Looking ahead - South Melbourne 2 Hume City 2

Apologies for the very late and very short thing.

In just one week we went from arguing with volunteer parking attendants, to being able to park anywhere, and kids with homemade dirt bikes blowing dust into the air. The souv was good, and that's about as good as the two-week Yarraville stint was. It wasn't Yarraville's fault, mind - we've just gone back to being garbage, and borderline unwatchable. Borderline, because there are still people watching the games. More fool them. 

After taking an early lead thanks to confusion in the Hume defence more than anything we did, it was back to getting absolutely swarmed. They say why would you stand behind the goal that we're attacking, a pretty ordinary view. Well, that way you're a least further away from whatever's going on at the other end. Who can understand the lineup decisions, the sub decisions, who is liked, and who isn't. 

Anyway, we got a point. Just trudging along to the finals. Get two (or more likely now, three) stupid wins then, and no-one will care about whatever preceded it.

Next game
Bentleigh away on Saturday afternoon. My attendance at this game is unlikely, for reasons other than my disgust at recent performances.

Upload news!
Super thanks to Nick Guoth on the Australian Football Memorabilia Facebook page, who uploaded the pages of the program from the 1965 Australia Cup semi-final first leg match between South Melbourne Hellas and APIA. I have collated those pages into a PDF, and made that document available here.

Women out of the cup
Well, look. I can't say that our senior women didn't give it a good shake. Dominated the first half, had pretty much all the good chances - how many point blank chances can you have saved? - but in the end, it was a familiar story; Calder, in the cup, the end. A real shame, because in that first half, this team played as well as I've seen them play for a while now. 

Around the grounds
Spirit of the game
The spirit of the game is threatening the opposition coach that you're going to come across and break his neck. The spirit of the game is both coaches relentlessly abusing and undermining the officials. The spirit of the game is players arguing with spectators behind the fence. The spirit of the game is, apparently, Harry Noon getting paid who knows what to run around the fifth tier of Victorian soccer (north-west section), bang into people like an old school footy sniper, and barely touch the ball. Depressing, really.

Final thought
Thank you to JJ for noticing an error in my fixture list page.

Half-arsed - South Melbourne 4 St Albans 0

There's not enough data to make it a thoroughly resilient trend, but let's go with it anyway. When we play St Albans during one of their often fleeting Victorian top tier stints, it usually goes like this: the first game, usually away, usually early in the season, is a bit of a grind, but we get the job done. They're still enthusiastic, have earned a few points, and maybe put in enough credible performances that people think they won't suck as much as they're prone to doing. Then we turn up, get our win, and it starts going south for them (no pun intended). By the time they rock up to Lakeside for the return fixture, they're disheartened, weakened by defections, and either in or just above the relegation zone. Then it all comes down to whether we give enough of a toss to go full on and completely humiliate them.

Well, humiliation it was for the first half on Tuesday. Performance wise, it was nothing remarkable. It wasn't built around super build up play, neat passing, flashes of individual brilliance. It was just a case of a team with some talent grinding an opponent with a talent deficit into the dirt. There wasn't much pretty about it. The penalty shot for the opening goal was struck a solid arm trying to save it, and still went in. Two of the goals were bundled over the goal line after scrambles in the six-yard box. Only Jake Painter-Andrew's shot into the roof of the net was worthy of highlight reels, though I suppose there's also people who get a kick out of unicorn goals like Lirim Elmazi scoring from a short corner.

So 4-0 up the break, and even the ground announcer makes the call that South has won the game 4-0. Too bad there was a whole second half still to play, as seems to be the custom nowadays. And what a pointless second half it was, as we failed to add to the scoreboard. Still, good to get some run into a few fringe players, including youth team player Cooper Halfpenny, and wing recruit Kosta Emmanuel, who has spent most of the year injured. But overall, the whole vibe, especially in the second 45, was of a glorified pre-season friendly.

Finals secured for 2023
The win against St Albans means that the senior men have managed to secure a finals berth with eight games to spare. The highest points tally that seventh placed Dandenong Thunder can achieve is 47 - which could only happen if they won every remaining game of theirs. Since we've already reached a tally of 49 points, all that's left to decide is where within the top six we'll finish.

Barring any changes due to external administrative cock-ups, we are also pretty close to securing a home final of some sort. Port Melbourne, the team currently in fifth place, would need six wins, a draw, and a calamitous collapse from us just to reach our current tally. 

As for securing a spot in the top two and the near negligible benefits that brings, it's a still little bit early to get into that. Better trying to do those sums after our next match.

Next game
Oakleigh on Sunday, July 2nd, at our latest home away from home, McIvor Reserve. 

For those who have not had the pleasure of visiting this venue, prepare to be underwhelmed. There should be ample parking for the expected crowds for this game, as well as the match the following week against Hume. Public transport options for this ground are inconvenient at the best of times, and will be worse considering the school holiday scheduled shutdowns of all train lines heading west from the city. Luckily this is one of those venues that's within my driving range.

There is some shelter, but very little seating. The social club/pavilion, where all the shelter is, faces east. If you want to stand on the opposite side of the ground, where the benches are, bring your sunnies and a hat, because you will be staring directly into the sun. Away from the pavilion, there is very little elevation. For those watching the games at home, well, here's hoping that someone bothers to hire a cherry picker, because otherwise you, too, will be watching the game from a sideline view, possibly directly into the sun, as was the case with the match that our senior women played there earlier this year.

As for the food... look, I'm willing to be surprised, but from my experience the souv at Yarraville is pretty ordinary.

Is there a curtain raiser?
No. But also yes.

So there's nothing before the senior men's match at 3:00PM, but the under 21s are playing after the seniors, kicking off at 6:30PM. Reminds of what Weird Al Yankovic noted when his band toured with the Monkees, "We didn't open for them; they closed for us."

As was rumoured
Danny Kim, the wrong player for the wrong club at the wrong time, has transferred to Green Gully.

South women through to semis of the cup
As messy as the league season has been in terms of trying to find any sort of consistency or clear front-runner, we also have the cup which, not quite as nuts. Three of the semi-finalists are fairly obvious. First placed Bulleen, third placed South, fifth placed Calder; but there's also mid-table Victorian Premier League side Casey Comets, and that's probably who you'd want to get drawn against in the next round if you were one of the other remaining teams. To get to this round, South had to overcome fellow NPLW side Preston, who after a promising start to the season, seemed to have slipped a bit. I watched this from the couch, and again, these South girls make hard work of winning. They pulled their finger out in the nick of time to get out of jail this time, like they did against FV Emerging in the league the game before this one, but it's frustrating to watch.

A better division 2, eventually coming for you
What does this even mean? So we got the news of the progression from the 32 odd expressions of interest getting cut down to 26 well over a month ago (bonus floodlight content in there for those who want to revisit it), and it's only now that the remaining bids actually getting the paperwork for making their bids? This is even shoddier than the organisation within Vic Uni's research department, which allowed me to skate through with extensions I probably shouldn't have gotten.

Anyway, final bids are due sometime in early August, and successful bids - and whatever the format will be that we'll be proceeding with - will be announced around Octoberish, maybe. And then the whole thing will be starting in March 2024, if you believe that. 

Around the grounds
For old time's sake
Last Saturday, for probably the first time since the chaos unleashed by the pandemic, I managed to get to a non-South match. I blame the pandemic a little bit for this, but I also blame changing home responsibilities, and I especially blame that season where South and seemingly most other NPL teams changed their schedules to be playing mostly on Saturdays. But also, even I managed to get suckered into streaming games instead of attending them. Well, now that South's back to not playing games on Saturdays, and every other planet aligned, I managed to stroll down to Ralph Reserve for Western Suburbs vs Altona East, a near-enough to top of the table clash. Remembering old days, an with only large notes in my wallet, I had my mum break a fifty for me. Turned out there was no gate charge. Turns out also that Suburbs are accepting card payments in the canteen. The souv was OK; not great, not awful. Perfectly acceptable, really. Served quickly, too. Seemed like an easy enough process, which one specific club could possibly learn from. Quite a large crowd, actually, maybe about 200 people, about two or even three times what I expected, and what I'd experienced before at this ground and between these two teams. Crowd included the brother of an ex-South and current Altona East player, who seemed somewhat incredulous that I hadn't realised he'd been in Greece the past four years. My answer could only be, how am I supposed to keep track of everyone that's stopped attending South games over the past 18 years? Anyway, the wind made the game itself a grind to watch. Playing with its benefit in the first half, Suburbs went into the break 2-0 up, scored a goal against the wind to make it 3-0, and then coasted home to win 3-1.

Final thought
Everyone's looking a bit jaundiced, but apparently that's just a trick of lights.

*sigh* - South Melbourne 0 Oakleigh Cannons 2

Another quick run through due to time-constraints.

Those turning up to see the return of the People's Champ and boo him until their throats were sore were left disappointed. Those turning up hoping to see South secure a much needed three points would have also left Lakeside disappointed. More pity to the latter from me, even if there was ample opportunity for wrestling style gimmicks.

