More than a bit of waffle on idiosyncratic forms of Australian soccer chauvinism

This week, in posting nothing even particularly inflammatory, which I'm more than capable of doing - some of it was just quoting choice elements of news articles on social media about Western United's ongoing issues with its creditors - I was accused of being bitter. Me! Bitter! Well, yes, I am. Of course I am. But I would like to think that there's more nuance to my bitterness than a simple slur like "bitter" can allow.

Right from the start, I should note that it is self-evidently both stupid and pointless (a winning combination if I've ever seen one) to engage with arguments and commentary that appear to be made in obvious bad faith, or at least based upon only skimming through the compulsory texts set for the course. If I were being reasonable about the whole thing, and I like to think I'm usually quite reasonable, I wouldn't expect any of my social media or actual social interlocutors, occasional or otherwise, to have read South of the Border from start to finish (please don't ever do that); that includes not even at the very least the good bits that people used to once share to their friends and enemies with the phrase "Mav nails it again".

So, I understand why I might get lumped in with people who are genuinely more aggro and aggrieved about the state of Australian soccer and especially South Melbourne's place in it than I am. Being lumped in with the more obnoxious online South fans used to frustrate me more when I was more engaged with the work of writing about Australian soccer, but back then there was also the reassurance that someone might chirp up with a "well, Paul's not like the others". How smug did I feel after those moments! But time and passivity can erode even the most hard won reputation. That makes it sound like I'm crying for my "nice bitter guy" reputation even more than I cry for South's reputation, and I suppose there's some truth to that. 

My reputation, limited as it was to being the "thinking Australian soccer fan's bitter" - sort of like the Lloyd Braun of bitters - went to great lengths to differentiate itself from the boastfulness seemingly inherent to South Melbourne Hellas and its supporters. But time moves on, and my reputation is no longer of concern, because I pretty much don't write anymore. So if I'm not worth engaging with, as some of my recent deriders seem to believe, then my message to them is: don't engage! It seems so obvious, and yet that is the social media nicotine impulse, isn't it? Someone of no consequence has said something stupid or disagreeable (about Australian soccer! of all the things to get upset about!) on the internet, and they must be corrected and chastised, for the betterment of all humanity.

So the bad faith arguments persist. It's even more frustrating when both sides of the argument clearly don't think that their opponents are arguing in good faith. Of course, calling it an argument is giving such discourse far too much dignity and credit; there really isn't much meaningful discourse about the topic. Getting involved with the sickly remnants of this new dawn/bitter divide is stupid and pointless in part because the new dawn has won, and quite comprehensively. Some South fans - the ones I've recently been lumped in with - would disagree, but it's so clear that, the novelty of a short Australian Championship fling aside (I should write something about that, maybe), Australian soccer has for the most part been drawn in the new dawn image. Yet so much of the engagement on these topics (at least within my social media vicinity) remains based around winding other people up, or trying to score brownie points with your own side by making yet another histrionic comment on social media. 

Meanwhile, I thought that my trademark casual flippancy was positively urbane by comparison; perhaps such nuances aren't as appreciated as they used to be.

Now on to a much more serious allegation. In addition to being accused of being bitter (fair), I was also accused of hating the A-League (mostly fair), and yet also with being obsessed with that competition despite my seeming/apparent/feigned (take your pick) interest in it. Well, yes and no. It depends on the day of the week and how well the competition is doing. Being slightly less flippant about the topic, I admit that the worse that the A-League does, the more interesting it is to me. Right now, the Western United situation aside, the A-League is not particularly interesting to me. The A-League is generally doing fine, and has been for a long time. Sometimes it does better, sometimes it does worse. It's not perfect, sure: it loses money hand over fist, crowds go up and then down very suddenly, and the TV deal ain't worth much. But that's no different to most minor and secondary soccer leagues around the world, especially those dependant on corporate philanthropy to keep them afloat.

Holding this general opinion of the A-League's mostly adequate health, as an otherwise bitter South fan, doesn't always go over well with other bitter South fans, especially those who are of a similar age to myself. For some reason, it especially doesn't go over well with Ian Syson, who likely thinks it to be mere contrarianism on my part; some last vestigial limb of the much, much younger me's penchant of arguing for the sake of arguing.

But regardless of how healthy the A-League actually is, the A-League has been around for twenty years now. The National Soccer League was around for 27. How long until those of our people actually death-riding the A-League finally get the hint that the A-League isn't going anywhere? Again, I suppose the answer lies in the question of how close South is to getting into the comp at any given point in time - the closer (in our imaginations at least) that we are, say during a semi-bona fide bidding process, then the more viable the A-League magically becomes; the further away we are (most of the rest of the time), the less viable the A-League seems to be unless it dramatically reforms itself to such an extent that, conveniently, the involvement or inclusion of South Melbourne is able to solve some or even many of the competition's problems.

