Tassie All-Stars stun the mighty South Melbourne Hellas in 1981 (via Walter Pless)

Photo of a pennant from the game between the Tassie All-Stars and South Melbourne
 Hellas, sent to Walter Pless by former Tasmanian player Craig Pitt. According to Pitt -
who played  against South for Tasmania in the early 1990s - the likely reason he has this
 pennant is that  he was a ballboy during the 1981 meeting between South and Tasmania.

During the coronavirus downtime, I've been mucking around with a collaborative project set up by Tony Persoglia to create and compile a database for interstate competition and tour matches, which will ultimately be uploaded to OzFootball. It's the kind of information which already exists in a piecemeal format on OzFootball - and in different, hard-to-find print almanacs - but which really needs a comprehensive clean-up so that we have a reliable one-stop shop for this kind of information. Here's a sample page of how this information will be presented once the collective effort is fully unleashed.

Meanwhile, unlike South of the Border, which has been slack with any sort of updating,
Tasmanian soccer journalist and historian Walter Pless has been spending the COVID-19 break putting up a series of fascinating posts on his blog on the olden days of Tasmanian soccer. Our lockdown interests met at the point where I needed info on a Tasmanian rep match from 1965 against an Auckland select in New Zealand.

While digging around for relevant info to help me out, Walter came across some South Melbourne Hellas archival materials, and kindly passed them along - and also managed to write about the Tasmanian state team beating our own South Melbourne Hellas in 1981. Here's the article originally posted by Walter on his blog - which he's kindly allowed me to reproduce on South of the Border. Naturally it's very much from the Tasmanian point of view. I'll have something more contemporary on the blog in the upcoming week.

Walter Pless' article in Soccer Action from October 21, 1981, covering Tasmania's win over South Melbourne.
The article above this one has then Hellas midfielder John Stevenson claiming that "it's Hellas' title in 1982".

Tasmanian coach Steve Darby really put his name, and that of Tasmanian football, on the map when he coached a Tasmanian All-Stars side to a 2-0 win over the highly-rated South Melbourne Hellas at South Hobart on 11 October 1981 before a crowd of 1,500.

South Melbourne Hellas had just finished second in the National Soccer League and their side included Alun Evans.

Evans began his career with Wolverhampton Wanderers and I had seen him play for Wolves in the United States against Stoke City in 1967.

Tasmanian coach Steve Darby. Photo: Walter Pless.

He joined Bill Shankly’s Liverpool in 1968 as a 19-year-old and played for The Reds for four seasons before losing his place to new signing Kevin Keegan.

Evans was the star of the South Melbourne side that came to Hobart but although he went close to scoring several times, the Tasmanian defenders kept him goalless.

Tasmania’s coach, Steve Darby, also had an impressive CV. He had been assistant national coach of Bahrain before coming to Tasmania to coach Devonport.

Darby also played for University and coached New Town Eagles, as well as the State team.

Darby went on to be the State Director of Coaching before leaving Tasmania and becoming a successful men’s and women’s coach in Australia and South-East Asia.

He coached the Matildas and the Vietnam women’s team, and was also assistant coach of the Thailand men’s national side.

The Tasmania All-Stars side was impressive and included former Middlesbrough First Division player Peter Brine in defence.

Photo: Peter Brine (rear at left) back in Hobart in 2018 to
 catch up with Craig Jones (front left), Nick Di Martino
 (rear right) and Denis Payne. Photo: Walter Pless.

The Tasmanian team was: Phil Kannegiesser - Alan Burton, Peter Brine, Darby Conlan, Chris Hey - Steve Kannegiesser, Eric Young, Willy Peters - Bruce Ward, Mark Oakes (Nick Cook 60), Ian Parker.

The South Melbourne Hellas line-up was: Laumets - Boon, Lutton, Xanthopoulos, Traficante - Stevenson, Shirra, Nicolaides, Campbell - Evans, Buljevic.

The Tasmanian side included other imports such as Eric Young (ex-Manchester United), Bruce Ward (one of the most lethal strikers ever to have played in Tasmania),Ian Parker (brilliant left-winger from the UK), Alan Burton (also from the UK) and Nicky Cook (was with Hull City).

The home-grown talent was impressive, too, with Chris Hey, Phil and Steve Kannegiesser, Darby Conlan, Willy Peters and Mark Oakes all playing from the start.

Eric Young (left) and Ian Parker catch up in Hobart in 2008.
 Photo: Walter Pless.

South Melbourne’s coach was former Greek international John Margaritis, who coached Olympia in Tasmania in the 1960s.

