Friendly Result - West Adelaide 0 South Melbourne 2

So, everyone happy now? A first clean sheet during this pre-season since our very first hit out against Moreland City late last year.

Look, I don't know anything about what happened last night except for what few snippets have been reported, which is basically, 0-0 at halftime, 2-0 to us at full time, and Manny Aguek scored both goals late. No details about starting elevens, quality of the opposition, etc.

So, on to round 1 this Friday at Kingston Heath, against a Bentleigh Greens side which a few days ago in the Community Shield reportedly easily took care of an overweight and unfit Heidelberg side seemingly still recovering from its championship.

If you want to talk about brushing off the cobwebs, take a look at that long, unwieldy sentence, bloody hell.

Cruising

FIXTURE THIS!
The 2019 NPL senior men's fixture came out some time last week. There was some good news for South fans: we're guaranteed* 3.5 home league matches in the first half of the season, an increase of half a home game on 2018's offering. The uncertainty factor comes from South being unable to say exactly when or where its round seven home against Green Gully will be played. 

But at least we get a home game early on this time around, a round two affair against Dandenong City. Not sure why a round one home game couldn't have also been fixtured considering our traditional grand prix and athletics affiliated home ground access issues, but I'm sure there's a really good reason for it not happening; there always is. 

In terms of what the other clubs are doing, it's more of the same for the most part. Kingston are sticking with Monday nights. Most other clubs are going for Friday or Saturday nights, while Gully seem to have considered their Friday night experiment a bust, and are going back to Saturday afternoons. The recently promoted Dandenong City and Altona Magic are doing Friday nights and Saturday nights respectively. By comparison, our club's persistence with Sunday afternoon kickoff is the height of civilised quaintness.

As usual, I've written up our fixture on the blog. It's probably chock full of mistakes, but what are you going to do about it? Go to another website there and get the info from there? You think by doing that you'll be both better informed, and crash the blog's advertising yield? Well you'd be wrong on both counts, but whatever, it's your life.

*not a guarantee

No friendly - Maybe friendly - Future friendly
An article posted to the Greek section of the Neos Kosmos website said that we were due to play a pre-season friendly at Lakeside last Saturday afternoon against Geelong. Lucky for me I asked the club on Twitter whether this was actually happening (in a manner of speaking), and they quickly replied with no; my subsequent mail is that Geelong cancelled some days before the friendly was due, and that for whatever reason that info didn't make it to the person responsible for the article. These things happen.

The same article says we're going to play Moreland City at Lakeside on Wednesday evening, but geez, you'd want to check your local guides for confirmation of such, because you might want to go check out the Shaft/Super Fly double feature at the Astor instead.

In a different Neos Kosmos article, also in Greek, we have what may be considered confirmation that we'll be visiting West Adelaide in February as part of our pre-season preparations. The game will also be the official opening of West Adelaide's new facility, which looks pretty snazzy.

I listened to the new iteration of South Radio so you didn't have to even though you probably did anyway
Keep in mind that this is me commenting on this matter as a long time listener of many kinds of radio, including being a reasonably dedicated listener of the previous version of South Radio, and certainly not me commentating as a radio industry veteran of four episodes of my own show co-hosted on the same network. In summary:

• It's slicker than the previous version of South Radio, which was to be expected, especially when you have George Donikian dominating or directing proceedings.
• Related to this, the show had the kind of awkward banter that comes with making a show that's basically a pilot episode going out to a much larger potential audience than the old show would have done. Thus the 'banter' was affected by no longer being informed by the pre-existing friendships that the former South Radio cast had - and that includes this audience member being 'in' on many of the in-jokes - and which was also a way for members of the then South media team to let their professional guards down.
• There was quite a bit of content dedicated to the A-League bid, but nothing new. After having been promised at a members' meeting during the season itself that there would be more information revealed to the public as the various deadlines approached, nothing happened. Bill Papastergiadis suggested again during this show that they would release more information. I'll believe it when I see it, not that any of that matters.
• There was quite a bit on the culture and history of the club and how great it is.
• There was a little bit on the powerchair team, which I would like to hear more of in future. 
• There was nothing that I can recall on new signings or any such things.
• There was an obligatory shout out to South of the Border. I thank David Henning for recognising this blog's ongoing importance to... something. Shall we call it sublime-pettiness? Arch-contrarianism? You-can't-handle-the-truth-ism? But I must admit, it was nice to reminisce about the social club's official opening in 2017, and the geekiest cutting of a ceremonial ribbon anyone could think of, back when I was still if not friends with certain people, than at least on friendly terms. Ah, that's where this blog's importance lies: adolescent woe-is-me-ism! 

Over time I expect the show to become less stilted, and even if the shadow of the club's oversight will always be there, I imagine I'll be listening in most weeks. Someone close to these things suggested to me that I call in during a show, to which I demonstrated the likely outcome should I choose to do so.

Speaking of South and FNR, tomorrow night from around 6:30 there'll be an A-League bid special. 

Join us from 6.30pm on Monday night for an FNR #ALeague Expansion Special!

