Victoria Bitter

This post was originally published on The Supermercado Project by Supermercado/Adam1.0

Sports fans will recall that despite being a massive soccer football fan for the last fifteen years, and having been sledged as a “wog” more than once for it, I’ve got no love for the new Australian national competition. For the last year we’ve had the same debate again and again - why South Melbourne should have been in it, why they shouldn’t have been etc.. Now on the verge of the new Victorian Premier League season, and our attractive clashes against world class sides like Richmond and Sunshine George Cross, the arguments have come up again. I’d like to say I’m over it, but sadly that would be a complete lie.

I think we’d be slightly less paranoid about it if the New Zealand and Central Coast teams weren’t in it. Everyone knows the NSL was a farce, and even if we don’t say it openly most of us will admit that the major markets needed a “broadbased” team to get people interested. The problem is that there’s only five major markets in Australia - and you can’t have a competition that’s just Melbourne vs Sydney vs Perth vs Adelaide vs Brisbane every week. So they forced a few experimental sides in there and are being rewarded with pathetic crowds for those teams. Relatively speaking the “big five” are doing well in crowd numbers (despite drops in Adelaide and Perth they’re still thrashing most of the NSL averages) but what are they going to do for the other three? Hang in and hope that some miracle is going to occur and suddenly all of New Zealand are going to start following their team? Their last gate was 1500. And what else can you do in a city like Newcastle? Either these people are going to go for it or they’re not. And at the moment they’re seriously lukewarm about the process. They pulled off 10k for a top of the table clash last night, but their crowd has been hovering around 5k all season.

The Brisbane Strikers of the NSL weren’t even close to an ‘ethnic’ team, and by the last days of the competition they found themselves with a thousand fans and rapidly losing money. All that says to me is that there was nothing you could do for the game in this country without decent coverage and media attention. Replace the Strikers with “Queensland Roar” this year and suddenly they’ve got 15000 fans from nowhere. Maybe South/Knights/Sydney Olympic/Marconi etc.. wouldn’t have grown to be the huge powerhouse clubs of a properly marketed and run competition but we sure as fuck would have contributed to it’s overall strength.

Personally I think that by pissing off Parramatta, Northern Spirit, Auckland, Brisbane, Wollongong and one of Marconi/Olympic/Syd U and introducing Victory, Sydney FC and Qld Roar it would have created a perfect balance. 3 teams in Sydney, 3 in Melbourne, one in the next three biggest markets and a relatively well established country side for a ten team competition. The people with a hard-on for “mainstream” teams get their wish, and the established “ethnic” clubs survive to play in a league where there’s no danger of any of the violence that everyone is so scared of.

But instead we get to watch a team from Gosford (current population, lest we forget, of 154,654) run around a stadium owned by a board member of the FFA in front of a couple of thousand people and are somehow expected to stand up and applaud this new leap forward? Fuck that for a joke. It’s painful to see it. To paraphrase the Timmy O’Toole charity song from the Simpsons

Well there’s a hole in my heart
As deep as a well
For another summer with no NSL
We can’t get in the A-League
So we’ll do the next best thing
Go on the net and WHINGE! WHINGE! WHINGE!

Still.. I’d rather stand with 750 people watching a club that I love than 10000 in front of a heartless corporate machine chanting “[team name] CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!” for 90 minute

Loving you is easy ‘cos you’re beautiful

This post was originally published on The Supermercado Project by Supermercado/Adam 1.0

Ten months ago I stood in Adelaide’s Hindmarsh Stadium and saw a penalty hit the net that should, for all intents and purposes, have been the death of the South Melbourne Football (nee ‘Soccer’) Club. With no prospects of playing in the pumped up, corporate fantasy world of the new Australian national league the years of financial mismanagement and general apathy that surrounded the place collapsed in on top of the club and they ran very, VERY close to going out of business forever. It wasn’t until September/October last year that we knew for absolute certain that the club had been saved. The world’s greatest chairman was appointed and the task of rebuilding started. And today we saw the first step to regaining the glories of the past.