The referee was Tasmania’s Norm Johnston, a top-class official who had come to the State from Western Australia. He was here only a few years before returning interstate.

Goals by Ian Parker in the 11th minute and Bruce Ward in the 79th minute did the job for the home team.

I’d love to see the video of the game. It was filmed from the back of a ute parked on the grass at the side of the pitch near the present scoreboard. I know because David Martin and I were the commentators. David, Reg Tolputt and I used to host a half-hour football show on local radio station 7HT on Saturday mornings. Reg was one of the founders of new club Salvos (Salvation Army) and he was also the manager of one of Steve Darby's Tasmanian sides.

My match report in "Soccer Action" [see above] didn't appear until 10 days later because Steve Darby and I had been attending the semi-finals and final of the Under-20s World Cup in Sydney [won by West Germany 4-0 against Qatar].

Thank goodness for Google Translate

Port 3 South 3
Out at Port Melbourne last Friday, those present saw a match of two halves, which I prefer to a game of three thirds. Being 3-0 down and then bringing it back to 3-3 says something and nothing at the same time. I have not seen enough of the team during this pre-season to make too many sweeping judgements, Michael Eagar looks good, Milos Lujic is doing his usual thing, and the rest of the usual first teamers have looked neither better nor worse - though Norton's cross for one of our goals suggests that his good form from last season will be taken into this season. I'm not sold though on this centre back they have trialling at the moment - Milos Tosic, I think his name is, probably from South Australia - he's a massive unit, which will be good for defending at set pieces, but his size comes with a severe lack of pace.

The search for strike partner or Milos Lujic continues. To that end we have apparently signed Congolese - that's Republic of Congo for all you geographers out there - striker or midfielder Philtzgerald Mbaka. Mbaka, a 23 year old left sided player, most recently played at Getafe B, the lower tier outfit of Getafe. The news article rightly mentions that this is a risky move for Mbaka - should he perform poorly, he will lose visibility for selection to the Republic of Congo's national team - and for all you promotion-relegation enthusiasts, the article also mentions the lack of promotion-relegation to and from the A-League, not just for its own sake, but in the way it hinders players at lower levels here. Mbaka didn't do anything special in his time against Port (nor against Comets), but then again neither did pretty much anyone else. All our goals conceded seemed to come from defensive mistakes.

For their part, Port will be competitive once again in 2016, and will be pissed off if they don't make the finals, but it's hard to see them pushing all the way unless they get a good run in terms of injuries and the like. This game was watched from the now normally closed off outer side of SS Anderson Reserve - here's hoping that continues in the 2016 season proper - in part perhaps because they've dug a large trench of sorts where the hill adjacent to the Laurie Schwab press box stands. Whether that's where the planned electronic scoreboard will be installed, I don't know, but I reckon that trench would be too deep for that, and on the wrong side of the ground for most spectators. It looks like local Greek-Australian soccer stalwart Jim Massis is also back in charge of the canteen there.

Some of you may have seen the video of triallist Velibor Mitrovic's excellent free kick against Port doing the rounds of the internet, but those of you who are a little too obsessed with the work of Football Chaos may also be familiar with this player from this stunner during Mitrovic's time with Kingston City.



Sure the defence gives him too much room, but anyone that can crack a shot like that should be worth a look, no?

In less good news, word on the street seems to be that young midfielder Cody Martindale, who missed the majority of the 2015 season after getting injured away against Heidelberg, has re-injured the same leg and may miss the entire season once more. Leigh Minopoulos was a non-starter for ??? but will hopefully be right for the start of the season.

Youngster Spiros Stamoulis seems to have been signed by Spanish side Alaves on a two year deal.

L'Alavés ha fitxat al davanter del South Melbourne, Spiros Stamoulis (18). Firma per 2 temporades. #fitxatges pic.twitter.com/IEExg4ONVA

— Mercat de fitxatges (@Mercafitxatges) January 17, 2016

It's possibly only an academy thing, but good luck to him anyway.

South 1 Comets 1

A photograph of people of taking a photograph. Yes, yes, it's all very meta. Photo: Paul Mavroudis.

In front of a crowd of 80 people (not counting those people running around the track) some sub par finishing kept the goals in this game to a more modest level than they perhaps should have been. Comets had been beaten 5-0 by Heidelberg last Friday, although according to some people that had been a weaker team than was on evidence here. Both sides switched players around and in and out as tends to happen at this time of year. Missing for us were Leigh Minopoulos (moon boot), Matthew Foschini (honeymoon), and Tim Mala (partying).