Representatives from Team11 and South Melbourne will be in studio, while the interstate bids will join us over the phone.

Call on (03) 9944 9999 or send us a tweet with questions to any of our bidders. pic.twitter.com/FY0PJEZzDP

— Football Nation Radio (@FNR_Radio) December 2, 2018

The Western Melbourne/Region/Universe bid people won't be there, but it might be worth a listen anyway, just in case someone says something mildly interesting. It could happen.

2019 SMFC senior squad roster as of 2/12/2018
Not much news this week on the signings front. Backup keeper Rory Brian has signed at Preston in State League 1 North-West.

Signed

• Dean Bereveskos (Bonnyrigg White Eagles)
• Kristian Konstantinidis (signed until end of 2019)
• Nick Krousoratis (Green Gully)
• Perry Lambropoulos (Port Melbourne)
• Brad Norton (signed until end of 2019)
• Gerrie Sylaidos (Northcote)

Seen hanging around pre-season training

• Luke Adams
• Manny Aguek
• Alistair Bray
• Ben Djiba
• George Howard
• Giordano Marafioti
• Giuseppe Marafioti
• Jake Marshall
• Leigh Minopoulos
• Nikola Roganovic
• Tim Mala

Holiday in Cambodia (It's tough, kid, but it's life)

• Marcus Schroen 

Rumoured

• Visa player no. 1 (English striker)
• Visa player no. 2 (Canadian midfielder)

Out

• Rory Brian (Preston)
• Matthew Foschini (Oakleigh)
• Christos Intzidis (who knows)
• Milos Lujic (Oakleigh)
• Oliver Minatel (who knows)

Unknown / MIA / Assumed dead from 2018

• Josh Hodes
• Iqi Jawadi
• Ndumba Makeche
• Andrew Mesourouni
• Will Orford

Plates! - Social club (and friends) artefact Wednesday

South Melbourne Hellas' commemorative plate, currently in storage while
we await the building of the social club. Photo: Paul Mavroudis.

Here's one that should have been posted a lot earlier. A Philips Soccer League commemorative china plate from the earliest years of the National Soccer League, with the contemporary logos of the then participating clubs. Quite a few of these plates seem to have survived the decades since they were released circa 1977/78 - at least that appears to be my impression based upon the 'Australian soccer before the A-League' Facebook group and the soccer public's general familiarity with these plates. Made by Coalport Fine Bone China or some such - a company which according to Wikipedia was absorbed into the Wedgewood group even before these plates were made - these plates are pleasing to look at, and are a real snapshot of the pluralist enterprise that was the National Soccer League at the time. The first photo shown here is of the plate belonging to our very own South Melbourne Hellas, and which once had pride of place (or something akin to that) in one of the glass cabinets which made up our museum space in the old social club.

Photo of a commemorative plate sent to us by 'Lakeside Spy'.

The photo of the second plate shown here was sent to South of the Border by a mysterious correspondent known only as 'Lakeside Spy'. Lakeside Spy's plate is also in its original box, and includes a sticker on its surface with 'A VICKHOAD 705' on it, which I'm not sure of the meaning of. While the plates come from a limited release of 750 - and are numbered as such - I would guess, having not seen the South Melbourne one in the flesh for some years now, that such a number would be on the bottom of the plate. Both photos shown here, as well photos I've seen from other people who have these in their collection, all seem to be in good condition, with the plate in the original box.

The third photo here is from the aforementioned 2015 auction.

Less common as far as I can tell is for the attendant paperwork to be included in such photos - certainly, I don't recall those elements as being part of the South Melbourne set. While I believe they hold considerable value from an Australian soccer perspective, it's harder for a non-specialist like me to place a monetary value on them Antiques Roadshow style. An auction last year which valued two of these plates and some attendant materials at just $40 only managed to raise $30. Yet on a Gumtree advertisement someone is or was attempting to sell two of these plates for $350.

This week, last week, whatever

Halfway to the real thing

We get an early chance to add to the silverware collection this Friday, with the inaugural Community Shield game to be played against Melbourne Knights this Friday at Knights Stadium. Of course if we win the game, who knows where the trophy will end up, but that's a better problem to have than its opposite.

I did consider asking the people that went over to Adelaide last week to bring back a social club if there was a spare one hanging about, but that would have been a stupid thing to do. The penalty for the extra baggage would have been murder.

Pie floaters, Farmers' Union Iced Coffee, and lazing by the hotel pool.

Praise be to Tiamat the Destroyer that I didn't end up in Adelaide after all. That whole Adelaide thing seemed to just pass by without much fanfare, didn't it? Yes, it's 'only' pre-season, but compared to the usually more thorough media service we've all become accustomed to, not much seemed to make it to those who didn't cross the border. For the record, we lost the first game against West Adelaide 2-1, with the last kick of the game, and lost the second game against Adelaide Blue Eagles 1-0, after being down to 10 men for a large portion of the game due to Brad Norton being sent off.