We stashed the official Reg Reagan “Bring Back The Biff” Holden whetever-the-fuck-it-is in my work carpark, unzipped my jacket so the t-shirt that was last worn on that fateful day in Adelaide was visible to all and set off for the now traditional Cricketers Club Hotel. Upon arrival it was clear that a star-studded cavalcade of the who’s who of South fans were in attendance. Just like old days. Almost enough to bring a tear to the eye. But not close enough. I was wearing the official Boutsianis Balaclava in dedication to our former midfielder, and armed robbery getaway driver, who turned his back on our club for roughly the 5th time and joined Heidelberg instead. It wouldn’t have been appropriate to shed a tear in such a fearsome disguise.

I did, however, see this redundant sign on the way,

The poor bastards only changed it from “Ericson Cup matchdays” a year ago, presumably after somebody had rolled them in a challenge, and now the NSL gets killed as well. I predict they won’t know what to do. I also predict a riot when somebody gets booked for parking there during a Victorian Premier League game.

The pub action was awesome. It reminded me of why before every AFL season I start to think South are barging their way to the front of my sporting priorities. I’ve never met one person ever at a Melbourne game, I just don’t give a fuck. But here I was outside a pub with 30 people who I only knew because of South. That’s ace. The balaclava came off lest the people run that pub think I’m trying to knock-off their takings, Boutsianis style, but made a reappearance when the Heidelberg team bus got stuck in traffic right in front of us. What can you do? I danced around a bit. From on bus it was probably reminiscent of the dwarf doing a jig around Stonehenge in This Is Spinal Tap.

Eventually we got to the ground. South won the reserves/U21’s 2-1 in an encouraging sign. Even though I came in with ten minutes left and missed the winning goal. As the minutes before the game ticked on it because clear that there was a fucking huge crowd there. I mean huge. For Australian domestic soccer huge anyway.The official tally was 12000ish. Absolutely remarkable for a state league game. I don’t give a fuck if it’s an all-Greek derby, or if it’s the first game of a new season it was an amazing crowd anyway. It’s fair to say that I thought I’d never see anything like it at Bob Jane again. Especially in the days of June/July 2004 where the old trophies and memorabilia were being loaded into storage lest we fold and they get ransacked. Let’s hope that at least half of this crowd bother to come back for South vs St. Albans next week.

The game itself? If you’d offered me 0-0 pre-game I would have not only taken it but humped your leg at the same time - our pre-season form was so bad that even against a side promoted from the State League I was terrified of a first up loss. Looking back now, having just seen the game end 0-0 I want the three points. I feel robbed. The most experienced outfield player in our entire side, NZ international, Vaughan Coveny missed two sitters and we were all over the Bergers from the word go. Only for a few brief minutes did the opposition threaten to break the game open with a goal. Our elderly goalkeeper, and brother of coach, pulled out a couple of cracker saves that I honestly didn’t think he had left in him to deny them their best chances. I’m encouraged. Very encouraged.

Still shocked at the crowd. If that doesn’t get some positive press I will fucking go ape. Of course there’s more chance of the Herald Sun and Peter “F’ing” Desira taking a picture of the two of us in black balaclavas and writing a front page rant about 12000 right-wing Combat 18 fanatics hijacking the game in this country. And if they did that.. Insert random threats here. Of course there was a picture taken of us by one of the Greek newspaper photographers. It was only after he’d snapped off a couple of pix that I realised my t-shirt was in full view during the shots. If they just print those without even thinking - and god knows why they would because if you didn’t get the Boutsianis-related comedy aspect of it you’d think we were total lunatix or actual Neo Nazi’s - and I open Neos Kosmos to see a shot of myself in a black ski-mask with the word CUNT prominently displayed it will officially be the greatest day of my life. I’ll have it framed and put it on my wall.

Click here to see the power and force of the fence run when Boutsianis was taking a corner right in front of us. I was too nervous at 0-0 to join in sadly. And the steering wheel I planned on bringing didn’t eventuate so there was really no point when so many young and enthusiastic practioners of the art.