It's the rather absurd and persistent and hardly unnoticed irony that the A-League's biggest haters (at least from those outside the A-League tent) so desperately want to be a part of it. People pointing this out sometimes do so thinking they've found the winning bit of well-observed satire that will once and for all take down the whole "South Melbourne supporter who's obsessed with hating the A-League" faction. But it's not a new observation, and it's not going to do the trick, just like counting A-League crowds off a TV screen isn't going to be the thing that kills off an A-League team. 

But back to me and my particular position on the whole thing. I don't much care for the A-League both as it is now, and as it has been since its inception. To understand my position on the matter though, one must separate the on-field aspect from the off. I could not give a stuff about what happens on the field. It does not concern me. I wish no one involved with it either well or ill. I really, seriously do not care, except on the rare occasions I am in the vicinity of A-League programming or in-person discussion, and I mostly try to ignore it, with often poorly disguised petulance.

But I don't care for the on-field aspect for much the same reason that I don't care for most soccer leagues outside Victoria, whether here or overseas. I don't care for the A-League in the same way that I, as a Victorian fan of Australian rules football, don't care about the SANFL or the WAFL. There's no hook for me, no connection. I tried connecting with Victory way back when, but it just didn't take. It didn't resonate with me on emotional, aesthetic, political, moral, or on whatever other grounds you can think of. That experience of not-resonating helped me understand the point of view of those who could not (and not just would not) connect to South or any ethnic club, even though it really shouldn't have taken that first season A-League sojourn to make that empathetic realisation. All sorts of reasoning (some fair, some absolute rubbish) can be attached to trying to make sense of why one couldn't attach themselves to it, but really, you either feel it, or you don't. Trying to convince yourself that you care or that you should care is not a good sign.

Would I change my view on the A-League if South Melbourne was allowed to participate in it, as South Melbourne, with no gimmicks? I probably would, even with having to deal with VAR; after all, pretty much everyone has a price. But that change of view wouldn't be only, or even mostly because I am a South Melbourne supporter, though of course it'd be a large part of it: it'd be because including South Melbourne in the A-League would fundamentally alter what the A-League is about, even if South Melbourne was a small club within the competition rather than the medium-sized fish that it was in the small sludgy pond that was the NSL. The A-League would fundamentally change if any of the major old ethnic clubs somehow made the jump. If it was Sydney Olympic or Marconi or Preston who somehow got in instead of us, I still probably wouldn't watch the A-League. But I could acknowledge that there was a pathway, and a significant cultural shift within the code at that level because of the addition. If I were to remain resentful about South's ongoing exclusion, then the resentment, too, would have to take a different form. 

But there's no sign of that ever being anything other than a vague hypothetical. So, if I don't care about the on-field aspects of the A-League, and if South has basically Buckley's of getting into it, then why do I (or any bitter for that matter) pay any attention to the A-League as an organisation at all? The answer to that question is so obvious, that it's insulting to have to point it out; but since the people who bring this point up are either being deliberately obtuse about the issue, or are actually that ignorant, here's the answer:

Because I, and we, have to.

It's very much like living in Victoria as an AFL-hating soccer fan, and pretending that the AFL does not exist. Or even worse, being an AFL-hating soccer fan from outside of Victoria, who has no clue not just about how powerful the AFL is economically in this state. but especially how pervasive Australian rules is to this city on a cultural level. The game of Australian rules has grown up symbiotically with the city of Melbourne; to understand one is to understand the other. I bring this point up only because one of my interlocutors made a point of me being an AFL fan, as if that was not entirely normal for someone from Melbourne - even a soccer fan - to be.

But back to the A-League. While the A-League in Melbourne is not even close to reaching the heights of cultural relevance that the AFL has, unless you are being completely intellectually dishonest as an Australian soccer fan of certain "exiled" clubs, you can't pretend that the A-League and its current ownership and management do not exist. They exist, and they wield significant influence on the game as a whole, at both national and local levels. Outside of the Socceroos, and much more recently the Matildas, the A-League is the main (and most regular) showpiece of Australian soccer. It gets the bulk of the private investment dollars put into Australian club soccer. It gets access to the best available stadiums. It gets the most fans. It gets, however small it is compared to equivalent competitions from other Australian sports, more media attention than soccer leagues below it. The A-League teams and their owners wield, to varying degrees, greater influence with soccer's administrators at a national level, and with politicians more generally. 