Ian Syson offered the rather biased (self-admission) observation that new attacking acquisition Andy Brennan didn't look at all out of place; another fan mentioned that Nikola Roganovic played 90 minutes against Blue Eagles; and that in he first game, we spurned quite a few chances. You can read the club's report of the trip here.

Comings and goings
Speaking of Roganovic, the word on the street is that Peter Gavalas has been confirmed as first choice keeper. As unpalatable as that may to some people out there (and in here), the point is now ti remember the following things:

• That we've shown a lot of faith in Chris Taylor to make the right calls, and so far the results suggest he's usually on the money.
• That Taylor is willing to make the change if he feels his keeper is not playing up to scratch (though opinions on whether the likely backup, Chris Maynard, is better are open to debate)
• Gavalas did win the 2013 goalkeeper if the award, and regardless of the mistakes he made, was a lot better in that year than in 2012. 

It's also my understanding that James Musa is gone, though the club has yet to make any official announcement on that matter. Does that leave us a bit thin depth wise in defence? Probably, but we'll see how the club responds to that situation as the year goes on, I think it's fair to say that we had a pretty blessed run with injuries last year, especially when team needed to be rotated through the crowded mid-season schedule.

Another signing is midfielder Jake Barker-Daish, a former Gold Coast United anbd Adelaide United player, as well as an Olyroo. Apart from still being young, I know next to nothing about this player other than what's been put out in the official press. A couple of people seemed quite enthusiastic about this signing, so I'm interested to see how he goes.

South and Syson off to Adelaide. I'm not going. Not sure about Musa.

Tomorrow, as part of its somewhat peripatetic pre-season, South Melbourne Hellas will travel to Adelaide for the first time in 11 years. While over there, the team will play a game on Friday night against West Adelaide Hellas as a curtain raiser to what seems to be the SA version of the Super Cup, and will follow that up with a game against Adelaide Blue Eagles on Sunday.

As noted earlier, it's unfortunate that I won't be in Adelaide this week, but Ian Syson of the Neos Osmos blog will be there, and he may live blog one or both matches depending on his mood and other vagaries of the universe. If any body else ends up over there, or is even by random chance a local who just wants to do a quick (or lengthy) report, send us a note.

But what about James Musa?
Someone else apart from myself that may not be in Adelaide is James Musa. There are reports that the defender has left (or will leave) to pursue an offer in the United States, I'm guessing in the second tier. As Musa seems to rarely update his Facebook status, and nor has there been any news that I've been able to find on the rest of the relevant parts of the net (ie, Yellow Fever forums), so there's very little to go on, apart from:

• an Smfcboard post from a source close to the team.
• the fact that Musa didn't play at all during the friendly against Bulleen Lions last week, though our scout says there was nothing preventing him from doing so,
• and one fan letting me know beforehand that 'we lost a key player to america - don't know who'.

 No news from the official South channels either, so I'm assuming this was not a planned move from anyone within the club.

Some news from recentish times

AGM on tomorrow
Just a reminder that the 2014 (not a typo) AGM will be held tomorrow at Lakeside, in the Presidents Room, 7:00PM. Lot of interesting discussion to be had, and what's more, since the surgeon and I agreed to hold off on laser surgery for a couple of months or so, even I might be able to make an appearance.

SMFC TV one step closer to being a gated community
As some of you have already noted, SMFC TV has moved to the Aurora Channel on Foxtel. While Channel 31's free to air future seems to be doomed, it's still disappointing to me that we couldn't see out the rest of Channel 31's tenure on free to air television. Aurora is basically pay television's community station, and while those who have Foxtel will be able to automatically record each episode, those of us without pay television (either because of cost, not enough interest in their programming, or because Fox own those chemical plants in Syria) will have to make do the with the internet and youtube product.

We're going to Adelaide!
Well, not me, I have other already established commitments. But the team is. They'll be playing West Adelaide Hellas on Friday 6th February, 6:15PM, at Adelaide Shores Football Centre in West Beach, as the first match of an double header, I think South Australia's version of the super cup. Then on Sunday we'll be playing Adelaide Blue Eagles at 2:00PM, at the Marden Sports Complex. Safe travels to all those making the trip over there, and hopefully someone can send in some colourful reports.

Community Shield
We've also been fixtured to play in the inaugural FFV Community Shield game, against last year's Dockerty Cup winner Melbourne Knights. The game will be at Knights Stadium on Friday February 13th.

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!
Some wonderfully sensationalist anti-sockah writing in the Hun recently. Basically, Little Athletics had the venue booked well in advance for their annual carnival, but the decision of the State Sports Centres Trust to resurface the grass on the arena and thus put out the Little Athletics people has not gone unnoticed by our citizen journalist, who's managed to rustle up a bunch of surly looking youngsters staring down the barrel of the camera with their arms folded at the injustice of it all.

Now I certainly feel for these kids, because they've obviously been put out by this decision, but the tone of the article which seeks to either directly or indirectly blame it on soccer (and therefore us) is so stupid it's mind boggling; unless of course, the article wasn't written by someone with an anti-soccer agenda. Did South get asked for comment? It doesn't seem like it. So no mention of the club's long tenure at the ground, no mention of the damage caused by the shotput, hammer and javelin on the turf during our winter season, and of course no mention of the fact that we have to share with athletics while Collingwood and Eddie McGuire get whatever they want.