Notable too that there the massive ex-South contingent (across many generations) that was possible in this contest was actually minimised. We outplayed Oakleigh in the first half, and had we had our finishing boots on, we may have gone into the halftime break ahead or level. But we didn't, and Oakleigh - who hadn't managed to create a single shot on target in the first half - still managed to lead at the break because of a ridiculous own goal from Brad Norton.

There was that one moment in the first half where a ball was cleared off or over the line by an Oakleigh defender at a corner, a goal obviously not given to us, and we'll never know what might have been. Looking at the video, the whole phase of play moves so quickly that it's hard to tell. Still, even it would've only papered over the cracks of this season's mediocrity, I would've taken the goal.

After putting in a good performance attacking wise last week thanks to a more attacking setup, we were back to playing to defensive midfielders; or if you were looking at it from Leigh Minopoulos' point of view, we were continuing to play with two defensive midfielders' as per last week, but this time just not executing properly. That was extracted from a discussion the winger/forward/makeshift assistant coach had with some of our fans on Twitter about the playing style.

I don't remember if anyone asked where our midfield disappeared to in the second half - a rank garbage second-half that no-one will ever get back. No sign of Gerrie Sylaidos either, one assumes still on trial at Central Coast. When we had him, we didn't use him or we benched him, and now it seems like we're letting him spend weeks away from Lakeside at a crucial time, while other clubs with triallists are able to use their players on weekends.

Milos Lujic came on in the final minute of the game to a warm reception, and I suppose we should be grateful that it wasn't him that managed to get the second (and ultimately meaningless) goal at the death.

And I should say while I don't agree with the borderline hyperbolic negativity, a chat I had pre-game with Cannons coach and former South boss Chris Taylor, did bring up one truism (of both us and Oaks) worth noting, and which in our case was hardly a secret: that after 4-5 games, you can count yourself unlucky, but after 11 games you gotta face up to the fact that you're probably just not very good.

We should've been aiming for four points from the Thunder and Oakleigh games, and instead we got just one. The next three league games are against Altona Magic, Heidelberg, and Bentleigh. Some might say we'd be optimistic to expect much more than a point from those matches. A good portion of the forum seems to have given up on anything being achieved this year except bare survival.

I just wish that for this season that we were not so bad, even if it was just good enough to be well clear of the bottom three.

Next game
But before then, Doveton in the FFA Cup tomorrow, at George Andrews Reserve in Dandenong.

South Melbourne Hellas Sound Bite Machine
So sometime during the second half a stranger was wandering around Clarendon Corner with a phone and microphone shield. Turns out he was some journalism student from Monash University working for Mojo News. A few people seemed to not exactly want to tall to him, but since I'm sympathetic to students looking for survey participants and such for their assessments, I was happy enough to participate when another Hellas fan palmed off the aspiring journo's advances towards my direction.

And besides, apart from my sharing my opinions with everyone whether they asked me to or not, the kid was a journalism student for crying out loud. I mean, talk about a dead end career choice, something which I know all about. Anyway, his first question threw me off balance, which is some accomplishment.

"What does the NPL mean to the community?"

The community? The NPL? Do those things even go together? I made the instinctual judgement that he was a naïf and not a troll, and asked him "what community?" to which he said the "Victorian community". The Victorian community? The NPL? Do those things even go together? All I could come up with at very short notice, and hopefully articulated very clearly into his phone/microphone, was "nothing".

Thus it was his turn to be thrown off balance, and the rest of conversation - brief as it was - centred around, "well, if the NPL means nothing to the community, who are all these people here then?" to which my response was "there's only like 500 people here". I wish he didn't leave at that moment so we could expand on the discussion, but he did, and I guess we'll never know what he made of my desultory but nevertheless forthright responses. At least I learnt from the time I did an "expert" appearance for the ABC, and kept my answers brief and quotable.

Anyway, that's my heroic story.

Erm, no
Just in case anyone read the following,

It's great to hear the @PaulMavroudis playlist at Lakeside Stadium today thanks to the @smfc media team. So far there has been Rick Astley, now the Darryl Braithwaite series, up next John Farnham

— FB Skippy (@fb_skippy) May 5, 2019

and believed it, I would like to declare that I had no influence on the middle-of-the-road generic '80s playlist that was played over the stadium PA on Sunday. If I did have any influence, I would be playing Godspeed! You Black Emperor's Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada in its entirety, or some such tryhard maneuver.

Oh yes, that thing
Me and Ian Syson are back on FNR doing our If You Know Your History show. This time we're live, on Thursdays at 7pm.

Around the grounds
Ancient Sugar
Decided against going to see Altona East vs Hoppers Crossing, partly because the weather was looking crappy, but mostly because I didn't expect winless East to put up much of a fight against a ladder leading side. So I ambled down to Ralph Reserve for a battle between two winless sides, Western Suburbs and Hume United, in a game that turned out to be rather entertaining if not exactly good in the conventional sense. Hume took an early lead. Suburbs eventually got enough control of this game to score from two penalties, which made some of the visiting fans a bit upset. These things happen. I also ate a packet of lollies of some sort of provenance and vintage a university faculty's worth of archaeologists and paleontologists would be hard-pressed to date and identify. Also, Altona East won their game.

Final thought
While working at the Fraser Pre-Poll Voting Centre on Monday in Sunshine, a bloke comes up to me and asked if I went to the South game. Me, not wearing a South beanie that day, yet very recognisable. Him, not wearing South gear, and yet I had no idea who he was. Is this what it's like to be a celebrity?

More to do - Green Gully 2 South Melbourne 3

Oliver Minatel's scored a few novelty goals this year; now he's taking novelty corners.

I only visit Green Gully Reserve once a season if I can at all help it, and thus I always have to remember that McIntyre Road becomes Sunshine Avenue at some point, and that I need to keep going straight instead of looking for some irrelevant turnoff. Anyway, I'd love to know the reasoning of whoever it was at Gully who thought it was a good idea to host games on Friday nights. At other clubs, I can understand - they want to have a separate day for seniors and juniors, and they may want to attract a younger adult demographic with the promise of being able to drink.

But Gully has never been a club with a history of great attendances, and on a cold night which threatened rain, this was one of the lower crowds between these two sides at this ground that I can remember. Still, perhaps they got their wish for at least one person to spend more money at the ground, with a couple of South fans venturing into the Gully social club/pokie barn to have some dinner. Didn't know it could take that long to make a pizza, but you learn something new everyday.

Back outside in the real world, the under 20s were finishing up a 1-0 win, and then it was the seniors' turn. Things did not get off to a good start, as Gully waltzed through our right-hand side to open the scoring. Issues with our right were going to be a recurring theme across the first half. I can barely remember Gully getting any penetration down our left during the opening 45. All told, they should've scored one or two more goals, but they didn't, so more good fortune to us.

Even more good fortune for us was Gully apparently having no idea about Marcus Schroen's complete lack of a right foot, because they kept letting him get onto his left for shots and crosses. Eventually that came back to bite them, as Schroen equalised with a ripping left foot strike across goal, after Gully coughed up the ball cheaply in their own half - itself a recurring theme. Their situational awareness was often atrocious; otherwise capable players I assume under instruction to take risks even in areas where the rewards for successfully pulling them off were negligible.

But hey, if other teams want to self-immolate against us, that's fine with me. Besides, we've been far too generous to other teams this year. Playing into the breeze in the second half seemed to work better for us, our crosses and through balls holding up inside the field of play rather than floating out or to close to the Gully goalkeeper. Leigh Minopoulos' cross to Milos Lujic - who was starting in place of Pep Marafioti - was excellent, the only thing better about it being how Lujic got down low to guide it into the net.

Cue the fence run down the hill - oh, did you know Gully got rid of the nonsense mesh behind the goals ends, and that they've also planted trees which in 20-30 years time will provide a sort of actual windbreak, maybe, and they also got a new kickarse scoreboard - and then the panting middle aged huff and puff climb back up the hill and out of breath chanting. We're getting too old for these kinds of antics.

Somewhere in between Milos' goal and Schroen's second, there was one of the great novelty misses by Oliver Minatel, who took a fresh air swing at the ball when a less grandiose gesture would have sufficed. Oh yes, Schroen's second goal, well he made Jason Hicks look foolish by dispossessing him in his own 18 yard box. Poor Hicks, I like him as a player, but somehow he's ended up going from being useless in a relegation scraping team (2017 Melbourne Knights) to useful in a good team (top three 2018 Bentleigh Greens) to being useless again in a relegation scraping team (2018 Green Gully).

Oh, but get this. Apparently you can give the opposition crowd the double bird - twice - ala Harry Noon, and not get a yellow card, but celebrate with your own supporters, and that's worth a yellow. See 'around the grounds' for worse behaviour. Anyway, more problematic is that Brad Norton finally collected his fifth yellow card, so that should be him out for this week's game. It had to come eventually, and it's a miracle it took this long to come, but it's something we're just going to have to deal with. Of course it'd be a little easier if there were obvious options other than putting Kristian Konstantindis at left-back, not the worst solution in the world but not great for the other problems it brings up.

