Never get high on your own supply - South Melbourne 2 Altona Magic 0

Just a short one this week because I'm back in what by my standards would be considered gainful employment, and time is no longer my friend. Well, that's my excuse this week, and there's always an excuse.

Welcome back to the blog for South fans who love to metaphorically slash wrists. Welcome back to normal diabolical crowds, but still continuing on with the same results, with much the same method, with one frustrating exception. What was it with all the short corners? It's not just having Harry Sawyer, Marco Jankovic, and Jake Marshall to aim at, but also little Pat Langlois - remember him that scored those headers from corners early in the season? But also, apart from having all those perfectly cromulent targets to aim at, we also have Andy Brennan who has mostly been providing rather excellent service from corners.

Let's put it down to feeling so comfortable with our position and our opponent, that we decided to use this situation as an opportunity not to showboat - because we would never, ever do something like that - but rather to attempt some in game variations which may become useful in the finals. Now I don't believe that for a second, what with my pathological hatred of short corners (at this level), but it might help other people rationalise what they were watching, assuming anyone else loses sleep about these the way I do. It felt like a targeted hate-crime against me, and in this fishbowl that is South Melbourne Hellas post-NSL, every time we take a short corner attention is brought to me.

Well, I painted that target on myself I suppose, and it's not like one can un-paint that now. Speaking of paint and other brilliant chemicals, how good was the smell of paints, sealants, and whatever other alchemic concoctions are being piled into, under, and on top of our grandstand? It was like being in the back of the old Capricorn Floors van - there's an inside joke for like, three people, tops. I suppose since we're not not allowed to take booze outside the social club (except for trace amounts of alcohol in a lemon, lime & bitters), and the outside beer tent went back into hibernation, why not substitute liquor for fumes? What could possibly go wrong?

Apart from the awful second half, where we lost all shape, the only really bad thing to happen was Ben Djiba's red card, which felt contentious live, and much less contentious once we saw the replay of someone with way too much adrenaline after dribbling past three or four opponents, like your correspondent back in a CC White vs Blue match many, many moons ago. At least I had the good sense to finish my poor run with a mere crappy pass, and not trying to knee-cap someone. 

Anyway, Djiba will be out this week and probably for at one game after, but what a great chance for someone else to do something. I give Esteban credit for this - pretty much everyone gets a go of some sort, sometimes more than I think they should, and sometimes less, and sometimes not in a role I think they're suited to; but it's not like you die wondering most weeks over whether we'll make a sub. It is easier to do now that we can make five a subs a game, but that doesn't mean that the sub will always get made. Look at Chris Taylor for example - still stuck to his more rigid method of well, it's 1984, we've got a squad of 14 players, and you have to fight tooth and nail to somehowbreak your way into the starting XI.

Whatever works for you I suppose, and like I always maintain, there's more than one way to get to your destination in this game. There's pretty and ugly, there's big spenders and slightly less big spenders, and there's even apparently playing with no meaningful sense of a central midfield and not even bothering to make a mid-season transfer to at least pretend to fix this. If we win this title - and I hope that we do - it just may be the first time South (or any club) has won a title mostly through sheer spite. The throw-ins, the set pieces, the playing 15-20 minutes of comparatively good football a game - all while knowing (or some of us fans believing) that we could be doing even better. 

Now you may ask what's better than being three games clear at the top with three matches to go, but that's what the easily placated like to say. I just hope we're not getting complacent. I saw Max Mikkola sit on the main subs bench instead of by himself after he got subbed off last week, and I'm worried we're going soft.

Next game

Port Melbourne away this Saturday. Thanks to Oakleigh's loss on Monday, we are now just one win from claiming the minor premiership and the chance to play in the NPL national playoffs... wait, I'm being passed a note which says that no one seems to know whether the NPL national playoffs will actually take place this year. It seems like there's no mention of them on either the Football Australia or Football Victoria competition calendars. Well, I'm sure everything will turn out fine. 