The return of Sir Peter, of the Order of the Knights of the Raised Middle Finger
We're apparently considering re-signing Peter Gavalas out of his premature retirement as our first choice keeper. It seemed to be out of him and Nikola Roganovic, and Slippery Pete's may well have done enough to get Taylor's approval. This decision has caused some consternation not only for Gavalas' on field capabilities - is he a great keeper for this level, who managed to be keeper of the year in 2013, or is he actually a bum on the verge of another costly blunder? - but there's also his demonstrated lack of respect for the supporters and the club. Now of course this has set in train discussions about whether one should trust an experienced and championship winning coach to make the right kind of personnel decisions, or demanding the board intervene and overrule the decision. This could be a fun season.

Technical director signed
One step closer to meeting the NPL criteria by hiring a standalone technical director, one Sean Gale.

Some in-season fixtures changed
Among the changes

• The away game against North Geelong has been moved back a couple of hours.
• The games against Bentleigh Greens have been switched. We'll now be travelling to Kingston Heath first, and hosting them second.
• The home game against the Knights, originally scheduled for the Greek Orthodox Good Friday, has been moved to the Saturday afternoon of that week.
• The Pascoe Vale away game has been moved to Saturday evening.
• Minor kickoff time changes to other home games.

The word is that there could be more changes, with the club looking to move some games to Sundays at 5pm. The club claims that during their online survey, Friday night games were the preferred timeslot of respondents, with Sunday evenings also being in demand. For my part, I'm in the Sunday afternoon camp, but it'll be interesting to see what happens, and whether the pro-Friday night crowd are proven right with improved attendances.

Then: 2008 seems so long ago. I wasn't even using
a clipboard as a makeshift mouse pad back then.

And now: In 2015, I have a lot of books packed away
due to a pending move to Sunshine, but books
somehow keep proliferating on my work space.

Deathbed
Disappointing news here, folks. My Benq laptop is nearly dead: it was bought by my littlest brother for some ridiculous over the top price nearly ten years ago, probably Centrecom in Sunshine; discarded by him within about 18 months; used by me for much plainer duties than his planned extravagant multimedia pursuits; converted from a dreadful Vista machine into first an Ubuntu, then a steadfast and reliable Linux Mint unit; and now finally, after many years of long service to the causes of education, Hattrick and especially South of the Border, it's time for it to retire to the great recharge outlet in the sky. Unfortunately, like all good players, it's had a noticeable slowdown in recent times; it's not as sharp as it used to be;, it finds itself dawdling where it used to sprint; and even its once sure touch has begun to desert it. And let's not forget the lack of an 'escape' key, after I dropped a book on it and broke it. While of course I've used other computers to write up items for the blog - various machines at Victoria University's St Albans, Footscray Park, Flinders Street and maybe even Queens Street campuses for example - the vast majority of this blog's outpourings of overbearing grief and negativity have been done on this machine. There was a trip to Hobart back in 2011, as well as non-South related trips to Canberra in 2013 and Sydney last year. So fare thee well, Benq Joybook A52. At least you got to go out on a high, with a championship under your belt. A pity that even though you lasted so long, you never managed to see South get back into the top flight. Here's hoping your successor can achieve even half your longevity and service. In the mean time, dear readers, please bear with me as I try to get used to the smaller keys on my new machine (named Charlene. Why? It just is, OK?),

Two games in two days - West Adelaide tonight, Hobart Olympia tomorrow

Tonight, we continue our 3XY Cup campaign with the second of our two group games, this time against West Adelaide Hellas. The match will once again be at Olympic Village. Kickoff is at 7:50.

Tomorrow, at Port Melbourne's SS Anderson Reserve, we play Hobart Olympia in a friendly game. Kickoff is at 5:00PM.

Entry to both matches is free.

New segment - Social Club Artefact Wednesdays - 1966 West Adelaide pennant

Back during the early part of 2010, I (along with Mr Valkanis, Steve from Broady, and a couple of other people) packed away (in a bit of a hurry I might add, and look how that worked out, sigh) stuff that was in the social club. A lot of this stuff will be familiar to you, my South Melbourne audience, but a lot of it won't. That's because it was often hidden or kept inside small office spaces or alcove rooms.

While the camera I used to document some of these items is not really up to the task, as is my skill as a photographer, I thought I may as well release an image or so a week, just for the sake of it. Hopefully by the time I run out of usable or interesting photos, we'll have our social club up and running, and we can all share in their glory. Over to you Ministers Delahunty and Guy.

For the most part, if the item itself is self-explanatory, I won't be adding too much in the way of elaboration. Chances are that I won't know much about a lot the objects anyway. Some times it won't even be social club objects, but stuff that was lying around all over the place, maybe even stuff that other people have posted on the net, so if you have a weird or unusual object you'd like to show off to the great South Melbourne public, give us a buzz.