And someone tells me that Iqi Jawadi is off on holiday? And Christos Intzidis has gone back to Greece to see his infant child, which was born while he's been at South and he has not seen yet? And that he may have contract offers in Greece?

But back to this game, because it's not like 3-1 is a safe score for us this season, and that's not even remembering that last year with a 'good team' we were 3-0 and 4-2 up and still cocked it up. No surprise that Gully pulled it back to 3-2, they're not that bad and we're still not very good even if we have improved from our worst efforts. The coach brought on Manny Aguek and Will Orford for fresh legs, and credit to the lads, they did more than just chase and harass. I'll say it again, not sure why more trust couldn't have been put into lads like these earlier in the season when we had nothing on the bench and cripples on the field. If Aguek was the standout of the two when they made their debuts, it was Orford's time to shine against Gully. He showed no fear, taking players on and putting Gully on the back foot, but he also made the right decisions almost every single time in whether to go on the attack or to hold the ball and kill time.

It was a game where we did enough to hold on, my umbrella finally carked it, and we kept our head above water for another week. Things could've been worse. They still could be.

Next game
At home against Kingston on Sunday.

Relegation/survival prognostication, yes, it's still an ongoing concern, and don't try and pretend that it's otherwise
The only positive result from this weekend's action on the survival front was ours: we won, and in doing so we also beat a fellow relegation scrapper. Who would've known that Gully's run of results would become so bad that we'd eventually overtake them and put them closer to the relegation playoff spot? But even as we're in our highest ladder position for months now, we're not really that much closer to safety.

Things looked much worse though early on Friday night though when we were 1-0 down and Kingston were up 2-0 at home to Bentleigh, which lead to me putting forard conspiracies about teams laying down to get us relegated. Eventually things righted themselves enough that Bentleigh came back to draw 4-4. It's a result that could've been worse for us had Kingston been given a pretty obvious penalty late on - even Johnny A thought it was a mistake by the ref not to give it.

Meanwhile Northcote earned a point against Port Melbourne, keeping their slim survival chances alive, but it was a result nevertheless that will make it nearly impossible for them to catch us. Only us losing every game by some margin, and Northcote winning all three of their remaining game could see them overtake us. I'm calling it now - it ain't happening.

The really nasty result was Hume convincingly beating a limp and disinterested Bergers outfit at Olympic Village, so that Hume remain just two points behind us. That means that the two point buffer we had from the playoff spot is now three, plus our superior goal difference.

A month or so ago I put forward some amateur calculations about what it would take to survive, based on a very small sample of years (2014 onwards), and being conservative about how many teams were going to be drawn into the relegation battle. I calculated back then that the highest combined points tally for the bottom was achieved in 2014, with a tally of 65 points (currently at 59 points in 2018, with three/four games to go!), a year which corresponded also with the highest playoff finisher total of 28 points. Right now it looks like anything less than 31 points is very unsafe.

At the time of putting together that loose forecast, my attention was only on Bulleen, Northcote, Hume, Kingston, and ourselves as likely to finish in the bottom three spots. Yet here we are with teams on 28 points - and one on 29 points - who are in a dangerous position. And yes, because this season is so competitive, many of those relegation threatened teams could also end up in the finals with a bit of luck and goof form.

Table excerpt sourced from socceraust.co.uk. 

So even as we've shed Bulleen to almost certain relegation, and Northcote to at best probably the playoff spot, other teams have been added into the mix. Green Gully, Dandenong Thunder, and even Melbourne Knights are now all in danger of finding themselves in the relegation playoff match.

As per last time though, we note that a lot the bottom sides are due to play each other over the coming weeks.

• Round 24: Northcote vs Bulleen, South Melbourne vs Kingston
• Round 25, Hume vs Green Gully, Thunder vs Northcote, Bulleen vs Knights
• Round 26, Green Gully vs Kingston, Knights vs Thunder

All we know is that the end of the home and away season is going to be chaotic, and that any finals dreaming needs to be put aside until we secure our NPL status for 2019.

Around the grounds
Hard rubbish collection
A rare Sunday afternoon with no competing commitments, so I decided to make my way down to Ralph Reserve for the first time this year. The walk to the ground coincided with the local council's annual hard rubbish collection. Thus the deserted streets of Sunshine West resembled the neatly ordered ruins of a post-apocalyptic society that seemed to collect, more than anything else, reasonably modern furniture that still seemed fit for use. At least we're getting to the end of hard rubbish day meaning nature strips full of cathode ray tube televisions. At the ground, I watched the reserves game a 4-4 shootout. I took my seat in the stand, next to the bloke on Dodgy Asian Betting Guy duties. Soon, too, some strange fellows took a seat near us, from what I could gather some sort of acquaintances of Iqi Jawadi and Nick Epifano. They discussed in vague terms the kinds of money players get at this and other levels of the game, and assorted nonsense. Suburbs, who were in deep relegation trouble, had the aid of the significant breeze blowing their way, and scored early on. They looked better than their lowly position, but these things never last. North Sunshine, with a slim and fading chance at a championship and possible promotion, equalised thanks to a keeper error.

I moved to the other side in the second half. Going into the breeze I didn't give Suburbs much of a chance, but they started off well and looked good for 15 minutes or so. But they got tired, had only one sub left after making two in the first half, and gradually North Sunshine's bigger enemy became the clock and not the home side. Oh, and they'd say the officials too, and I know everyone gets mad at refs sometimes, but coaches going out of their way and out of your technical area repeatedly to abuse and swear at the officials? If FFV are serious about clamping down on referee abuse, they could do worse than look at a repeat offender like North Sunshine. Anyway, first minute of injury time, the ball falls kindly to Epifano who slots it for the winner.

Final thought
Always wonderful to go a ground who play music over the PA system that's just as bad as that played at Lakeside.

A rare treat - South Melbourne 3 Heidelberg United 0

The Setting
Every now and again, when a good crowd turns up for what might be considered by a neutral as a meaningful affair of a South match, I like to note in these pages that the occasion 'felt like a real game'. Of course, for South fans, every game is important and meaningful, no?

It feels a bit alien, impersonal and lacks a spectacular city backdrop but as a replacement venue not bad.
Go South! pic.twitter.com/xsn9ZK1tYF

— John Patitsas (@johnpatitsas) June 11, 2017

And let's not forget no social club either!

So, because Brazil wanted to use Lakeside exclusively for training preparations, we found ourselves at the Bubbledome. No complaints from me as a one off, and I think most South fans, whether regular Bubbledome visitors or first timers, enjoyed the novelty of the experience. Those first ten minutes especially felt surreal, some strange mishmash of past and future that shouldn't have been, but was. Then the game eventually did its bit to overcome the uncanniness of the setting, and attention was then mostly on the players.

I don't like to predict crowds or count them, but I was expecting no more than 1,200 or so. The public holiday long weekend, the relatively lake kickoff, the lack of media attention, and all the usual banes of this state league existence. Some of that would be offset by the novelty value, the odd neutral making the trip in, the fact that it was South vs Heidelberg in a near top of the table clash, but those expecting miracles of several thousand to turn up were to my mind misguided.

The fact that close to 2,500 (officially 2,365) turned up was a good result. It was not earth shattering, but neither was it embarrassing. The club had promoted the game through its social media channels, the FFV did their bit, and the Berger fans came out in good numbers. One fan noted afterwards that a crowd like that at Lakeside would have been electric - and I won't argue with that - but it was hardly a disaster. It helped that, so far as I could tell, South itself did not put a number out into the public sphere that would be considered as a pass mark. Sure, it's true that you miss all of the shots you don't take, but by avoiding setting a definitive target, the crowd number did not become the be all and end all of the day.

Catch her if you can: Melina Ayres celebrates as South's WNPL side
keep pace with the ladder leaders after beating Alamein 3-1.
Photo: Mark Avellino.

I was surprised that rather than just opening the entirety of the western stand and leaving the rest of the ground closed off to the general public, that the folks in charge went for a bit more of a customer focused approach, opening the lower deck on the western side, but also each of the goal ends. South of the Border and associates got to the ground well before kick-off for the men's game, and had little issue with quickly getting our tickets and getting in. I'm not sure if lines closer to start time were more problematic. Security outside the ground was a bit intense for an NPL match, being standard major events stadium practice of bag searches and empty pocket metal scans, but inside the ground everything seemed fairly casual.

(the food and drink prices I'm told were ridiculous; it makes you appreciate the relative pleasures of local grounds, and for me at least, what we have with our social club)

As you'd expect there was no segregation of fans, though there was a certain amount of natural selection; South fans tending to take up areas of the southern side of the available space, including the behind the goals, while the Bergers took up northern areas. Security inside the venue seemed non-intrusive, the only interference in our area being to tell people to not stand on seats, which seems like a reasonable enough request. I don't understand why people stand on seats anyway when they don't need to do so in order to see the game. Clarendon Corner's minimal banner and confetti display received no hassle. Clarendon Corner's numbers were fine, and the chanting more frequent and committed than usual. The most memorable chant? Off the top of my head, 'shit ground, no fans'. Oh, and anything primary school level in order to outdo some Berger juniors on the wing.