I hope that if it's not going ahead that the thing was cancelled due to COVID or a failure to attract a sponsor for it, and not because people were planning to fill in the space with a National Second Division. 

Final thought

Whatever stupid thing happens in the rest of this season, let us all bask in the quiet relief that Avondale did not win its stupid 2021 Bespoke Cup. They might still win the 2022 title - and good luck to them if they do - but their failure to take out the title they felt they so deserved, and which they spent so much money on lawyers on, and which they thought was a right laugh until their seven point lead got chipped away to nothing, and then they stopped posting about it on their socials, and then started blocking people on their socials who brought it up... where was I going with this? Oh yes: the Bespoke Cup is over. Let's never speak of it again. 

Not dead yet - South Melbourne 1 Oakleigh Cannons 0

The most important news must come first.

So this "painting" the grandstand business, which has been going on for quite some time now, and which has been testing people's patience, especially constituents of Clarendon Corner, who have been exiled from their usual locale while this "painting" takes place. Last week this seeming farce continued, with now just the lower half of that bay cordoned off - as well as sections at the lake end of the grandstand - and setting off the thought bubble that at some point they'll end up cordoning off Row H by itself just out of spite.

However, I got a message from one of the bigwigs last week - always a concern, because any message I get from them these days I assume is going to be bad news, or some form of berating. Sort of like when you get an email saying that you have a message in your MyGov inbox. In this case, the message was educational rather than hostile, which is always welcome. And the message? It's not just painting that's taking place on our stand, but rather extensive restorative work. The stand is leaking in parts, creating a risk of eventual damage from rising damp. The stand is receiving repairs from both on top and from underneath. I am told that the works are proceeding in a piecemeal fashion, partly so they can see how the repairs go on particular sections of the stand, but also because the persistently inclement June and July weather this year has made progress slower than would ideally be the case.

So having informed nearby people of this, our collective thoughts then turned to the future, and the imminent national second division which I am assured is coming next year. Imagine the buzz of the first couple of weeks of this competition, as all sorts of people come out of the woodwork to watch South play Sydney Olympic or some such. A chunk of this almost certainly temporary renewed interest would centre on Clarendon Corner; its numbers would swell, and the increased weight in and around Row H and the lower half of our usual bay would see the stand creak and groan, and ultimately collapse, inuring many, and possibly killing a few. In the event that the club didn't die as a result of this imagined tragedy, the outpouring of grief among the latent and former South supporter network would see the club reborn, as those who abandoned in one hour of need, returned to it in another. The CC martyrs would be commemorated with plaques and memorials; each year on the anniversary of the tragedy, our fans would remember their fallen brethren; and though those most dedicated would no longer be with us, their sacrifice would lead to the rebirth of South Melbourne Hellas. Αδέρφια ζείτε, εσείς μας οδηγείτε and all that.

Or the repairs could just go really well, and the club can continue making us miserable for all the usual reasons, dragging on its interminable existence in this or some other equally interminable competition.

Back in the real world. there was a game to be won, and surprisingly to me, we won it. I'm not anti-winning matches, especially highly anticipated ones, but I must reiterate: I don't trust any of what's happening this season, which makes my enjoyment of this farce of a rather good run in 2022 conditional on us actually winning the championship, whereupon I can retcon all my ramblings into something altogether more positive and assured. 

Not counting last season's penalty shoot-out win in the cup, this was our first outright win against Oakleigh since 2017. Think about all that has happened since then. Three coaches, a failed A-League bid, and two cancelled seasons because of a pandemic. How many people got married, and/or had one or more kids? How many jobs have I had and lost in that time? The only thing that hasn't happened is the national second division.

What these Oakleigh clowns are trying to claim,
 I have no idea. Photo: Kostas Deves.

There were too many close calls for us in the first half, including one ball that sort of everyone just let roll across the face of our own six yard box. Seemingly close but not really, was a low shot or whatever it was from Oakleigh being saved by Javier Diaz Lopex, clearly well in front of not only the goal line, but also in front of the post. Cue some Oakleigh players, but especially Daniel Clark trying to claim that it was a goal. I get that players get excited, but come on guys, have some respect for physics at least.