Football federations have funded W-League teams, and promote the efforts of A-League teams - all private businesses, which are not members of their federations - on their social media channels. At a local level, clubs like South compete against the youth set-ups of Victory, City, and Western United for access to junior talent. At times we are forced to play against the youth teams of the A-League sides, which in the case of matches against Victory's NPL team, includes expending not insignificant amounts of time and money dealing with security concerns, because of the violence a minority of Victory's fanbase bring to this level. Western United, looking to temporarily solve its home ground issue, tried to play out of Lakeside apparently without even thinking to ask the already existing soccer tenant whether that would be OK. Second tier clubs lose players on the eve of finals series or right before a grand final to A-League teams, and who knows what the financial compensation for that is, if any. Weekly fixtures have to be worked around local A-League games, or at least the derbies and bigger matches.

These are mostly the inevitable logistical challenges of soccer in Australia, or any sport really. The big(ger) dog gets catered to better than those further down the pecking (or biting) order. Some of this stuff could be handled better, but being frank, if you're second tier, you're pretty much never going to be treated preferentially compared to those in the first tier. I doubt that it was much better in the past, and if it was, it probably wasn't because soccer's administrators and powerbrokers were more accommodating to their poorer cousins; it was probably just more down to being inept at exploiting that advantage or simply lacking enough leverage to better exploit the situation.

So there's logistics, but there's also culture. The A-League's varying degrees of success (at least during its early peak) have meant that soccer administrators at a state level have tried at various times to import and force changes upon lower tier clubs and structures in an attempt to emulate the success of the A-League. You can't use this or that name. We should introduce franchise systems of regional/suburban representation at the top of the state system, supplanting the existing club system. But there's also other, less official cultural elements which get less remarked upon. For example, when the A-League does good, it's obviously in spite of Australian soccer's ethnic past; when it does bad, it's just another example of how Australian soccer cannot get away from its dysfunctional (read: ethnic) past.

Examples of maladministration and bad ownership aside (which people don't really engage with too much), it's the hooligan aspect (which is much more visceral, and thus a lot more tangible to the ordinary punter) that generally gets the emotional juices flowing. It's been over twenty years since South and Knights were in the top-flight, and thirty years since Preston and Heidelberg were in the top flight; yet when Victory fans (for example) fuck up - most of whom would never have been to an NSL game, and would have almost no connection to those clubs - it's still our clubs who get dragged into the fray. "It's just like the bad old days", even though it isn't exactly like the old days.

(which is not to say that fans of "our" clubs haven't fucked up in the intervening periods; only to suggest that maybe there should be more nuance in the ongoing discourse of the Australian soccer violence problem)

Even when used as a positive comparative framing device, the existence of the A-League as a touchstone is unavoidable. The FFA/Australia Cup was built on the twin stories of reconnecting two disparate parts of the Australian club soccer ecosystem (with some going as far as to suggest it's part of a "healing" process), and the thrill of a lower league club upsetting an A-League one. When local and A-League clubs meet, it's at the lower club's home (except in cases where the local ground doesn't meet A-League player and broadcast standards), and the local club gets to show off a bit of its "authenticity", which apart from the tiresome Soccer Food Safari discourse, also inevitably paints the A-League clubs as somewhat "inauthentic" by comparison. And how can we run the Australian Championship without any reference whatsoever to the A-League? Both those running it and those watching cannot help but comment about the good, the bad, and of course the gap between the two competitions at every comparative level. 

Closer to home, the young supporters of our club, as well as the junior players and most of their parents, just do not have the same chip on their collective shoulder about the NSL, the A-League, and all the guff that those who grew up with a more glorious South Melbourne Hellas have. For them, it's an entirely different world, and approached that way. That goes for the majority of sponsors we have to woo, too, and the politicians. And those of us who do have that chip on our shoulder have to acknowledge that experience. We'll have fun among ourselves hating on the A-League, but at the same time, it's not the reason we exist, and I sometimes think some people outside the club want to push that idea - that our support of our club is secondary to our varying degrees of hostility to the A-League. For the most part, that's utter nonsense. If anything, those who prioritise hating the A-League over supporting South aren't really coming to many South games.

Going back to what kicked this whole thing off. Almost seven years ago to the day, the consortium behind Western United beat South and several other bidders for an A-League licence. They did this by bidding more money for the licence fee than most of their opponents, and by promising to build a privately owned, soccer-specific stadium, alongside an urban development project in Melbourne's outer western growth suburbs. The group behind Western United claimed they would be ready to start work on that stadium as soon as they were awarded their licence. 

Seven years later, apart from a local council-owned training venue posing as a national league stadium, the "shovel-ready" stadium project is yet to commence. Large amounts of land remains undeveloped in the vicinity of the mooted stadium. The entire senior wing of the club - men's and women's - has been put into hibernation. Their men's VPL side was removed from competition a week before it was due to participate in playoff matches which had the potential of seeing them enter the top tier of soccer in Victoria. Western United's main backers - including a former Socceroo - have been taken to court by various parties for failing to meet their dues. The creditors have included staff members of other businesses of Western United investors, as well as various suppliers and, most notably, the tax office. Famous athletes from a variety of sports have been revealed to have been investors of the team.