Then there were the seagulls. The seagulls are infamous, of course, and Lakeside is not immune to their appearance - we are not so far from the ocean, after all. But the seagull problem at Bubbledome is something else. The kookaburra noise intermittently played over the speakers to disperse them was also almost as irritating as the seagulls to some. I was later told that the same sound is also played at the MCG, but I can't say I've ever heard it, maybe because I was too busy abusing Travis Cloke at the time. Anyway, I can't say with any authority whether the sound affects worked,

The stadium music was too loud, and its musical selections - with the exception of a bit of Pulp's 'Commin People' - not much better than Lakeside's offerings. The benches from the 2015 Asian Cup didn't make an appearance, and thus we had the famous Bunnings chairs instead. The scoreboard was in full operation, simulcasting the live stream. Most importantly, the grass and line markings all seemed up to scratch, which was a relief after the Wallabies had played on the field the day before.

The Match Itself
As we were making our way to the ground from the pub on Swan Street, I noted to one of the fans along for the walk that I no longer felt confident about any South game. So different to the NSL days in that regard, and so out of synch with the fact that in the Chris Taylor era we've been able to amass several long undefeated streaks. And as much as I hate to say it, the novelty of having an open doors match at Bubbledome also left one wondering about the contrived social media reaction would be if we lost this game. But that's just me being unnecessarily sensitive, as per usual.

For all Heidelberg's complaints about having to field a sort of makeshift defense - which seemed to me to centre mostly around Steven Pace being out injured - it's not like we didn't have our own issue. Milos Lujic had injured a hamstring during the week, or so they said, so I wasn't expecting him to be out there yesterday, but there he was, metaphorically on one leg, Seeing him out there didn't fill me with confidence - it was certainly a gamble, but I guess the powers that be felt that the situation warranted the risk. I had felt, and still feel, that we've been very fortunate to not have Milos miss many games, and that while what do no doubt works most of the time, it would be interesting - from a strictly scientific point of view, of course - to see how the team would play without him. I'd expect that properly set up, it would be probably be less clinical, but it would also be much more flexible and unpredictable.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves a bit. Our defense also had a notable absence, in that Tim Mala was missing because of the red card he got in our game two weeks ago against Port. So what was the plan going to be for this time around without a known right back? Would Taylor play defensive mid Luke Pavlou there for a third time, having copped eight goals in the two games he was slotted in there? Thankfully not! Matthew Foschini was put there, and he played rather well. The big threat for Heidelberg around the final third is of course Kenny Athiu. It's not just his size, but also his mobility which causes opposition defenses problems. And in the first fifteen minutes or so, we were on the back foot, scrambling around a bit. But after that, we seemed to control the game. As one unfairly maligned supporter noted, apart from playing in his natural position, Foschini was also able to play those passes down the line better than Mala usually does.

Nick Epifano's shot on its way for 3-0. Photo: Mark Avellino 

Our wide play - our best feature when we play well under Taylor - was at its best last night. On the other hand, the Bergers would get to wide areas, or into the corners, and get stuck; snookered if you will. Our counter-attacks, so often a weak point of ours, have become a bit more a reliable outlet for us. Going two goals up before half-time - a slightly fortunate goal for Nick Epifano, and well taken one on one by Lujic - made things much easier to sort out for the second half. Lujic was subbed for Leigh Minopoulos, and while we played a bit more conservatively in the second half - we always controlled the nature of the game. As an aside, it will be interesting to see how Lujic's hamstring issue is managed over this next little bit - provided that he didn't aggravate the matter in his 45 minute stint yesterday.

We should have added to our lead well before the Peoples' Champ tapped in Jesse Daley's pass with about ten or so to play, but that's to nitpick unnecessarily. Our desperation for the contest across the board was excellent. Our organisation was usually pretty good. Even at our most vulnerable Nikola Roganovic only had to make sparing saves, the most spectacular of which was when the game was well over. If I was to pick out something which annoyed me, it was our continuing tendency this season to collect yellow cards from unnecessarily aggressive fouls or assorted inessential nonsense. Yellow cards get collected out of custom anyway, and the more games you play the more you'll get. Coming up to a crowded bit of the schedule though, it will be a problem when we have to shuffle things around more so than you would like. But that's where the much vaunted depth comes into play.

Unfamiliar venue, familiar routine: Nikola Roganovic, as he usually does
 after a game, celebrating with South Melbourne fans. Photo: Mark Avellino. 

The ladder as it stands is a complicated situation, what with the teams at the top, including ourselves, having various numbers of games in hand, sometimes against each other. The important thing is that we've kept in touch with the ladder leaders, especially Heidelberg, who could've skipped away with a win yesterday. We also extend what is an absurdly long unbeaten run. It's a long way from the dire start to the season.

In conclusion
A good win, and most people seemed to enjoy the event. It was also nice to be able to share the experience with everyone else, as opposed to what happened last year.

Next game
Sunday at Lakeside against St Albans.

Coming and goings
Liam McCormick has departed the club, joining Dandenong City. Meanwhile, we've signed young midfielder Bardhi Hysolli from Bulleen. I have no idea who he is, which doesn't mean he's no good. We've also gone for a Spanish forward, David Barca Moreno, from Getafe B. I feel like I've seen this move played before, but I can't put my finger on it. His international clearance reportedly came through this week, but not his local clearance, There is talk that Andy Kecojevic has gone overseas, but nothing official at the time of print.

Intergalactic Space Hussy department
For Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, caught two-timing us with the Dandenong A-League bid.

https://t.co/jS6qT25qfi https://t.co/faKUqc0nwX

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) June 2, 2017

Around the grounds
Half arsed
Among even the most sartorially oblivious of men can be found a certain niche for fashion trends - the soccer jersey. And thus I spent part of a Friday night at Somers Street observing a conversation about colours, shades, cuts and fabric; about makers, years, taste, and at times an unapologetic preference for unpopular styles. As for the game itself, it was rubbish. Knights are barely keeping their head above water, being at the start of a very long rebuild. Bentleigh meanwhile went about their business completely half-arsed. While else would they play Andy Brennan when he is clearly battling with injury? The game seemed set to take its expected course, when Bentleigh took the lead in the first half via Lambros Honos. Knights were bound to get one chance which they would need to make the most of - and Tom Cahill blasted his penalty into the back of the net. Then Bentleigh had a player sent off, and you wondered how Knights would manage to stuff this one up. The answer? By conceding a woefully soft goal with the last kick of the game, And I never got to find out for sure if Knights ever had an Umbro kit in their history.

The proverbial, dare I say, quintessential six-point game
Westgate, the home team, were on three points. Altona East, the away side, were of four. South of the Border's correspondent, having not had lunch, was hungry. Westgate scored, early in the second half, and won the game. Altona East had their chance, saw it saved, and lost the game. I had a cevapi, was satisfied, and walked home for dinner after the match. Where everyone involved lost: when someone decided to have this game kickoff after 6:00PM. It was cold when the game began, and it was bloody cold when the game ended. Dead set, this bloke rocked up to watch the game early in the second half wearing shorts and thongs and I was *this close* to getting his mates to stage an intervention. As you can see, it was not the most thrilling of affairs.

Making hay while the sun shines
Approaching the gates, I pull out my media pass. One bloke at the gate is OK with it, another guy demands a more rigorous examination. That's no surprise - who from the media would bother to cover this game? So after I explain that I'm a freelancer, I eventually go through. The old blokes in front of the social club - some of whom I know from other grounds - are comparing their ages. I buy a souv - and you know it's a big game when they have a separate booth for buying tickets away from the food outlet - and wander through the social club. The picture frames tell the story. Of humble origins, in photo and in print. Of volunteers who built the social club building in the late 1980s. Of being proud of playing South, and beating us. Western Suburbs had a brief bit of limelight in 2007 and 2008, when they reached the lofty heights of the Victorian Premier League. They got a new grandstand and media box out of the stint, and good luck to them for that. Nowadays things are a bit more grim, down in State League 1. Myself, it's moment like these, sitting in the stand during the tail end of the reserves, wondering how I got here. Yarraville had the better of the first half, and should have capitalised on their chances. They didn't, and during the second half, five or so minutes of napping undid the visitors. The first goal was a chip over the keeper from angle; the second goal a lofted ball from a midfield free kick which sailed over the Yarraville keeper, and which almost no one expected let alone saw. Yarraville only managed to wake up late, and score in the dying seconds.

Final thought
The staff at the Richmond Club Hotel really should have given me a pen so I could get the out of date map on one of the walls up to speed.