The second half from us was better, but my goodness, we are still such a hard team to watch compared to some other teams. I know, I know, get the results, grind out the wins, not how but how many. But watching South players panic with the ball anywhere in the defensive third, launching long balls when keeping the ball would be better and no less dangerous, and avoiding playing the ball in the middle of the field as if their lives depended on it. That last thing must surely have been a direct instruction, because it was pretty much all wing play. I've never seen a team of this calibre - in that they are top of the table so late in a season - so determined not to play the ball anywhere near the central channel, until a cross can come in around the area of the six yard box.

It was fascinating to watch in its own nihilistic fashion. If we were going to turn the ball over, we were to make sure as hell that it was nowhere the middle of the field, which doesn't say a lot for what we think of our central midfield combinations. 

(yet Patrick Langlois, part of that midfield combo, was awarded man-of-the-match in the post-game awards ceremony of the Tony Clarke Memorial Shield business.) 

For apparently the eighth time this season (though who's counting?) we scored a goal from a Max Mikkola throw-in. Not much different to the usual pattern here: long throw into the vicinity of Harrison Sawyer, hoping for a keeper mistake, and eventually a goal. Every week I keep asking how long we can keep getting by on these shenanigans, and every week the answer seems to be, "at least one more week". I'm not comfortable with it, but lest I be castigated for being a Negative Nancy, I'm trying my best to just enjoy the ride. The effort is good. The results are good. The method sucks. But two out of three after five years of mostly crud is, for the time being, acceptable I guess.

Next match

Altona Magic at home on Saturday night. Magic have lost their last five matches, and are still in the relegation scrap. We're expected to win, but the last time we played each other should act as a warning not to be complacent. Remember that game, where some heinously profligate finishing from Magic in the first half left us in the game? 

The mathematics

Eastern Lions are now mathematically relegated. Everyone between 9th and 13th is still in a relegation battle, though it'd be a collapse of all collapses if Knights end up 13th. Finals wise, realistically the top three are in, with the remaining three spots to be fought out by four teams. Knights or Thunder could theoretically make it in, but it would take an amazing set of coincidences for that to happen.

More likely is a finals series with four teams and possibly five of the six being made up of the Greek NPL clubs, in which case, why mourn the absence of the Hellenic Cup, when we play in a Hellenic League?

So far as South is concerned, a top three finish is locked in. Three points from out remaining four matches guarantees a top two finish. Eight points from our remaining four matches guarantees first place; seven points makes us dependent on goal difference, assuming Oakleigh wins all four of its remaining matches.

2021 title race almost over, thank goodness

Oakleigh's loss means that the 2021 Bespoke Cup is Avondale's for the taking, as long as they can beat Port Melbourne. If Avondale lose, and we beat Dandy City in a few weeks time, we can finish as a runners up.

New program uploads

Haven't had one of these for awhile. An early 2000/2001 season effort was sent in this week by a reader, filling in a couple of gaps, which I'm grateful for. Highlight is Steve Panopoulos winning the South Melbourne go-kart challenge. I've also scanned and uploaded the 2021 and 2022 Knights and Gully away match programs.

Final thought

Second division

Hanging in there - South Melbourne 2 Dandenong Thunder 1

Apart from collectively managing to finish the season, South's main priority in 2022 according to at least some people, was to avoid relegation. A fairly obvious goal, even taking into account that he squad had been strengthened relative to its 2021 counterpart. That feat was accomplished a few weeks ago, which was nice, considering the odd near miss with relegation since Chris Taylor's sacking in early 2018. The next priority was to make the finals, also something fairly obvious, but also something that hasn't been achieved since CT got the arse.