So,

South Melbourne 0
Heidelberg Utd 0

Not the best 0-0 draw I’ve ever seen (vs Perth, Australia Day 2004. Another huge crowd) but certainly the most emotional. I was so tense during that second half I could barely stand up, I fear that if we’d scored I may have just broken down on the spot.

I realised something the other day as I looked through my diary. Given that the ancient gods of scheduling have come together to ensure that work/South/Melbourne AFL don’t clash more than a few times during the next few months it means that I’m going to be at one sporting event or another one pretty much every weekend day I’ve got off until September. And then I go to England in October to watch more soccer. I think it’s fair to say that next cricket season I won’t even turn the TV on. I will start to understand why people hate sports.

Top night. Football is back. I still don’t get that sick feeling in my stomach for the whole game that I do when watching Melbourne play but the post-match tension is still there. I won’t sleep all night now.

If this game isn’t given massive coverage in the papers tomorrow then I’m going to ballistic. Fuck the A-League. South forever! Get all your asses down to Bob Jane next Sunday night against St. Albans.

Con Harismidis fragment no. 1

Stolen from some long dead Berger forum

Good see Con Boutsianis is here

There is Boutsianis and he play or he play for national leage but now he is here.

Well done Con Boutsianis. You are very good and best player.

Con Harismidis fragment no. 2

Nicked from a long dead Berger forum.

Con Boutsianis is the best player

You know John Anastasiadis is best player from your team.

I follow Boutsianis as he is best player to play now.

Fragment No.7

South is playing their second leg match tonight, could be their last ever in Australian top flight competition, so I’m quite disappointed at not being able to go.

Fragment no.6

Went and saw South Melbourne defeat Parramatta last week, my first game in awhile.

Fragment no. 13

Sunday I hope to go to see the Australian under somethings play against Fiji at Bob Jane Stadium.

Fragment no.5

South won 4-2 against the Knights, or so I’ve heard.

Fragment no.4

Went to see South win this evening against Olympic, 6-4 the final score after we led at two stages by 4-0 and 5-1.

Fragment no.3

South Melbourne won their first game of the season yesterday against Perth Glory at home, 2-0.

First Home Game For South - Neos Kosmos English Weekly

Trimboli To Stay At South - Neos Kosmos English Weekly

Fragment No.8

I went to the soccer yesterday, we won 2-0. Could have been more.

South Gallop Into Top Six - Neos Kosmos English Weekly

Karavitis Makes Junior Squad - Neos Kosmos English Weekly

Fragment no.12

Once again my beloved Australia failed to make it through to the World Cup Finals. I personally believe that it is further proof that Oceania should have its own direct place, rather than a redirection through another zone.

Fragment no.2

Today South Melbourne defeated Marconi 6-1.

Fragment No.1

I also went and saw a South Melbourne soccer match for the first time in about a year. We won three - nil so that left me feeling pretty good.

Rescued match report - Carlton 3 South Melbourne 5

This match report was rescued from a dormant NSL era South Melbourne fanpage. If you happen to have been the owner of the fanpage, I'd love to hear from you

Friday, 14th April, 2000
South countered early Carlton pressure to open the scoring in the 13th minute. Goran Lozanovski crossed into the box and Steve Panopoulos got in a difficult shot. Carlton keeper Dean Anastasiadis saved well but the ball fell for Vaughan Coveny at the far post. He made no mistake in what probably was his easiest goal of his career.

On the half hour, South keeper Chris Jones kept South in the lead when he was called on to make two great saves in quick succession from close range shots. South looked like they would hold out Carlton until the break but it wasn't to be. In the 44th minute Carlton got on level terms. Bad marking allowed Dave McPherson a shot on goal but he mishit the shot and the ball bounced across the face of the goal. Striker Archie Thompson was on hand to tap the ball into the net.

After the break Carlton hit the lead when Simon Colosimo scored his first goal since injuring his knee in a Socceroo game against the visiting Manchester United. South defender Robert Liparoti had his attempted clearance blocked by the exciting Colosimo, the ball fell nicely and he made no mistake, slamming the ball into the corner of the goal.