Monday night football still sucks - Kingston City 1 South Melbourne 2

Like last week, the collective amorphous 'we' chose some less than ideal spots to watch this game from, the second half less worse than the first because at least it had some elevation. But, and this is so good, having decided at the last moment to move around to a different sport from where we had been, Milos Lujic's goal 30 seconds into the game was missed by the lemming ensemble. No matter, just because we didn't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't count.

At the same time, we had to deal with a bloke wearing a South scarf being escorted rather unwillingly out of the ground by security/ground marshals. We had seen this gentleman banging away at the back of one of the benches, not incoherently but quite clearly to the rhythm of a traditional Hellas chant. Only later did we learn that he happened to be Gavin De Niese's dad, but also that he'd thrown a bin over the South bench. One suspects he may have just received the news that his son, who has not been able to break out of the under 20s side, is to be let go - but that is just me being speculative.

[disputed remnants of Clarendon Corner intolerable in-joke digression - as one wit noted, no one thought we'd top the 'wet socks' fiasco from last week during the rest of the season, but here we are a week later with 'bingate'.]

The first half settled into a pattern of stupid but funny UFO related chants and the team playing pretty well. Some better crossing (even though it wasn't so bad this week as compared to last), someone waiting to pounce on the loose ball, and even a bit more luck for Milos would have seen us go ahead by two or three goals. Lujic's quick header in particular was one of those moments where you feel that last year he would've scored the same thing, but it's not worth being harsh on an opportunity that came onto him so quickly.

Anyway, because we didn't score, Kingston did. They relied a bit more on the counter attack then I thought they would, and they'd usually try to shoot from longer range than they perhaps needed to. But since we were unable to get the ball back into the mixer with as much reliability as we should have - perhaps it would've been better to have Matthew Foschini instead of Jesse Daley in that role - Kingston were entitled to try and absorb pressure, being under siege as they were, and relying on pace to get them up the field.

The one time they did get proper close to goal, former South man Chris Irwin latched on to a good pass and made the most of an out of shape back line to slot it past Nikola Roganovic. Some people (not me, for once) must have felt at the time that it was a crime to have let him go, and wasn't it amazing what he could do when not coming off the bench in the 93rd minute as a time-wasting sub.

Not that one felt that we couldn't get the lead again, but it sucked to have conceded even against a nimble and pacey attack like Kingston's. The second half was more of the same as far as I'm concerned except that, as noted earlier, perhaps our vantage point behind the goals at the eastern end of the ground was not the best place to watch the game from for analytical purposes.

It was the best place from which to see Marcus Schroen blast the ball over from range when a low drive would have done the job with the Kingston keeper way out of position. It was also a good place to watch the home side's defense block shots off the line. It was also, sadly, a magnificent position from which to watch Lujic miss an absolute sitter, which looked much worse from behind the goals than it did from the live feed - and it looked pretty bad from there.

With the People's Champ having played in Stefan Zinni - yes, he's actually back from his A-League sojourn, contrary to some things I had been hearing - the young winger passed the ball across the face inviting Lujic to score into an unguarded goal at the back post. Except that Lujic somehow launched it over the bar and possibly adding to the Westall UFO mystery in the process. At that point you had the feeling that we'd find a way to lose this game, but instead we scored our best team goal of the season. I'm not going to say it was some master class of planning and sequential deliberation - and it was helped by a Kingston player being caught ball watching and not tracking Matthew Millar into the box - but they all count the same.

And what's more, the finish was delightful, Millar calmly chipping the ball over the keeper and getting the ball to be at the right height and velocity to make it impossible for the defenders to clear it. Millar now has six goals in maybe almost as many games. I don't know what to make of it. What I do know however is that the 'Apples' nickname and associated chant is a bloody stupid gimmick and I won't have anything to do with it.

We were a little lucky not to be caught falling asleep at the wheel from a Kingston counter attack - Irwin should have done better with the chance, but he fluffed it, and maybe some people (not me, for once) must have felt at the time that it was hardly a crime to have let him go, and wasn't it amazing what he couldn't do when not coming off the bench in the 93rd minute as a time-wasting sub.

Anyway, we won the game, I've lost track of how many that is on the trot now, and are within three points (or something like that) of top spot in a crowded upper(!) half of the table, And some of people (maybe even me) wanted this entire team thrown on a barge which had been set alight and shipped off down the Yarra and into the ocean, viking style. How times change. Just don't check back in here in the event that next Wednesday night it all goes to crap again.

[By the way, how much would such a barge cost do you reckon? I'm thinking we should get a crowd funding scheme to buy one, so we could chuck the entire Melbourne Rebels organisation onto it and float it out to sea. Whatever it takes to get 'professional' and unnecessary rugby union out of Melbourne]

Next game
Bulleen at home on Sunday, the first of a very long series of home matches. I think Matthew Foschini is going to miss courtesy of pickup up five yellow cards. A few others will have to be careful not to pick up their own fifth yellow card, seeing as how the FFA Cup is on straight after the league game.

FFA Cup news
Our match against Dandenong City has been scheduled for Wednesday May 24th at Lakeside. Get your pitchforks and/or floral tributes ready for either of the scenarios.

Periodic burst of public transport user virtue signalling
The journey there was uneventful, except for the decision to take the winding backstreet path, often through poorly lit streets. The journey back, well... fairly brisk 15 minute walk back to Westall station. Pretty good connection with the next train to the city, except that it only went as far as Caulfield, because of some sort of works. Thus it was on to a replacement bus to South Yarra, not too bad considering it was not an express. Then a quick connection to the next city bound train at South Yarra, unfortunately ending up at the back end of platform 13. Plenty of time to get to platform 4 for 11:58 Sunbury service. Got home some time around 00:30. Good thing I didn't have anywhere to be on Tuesday.

Transfer window open
The transfer window is apparently open. Who knows if we have any loose change to spend, who's going, and where we might look to for reinforcements. I'm reading 'not much', 'Carl Piergianni', and 'who knows?'. Among other things (ie, another striker), the fans seem to want an attacking midfielder - one that isn't Andy Kecojevic, who isn't getting a game anyway, nor the People's Champ, who has been played there as a stop-gap measure at times - and preferably one that isn't cup tied. As noted earlier, Stefan Zinni has returned, having completed his stint at Western Sydney Wanderers - where he didn't get much game time. As a winger, he'll be competing against Leigh Minopoulos, Jesse Daley, and whoever else Chris Taylor likes to throw out on the wing. I don't know about our PPS situation either, but conceivably the club knows what it's doing (all hail the all-knowing club people squirrelling away in the back rooms, and not on the internet) on this front, and thus that won't be a major issue.

Languid
I had been asked by a famous journo friend to attend North Sunshine vs Preston (true story), but I did the right thing and trundled over to Lakeside on Saturday afternoon, through the Shanghai-like haze - now that's bravery for you. And it's not like anything of not happened out at Larissa Reserve anyway, if you know what I mean.

I was at Lakeside to watch the women's team play Heidelberg, which provided the chance for our WNPL side to rack up some goals and boost the plus/minus differential against the struggling visitors. But first there was the issue of lunch. The open souv has changed, more expensive now to distinguish it from the closed/takeaway variant. It's also more in the vein of what'd you get in terms of a plated souv at various Greek restaurants - meat, salad (not the caramelised onion of before), chips, pita, tzatziki on the side. They've also brought in a couple of new craft beers on tap.  But they also trialled brining in some pastries, and this I also pigged out on a very buttery danish. I thought everything was very good, but others may be less impressed by everything. It's not in my nature to complain after all.

Caitlin Greiser has won an athletic scholarship to the US.
Photo: Damjan JanevskiStar Weekly.

The game itself was not lacklustre, but it did lack something. Maybe because both sides have played three games in a week due to cup commitments. Maybe because of no Lisa De Vanna, reputedly dealing with a hamstring injury. Maybe it was because Heidelberg are anchored near the bottom? Probably all three of those reasons contributed.

South dominated this game from start to finish, with Heidelberg rarely mounting a meaningful attack. While South was unlucky to a degree - the girls hit the woodwork a couple of times - it took until the last ten minutes of the half to convert that dominance into goals. When we ended the half 3-0 up, not only was the game cooked, but one began to wonder how many more we'de end up with. As it turned out, the halftime score was also the full time score, as for whatever reason the team wasn't able to convert its mountain of possession into meaningful chances. So, while we chalked up the win we were expected to, it was a missed opportunity in terms of bettering our goal difference. This week our women host the ladder leading Calder at home at 1:30, as the curtain raiser to the men's game against Bulleen.

Today's game won't live long in the memory but the form of @gummmybear3 & @solodoloJOLO has @smfc well placed in the #PS4NPLWVIC title race pic.twitter.com/YtjfGONl20

— Teo Pellizzeri (@teopellizzeri) May 13, 2017

Match programme uploads
I've uploaded some more South vs Newcastle and Newcastle vs South match progammes, including the Michael Schumacher special! Thanks to Todd Giles for those. I've also added the recent Bentleigh vs South programme - it isn't much to look at, but at least it exists - and a Knights vs South programme from 2014 which I had stashed away but had forgotten to upload.
 