I was going to start off with another artefact, but in honour of West Adelaide Hellas' trip across to Victoria for the 3XY Cup, I've decided to go with this one instead.

In a box in one of the back rooms there was a lot of stuff, including a lot of pennants, usually as part of the custom of exchanging pennants after friendly or other matches.

Quite why we have a 1966 South Australian state league championship pennant (see above photo) I'm not sure, and I hope that it wasn't left behind by accident and that the West Adelaide people still have their own copy. 1966 was the year of West Adelaide's first state championship.

As an aside, the material and design bears at least some similarity to the pennant on the left, which I got from one Pave Jusup, a Melbourne Croatia committeeman, who put this up on his twitter feed. The provenance of it was unknown until one helpful West Adelaide person noted that it was from the Australia Cup (a tournament that we always seemed to underachieve in) - the tournament apparently being held at Hindmarsh stadium that year. Croatia probably qualified for the tournament by finishing as runner up in the Dockerty Cup that year to Slavia. But what was the score from this Australia Cup tie?

Update - West Adelaide - Croatia pennant mystery solved, properly this time.
This is where it pays off to do your due diligence in these matters, and for that I apologise. At least one of our regular readers was able to do the hard yards and set the record straight, and we thanks MelbCro for supplying the correct information as to the provenance of this article's second pennant. 

Actual 2014 Soccer News (instead of history and books)

Hip, hip, hooray and all that.

I'll Swap You My Rixon Card, For Your Lujic Card
Well, there goes one of the worst kept secrets in the league, and I don't care what certain club apologists have to say. With Luke Hopper pretty much out the door already (visa issues), and with Trent Rixon back to Northcote, we needed a striker or two badly. So, now we have 2013's leading VPL scorer (from the championship winning team no less) and recently discarded Wellington Phoenix temp worker (ah, the perils of the increased casualisation of the workforce) Milos Lujic on our books.

I think that's an improvement, and it's in keeping with our 'Let's buy the cunts that fuck us up from teams that seem to have been doing OK over the past couple of seasons' policy (it's in our constitution, have a look yourself if you don't believe me), as well as our 'Juniors? What are juniors?' policy. So, who's going to partner Lujic up front? Or if we play only Lujic up front, who's going to replace him if he gets hurt? Baggio Yousif? He's gone to Hume. Nick Jacobs? We could always try Gianni De Nittis again.

It's the Hellenic Cup for When You're Not Having a Hellenic Cup (or a Bouzis Cup)
A little while back we mentioned that Heidelberg were planning to have a pre-season tournament, with an assortment of Greek teams, including interstate ones. Well, while details were sketchy then (and for those of us who lived through its horror, we entertained the possibility of having it turn into the farce that was the Bouzis Cup), it looks like this is actually real, and brilliantly broadbased and compelling. Even better, it's sponsored by one of our favourite organisations, media or otherwise, 3XY Radio Hellas. Without looking too far ahead, if we win, they would have to mention it on their sports program, wouldn't they?

Anyway, it looks like it's four groups of three. From the VPL, Northcote is missing. The rumours of Sydney Olympic coming have turned out not to be true, as they'd probably (and rightly) prefer to take part in the NSWNPL pre-season tournament. In their place is Hobart Olympia, though I'm not sure how it will effect their supposed plans to play us.

But more interestingly, back from the grave is West Adelaide Hellas. If you thought (like I once did, before being set straight on the matter), that West Adelaide were dead following the 1999 NSL season, then are you in for a shock. The junior wing of the club survived, eventually re-establishing a senior team, and after many tough years has fought its way back into South Australia's top flight this year.

They've been placed in the competition's group of death along with ourselves and Heidelberg. Click the image for a bigger version, or head to the fixtures page on the blog for our group games. It's going to be a bit of a fucking hike in the middle of the week to that joint, and even the attempt to get home on a Friday night won't be pleasant, but at least it's free entry.

Random Dispatch From The Tenth Circle of Hell
Steve From Broady, back yesterday from his holiday down the coast, where I assume he spent most of his time impressing hot chicks with his radical/tubular/gnarly surfing moves, went down to training and had this to say.

Boys looked good at training last night

Which is all well and good, except that I'm fucking well sick of hearing shit like that. I want them to look good on the field - and by look good I mean score a shitload of goals and strike the fear of (insert your preferred deity here) the hearts of the opposition.

Cool, We Just Saved Ourselves $9,000,000!
So, Melbourne Heart have been bought out. The minority stake (20%) by that Bart Campbell/Melbourne Storm dude, the other 80% by Manchester City. Cue all the jokes about Northern Spirit and Rangers.

New name, new colours, new logo. Goodbye Heart. Presumably goodbye wheelie bins. I'm taking this as a franchise that has folded and is being replaced by something else. If the wheelie bins aren't there, then as far as I'm concerned the very fabric of that organisation has ceased to exist. As one person noted on the interwebs (and which I'm stealing without his permission)

For an organisation that didn't want to sell out their name, colours and identity to another club, they sure were quick to sell out their name, colours and identity to another club.