Three minutes later though, South hit back when Michael Curcija got the first of his double. Vaughan Coveny held the ball up well on the left and delivered a cross to the feet of Curcija. He controlled the ball and cut inside the defender and hit a rising shot that gave Anastasiadis no chance.

But the joy for the small contingent of travelling South fans was shortlived as Carlton made it 3-2 moments later. Liparoti, who was not having his best night, was caught in possession just outside the area by John Markovski. Markovski raced towards the byline and cut the ball back brilliantly for the well positioned Archie Thompson. Thompson made mo mistake with a shot to the far post.

It was 3 goals in 10 minutes and things were looking too good for the Blue and Whites. South coach Ange Postecoglou made some changes, taking off Paul Trimboli and David Clarkson, and replacing them with Jimmy Tsekinis and Anthony Magnacca. The team now seemed to have an extra yard of pace and were able to stretch the Carlton defence. Despite this, Carlton still looked the more dangerous and likely to win.

Just when the fans were probably thinking it was over for South, 3 goals in the last 18 minutes turned the glum faces into happy ones. It was an amazing turnaround, as South's play resembled the once dominant team that won back to back Championships. Man of the match, Goran Lozanovski, did well to chase down a bad pass played back by Curcija. He kept the ball in play and then beat the advancing defender, looked up and clipped a beautifully weighted cross onto the head of goalsneak Michael Curcija. Curcija, now with a league leading 19 goals, beat Anastasiadis with powerful header.

The goal of the game came 7 minutes later and what a goal it was. 100 gamer Steve Iosfidis played a fantastic defence splitting long-ball to the running Fasuto De Amicis. De Amicis hit the ball from well outside the area and it raced into the back of the net, giving the despairing Anastasiadis no chance in the Carlton goal.

South super-sub John Anastasiadis sealed the win with a well taken goal in the 89th minute. Midfielder Steve Panopoulos robbed sub Vasilevski of the ball at halfway. He played a ball outwide to Anastasiadis. Anastasiadis took on his defender, made his way into the box and neatly slotted the ball under his goalkeeping brother.

South Melbourne 5 (Coveny 14th, Curcija 51st, 72nd, De Amicis 79th, Anastasiadis 89th)
Carlton 3 (Thompson 44th, 54th Colosimo 48th)

South Melbourne : Jones, Liparoti, De Amicis, Blasis, Iosfidis, Clarkson (Tsekinis 55th), Panopoulos, Trimboli (Magnacca 55th), Curcija, Coveny (J.Anastasiadis 67th)

Carlton : D.Anastasiadis, Douglas, Horvat, McPherson, Colosimo (Moriera 75th), Atkinson, Lapsansky (Terminello 65th), Slater, Packer (Vasilevski 88th), Thompson, Markovksi Yellow Card SM - De Amicis 61st

SM Hellas - The Professional Soccer Club? (article in Studs Up)

This article originally appeared in the February 1998 edition of Studs Up magazine. This version of the article was sourced from this site. We present it here as part of our ongoing and erratic project of documenting independent writings on the club outside of work undertaken by contributors to this blog. The only changes made have been some formatting of quotes.


SM Hellas - The Professional Soccer Club?
From Peter Kartsidimas
(To be published in SU29 - Feb 1998)

Over the next couple of pages I will attempt to tell you a story that, if told in full, would fill at lest five editions of the World Book Encyclopaedia. I am a founding member of the South Melbourne Supporters Group (SMSG), a group that started with a few friends after we witnessed what some of our fellow SM supporters did on the bus trip back from last season's Preliminary Final at Parramatta. (Ed note: See SU24, it's a gem!)

We'd had enough of George Vasilopoulos' pussy-footing around, seemingly doing nothing about these thugs and most importantly doing sweet diddly about promoting our club to mainstream Australia. So we went off to see SM's then general manager, Peter Filopoulos, with a list of grievances ten miles long. After a lengthy conversation, Filop suggested we do something about it and create OUR OWN Supporters Group. Despite being hesitant about it in the beginning, we quickly got into action by organisising a meeting, with all SM members being invited.