I've also added more editions of Soccer News with text recognition (1961 and 1964) after Mark Boric recently updated his collection.

Video uploads
Relive the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles.. in other words, I've finished uploading all the 2005-2007 South Melbourne videos I had at my disposal. Next step is to somehow get access to the Greek Media Groups' archives to get as much of their footage online as possible. Don't hold your breath. Thanks to Box, Gav, and whoever else put these games on DVD in the first place.

Around the grounds
As for the match itself, well...
Decided to walk towards Ralph Reserve from my house, a leisurely 15 minute stroll, for Western Suburbs vs Altona East. About halfway there you could smell the souvs, but wouldn't you know it, when I eventually decided to get one, one of the volunteers threw a tantrum while I was waiting in line and the canteen was unilaterally closed for five minutes. As this was five minutes before kickoff - and it's hard to tweet and eat at the same time - I had to wait until the halftime break. Aside from that, I had to deal with the Bentleigh Peanut Man having a go at me for being a Hellas fan at non-South game, and then becoming chatty with me and offering me a lift back from The Grange to Westall on the next night if I needed one. As for the game itself, pretty freaking ordinary. East will be shattered not only that they lost 4-1, but that they copped the same goal three times.

Final thought
Outside the ground, someone had placed one of those cleaners' "caution - wet floor" signs on the grassy path. Not sure if they were being serious or hilarious.

All over the bloody shop - Green Gully 4 South Melbourne 4

Let us begin with some wisdom gleaned from a psalm.

Blessed is the one

    who arrives with low expectations

or who does not expect sudden turns of form

    or who can endure the company of mockers,

but whose delight is in the wondrous absurdity,

    and who meditates on this day and night.

That person is the one sane person left at this club,

    who can go home unburdened knowing

that if these blokes were really any good —

    then they would not be playing here.

Dear readers, I spent most of the previous week sick, and was therefore so looking forward to getting out of the house and watching some soccer. More fool me, because here I am two days after the fact and I'm now sicker than I was before the event. It would hardly do to blame the team - after all, it's only a hypothesis at the moment, and we still have to do some longer term studies and get them published in peer reviewed journals - but why blame my feeble constitution for failing me when I can point the finger squarely at those men dressed in blue on Saturday.

After that loss draw, I have found it incredibly difficult to muster the courage to approach this keyboard. How could I explain with my only modest eloquence the disaster of those frantic fifteen minutes? I could try and step back from it I suppose. Did the Gully comeback come out of nowhere? Well, not really. One could blame Chris Taylor for the subs he made, taking off our two best attacking threats in Jesse Daley and Nick Epifano, but Gully had been threatening throughout the game - it was just that when push came to shove, they were rather inept in the final third for 75 minutes.

At 3-0 and 4-2 up, things should be secure, but that's why matches keep going instead of being called off at those score lines and at those times, because stuff like this can happen. It happened to Gully last week, copping three goals in seven minutes when 2-0 up against Heidelberg. And while I'm not absolving Taylor for his role in making the initial team selections, placements and subsequent substitutions, at what point do the players have to bear some of the responsibility? Who of them stepped up during that time to wrest back even nominal control of the game?

We also seem to have no idea about tempo. If the game slows down and needs to be sped up, or is getting out of hand and needs to be slowed down, we don't seem capable of taking the necessary action independent of the coaches making those decisions... or maybe the instruction went out there and no one was able to implement the necessary action? The feeling of the second goal we conceded - and I can't bear to go to the video to watch and confirm - felt like something from my days watching the Altona East reserves.

Pseudo-psychologically, especially with such a deficit to make up, the intention of the team that's just pulled a goal back is to storm the barricades and pile on both actual and implied pressure. The job then of the team seeking to maintain the lead, or at least not let things get worse, is to suck the life out of the potential momentum before it even gets out of hand for at least the next three minutes. That didn't happen, so here we are, having robbed ourselves of what could have been called momentum and goodwill.

One can go on and on about the negatives, but in this rather truncated match report, I will close by noting some of the things I liked. I liked the return of the People's Champ. Two assists, a goal, and generally good attitude. I liked Jesse Daley, our best outfield player in 2017 keeping up the good work. Matthew Millar offered polish as well as effort for the first time this year. Notwithstanding the fact that scored four times, we also actually looked like scoring on a regular basis. We even scored off a counter attack.

Things are not as bad as they could be. In part this is because of...

Next game
At home, at last, against the struggling North Geelong on Sunday prevening. They copped an 8-0 beating against a ten man Bergers. Look for your own omens and portents.

Soccer, soccer, soccer is the real football! Soccer, soccer, the greatest game of them all!

Pros: Managed to get out of Green Gully's car park in record time
Cons: Someone tried to tell me that it's football, not soccer #ps4nplvic

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) April 1, 2017

Sometime during the second half I think it was, I somehow got dragged into a childish back and forth discussion with a Gully fan about what the name of the game was. I prefer soccer for all sorts of arcane, regressive, and recalcitrant reasons and some of what Ian Syson says here about the naming conjecture applies here also. Now the discussion didn't end up in a punch on or anything like that (could you even imagine such a thing?), but it did bother me that someone would choose that to become (relatively) upset that issue of all things. Having made some nonsense response by referring to an SBS soccer jingle from the 1980s, I was more upset by the fact that, some time after the incident and either on the way home or already there, I figured out the perfect comeback - that being if that our friend felt so strongly about the matter, he should take up the issue with his club first.

If you like football so much, why do you go to the soccer?

For you see, unlike many other clubs of our level which have tinkered with their names by getting rid of the word 'soccer' and replacing it with 'football', or the nonsense 'FC' (and I only partly excuse our club for doing it, because there was the comical coincidence of upsetting Sydney Swans fans, who came to understand that their club hadn't copyrighted 'SMFC' or 'South Melbourne FC'), Green Gully remain steadfast users of 'soccer' and 'soccer club'. They've even added a whole bunch of new banners along their fences proudly telling everyone that they are the 'Green Gully Soccer Club'. So you know, maybe tackle the problem at its source if it means so much to you.

The world revolves around Hellas, Part ∞
Apparently Perth Glory's coach Kenny Lowe was in attendance at our game. That obviously means he was there to look at our players. I mean, they've all been playing so well, who wouldn't want them?

This week is a big week, just quietly
Jersey night on Friday. Family Day on Saturday. Home game on Sunday. And at the centre of all those things is the newly refurbished social club. More comment on that next week.

Mesorouni found alive
Call off the search parties, rein in the dogs, cancel the Soul Asylum gig; the milk carton campaign worked.

Around the grounds
It's too late for it now, but I really wished I'd collected every failed soccer club raffle ticket I ever bought
Went to Westgate vs Western Suburbs before our game, because the food is nominally better there than at Green Gully Reserve. While not even close to being as good as the overpriced Altona Magic, Suburbs were still about .5 to 1.5 classes above Westgate, and won the game 3-1. I missed Westgate's goal, which came directly from a corner, because I was looking at my phone for some reason. I like to think that them scoring wasn't to be expected, but you've got to keep your eye on the ball. Goal of the day was Suburbs' third, the low corner not being dealt with in any way by the Westgate defense, and the Suburbs striker finished it off with an outrageous flick volley, which I did see and wish that I could see again.

Final thought
I was going to post some salacious gossip that I heard during this game, but I'm trying to build a reputation of being a man of the utmost taste and character.

Losing on aggregate - South Melbourne 3 Richmond 2

There is an aspect to which one could compare this South Melbourne side to someone being rehabilitated from a stroke or a serious car accident. You have to re-learn how to do everything that once seemed so natural - how to talk, how to walk, rebuilding muscle memory - and neither doing it nor watching it is going to be an easy experience.

The first half of this game was unpleasant to watch; despite the cold, the rain hadn't even started yet. so it's not like you can blame the onset of mass precipitation for what was happening. Richmond mostly chose to counter attack, being the first team in several weeks to genuinely exploit our offside trap sensibilities. Even Bentleigh in our recent cup embarrassment didn't do as well on that front.

But in the final third of the pitch the visitors were wayward with their passing and wasteful with their finishing. For our part, we had most of the ball, but mostly to little effect in the first half - though our corners did look better and more dangerous than has been the case for some time. There was much annoyance with a lot of the passing around the back and especially the passing back to Nikola Roganovic, but playing devil's advocate for a moment, I think I could see what they were trying to do.

Rather than needlessly hoof the ball forward, or even as part of the symptom of shirking responsibility, Friday night saw the side perhaps trying to adapt to a different mode of getting forward. Instead of relying solely or mostly on getting the ball onto the wings, we decided to find a way to play through the middle as well - so there was a lot of scrappy play, and lots of strays passes from us as we sought to take some more risks in midfield.

Part of that can be put down to Andy Kecojevic, who started a second successive game, who rather than play like his more defensively minded kin such as Iqi Jawadi (who was back on the bench this week, but saw no game time), Steve Hatzikostas (who worked hard in conditions which played to his strengths) or Matthew Foschini, who was at centre-back anyway (with Michael Eagar not being recalled after serving his one match suspension), was busy trying to move the ball forward and as quickly as possible.