But maybe it's not up to me to decide. Just maybe, it's for the diminishing support of the Heart itself to make decisions on such things as perceptions of continuity and allegiance - that's if it is a decision, and not something felt, you know, in that now hollow cavity that used to hold their their, ahem, hearts (only time I'm using that joke).

So what I want to know now is, are they finally going to be the team for the south-eastern suburbs? The team for old soccer people? How much are the real Melbourne City from South Kingsville going to extort from the new owners for the name? Can we have two sky-blue teams in the A-League, or will that be too confusing for the children? Will supporters of other EPL franchises be put off supporting

And what of poor little South Melbourne? Have our dreams of a return to Australian top-flight glory just been shattered into a million tiny pieces, again? How many of our small remaining flock are about to run for the exits now that our national league ambitions have been denied twice in the space of a year? Oh the pain, the pain of it all!

See you at the games next week folks. Fuck I need to see something resembling soccer being played by a real team in blue*.

*that only fully adopted the colour in a mid-1960s change of, ahem, heart, lol, chuckle, snort. OK, I lied, and I used the same lame joke twice. You try being funny and innovative when it doesn't come natural to you.

2014 season getting closer! Hurrah!

I'm Bored, You're Bored
This week has seen the senior squad begin the long road to avoiding our longest league title drought - in other words, pre-season training has started. After missing out on the supposed seven year itch omen last year, our record of the eight years it took to win a title after leaving the state leagues in 1976 stands to fall if we don't pull our finger out this season.

Player Points System Is Here!
Well, well, well. Here we go. We get 275 points this season, fewer in subsequent seasons, unless the PFA pull their finger out and do something major. Once again, here's the gist. Everyone is worth 10 base points, and then gets points added or taken away based on a whole bunch of criteria. In a nutshell, here's what's 'good' and 'bad'.


Players you'll tend to want include:

• Those who came up through your junior system.
• Local players.
• Players who are 25 or under.
• Players you already have.

Players you don't want as much:

• Players brought up through the junior wings of other clubs.
• Foreign players.
• Players over 25.
• Players from other clubs.

Now, a very important addition to all this is the fact that you will now only be able to have two visa players. They'll cost you 20 points at a minimum. The FFV's explanatory PDF says:

Any player who is not an Australian Citizen, or does not have Permanent Residency status, is considered a Visa Player.

Which should make things easier and more lenient than I expected. There;s also scope for what they call a 'marquee' player, who is described as"

who was playing in a fully professional league the previous season, and subsequently signs for an NPL club.

Lastly, you also get bonus points in your cap for having players get promoted to the A-League or an Australian based pathway. It does not appear to count if your player gets sold overseas first.

So, Who's Gonna Save Us? (and will we come in under the points cap?)
Well, pinching a whole bunch of Northcote players didn't work. Pinching a whole bunch of Thunder players didn't work, though it did get us closer. How about getting players from both of those teams!

Re-signed/Apparently sticking around

• Dimi Tsiaras - despite getting increasingly limited game time, has re-signed. Will provide decent cover even if he's not in the starting eleven.
• Nick Epifano - fell away badly toward the end of last season, so will be interesting to see if he finds the form that initially made him one of the more valuable mid-season acquisitions.
• Tim Mala - probably the weakest of the Dandenong acquisitions in 2013, but beggars can't be choosers. 
• Tyson Holmes - signed a two year deal. Steve from Broady will be happy.
• Brad Norton - has been signed up for our 2014 plans.
• Iqi Jawadi - apart from being one of the Dandenong Thunder boys, played in the friendly the 21s played against Selangor late last year.
• Shaun Kelly - will need to adapt to a new partner. Did well again last season, but Bran going will mean that perhaps more attention will be paid again to his performances

New players/invited to train/rumoured

• Michael Eagar - defender from Northcote. Dual citizenship helps his and our cause when it comes to visa spots.
• Matthew Theodore - midfielder from Dandenong Thunder. This was apparently a done deal last season (or as much as deals can possibly be done back during that period of time, which resembles more the primordial ooze than anything concrete and stable). Young, lots of experience at this level.
• Anthony Giannopoulos - after having spent the second half of last year at Sunshine George Cross in state league one, where he apparently played well predominantly as a left back (as opposed to his usual under 21s forward position), he's apparently been training with the side. Whether he'll be able to make the step up is anyone's guess.
• More players of unknown provenance.
• Kieran Gonzalez - Green Gully's goalkeeper has been thrown up as a possible replacement for the retired Peter Gavalas.
• Milos Luic - Northcote's star forward had been thrown up as a possible acquisition, pending him not being picked up by an A-league team. While his initial attempt to get on Sydney FC's books didn't work out, it looks like he's got at least a temporary spot at Wellington Phoenix.

Who's gone so far? (and who else may be going?)
Remembering that it is pre-season, and that there are new rules to play by this season, it's a scenario that's been complicated beyond the usual 'can we afford him/does he want to play for us/is he under contract' shenanigans.