Maybe Western United will survive, maybe they won't. But put aside my self-interest in this matter by virtue of being a South fan, and a bitter one at that. Put aside the fact that I, as an almost lifelong resident of Melbourne's western suburbs and an Australian soccer fan, am at least nominally part of the cohort that Western United would have wanted to convince to support them. Put aside for a moment that United's most recent hearing in the Federal Court was just three doors down from a courtroom I was working in. Put aside even this nonsense. If you're at all interested in Australian soccer, and you don't think that the current travails of Western United are absolutely fascinating, regardless of the motivation for finding them fascinating, then there's something wrong with you.

Very strange people: Nike Cup Final - South Melbourne 0 Calder United 3

To begin with, how we got here.

While everything strictly local football was cancelled several months ago, Football Victoria decided to persist with closing out at least some of its competitions with a winner in 2021. So as with the Dockerty Cup for the men, won by Avondale a couple of weeks ago, the women's knockout cup also forced through an outcome and title winner, courtesy of two semi-finals last week, and a final yesterday.

Last week our senior women played against Bulleen at the Veneto Club in one of those semi-finals. Because it was at the Veneto Club, and because it was on at a somewhat lousy time of day, and because it was screened on YouTube, I took the not altogether reprehensible, perhaps even soft, decision to watch the game from home.

What was less excusable was not writing about the game, but that's the state of South of the Border these days, the blog that continues its trajectory of becoming exponentially slacker.

That game against Bulleen was a strange one. I get the urge to at least get something out of this awful situation, but the competition came across as farcical when most of the remaining teams were hampered by some or many regular senior players being unavailable due to competing A-League Women commitments. I can't speak for the other three teams, but South reputedly had around about ten players unavailable because of this. Add to that the lack of training and match conditioning, and you end up pretty close to conducting glorified pre-season matches.

But I guess that's how much people in this country love soccer, that everyone pulled together to get this tournament over and done with, in order to salvage something from 2021. Last week South utterly dominated the early stages of their game against Bulleen, couldn't put them away at first, let Bulleen back in the game, before finally rolling over the Lions for a comfortable 5-1 win. I'm rather ignorant of who's playing for South's senior women at the best of times, but even by those standards there were a lot of names that I was unfamiliar with.

It wasn't a particularly fluent performance, but why be harsh under the circumstances? Still, it didn't fill me with much confidence that we'd beat Calder in the final; but seeing how it was a final, and it was at the comparatively easier to get to venue of CB Smith Reserve, and what with there being a much more family friendly kickoff time than the semi-final, I decided to go to the game to support the team. That, and it probably wouldn't kill me to be a little bit more social, though who knows what disease you'll catch if you dare leave your house these days.

There was some chatter on our forum that a bunch of Clarendon Corner people who never go to any women's games would actually go to this game, but the likelihood of that happening was always very remote. As things turned out, it was probably for the best that they didn't turn up - there was no need for two sets of supporter groups taking away from the spectacle and the still generally positive, non-aggro vibe of a women's soccer match. Having one such set of self-absorbed fans at the game was more than enough. 

When your attention span gets shorter by the day, you forget things which on reflection you actually kinda knew at one point. As with everything, it's easy to blame the pandemic, but I think I can be forgiven for forgetting that Calder United now has some affiliation with Western United as part of the latter's eventually getting an A-League women's team, to the point of Calder adopting Western's colours. I'm not even sure if it was just a new away kit, because most of the obviously legacy Calder fans in the crowd still sported the team's usual navy colours.

With Western United and Calder being affiliated, the Western Service Crew - a Western United supporter group - rocked up with a megaphone, a drum, and a banner or two. Parking themselves to the left of the grandstand, they hoisted up a hastily made banner with "NO LICENCE" written on it. It was petty and stupid, and didn't have much to do with the game at hand or with Calder, but that's football fandom for you. 

Being behind the goals at the opposite end of the ground, it's a wonder that either side's fans bothered to try and abuse each other, what with the wind swirling around as it was, especially in the first half. Thank goodness the ground at least looked in amazing condition compared to the Dockerty Cup final's potato field from a couple of weeks ago. The wind was blowing across the field mostly, and if it was favouring either end it was the one that we were kicking to in the first half, but we couldn't make the most of that advantage, and went into the break at 0-0.

I reckon the game was pretty much lost right there for South, and the second half kinda showed that. Our small gaggle of regular and regular-ish watchers of the South senior women moved around to the other end for the second half. We copped a couple of goals early enough in the second half - the second of which was an absolute belter of a finish - to pretty much be out of the game. Hitting the crossbar from about eight yards out at 2-0 down was the icing on the cake unfortunately. For whatever it's worth, though we were generally outplayed, I didn't think that we were bad. Indeed, I thought we were better yesterday than the previous week, but Calder were better drilled and had that bit more experience and polish. 