This meeting showed the first signs of how certain people on SM's board felt threatened by us. A now past boardmember had agreed to come and open the social club for us, yet he somehow changed his mind and never came until numerous phone calls tracked him down on the day and he begrudgingly let us use the room, even though he was about an hour late. This meeting was a complete success with about fifty, mostly young, SM fans turning up and it was obvious that we weren't the only ones wanting the club to open its doors to all.

Some members of the Supporters Group (SG) also became club volunteers, helping the club with endless amount of things. One of the first things we did was to do a letter drop of the local area, where 5,000 letters were dropped off informing residents about SM and inviting them to the Tynan-Eyre Cup game against Carlton and to the club's family day.

Somehow this family day turned into a Athens 2004 day, with Greek flags and music becoming the theme. Luckily, it was a wet and miserable day and not too many local families turned up, but those that did quickly walked back to their cars, and so they should.

Despite this we continued helping with things like manning a stand at the Royal Melbourne Show (even though we had to pay to get in!), endless administrative work, club mail outs and out biggest success has been producing the new SM matchday programme 'Inside Lakeside'. On match days we man turnstiles, do the ground announcing, sell raffle tickets and sell 'Inside Lakeside' amongst other things. In order to do these tasks some of us were given ground steward passes, even though we never asked for them, but we were simply told that they were to prevent any hassle in getting into restricted areas, nothing else. More on that later.

Despite all this work we somehow found some enemies, some of the club's old Hellas boys. These people were hellbent on making sure the SMSG was eradicated by feeding people lies, especially the Greek media. We hardly knew these guys, yet they came up to two of us and told us "watch your backs". They seemed to be angry about us removing the 'Club Hellas' sign from the social club, a sign a club official asked us to take down (a sign that is still to go back up, thank God!)

Before much longer a Greek newspaper started writing some false allegations about us, saying that we had banned Greek flags and symbols from the ground and they plaguarised our page on the SM Lakers internet site. The next thing we knew these Hellas old boys were on this newspaper's radio station absolutely slagging the hell out of us, implying we were anti-Greek and calling us "monkeys" amongst other things. The funny thing is these guys hardly knew us or spoke to us, so you can imagine the amount of ies used to vindicate their story. And some of the ridiculous things they were saying aren't even worth repeating.

I rang the station demanding a word of reply, and after much persistence they finally let me on. This resulted in some of us being invited to air our views on the same show a few days later. We accepted this invitiation and everything seemed to go quite well, they even promised us a new story in their newspaper telling the true story, funny how it never appeared. I guess they felt they had given us the bad name and they wanted to keep it that way.

Our continued volunteer work seemed to keep us away from what we initialy intended to be, the progressive fan's voice, and other than conducting a second meeting - attended by about 15-20 people, we had neglected our fellow SMSG members. So it was time to make our first newsletter, appropriately titled 'The Maverick'.

'The Maverick' was a newsletter letting every SMSG member know exactly what had been going on since our initial meeting, there were no lies and was written in a satirical manner, much like a fanzine. Despite this somehow the @#*% hit the fan due to the article titled "Fatman, Moustaka and 3AB', which was an in-depth description of the situation described above. The SM board were very unhappy, as they felt we offended one of their sponsors, 3AB. Mind you, the owner of 3AB once went on radio slagging SM and saying that SM helped sink Heidelberg United. The only thing we did that may have offended them, other than tell the truth, was to call them Radio Heidelberg, and when you consider all the above information, you could think of worse names. Of course people rightly or wrongly thought they were one of the characters in the article, some of whom we had never seen in our lives let alone know who they were. For them to think they were the characters they must have done something, where there's smoke there is always a large fire at SM, and the smoke isn't from grilling souvlakia.