Now we also have to deal with a 275 player points cap (which will probably be reduced in the coming seasons), which penalises teams who recruit heavily, rely on visa players, and generally favour older, non-own club products to younger, crafted by your own hand players.

Definite outs

• Bryan Bran, supposedly to FC Chabab, an ethnic Moroccan team playing in the Dutch third division (which is a recent attempt to bridge the gap between amatuer and professional football there, or so Wikipedia says.
• Trent Rixon, gone back to Northcote. A shame, but not entirely unexpected.
• Alan Kearney - apparently to Dandenong Thunder. For whatever reason, looked like he was falling out of favour once the new signings came in during last year's mid-season transfer window. The limit of visa spots has not helped his claim I would think.
• Peter Gavalas, retired, a big hole to fill, whether you rated him or not.
• Fernando De Moraes, retired. Fare thee well, Nando.

In the maybe/likely/fucked if I know pile

• Luke Hopper - with only two visa spots available (and one of those being taken up by Shaun Kelly, the other probably to Nick Soolsma), he looks like the one that will miss out. Or will he? 
• Carl Recchia - supposedly going to Pascoe Vale - disappointing as he was allegedly paid throughout 2013 despite missing the entire season due to his knee injury. Though quite how much value he'll provide a season after a serious knee injury and at his age is anyone's guess.
• Renco Van Eeken - almost certainly gone back home. His chronic osteitis pubis problem is probably where our downward slide started in the first half of the season.
• Nicky Soolsma - the info on this keep changing, but the assumption at the moment is that he'll stay
• Chris Maynard  - I'm hearing disturbing things related to a shit attitude towards training. I hope this is not true, as a) we need a keeper b) I would rather have one of our youth products make the grade if he's good enough and c) I think it's fairly well known what Chris Taylor's attitudes to a slack attitude to training are.
• Rhys Meredith - Have heard he's gone back to Queensland. A pity, and a little bit of a surprise I think. At one point I thought that if either of the two Queenslanders was going to win a spot here, it would have been Rhys over Tyson, but the latter's late season form really turned a corner.
• James Karvelis - the young defender got a few games last season and actually did OK, but if he stays it looks like he'll be a back up player again.
• Nick Jacobs - despite my love of this player, have the gut feeling he's destined to be remembered as a future SMFC trivia question for his winning goal against Southern Stars in 2012. Still young though, so hopefully he's still deemed worthy of overcoming his injury problems and giving it a real crack.
• Matko Budimir - the big defender probably should have got more game time last year, but for whatever reasons didn't. Not sure what his future holds. Would like to see him given a chance, but I'm not sure it's in his best interests to stick around.
• Baggio Yousif - apparently left for Hume. Scored a ton of goals and seemed to take up a lot of the on field leadership slack after Giannopoulos left the 21s last year. While 21s football is not senior football by any stretch, I'm actually disappointed to see him go.
• Erdem Ozcagli - assume he will be staying.
• Andrew Cartanos - got more senior game time than most from the 21s last season, but I'm not personally convinced by him. Would love to be proven wrong.

So when do we get to start seeing them in action?
No firm dates for friendly or trial matches have come forth yet, though some other clubs are apparently getting into gear. But on that note. here's what one of the peoples on the old smfcboard posted recently:


George Katsakis interviewed by George Karandonis on Rythmos 1656 just before where he stated Heidelberg are conducting a tournament that starts on Sunday Jan 26th.

Confirmed teams:

• South
• Heidelberg
• Oakleigh
• Bentleigh
• Port
• Sydney Olympic
• West Adelaide 

 Nearly confirmed:

• Hobart Olympic 
  

Declined to participate:

•  Northcote City

Further to that information, my mail is that Hobart Olympia will not participate in this tournament, but will be heading down to Melbourne to play a couple of games against us. Another chance for Jake Vandermey to show his worth against his old mob?

It's a pity we don't get an interstate trip, as was mooted towards the end of last year, but since Melbourne is the centre of the Greek-Australian universe, it makes sense for everyone else to come to us.

Of course, this hasn't been confirmed as of yet beyond the radio broadcast, so expect some changes. One of the Football Anarchy Sydney Olympic fans has pointed out that the NSWPL pre-season cup starts in the first week of February.

Quite why they're proposing to start on Sunday 26th - instead of say, starting on the night of Friday 24th, taking advantage of the whole of the Australia Day long weekend is anyone's guess. The Groundskeeper Willie of smfcboard has also noted that Olympic Village's turf is not in good nick.

Fanatic of the Week - Paul Mavroudis

So we've exhausted our stash of genuine vintage Fanatics of the Week. And I'm bored and dismayed - and just because I'm typing this up on a rainy Saturday afternoon for release on a Wednesday, it doesn't mean that I won't be bored and dismayed at the moment it's published or when you read it.


FANATIC OF THE WEEK

Saturday, 14th March, 2009

This week’s fanatic is Paul Mavroudis who likes the club because, to paraphrase Lift To Experience "we have to, not because we want to".

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NAME: Paul Mavroudis

AGE: 25.