It's not great to lose a final, especially of a competition you haven't won yet, but hopefully at least some of the players out there for us got valuable experience, and some knowledge about what it's like playing senior football. 

Now that we've got all the cliches about incremental personal improvement and grudging acknowledgment of a superior opponent out of the way, it's time to get into what you're really here for - reports of επισόδια and/or φασαρίες. After our earlier mentioned gaggle moved behind the southern goals, a portion of the Western Service Crew moved around to the western side of the ground next to the Calder benches. Maybe they realised eventually that their "no licence" banner (eventually joined by a "no cup" banner) wasn't visible to the cameras at home, what with the game being filmed from the grandstand and not the outer side.

This group then also began directing chants our way, about us, most of which were nonsensical and not really worth responding to. "You're not singing anymore" - well, we hadn't been singing at all. "Who are ya?" - well, like Bodie said to Marlo, "you know my name". And dumbest of all, "what have you done". I mean, you can slander South Melbourne Hellas about all sorts of things, but not having done stuff, or won stuff? Of course, when your focus is on chanting things about SMFCMike, maybe you don't have the best interests of the women's team you're allegedly supporting at heart.

(the less said about their first half rendition of the Great Escape theme when the game was still 0-0, the better)

Anyway, security and Western United officialdom got themselves in all sorts of a tangle trying to figure out what to do about that group and its banners. As the game was winding down, their group wandered around behind us en route to rejoining their mates on the grandstand side of the ground, some of them decided to get mouthy and dawdle instead of continuing to shuffle on; harsh words were exchanged, and a small child belonging to one of the Western United fans began crying. All in all, a rather unedifying, unnecessary, and rather avoidable experience.

The game done, it was time go home, except CB Smith only seems to have one exit - or at least one that anyone bothers to open. Blue Thunder Kosta had the players race closed lest (I assume) any members of South's media team, office bearers, ordinary fans, and one itinerant blogger, decided to go out with a surprise attack on the celebrating Western United supporters. When the gates to the players race were eventually opened, we all managed to walk through to the exit without hitting anybody, so kudos to us I guess. 

Western United blocked from using Lakeside

So the news came in late on Friday afternoon: South had successfully blocked Western United from using Lakeside for the upcoming A-League season. Thus ended the week-long saga that saw much energy expended by a lot of people, with just about everyone involved ending up more or less where they started from. South doesn't get an A-League intrusion at Lakeside. Western United will end up playing those seven home games designated for Lakeside at AAMI Park. And the Trust which manages Lakeside Stadium will continue scratching its head trying to figure out how to make soccer work at Lakeside.

Despite all parties involved seemingly ending up back at square one, one tangible change in the dynamic is the realisation that South's veto rights over football at Lakeside are actually quite real. This is a lesson - perhaps the only genuine lesson learned from the entire situation - that's been learned by both the online anti-South brigade, but also by South fans themselves. Otherwise, pretty much everyone who contributed to the public discussion on United's attempt at play at Lakeside, and South's thwarting of it, hasn't budged from their starting position of what they think about South Melbourne Hellas as a valued (or otherwise) member of the Australian soccer body politic. 

I don't know what the anti-South brigade thought about the veto's legitimacy - as Mark Boric noted, maybe they thought that because the most "excitable" online South fans kept bringing it up, that the veto must be a figment of those South fans' imagination. Combine that with South not being the owner of Lakeside, and I can see how some people came to that conclusion; but even as other comparatively non-hysterical South fans noted the veto's existence, the blindness caused by the anti-South cohort's visceral hatred for South meant that only the successful application of the veto itself could make it real.

For South fans, who have been used to hearing about the existence of the veto, it was a relief for to see that not only is the veto real, but that invoking it has real-world consequences. Considering South has long allowed W-League and Y-League games at Lakeside - which is not something some staunch South fans are happy with - we have seldom if ever seen the veto used in practice. The exception to that is a now ancient and maybe even apocryphal refusal to allow Melbourne Heart to use Lakeside, before they became Melbourne City. In contrast, the deployment of the veto means that its existence is now public and verifiable, and a marker for all future discussions on the topic, even if most of the specifics remain confidential.

Further to the confirmation of the veto's power, is the surprise and delight among many South fans that the South board actually decided to use it. Thanks in part to the clumsiness of United's attempt to barge into Lakeside without even wiping their feet on the welcome mat, we will never know if the South board would have decided on a different course of action had United's request been made with more tact. The immediate and overwhelming opposition from South members might have it impossible for the South board to agree to United using Lakeside anyway, but the manner in which the situation unfolded gave the South board little choice but to say "no".