Perhaps this is because Andy's a genuine attacking midfielder, or because he's too young to have been brow beaten into playing a dour sort of game. I sensed that in part because of the presence of Kecojevic, especially in the second half when we started cutting through all three channels, left, right and middle, we looked almost versatile and unpredictable.

Some aren't sold on his alleged potential, and that's understandable from the point of view that he is only 18 and has played very little senior football, despite what the stats may say. But from the point of view of attitude the team seemed to be, at least in the second half, looking to do something with every possession of the ball. That doesn't mean it was all pretty or fluid, but it was at least fun to watch.

Having the right attitude isn't everything in soccer, but it's a bloody good place to start. The first goal in particular was one of the worst goals I think I have ever seen, players falling all over the place or just standing around, and eventually someone (Milos Lujic) doing what had to be done in the absence of a referee's whistle putting an end to the madness and putting the ball into the back of the net.

Conceding a goal soon after to substitute Nick Niagoran (has any ex-South junior hurt us so much in such a short space of time?) could have seen the team implode, but Kecojevic was on hand to put us back ahead, and the flip pass into hectares of space by the People's Champ saw Spanish import Manolo (again coming off the bench) finish off a one on one to give us a 3-1 lead with you would have thought not enough time remaining for a repeat of the heinous implosion that occurred last time we were leading Richmond 3-1.

Except that Richmond gave it a fair old shake despite the limited time on offer, reducing the deficit back to one when a South defender failed to either dispossess or bring down Niagoran who passed across the face of goal for an easy finish by a teammate. After that, we relied on Roganovic making a double save to get all three points, but rather than there being a feeling of angst mixed with relief akin to that which followed the Bulleen game, I think what we had here was relief mixed with a sort of happiness - no one thought it was a great performance, but people could at least appreciate (I hope) the endeavour and the intent of the side.

And the scoreline does flatter Richmond, too. They had their moments at the beginning and at the end of the match, but the game was played mostly on our terms, especially in the second half when we launched several promising attacks and forced the Richmond keeper into action on several occasions - and one notable instance of inaction, when he let a low cross or shot towards the near post from Brad Norton hit the post and squirt across the six yard box, just out of reach of the equally surprised South players in the vicinity.

In the end, my biggest concern was not some galoot chanting 'we're gonna lose 6-3' when we were 3-1 up, but whether Amadu Koroma coming on as a substitute was going to cost us three points, because his name hadn't been on the team sheet provided to the general public before the game. Not for the first time this season, there was a late change to the line up, and another team sheet filled out. At least for consistency's sake, Chris Irwin's three minute stint at the end of the game was as legit as they come.
Next week
Hume on Friday night (really!), as we begin a stretch of three games against teams bound for the finals. Should be fun.

Rolling out the green carpet
For some inexplicable reason, the path out of the players' race on Friday was not 'as the crow flies' but instead one which diverged into two paths which ended up taking the two teams the long way around to their benches. I have not been able to independently come up with a reason for this change in proceeding, and for a moment I was worried that this whole enterprise may lead to an A-League style 'face-off', a phenomenon I've heard much about, but whose horror I have thankfully not seen. Just our luck that the players ending up in the usual line and handshake formation. Further adding to the perceived pointlessness of the whole thing was the substitutes and assorted others disregarding the existence of the separate paths at halftime, and everyone walking through the players' race at the end of the game without making any unnecessary detours. If anyone can fill us in as to what was going on here, we'd be glad to know.

TGIF!
So apparently we tried to have this fixture moved to Sunday (for who knows what reason, but perhaps in the hope that more than 150 people would turn up), and Richmond said 'no'. What's good about this is that some folk from our side are blaming Richmond for this outcome, as if it was Richmond's fault that the game was scheduled for a Friday night in the middle of winter in the first place. Worth remembering that Greeks did invent hubris after all.

Social club news
So the latest tidbit on this saga which I have managed to source from a third or fourth hand source is that apparently there's a power box in place, which I am reliably informed is necessary for the operation of tools in the event that someone may want to do some work on the social club.

Everyone thinks they have immaculate (and of course everyone is wrong)
Seems like the club has dispensed with the player playlists for their pre-game and half time stadium music, NOT THAT ANYONE COULD REALLY TELL THE DIFFERENCE, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. As the South players walked out in the second half to the strains of 'Say My Name' by Destiny's Child, one felt that surely we deserved better than this, and surely we could do better.

[there was also, for me, the not altogether pleasant sense of being taken back to 1999 and Year 10 when the song first came out, and the girls in my tech studies class (I vaguely remember it was something to do with electronics; the boys mostly made balls of solder to throw at each other, or watched test cricket on a portable TV) would play the song off a cassette tape, before that medium fell out of use until it was revitalised by hipsters so that the only people who could listen to their post-Appalachian funk metal would be third world cab drivers driving old Datsuns through monsoonal traffic jams, or people that had bought an endless supply of Sony Walkmans from op shops. I'd add myself as a third possible market, but the cassette player in my 1989 Toyota Camry doesn't work.]

Of course, when it comes to  playing better music over the speakers (if indeed we must have music at all) I have offered my services on many occasions, even offering the club money for the privilege via such things as making it an auctionable item at the jersey night or making it a prize in a raffle. Of course, I have had minimal success on this front, managing to get Kitchens of Distinction's 'When In Heaven' played through what were then malfunctioning speakers last year, but otherwise we have had to put up with what the current master of ceremonies decides to play. Someone in Clarendon Corner did suggest we get a petition going...

A persistent pounding sensation
People are really getting fed up with the constant drumming during matches by Harry the Drummer. Let's see where this ends up.

Victory incident tribunal news...
The only news is that there is no news. Maybe tomorrow.

Update - decision has been released. Six point deduction, and six point suspended sentence. South of the Border will discuss the outcome in more detail in our next match report.

Around the grounds
Hard times, and they're only getting harder
So I ventured out to the right side of Paisley Park yesterday to witness the match between Altona East and Western Suburbs. East, as readers will know, are struggling, but Suburbs aren't doing much better. The first half of this game was more or less a complete write-off. The second half was better, and East had a number of good chances to open the scoring, but the visitors scored on a counter attack and withstood whatever the home side could offer. So, relegation looks likely for East, unless something drastic happens. Whether the return of Lester Abalos and the signing of former of South youth player Anthony Giannopoulos is part of that drastic thing, well, none of us will know for sure until the season is played out.

Final thought
Why do we persist with a single striker many fans ask. Perhaps South Melbourne is merely employing a variation of the 'No Homers' club.

Redemption, of a sort - South Melbourne 3 Oakleigh Cannons 0

South coach Chris Taylor and captain Michael Eagar lift the Dockerty Cup
trophy, as the rain pours down. Photo credit: South Melbourne FC/unknown.

There was an obvious fear that no matter how well we played yesterday, that we'd nevertheless fall short. This fear wasn't just based on the 120 minutes we'd played on Wednesday, but also on the mentality of the players and whether they'd be able to get up for the game following the FFA Cup disappointment. Instead the team put in a solid 90 minute performance and took home a third trophy in 12 months, and our first Dockerty Cup in 20 years. The win, in front of about 1200 people braving wind, rain and cold, also showed that the club needs to be and can be about more than the odd spell in the mainstream limelight.

I'm struggling to recall a South game with a more even performance from every player that took the field. While we weren't faultless, I'd argue that every South player contributed to the win yesterday, and that they were superior to everyone in their opposite position. Even with Oakleigh's relative abortion of a 2015 season, they'd still managed to get this far and were still a side comprised of several quality players - yet they struggled to penetrate the 18 yard box, and were left scrambling to defend our attacks on multiple occasions.

Even with the aid of a strong wind in the first half, Oakleigh weren't able to conjure up much to trouble Nikola Roganovic in the South goal. One long clearance from defence (actually a clever chip from midfield) saw Oakleigh beat the high offside trap, but Roganovic was quickly off his line and dealt with the oncoming attacker brilliantly (Lambros Honos hit it straight at him). For the rest of the game, the back four of Tim Mala, Brad Norton, Luke Adams and Michael Eagar were superb. Eagar in particular had an outstanding game,

The midfield, which this time included Matthew Theodore (replacing Jake Barker-Daish) and a start for Leigh Minopoulos (replacing David Stirton out wide on the right) never stopped running. Rather than the one dimensional, predominantly left wing attacking side we'd been for several weeks, we were a team that looked dangerous from whichever direction we attacked from. While we had the better of a relatively even first half, the main concern from an attacking sense was how isolated Milos Lujic was once again. All this was rectified in the second half, as the early goal was symptomatic of the way we'd run the game out, with numbers running into the box to support our star striker. Scoring goals from a corner also helps, but to be honest we could have won this game by a lot more. Some of our finishing once the game was settled could have been better, but at least we were well in front as opposed to having to play catch up as we'd had to do in some of the cup games leading up to the final.