These old Hellas boys kicked up a horrendous stink, Moustaka even threatened to hit me in front of George Vasilopoulos, SM's fence sitter (ah, sorry, president). We told some committee members that we would discuss the situation on the night of the next SMSG executive committee meeting which coincided with the club's board meeting. We all turned up, with even some support from Flying Start's Andrew Neophitou, yet we were told that we were not required. Despite this we offered our services for 'Inside Lakeside' and for nothing else, but this request was denied. We were not wanted to do the programme anymore.

The board went ahead with the main topic being 'The Maverick', a decision was made without hearing our side of the story. Even Martin Bryant got a fair hearing! This is what was sent to me by our new general manager, Peter George, about nine days later.

Dear Peter Due to the circumstances pertaining to the newsletter sent out, headed 'The Maverick', we South Melbourne Soccer Club hereby would like you to hand in you off-field passes immediately, thus relinquishing your duties as an official of the club for season 1997/98 However, this does not mean that your role in the supporters group is jeopardised in any way. We still believe that the supporters group is a big part of our club and wish it to be for a long time coming.

What's actually laughable is the fact that he feels he can control who is part of and who is not part of the SMSG, like he is the SMSG president of something. The club has no say whatsoever over what we decide to do or not to do. It is the Supporters Group, not Peter George's or Vasilopoulos' Group.

What I like about this letter is the part that states "due to the circumstances". What are the circumstances? Did we slag the club? No. Did we lie? No. Then what is the problem? We even had a disclaimer saying it was not the views of SMSC.

It seems the problem is that we at one point advised people to call the club if they wanted to be FORWARDED on to one of us and that we used the club's P O Box as a forwarding address. Well, we had asked for our own separate P O Box, to be paid from our own funds raised and it was denied. Another problem it seems is that Peter George was upset that we didn't tell him what was in the newsletter and that we somehow deceived him.

Well Peter, I photocopied the newsletter right in front of you, did I hide it from you? I think not, it's not my problem if you kept your face glued to your photo in Neos Kosmos, any anyway, why should we tell you what's in OUR newsletter anyway?

He also complained about using the club's facilities to do the newsletter. How nice, that after all the manhours we put into the club that he should see this as an issue. It seems he is clutching at straws.

Despite all this and the fact we were told we were no longer wanted for 'Inside Lakeside', he still had the nerve of calling one SMSG member the day beofre the programme was due at the printers, to ask him if we could do the articles!

SMSC is a great club, one with much prestige and history. It has produced some exciting players in the past and this year may well bring a third national title. Most SM fans are pasionate and loyal, that is exactly what the SMSG members are, we do not want to see our club bcome anything less than the best soccer club in this country, that is why we got together. Despite this it has been painfully obvious SM is one of the least professional clubs in Australia. Which other club would make such an issue over a newsletter made by the fans, for the fans? Especially when there was NOTHING in it that slags any individual or official of the club, just other fans. They feel that because they made us officials ofthe club, that we shouldn't say waht we want to say, that's why they took away our passes. As I stated earlier, we were not asked if we wanted to be officials, it was simply pushed upon some of us and we were never told that we couldn't express our views.

At this present time many SMSG members have withdrawn their services from the club, the circumstances surrounding The Maverick was the final straw for many. The club has made it very obvious that they see us as club volunteers and nothing else, in other words, free labour. They suddenly showed great concern when they realised we were no longer their slaves, but what were they doing to keep us happy? Very little.

The club is simply heading in a different direction to that which we were initially told it was. We were also initially told that we will be consulted with any major issues. That definitely didn't occur. We read about the Hellas issue in the paper like anybody else. I would call that a major issue. Our vision for the club seems to be well off the club's visions and it is difficult to work with people who can't see the big picture. In fairness to some people on the board, they're not all that bad, the problem is there are 22 (twenty-two!!) board members (an issue in itself) and most of them are old Greek migrants who mix with the old Hellas boys.

In hindsight, something like this was always going to happen, but it shouldn't have happened over somethin as insignificant as this. It seems the club has bowed again to the pressures of the old Hellas boys. The club always talks about a lost generation of SM fans. I now know why we do have a lost generation, it's because they look to please the older generation.