Moral grandstanding aside, for South the opportunity seemed to be there for some sort of financial gain, as well as improvements to Lakeside's amenities. On arguments about generating goodwill, I'm less convinced about that than I was last week. After all, what would be the long-term benefits of being good public soccer citizens to any member of a self-interested cartel? Key members of the A-League cartel - now almost completely a law unto itself in terms of its governance and operation - have made it clear they do not want South Melbourne in their clique. I mean, City and Victory didn't even want a third Melbourne team of any sort to be part of the A-League. Yet even as key parts of the national league cartel, whose goal should be the self-interest of the cartel as a whole, and not just the narrow self-interest of individual cartel members, City and Victory helped contribute to this mess by not allowing United to use AAMI Park for the upcoming season in the first place.

Sure they're rivals, but being part of the same cartel - and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, it's just facts - it was ridiculous there wasn't any evidence of cartel discipline or solidarity until someone in (I assume) Australian Professional Leagues (the A-League's governing body) forced the hand of City and Victory. It's the least they could do for the team whose licence fee, in at least some A-League fans' opinion, is helping keep several struggling teams afloat.

Of course most of the anti-South squawkers seemed to miss all of that. Asking why South copped so much grief for the situation United has found itself, and why more of the blame wasn't being directed not just at United, but also at Victory and City, is really a very rhetorical question. Those people will squawk about South "showing its true colours" with regards to helping Australian soccer (as well as itself in the short and long term), but the reality is a likely more cynical affair: that most of that squawking was done by people who have no time for South anyway; are in no position from which to turn any goodwill gesture from South into something which will tangibly benefit South; and even if they were, they would be just as likely to move the goalposts should South get even close to achieving its aim of a return to national league soccer.

Speaking for myself, as probably one of the few South fans who was nonplussed about United using Lakeside, I'm a little disappointed that South won't be able to cash in materially on the opportunity. Still, I understand the general elation from our supporters at the board's conduct and the overall outcome. Whether it was the right decision by the South board or not, the way things panned out they had little option other than to invoke the veto. 

United had been scratching around for months for a suitable venue, had come up short for a variety of reasons, and ended up falling onto Plan Z: Lakeside. 

The problems with this plan were myriad, but also contained elements specific to United's reason for existing. One of Victorian soccer's oldest problems has been a lack of suitable infrastructure; United promised to ameliorate that infrastructure deficit by building a new soccer only stadium, and an associated soccer precinct. A few years down the track, and next to no visible progress has been made on their promised solution. Thus we end up in the situation where United apparently trawled Australian Rules venues, tried to get government funding to improve a private soccer venue (not even their own) in the form of Knights Stadium, and then tried to stowaway on the good ship Lakeside.

And perhaps more than most venues they considered, Lakeside has its particular quirk as a moral choice for Western United: United didn't just win its A-League licence (at the expense of several other bids, including South's) by promising a new soccer specific stadium. During the bidding process for that licence it was also made very clear by a variety of people, including people affiliated with United's bid, that Lakeside was not a suitable venue for national league soccer. Somehow all of a sudden Lakeside, with the addition of some very simple improvements - better lighting and wifi - became a more than suitable venue.

Even those who saw this as a good opportunity for South to cash in financially, infrastructure-wise, and in building goodwill, could not ignore the moral heart of the matter. United and a whole bunch of people in high and low places had said that Lakeside Stadium was not good enough for national league football. The implication which followed on from that belief is that because Lakeside was not good enough for national league football, that South Melbourne was also not good enough for national league football. And yet there were a lot of people who got very mad that the club they said wasn't good enough for national league football, wasn't going to allow Western United to use a stadium that they themselves, as well as Western United, said was not good enough for national league football. That United tried to get into Lakeside by not even giving South a courtesy call until very, very late in the matter turned this strictly into a moral matter instead of one that also had a commercial element (though the South board was at pains to emphasise the commercial aspect). 

I'm happy to acknowledge that United may have genuinely been blissfully ignorant of the existence of South's Lakeside veto. I'm even willing to acknowledge that United took the right path officially by calling up the Trust first, the Trust being the venue manager after all, to start the process of trying to sort out their fixture problem. But having known that they were going to embark on this process, United could surely have contacted South much earlier than they did; and even with the pressure of a fixture deadline needing to be announced, not gone public with their announcement until the South board had had time to consider the situation.

(One also has to wonder who at the Trust who met with United - meetings which reportedly included senior figures and not just low level bureaucrats - forgot to mention to United that South has a football veto.)