In the room after the game, Roganovic still felt the need to apologise to supporters. What I would say to him is that his service in his brief time at the club has been exemplary as both a player and someone who feels part of the club, and that there are many, many former players and people involved with the club over the years who'd need to apologise before he does. And while it clearly sucks not having a social club, I'd like to say a big thank you to the players for allowing the supporters to share the win in the locker room after the game.

Speaking on behalf of myself, on a personal level...
I was pleased that we'd won the Dockerty Cup rather than some no name trophy or that light bulb trophy. Having been one of the people that fought for the return of the Dockerty Cup name and trophy - albeit this season in its stupidly truncated semi-final onwards only format - it was great to be able to lift the trophy in the change rooms as a supporter rather than as a historian during my sojourns to FFV HQ as part of the Historical Committee. It was even better to be able to share that experience not just with the players, but with other long serving supporters of the club. A pity that South's habit of breaking trophies was once again on display; having broken last year's NPL trophy, and the 1998 NSL trophy, yesterday this happened:

@PaulMavroudis nah we got him, never fear!

— Cindy N (@cindyn) August 2, 2015

Time to break out the Tarzan Super Grip I think.

Update:

@77kazzg @PaulMavroudis lol... ok, ok... Being babysat by the gaffer! pic.twitter.com/eGFnIbGFM4

— Cindy N (@cindyn) August 3, 2015

The questions that keep you up at night, and then follow you into the next day
After the consistent appeal for an answer to Chris Taylor's questionable substitution decisions on Wednesday night, did Taylor make no subs in yesterday's game out of spite? Was there a great overarching plan somewhere in there that we just can not perceive, nor be trusted to comprehend?

Five years!
If the rumours are to be believed, when our board had claimed that we'd signed Chris Taylor for a 'long time', they weren't kidding. Five years?! That's almost as long as we've been waiting for a social club! Of course this could turn out to be either a masterstroke or disaster. Not wishing to judge (five years, what the hell?), I reckon we should all agree to meet at this spot in about five years time and see how it all worked out.

Next game
Back to league action, with a game against Port Melbourne at home on Friday night - please note that kickoff has been pushed back to 8:30.

Nick Epifano, born charmer
Nick Epifano was interviewed last week on the Sydney based Soccer Stoppage Time show, in what turned out to be a brief interview. The main presenter of the show appears to be a huge fan of Epifano, and is flabbergasted by the fact that he's not in the A-League yet. When he asks Nick that question, Nick replies with I don't know, guess I have to work harder, etc. Nick goes on to say that he owes a lot to Chris Taylor; that the Dundee United experience, although truncated due to personal reasons, was an eye opener in terms of what kind of professionalism is required to play at that level; some guff about the club's FFA Cup preparations (this was recorded prior to our loss to Palm Beach); and there being interest from Adelaide United and Perth Glory. Epifano doesn't make a very good interview subject; his answers are short, nervous and provide little prospect for elaboration. After the interview ended, the main presenter once again praised Epifano's footballing ability, took aim at the struggling A-League franchises that hadn't done their homework, and while acknowledging that there were some concerns about behavioural issues, brushed them aside.

Film review - El Cinco
The Melbourne International Film Festival has made a habit of showing some really interesting soccer films. Two years ago it was the North Korean film 'Centre Forward', while last year it was Romanian experimental doco 'The Second Game' (which I really regret not reviewing for this blog). This year it's 'El Cinco', an Argentine film about a professional footballer who has made the decision to retire. It's a low key and poignant film, but which also has several hilarious moments.

This is a film about the end of what director Adrian Biniez portrays as the extended childhood of life as a professional footballer. Defensive midfielder Paton (Esteban Lamothe) - a sort of man child who spends his spare time on video games, booze, pot and annoying his wife -  is 35 years old when he receives an eight match ban following a red card; the ban rules him out of all but the final matches of the season. Locked away in the change rooms by himself and sitting out the rest of the game in what resembles a prison cell, Paton clearly feels the hand of football's Father Time resting on his shoulder. At home later on, he calmly announces to his partner Ale (Julieta Zylberberg) that this will be his last season - and the rest of the film follows what will be the final portion of his career, as Paton struggles to find what his purpose in life will be after his career is finished, including several schemes for his post-footballing life, as well as attempting to get his high school diploma.

The portrayal of Argentine professional soccer in this film is almost unrelenting in its working class aesthetics. Paton's side, Talleres, plays in a dilapidated stadium; but then again, so do most of their opponents. Money is short, and wages are often delayed. His team mates are mostly, if not all, working class boys like himself, who seem to have few other prospects apart from being professional footballers. Playing in a match is at best a reward for the repetitive exercises and training sessions that have to be undertaken; at worst, they are a frustrating and unfulfilling experience. Adulation is there for the players, but more often than not they are employed as a way for the club's supporters to be able to vent the frustrations of their own lives.

As Paton dithers about telling his family and his team mates the news, he learns about the fate of those from his junior soccer days who never quite made the grade, and tries to fight a battle against anxiety and boredom that threatens to derail his post-football life before it begins - because as much as playing football is the chief means of his employment, it also makes up almost his entire identity as a person. Football is not only a job for Paton, but also his vocation - he knows little else of the world. The pending loss of the companionship and camaraderie of the change rooms are heightened by Paton's impending retirement.

If that sounds like all too much po-faced seriousness, then it should be clear that there are a lot of funny moments in this film as well. While Paton is usually quick witted, he can be undone by his own determination to get even with those who have slighted him (at one point a radio talkback segment goes very, very wrong). The supporters and club directors are always there to make a nuisance of themselves. The most comedic (and tragic) lines in the film though go to the team's coach, a slob of a man with little obvious football nous, who sometimes sleeps in his car and is always at a loss as to how to inspire his troops in their quest to escape mid-table mediocrity.

And as much as this is a film about soccer and the life of a professional athlete, it is also a film about marriage. As another review of this film has noted, the marriage portrayed in El Cinco is not a typical film affair. We are shown a relationship that is in the middle, not at its beginning or end; we are not shown a relationship in strife, but one that has its protagonists constantly renegotiating the terms of its existence. Paton's partner Ale is neither harridan nor long suffering saint, and this portrayal is aided by the excellent acting chemistry between Lamothe and Zylberberg.

The only two gripes I had with the film? The on field soccer scenes are pretty lame, but then again they almost always are; and the subtitles are a little wonky at times, which only makes you appreciate the quality of subtitling we get on SBS. There will be those, too, who will feel that this film doesn't really go anywhere, and that would be a valid complaint, if only that was not the purpose of the film - to portray working class life in all its low key mundaneness.

It's showing again this Saturday, and it's definitely worth a look for fans of good football films, and of course Latin American cinema.

Sic semper tyrannis
If the moderation of smfcboard is going to be more active, in terms of banning people and deleting their posts, the least we could do is have some clear rules set out for what the mods consider acceptable posting. It was bad enough when posts were being deleted because someone from the board demanded it, but the moment it becomes about posts being deleted because of an arbitrary matter of taste, then we've crossed into really dangerous territory.

I have received my share of criticism for my own vague comments publishing policy on this blog, because I've more or less allowed just about every nutbag to have their say over the years. This is based on my belief that the vast majority of my readers are sensible enough to post thoughtful commentary, even stuff that I disagree with and even items where I myself am the target of the post. I also trust my readers to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff for themselves, and that stupid posts reflect badly not just on their own authors but also the cause they seek to promote.

There are few more powerful tools of rebuttal against a person's arguments than their own words and the passage of time. I hope the moderators keep this in mind before pulling the trigger in future.

Does Mornington count as being in Melbourne?
Remember this? Well, Mark Bosnich was in town on Saturday for Mornington's 50th anniversary, but I still had to pay for own crepes yesterday, and complain to people who've already heard all my complaints.

Around the grounds
Mummy, where does daddy go on Saturdays?
A trip to Bendigo was reluctantly knocked back; an opportunity to watch a tanking Collingwood was considered only briefly; so it was off to Paisley Park for the State League One North West Greek Derby between Altona East and Western Suburbs. And what a game it was! At least for the first 50 odd minutes anyway. East looked better than the ladder leaders, and took the lead when Gomer Pyle was given too much room to unleash a curling left foot shot from the edge of the box into the opposite corner. Then the little Japanese fellow blasted his shot miles wide on the goal line, and that's where things stopped going well for East. After a passage of play where East cleared desperately off the line, the keeper got up dazed and confused but continued. Suburbs equalised with a great free kick from out wide to go into the break level. The early parts of the second half saw East go down to ten men after a handball on the goal line. After the penalty was scored, East's keeper also got subbed off suffering from the concussion he got in the first half, and Suburbs made sure of it soon after with their third. Goals four and five were icing on the cake.

Final thought
I'm a worrier, it's true; but you'd worry, too, if you had people come up to you after reading last week's post after our FFA Cup loss and ask you to write something positive for once.