the only people with whom that should be discussed are the relevant player, the player's coach, the referee and, at a pinch, the serving team manager - and certainly not some random onlooker with no obvious authority to interfere with the situation and no obvious medical background which would only apply in an emergency situation anyway.

While Honos managed to play on and keep reasonably well for the rest of the game - apart from some fumbles - he later went to hospital for what I assume would've been some emergency plastic surgery in order to fix his busted lip. The whole situation was beyond the ken. Here was a guy who just been accidentally kicked in the face - and who knows if he could've even had some sort of delayed concussion effects - who clearly needed immediate medical attention, and yet by some strange machinations he was compelled by even stranger individuals back out on to the field in order to help his team win a semi-professional game of football in front of a few hundred die-hards.

After all of that, South managed to settle down well enough. Nick Epifano was able to make his way into the box, and was probably unnecessarily knocked over by Oakleigh defender Janiel. I had a bad feeling about the penalty - not its justice, because it was clearly a foul, but rather whether it would be converted - but Lujic put it away nicely.

Milos Lujic sends his penalty right down the middle as a patched up John Honos dives out of the way. Photo: Peter Psarros.

At that point it was the 81st minute, but owing the to the extended Honos-related delay, there was still more than enough time for Oakleigh to get the goal back, especially against a side made up mostly of players who'd played on Thursday. The whole thing ended up going to about 98 minutes, which included the closest Oakleigh would come to a goal. A corner was played short - the marking and awareness of which was pretty by the South defense - the eventual cross deflected into the six yard box, over Roganovic, and comically into the Oakleigh player on the goal line hoping to knock the ball in, but who instead sent the ball away from goal.

Neither team was at its best, but I thought for the most part we had the better of things - especially when it mattered most, on either side of the Honos stoppage. The midfield structures improved in the second half, and considering the three games in eight days we'd had to play, we ran out the game about as well as one would have liked - though another midfield sub may have been useful to nullify Oakleigh's late surge, or to take advantage of their need to chase the game.

The win keeps us on top on close to the barest of goal difference margins from Heidelberg, who had a 2-0 win against Green Gully and look to have shaken off their momentary slump. The biggest result over the weekend was Bentleigh's 2-2 draw away to St Albans, but seeing as there are many final race teams with games in hand - often against each other - the jostling won't be clearer for some time I would think. Still, nice to keep top spot for at least one more week.

Irrelevant trivia section
The substitute goalkeeper for Oakleigh was Billy Akritidis, the son of former Channel 31 soccer commentator (and present day NPL security dude) Arthur Akritidis. Arthur Akritidis himself was a goalkeeper in South's youth team back in the 1980s.

Next game

Tiff Eliadis celebrates scoring against NTC yesterday. The SMFC Women
won 9-2 to maintain their lead at the top of the of the table. Next week the
NPL Women are away to Geelong Galaxy. Photo. Cindy Nitsos

Green Gully at Lakeside, the last in our long run of home matches. Michael Eagar is apparently is out for this one having collected five yellow cards. Kristian Konstantinidis 16 match suspension is over, and I'm led to believe he has played in the under 20s - whether he would be a straight swap, or whether Taylor would prefer to switch Foschini in there and return Mala to right back will be an interesting element of this fixture.

FFA Cup news
Draw is on Thursday. How excitement.

Around the grounds
I think we have enough data now, and it's time to move on
This was an absolute nothing game for an hour, about as pitiful advertisement as you could find not only for the NPL, but for soccer as a sport. There was no penetration, very few chances created, and no excitement. Then Port scored their weekly bomb - not from Andreas Govas, but some other bloke - and everything fell into place just as the scientific modelling said it should. Within four minutes Knights collapsed, again, and were 3-0 down, and the game was as good as done. Sure, Port coughed up a goal thanks to a careless back pass, but they made up for that error with another goal. Knights continue to get closer to the relegation playoff spot, and judging by the quality of their play on Friday, look certain to earn it. Probably best for all concerned that next week I find something else to do rather than go to Somers Street. I see there's a screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Astor on Friday. Might do that.

Final thought

@JoeGorman_89 pic.twitter.com/rfcToPzU7c

— Ante Jukić (@a_jukic) June 26, 2017