The end result, so far as I'm concerned, shows South merely exercising its hard-fought for legal rights. United meanwhile continue to flounder about not just in terms of sorting out its ongoing stadium problem, but also in the basics of local soccer diplomacy and courtesy. For an organisation which has boasted about the bona fides of its core staff being football people - and which went on Greek radio no less to talk about their respect for South as a club and institution - their approach to making friends in the local soccer scenes came across as graceless at best, and arrogant at worst.

Some punters spun United now being allowed to play this set of matches at AAMI Park, as what United wanted all along. That's possibly true; but if it is, what an awful, circuitous way of getting to this point. For South, the end result is a moral victory in the short term. How that short-term victory plays in financial terms, and in the relationship with the Trust, remains to be seen. 

Still, at least it was something which helped pass the time.

Report on Lakeside / Western United situation, as heard on 3XY Radio Hellas

I'm not sure if they did a coin toss for who got to go first on the night, but it was our own president who was first cab off the rank. 

Nick Maikousis, South Melbourne president

South Melbourne were approached by Western United for discussions several months ago, which did not end up happening for reasons Maikousis was not clear about.

In the past week, Western United were advised by South Melbourne not to make an announcement about playing their games at Lakeside. They did anyway. South then exercised its legal rights to prevent that from happening. The process of getting a formal response from the Trust is ongoing.

Maikousis noted that Victory and City have also locked out Western United from AAMI Park, and that if fellow A-League teams are not going to look after each other, then its certainly not the place for South Melbourne to look after A-League teams. Also, weren't they supposed to build their own stadium? Isn't this the reason why they got picked over South?

There was also note made that training will resume for our senior men's side tomorrow for the FFA Cup, as that is classed as professional  sport.

Chris Pehlivanis, Western United CEO

Attempt at a conciliatory and collegiate tone throughout. Noted that the scheduled (but never held) meeting mentioned above was cancelled due to covid, but was not going to be about using Lakeside; rather it was about establishing good relations with all Victorian clubs. Pehlivanis then set up the framework under which the situation arrived at this point: lack of suitable soccer infrastructure; changed A-League season window; covid, etc. 

United were not locked out of AAMI Park because of Victory and City directly, but rather because the trust that operates that venue was concerned about overuse of the pitch due to the A-League season now having more crossover with the NRL and Super Rugby seasons. Also because Victory have moved their allocation of Docklands matches to AAMI Park. At least that's how I understood the situation.

Pehlivanis seemed to also insist that at all times Western United's discussions were conducted with the relevant Trusts for AAMI Park and Lakeside, without any knowledge of what tenancy rights were due to the extant leaseholders.

Alternative venues were not suitable for a variety of reasons: being used by other, primary tenants; resurfacing of turf; covid related seating capacity limits; limited time to implement necessary improvements to venue before start of season, and lack of government support to do that. Pehlivanis contested the claim in a recent Melbourne Knights press release that no stadium audit had taken place for Knights Stadium.

With time running out for Western United to sort out venues before the A-League fixture was released, they then decided to pursue Lakeside as an option. They approached the Trust, and had negotiations with the highest level within that organisation. The stadium audit revealed that Lakeside's lighting needed improvement to adhere to A-League standards (which the Trust was willing to do), and some minor improvements to media facilities. They got approval from the A-League governing body.

A meeting with Nick Maikousis took place, where Maikousis said he'd discuss the matter with the South Melbourne board before providing a formal response. With time running out before the fixture announcement, and before the South board could make a formal response, Western United announced that Lakeside would be one of their venues for the upcoming A-League season.  

South have exercised their legal rights to the stadium football veto, and are waiting a response from the Trust. United still intend to play those seven games at Lakeside.

The ironing is delicious / making hay while the sun shines with edit

Edit: Damn you to hell South Melbourne board, make me write things for the first time in months and then you post this update, lol.

Near everything below is now redundant, carry on as you were.

In this current environment of not very much South news, something popped up today which will intrigue and enrage South fans in unequal measure - namely, the announcement that A-League team Western United will be adding Lakeside Stadium to its home venue repertoire for the next A-League season. 

Quelle horror, and such.

Of course you may remember Western United as that property development enterprise which took the form of an A-League expansion licence bid, whose bid centrepiece was the promise to build a new soccer stadium precinct in Melbourne's western sprawl. More pertinently as it applies to South Melbourne Hellas, it was a bid which was successful at winning an A-League licence at a South related bid's expense. 

(the Western United bid also won at the expense of that Dandenong/South-East/Team 11 whatever thing, which is neither here nor there for the purposes of this discussion, and which is now literally not here, there, or anywhere anymore because that south-east angle was absorbed into the City Group empire, and the latter's future plans and schemes)

The Western United licence was won in large part because of that promise to build that stadium and accompanying precinct, thus attracting hoards of soccer fans in the western suburbs to its cause.