On the plus side, Matthew Theodore looks a like a bundle of energy during this pre-season. Injuries and work commitments have hampered Theodore in recent times, but there's obviously still a lot of love out there for player with his work ethic, style and ability to quickly thread a through ball to Milos Lujic. Still, you wonder if he will be able to overcome the obstacles of combining a hectic career as a corporate lawyer, being the wife of a bitter and broken entrepreneurial consultant and the mother of two teenage girls growing up in the cynical and angst ridden 1990s - and still find the time to play semi-professional soccer.

A pennant from Adelaide Comets
marking the occasion of their visit to
Melbourne. Photo: Paul Mavroudis.

Having deleted Twitter off my phone - ostensibly because it was interfering with my work and/or not allowing me to be 'in the moment' at games - I was surprised to find out later that I had received two notifications from gamblers looking for score updates from this game (which was also played in three thirty minute thirds). Of all the things to gamble on, why this fixture? OK, I get that some might get a laugh out of it because of the sheer obscurity of the affair, but beyond that?

Oh well, I suppose people need to entertain themselves with something while we wait for resolution to the lease and social club issues.

Bendigo calling
Seems like we're booked in to play a sort of match against NPL2 franchise Bendigo City on Saturday night up in Bendigo. Kickoff would be at 7pm at Epsom Huntly Reserve, which is on the outskirts of Bendigo. I don't think I'll be able to go to this one, which is a shame, but that's what happens when you play these games in the middle of nowhere. Check the South website for more details in case they bother to put any up.

Takis Mantarakis passes away
Multiple championship winner, captain, South team of the century team member and all round club icon Takis Mantarakis passed away at the age of 81 last Saturday. The obituary on smfc.com.au is well written, and has some excellent photos to boot. Looking at the reaction on Facebook to Mantarakis' death, what comes through is not so much his undoubtedly massive contribution to South over many years, but especially his human decency. Those understand Greek may also choose to listen to this piece from SBS Greeks' 'Athletes who we loved' series.

Social club artefact Wednesday - Club Italia pennant

A few weeks or months ago - I can't remember exactly, but it was towards the end of the home and away season - I ended up chatting with a couple of the older heads, and the Club Italia '82 tour popped up in discussion. One of the two older blokes in this discussion could not remember anything about this tour, which was unusual as he's usually good with this stuff. As for myself, I'd never heard of it. Club Italia? What was that? Turns out it was a team made up partly of players from Italy's 1982 World Cup winning team, which toured Australia sometime in 1992, probably during the first half of that year (see below for exact date). And then I had a little bit of a light bulb moment - hadn't I seen a Club Italia pennant when I was cleaning up the social club? Indeed I had. That pennant had made little sense to me then, but it makes perfect sense to me now. Club Italia had beaten Adelaide City 1-0 before our meeting, which we lost 2-1, and then onto Marconi who they beat 4-2. That Marconi game actually has some footage online, which makes one hope that out there, somewhere, there is some footage from South's match against Club Italia. There may also be a match programme out, which we'd also love to see. Apart from the video of the Marconi exhibition match, the only online information about this tour (that I can find in English at least) comes from this link, which is a description of the Marconi match. What's interesting is that Marconi also used some guest players from other clubs for this match, so I wonder if South did the same. Of course, any further information on this tour, and especially the South game, would be appreciated.

Update
Thanks to Mark Boric for digging through some of the old Italian-Australian papers for us to get some more info on this.

For the Melbourne leg of their tour, Club Italia were due to arrive on the day before their match (on an Ansett flight), immediately heading to the Veneto Club for a welcoming reception, before holding a clinic for junior players. That evening they were to attend a reception in their honour. Their game in Melbourne (Thursday 27th February, at Olympic Park) was meant to be against a composite team coached by Ferenc Puskas, but was mostly made up of South Melbourne players. The lineups for the game were as follows:

'When classes does not get old'. Paul Wade receives the Club Italia pennant.
Image scanned by Mark Boric.

Club Italia: Copparone, Gentile, Mozzini, Filippi, Fontolan, Guida, Cirelli (Scarnecchia 62), Roggi (C. Sala 49), Rossi, Causio, Graziani (Briaschi 41). Coach: Valentino Angelillo

South Melbourne: MacLaren, Wright, Micheil, Durakovic, Fernandes, Wade, Taliadoros, Petersen, Trimboli, Tsolakis, Hasler. Coach: Ferenc Puskas.

At the start of the second half the following players took the field for 'South Melbourne', though in most cases it isn't clear who they replaced: Lilikakis (incorrectly listed as Lilikas), Michalokopoulos (incorrectly listed as Nichalokopoulos), Boutsianis, Healey, Tsoumerkas (incorrectly listed as Tsoumarkis), Tombolato (Fawkner), Della Rocca (Juventus), Di Martino (Thomastown), Ruccia (Bulleen). The crowd was approximately 12,000.

