Moving House artefact Wednesday - Kon moves house...

Usually this segment (when it bothers to run) doesn't go full bore with the images, but this is a bit of a special edition.

One of our readers, Kon, has recently moved house and needed to take some South Melbourne Hellas memorabilia with him, including some posters from 1988 and 1998. In his own words:

"One of the posters hung proudly in my dad's garage for 27 years. Dad passed away in 2009, an avid SMH supporter since 1964 - from memory, the last game we attended together was an away game in Heidelberg sometime in 2007/2008. His last SMH triumph was in taking his 5-year-old grandson to the final against Altona Magic back in 2006.

After 45 years at the same address, we sold, packed up and moved out of our family home. Memories. Of course, I had to take the posters with me. Damn shame I couldn't salvage the 'Barbaresso Ouzo & SMH, a great combination' sticker that was fixed to the door of the outside laundry."

Not that I keep up to date with all the different Greek language publications that exist and have existed in Australia, but Ελληνοαυστραλιανη Παροικία ('Greek Community') is a new one to me.

There are people out there who watched South in this era, who seemed to like this jersey. I can't say that I am one of those people. But the poster (see immediately below) is nice, and probably not one commonly seen.

The other poster and the news article spread are from just before the 1998 grand final. The juxtaposition between the two eras is interesting. Uniforms, stadium, branding, cultural emphasis. How the boast of 'not just a name, an empire' in 1998, even before we'd won the title, proved half true for a few years, but soon turned to dust.

As noted earlier, one bit of memorabilia which Kon and his family couldn't take with them to their new address was the sticker below, as it was stuck to the door of their laundry. But here it is preserved for posterity.

Thanks once again to Kon for sending these images our way, especially the sticker.

Lastly, since I am no good with putting names to faces, it'd be nice if all you old timers could list the players and staff members in each photo so I can create some complete captions for each image.

Bubblewrap artefact Wednesday - framed Team of the Century print

This post is tinged with both sadness and also a bit of hope. I have lived in the same house for something like 27 years, and now it's on the market. Quite where my family and I will end up is undecided at this point in time, but wherever that new home happens to be, one thing I will finally be able to do is find somewhere to hang up this framed South Melbourne team of the century poster - since I had it framed back in July, it's just been sitting on the floor of my study, leaning up against my brother's barely used drawing board.

The club still has a small handful of these posters left - probably fewer than ten - and not all of them are in the best condition, but most are still in acceptable condition. I found them during my stint cleaning out the social club several years ago in preparation for its renovation, and since then have always wanted one, even though I did cringe at the $150 cost, not including the framing. I suppose I could have nicked one then and there, but I would have felt sick doing that. Besides, I was compensated for my efforts well enough.

As for the painting itself, I'm not sure who the artist is. I may have had the detail somewhere, but I can't seem to find the information now. I'm pretty certain that it was not done by Jamie Cooper, who did the AFL team of the century paintings, and I probably wouldn't class this painting as being equal to that standard - to me at least, it seems like the players' bodies are too similar, and there doesn't appear to be a sense of warmth, camaraderie or connectedness - the subjects being too scattered and lacking in focus, the antithesis of your typical soccer photo, with the starting lineup looking forward with just a hint of the askance, waiting for battle. I suppose I would have liked to have seen the players in the various jerseys used by the club over the years as well, something akin to the Fitzroy team of the century painting - but you can't always get what you want.

Of course the original painting - rarely seen by South supporters, because of the fact that it was located in the old Lakeside boardroom - is in storage at the moment along with our other treasures. Will it be brought out into the public areas of the revamped social club, or will it retain its place in the new boardroom? I'm not too fussed either way, but I did like the way it dominated the old boardroom space, reminding whoever was in charge that there was a profound legacy that they were being asked to maintain, with the muted, but still inherent menace of the framed photos of the club legends in David Williamson's The Club.

Update
Our friend Pavlaki tweeted this as part of his response to this piece.

@PaulMavroudis @smfc pic.twitter.com/TVXwh8V97F
— Paul Touliatos (@pavlaki1969) November 12, 2014

The suggestion is that the artist's name may be Dave Thomas, who has also done a few other team of the century paintings, from what I can tell mostly rugby league ones.

Social club artefact Wednesday - 1964 championship poster

The players, clockwise from bottom left, are: George Kosmopoulos,
John Anderson, Boulis Kambouropoulos, Steve Kalogeros,
Andreas Roussis, Takis Xanthopoulos, Panayotis Tsitsos, Sam Kagioglou,
Harry Vamvakas, Takis Mantarakis, George Papadopoulos,
Mike Mandalis, Ernie Ackerley, Jim Pyrgolios, Leo Damianakos
The Greek words at the top say 'Hellas, Victorian Champions 1964'
The Greek words at the bottom say 'The Hellas Football Club wishes
 you happy holidays and good fortune in the new year'.

Conveniently situated in a week where we could secure our ninth state league title, this Friday also happens to mark the 50th anniversary of South's second state league title, which would also be the first of three consecutive titles.

Coming in to the final round of the 1964 state league season, South Melbourne Hellas was just one point ahead of George Cross and JUST, with a significantly inferior goal difference, and also one point ahead of Juventus who were a longshot to overtake all three of the sides ahead of them.

Apart from the Juventus-Polonia game, which was played on the Sunday, the rest of the matches were played on the Saturday. JUST smacked Hakoah 5-0 at Middle Park, while George Cross beat Lions 3-1 away at Montogomery Park.

South was matched up against Melbourne Hungaria at Olympic Park, and took the lead, and though Hungaria equalised, Hellas went into halftime ahead 2-1. Extending that lead to 3-1, the title looked secure, until Hungaria pulled one back and probably sent the Hellas fans into a bit of a panic. Thankfully the scores remained as they were, and South secured its second Victorian league title.

With a short, 22 game season being the norm, and the use of the two points for a win system, title races were always likely to be closer than the norm, but even so, the top six teams ended up being separated by just four points, the equivalent at that time of two games. After the season was completed, JUST would apparently lodge a protest, claiming that its round 20 match against the relegation bound Alexander - a game it lost 2-0 - was moved without enough notice, and that therefore the game should be replayed. This would have meant that the Greek import players that Alexander used for that game would not be available, what with their having returned to Greece.

What's interesting about this poster, is that it leaves out several players of the 1964 squad while including players that would play for the club in 1965. There is also one player that I can't identify, which if you read the caption I've included for the photo is the third last player. Any help with answering that question

Update
Thanks to the person who runs the official South Twitter account, who posted that the unknown player was Ernie Ackerley, coincidentally one of the players who was not part of the 1964 team, but who had joined South in time for this late year friendly match against Pan-Hellenic.