To some people's surprise and to the confirmation of many people's cynicism, that promised stadium hasn't yet materialised. Seeing as I am not a member of the construction, government, town planning, or civil engineering fields, I assume the reasons for this are both pandemic and non-pandemic related, but I'm not willing to take a guess as to the exact reasons it hasn't happened, because frankly I'm a coward; but also, what if I'm wrong? There's too much misinformation going about these days as it is, and we don't need obscure, half-moribund blogs covering obscure, half-moribund soccer clubs adding to the ongoing crisis of a lack of trust in media.

At any rate, Western United say they're about to start their stadium build for real this time (even if it's just the construction of a dirt road), and for whatever my opinion is worth, that's probably true. But whatever the truth may be, their promised stadium is still some time from actually existing, let alone being functional.

But one stadium which does exist, imperfect as it may be for national league football - or apparently was until at least a few hours ago - is Lakeside Stadium. On top of its inbuilt imperfections - its lack of corporate spaces, limited seating capacity, the running track around the field, and its suboptimal media facilities - many people (lay and otherwise) at the time of the most recent A-League expansion bidding process also objected to Lakeside Stadium's mere proximity to the Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, extrapolating from that fact that the South bid was geographically too close to the main (shared) home ground of the extant Melbourne A-League licence holders.

That people from outside Victoria could make such generalisations about the geographical particularities of Melbourne's sporting culture was forgivable, albeit irritating. That some people within Melbourne also tried to use the same arguments was less tolerable, but regardless of my feelings, time moves on. And South of the Border has spieled at length on this matter in the past anyway, so there's no need to go over it again.

While time has indeed moved on, Western United have spent the past whatever number A-League seasons (two, I think, but it's all such a blur), wandering aimlessly and unsatisfactorily from the CBD, to footy ovals, to country towns, to Tasmania, and even to failed (irrespective of whoever was primarily responsible for that failure) attempts to get access to Knights Stadium.

And now here we are, after so much failure from Western United to settle in anywhere, much less build their promised stadium. Here we are, after so much objection to Lakeside being deemed a suitable national league venue for men's soccer, and thus by at least some logical extension to South Melbourne being a suitable club for the national league. Here we are, in the situation where Western United will play seven games in the upcoming A-League season at Lakeside, the little venue no-one wanted.

And I, for one, am OK with that. As long as the price is right - that is, we get significant compensation for doing so - we would be mad to decline the offer. Remembering that our monthly government stipend is due to permanently reduce in size very soon, that we have had negligible income from home games for nearly two seasons, and that sponsorship under pandemic parameters is very tight, I think we should take the money. 

It's just good business. At some point in the not too distant future, our government stipend will reduce even further. At some point Western United's stadium will be built, and they won't need to even consider Lakeside. At some point we should actually make use of our veto over competing soccer usage at Lakeside for the purposes of creating a subsidiary, non-South match day dependent income, instead of using it as a means to feel momentarily good (read: smug) about ourselves and our place in Australian soccer.

You would also hope that such a move would lead to at least temporarily improved relations with the Trust, and maybe some investment in the stadium from the government, but that's by the by really.

Seeing as we have the veto over soccer usage, clearly this is a decision that has been made possible by our board. Western United would have approached either the Trust or the club or both, some negotiations would have taken place, and our board would have then made a decision agreeing to this situation, I assume because the offer made was too good to refuse.

Of course this decision has enraged a good number of our fans, as you would expect, and it would be nice if they came out with their reasoning to the membership sooner rather than later. Club boards of all sorts sometimes have to make decisions that will piss off their supporters. And look, for better or worse it's a member run and owned club, and people have a right to their air their grievances on the matter. So you know, sack the board because they're sellouts and such. Still, I doubt that the board would have expected a different response from our fans in making this move. 

But then again, what's the alternative? 

Sack the board (who at least partly fund the club's ongoing existence through their sponsorships) and replace them with who? Reject the deal, and replace that possible income stream with what? Would people rather we wind up the club? I mean, I'm OK with that if that's what the members want, because we've had a good run, and I'm sure that once the current lockdown ends and autumn and winter swing around again, there's other things we could all be doing if South ceased to exist, even if we would miss it. 

For those people still pining for the old days and the prestige and clout that South used to have, all I can do is defer to Slim Charles on such matters. And distasteful as the entire situation may be, think of it this way: the Australian soccer public will get to see Lakeside functioning as a legitimate national league venue (outside the more limited reach in public consciousness of Lakeside's intermittent usage as a W-League venue) - which may in turn help push along the legitimacy of the cause of the national second division, and thus our own cause - and we get to enjoy the short term irony of those who promised big on the stadium and have yet to deliver, paying us for the privilege of using the ground they said wasn't good enough.

Just make sure the cheque clears before they play on the ground though.