Mehmet artefact Wednesday - Selangor FA pennant

Oh, so many fond memories of Selangor's tour of late 2013. I suppose it all started before they'd even thought of touring, when former South Melbourne Hellas championship player Mehmet Durakovic quit his post as South Melbourne FC director of football or technical director or whatever it was that he was doing with us, and took up the gaffer's job at Selangor, where he played in the 1990s. Then news filtered through that Selangor was in Australia as part of their pre-season schedule, and were using Lakeside as a training base. Would South Melbourne play them in a friendly? Would it be open doors? Would someone from the club say it was closed doors even it wasn't? Yes, yes/no/kinda and yes, but with appropriate caveats! And thus Gains and I went to this game expecting not very much and getting it. All of which is a very long winded way of saying that this week's artefact is the pennant Selangor presented us with prior to the game, and which was last seen somewhere in team manager Frank Piccione's dungeon. You know, because we don't have a social club and stuff.

Selangor FA pennant from our friendly kick about with them in December 2013. Also
partially visible is an 'I Love This Club' sticker from the 2010 season. Photo: Paul Mavroudis.

I'm seeing double artefact Wednesday - 1966 championship pennants

1966 state league championship pennant, from a later tradition.. Photo: Paul Mavroudis.

Now, if someone can fill me in on how such a situation would come up, I'd love to hear an explanation. For some reason, we have two different pennants for our 1966 state league title, our fourth state title.and the final part of the 1964-65-66 hat-trick. The pennant on the right - which due to shoddy camerawork and the awful lighting in the old social club has taken on a raucously jaundiced hue - seems to be a part of the same tradition or set as most of the other state league title pennants from the Victorian Soccer Federation series that were on display. And yet, amid that series of pennants, I found another 1966 championship pennant, one that clearly belongs to an older tradition. If nothing else, the different designs of the balls on the two VSF logos is a dead giveaway. This leads me to ask a number of questions.

Alternate 1966 state league championship pennant, from what appears to be an earlier
tradition or series. Photo: Paul Mavroudis.

What ever happened to the rest of the pennants from that earlier set? How did the original(?) 1966 pennant survive when the others didn't? In addition to that, the next thing to figure out is whether there were any actual trophies awarded for the state league titles back then. If there were, then as best as I can remember we're missing every single one of them from the pre-NSL era, which is a damn shame considering how many relatively ephemeral trophies we had on display and which are currently packed away in storage awaiting the reconstruction of the social club, Finally, in terms of which design I prefer, it's the older version. Ignoring the superior colour quality of the alternate pennant's photo, the design just has a lot more 'oomph' and presence, which I know won't satisfy the graphic design heads who read this blog, but maybe they can come in and talk about the differences between the two pennants using proper graphic design jargon - come on, you know you want to.

Atypical artefact Friday - Hellas Soccer Club Melbourne pennant

In lieu of the Kiss of Death having gone missing this week, I decided to pull out an artefact for a Friday instead of a Wednesday. This pennant was in the South Melbourne Hellas boardroom back at the old Lakeside offices, and I assume that it dates well back to our days at Middle Park. Most notably, it does not include the name 'South Melbourne' in any part of its design - could this mean that it dates back to the 1959 merger of Yarra Park and Hellenic to form Hellas, but before that newly formed club amalgamated with South Melbourne United in early 1960? I can't say for sure; perhaps it was a later Anglisised example of the club's Greek name 'Ελλάς Μελβούρνης', (Ellas Melvournis). All that I can say for sure is that it's one of our most beautiful and well made pennants - flimsy this ain't - and something that many if not most of our fans would have never seen.

Totalitarian theocracy artefact Wednesday - Saudi Arabia FA pennant

With the Asian Cup starting this week, and what with the Saudis even visiting Melbourne next week to play North Korea (in a totalitarian theocracy derby, how apt), this seemed like as good as time as any to post this piece of history.  Three years ago now, the Saudi Arabian national team used Lakeside as a training base in the lead up to playing what was for them, a must win game against the Socceroos in the course of World Cup qualifying. That stint included a warm up match New Zealand which turned out to be open to the public, a fact however that was announced too late for me to make use of. Anyway, I assume this was presented to us as a token of their thanks to us infidels for using the stadium. Is the drawing of the footballer on the pennant classifiable as a graven image? What about the date palm? I don't know; I'm no theologian. If you're anywhere near me in the good seats during the Melbourne based Asian Cup matches, come around and say hello.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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