SUBURB: In the Darkness On The Edge Of Town

INTERESTS: 'Football'; the other football; books; alternative 'music'; Wikipedia; collating statistics; blogging; providing highly educational but seldom understood pearls of wisdom on Internet forums; stopping myself from writing cliched serial killer fiction where I annihilate everyone that shits me and handing it in as part of my coursework; public transport; retro gaming; providing constructive criticism of classmates' mostly pisspoor attempts at short fiction; stickers; Fred Negro's 'Pub' strip when it isn't just St Kilda in jokes; a fair few crazy animated television shows; dessert.

FAVOURITE SOCCER CLUBS: South Melbourne.

ARE YOU A MEMBER OF SOUTH MELBOURNE?
Yes. Until the Hellas Fan Club comes in and sets everything right again, back to the way it used to be, in the Beforetime, the Long Long Ago. Soon I hope. Put us all out of our misery.

WHAT AGE DID YOU EXPERIENCE YOUR FIRST MATCH?
Probably around 9 years old, the home game against West Adelaide in season 1992/93 where we won won 4-2. They were introduced as our cousins from South Australia or something like that, hmm.

WHITE COLLARS OR BLUE?
Seriously, should it really matter?

FAVOURITE SOUTH MELBOURNE MEMORY?
The day everyone realised Acropolis Now was actually farken shithouse. Which is technically not a memory since it hasn't happened yet, as can be seen from this review of Stephen Hawking's 'Brief History of Time', which I did end up reading the entirety of, and not just get bored by page 3, thank you very much John Safran. Not that I understood all or even most of it, but I got something out of it I think, and Carl Sagan's question in the introduction to that book about why we can remember the past but not the future struck a quixotic physical and philosophical chord.

Our ability to remember past but not future also coincides with the arrow of entropy. The reason, Hawking says, is that whenever a memory is made, in either a brain or a computer, the smidgen of energy required to light up a neutron or move an electron is released as heat. Heat ---roiling, chaotic heat--- increases entropy. Memories, then, because they release heat, increases disorder, too. Entropy increases from yesterday to tomorrow. That`s why memories are made in the past --- to Hawking a more convincing explanation than the pedestrian statement that one can remember only what has already occurred." (Newsweek, January 4, 1993.)

MOST MEMORABLE GAME WATCHED?
The 2006 VPL Grand Final, because within a few seconds a whole bunch of people forgot we'd just won a championship and were more interested in throwing rocks at other people who were piggy backing for a day on the fat woman's current club in order to pursue some sort of justice for issues of blood, land, culture and history located mostly in the Balkans and who were also throwing rocks. Halcyon days.

FAVOURITE DEGRASSI MOMENT
The scene where Wheels is for some inexplicable reason wearing a Footscray guernsey.

FAVOURITE CURRENT PLAYER?
James Spanos. Doesn't even have to do anything to be part of the senior team. Doesn't make mistakes. Known by people who don't even know of the actual players.

FAVOURITE BISCUIT
Arnott's Kingston, the grownups chocolate biscuit.

BEST SOUTH MELBOURNE PLAYER EVER?
Paul Trimboli. Stupid question.

ASTERIX OR TINTIN?
Asterix, but they're both pretty cool.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT SOUTH MELBOURNE?
Oh wow, where do you begin? For starters, I like the lies. The little ones, like why we didn't wear the South Melbourne United heritage strip, to the medium ones, to the big ones, with the claims of 10,000 strong crowds at pretty much every game in the 1980s, because the people making those claims either have dementia or only went to the games with 10,000 people, and not to the games with 800 people against teams such as Brisbane Lions.

I also love the fact that we've never played in South Melbourne.

I love the hypocrisy which pours fourth constantly out of every orifice, especially with regards to the A-League and the AFL.

I love people living off past glories and thinking it's enough to last a lifetime.

I love the fans who see only what they want to see and never what's actually in front of them.

That's just the stuff off the top of my head.

WHAT DO YOU DISLIKE ABOUT SOUTH MELBOURNE?
The food could be better at times.

WOULD YOU EVER SUPPORT ANOTHER NSL TEAM?
No.

WHY?
Well, the league doesn't exist anymore, so I guess it's impossible to support another NSL team.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME PAUL!
My pleasure.

1964 championship player Jimmy Adam passes away

From the FFV site via smfcboard.

Monday 29 September 2008 

FOOTBALL Federation Victoria is saddened by the loss of one of football’s great stalwarts in James Adam. 

Known as ‘Jimmy’ to the football community, Adam arrived in Australia in 1964 after a stellar career in the United Kingdom, where he played with distinction for clubs such as Luton Town, Aston Villa, Stoke City and Falkirk. 

Adam’s first season in Australia proved a success, helping South Melbourne secure it’s second ever Victorian State League title in 1964 with a cornerstone display in his customary wing position. 

Jim continued on with the club the following season but eventually moved to George Cross where he assumed the head coach position. 

His ultimate success as a coach came in 1978, where he steered West Adelaide to the National Soccer League championship in his first and only season at the club. 

Adam passed away suddenly on Friday, at the age of 77.