Last week's win against Dandenong Thunder, combined with other results, means that we are now mathematically guaranteed to play finals. Fantastic, what a relief. Next step is to claim top spot, not so much for the very minor benefits that a top two spot grant, but for the hope that we might end up with a post-season NPL national playoff run. Embedded somewhere in there is the desire to win the championship, especially because we threw away a potential cup run, and no. I am not going to get over how and/or why that happened.

So anyway, there's five games left until the finals, and we're in a reasonable spot, even if after trying to figure out how we got here, I still feel unconvinced by the whole thing. That's a me problem. Last week we quite obviously brought in the sidelines, one assumes less to help Max Mikolla and his long throws - ineffective for a second week out of three as opposition defences catch on - and more to constrict the Dandenong Thunder's wide play. That worked pretty well, as did the idea of gifting them mostly meaningless possession, which they didn't do too much of note with, except on our right-hand side, where an overenthusiastic Andy Brennan, and an underdone Perry Lambropoulos got caught out in cases where they shouldn't have.

Having managed to carve out the odd chance ourselves, as well as restricting Thunder to the kind of slower possession game style they likely don't prefer, it was infuriating to concede goal from a set piece, especially from a guy who coaches our own under 12s. Also, thanks to the under 12s in front of whatever's left of Clarendon Corner for letting us know that irritating fact. When is paint going to dry anyway? With Oakleigh having smashed Avondale earlier in the day, we were in second place on the live ladder, and though it was not impossible to see how we could come back into the game, we had lost our way a bit, getting sucked into melees and assorted nonsense.

Thanks then to one of the more unnecessary penalties you've ever seen give away. The ball was released wide right into space in the fourth minute of first half injury time. Mikolla and his Thunder opponent sprinted for the loose ball. Mikolla got there firsr, and was clearly fouled by his opponent. My only quibble watching it live was wondering whether the ball was in the box, because surely a defender wouldn't be so daft to give away a foul at that place, at that time, when Max was by himself, on a terrible angle, and would be covered comfortably by even moderate jockeying.

Harrison Sawyer added to his "non playing against Eastern Lions" goal tally by scoring from the spot, and at half time I think we all felt a little better about ourselves. Second half was more of the same, including many of the same kinds of subs we often make, including one which continues to have minimal effect. What stood out, obviously, was Pat Langlois diverting Brad Norton's long range shot into goal for the lead, and Lirim Elmazi getting sent off probably unnecessarily, meaning our already "creative" heavy midfield corps becomes more unbalanced without a designated "ball winner" type.

Indeed, unnecessary yellow cards were a big problem last Saturday, especially after some of our players went out of their recently to reset their yellow card tallies by getting deliberately suspended. So it goes. On the plus side, Oakleigh's Joe Knowles is also suspended, which you'd hope is of some benefit to us, though Oakleigh are hardly short of attacking options.

I agree with the sentiment that we need to win this match in order to finish in first place. Win this game, and we go five points clear with four games to go, with two very winnable matches (Altona Magic, Dandy City), and two very hard ones (Port, Avondale). Oakleigh meanwhile have Bentleigh, Knights, St Albans, and Hume, an easier run to be sure, complicated only by Oakleigh's Dockerty and Australia Cup committments.

Next match

Oakleigh at home on Saturday night, in case you haven't heard. Seeing as this is a reversed fixture, there's no women's match curtain-raiser tomorrow. At the time of writing, it also appears that the men's under 21s also aren't scheduled to be a curtain-raiser. There was some murmuring that the Tony Clarke Memorial Shield might be on before our senior men's match, but I have seen nothing to indicate that that's happening tomorrow. 

If you're looking to spice things up further for tomorrow in the worst way possible, tomorrow's match is also a potential title decider for the 2021 Bespoke Cup. If Oakleigh wins tomorrow night, they get the ignominy of winning that "championship". If they draw or lose, then it's up to Avondale to beat Port the week after.

A sentence or two on the women's team

With results like that, maybe they should sack coaches more often. After knocking off Heidelberg in the cup, the senior women knocked off Bulleen in the league. And quite comfortably, too, at least as far as the scoreline goes. They say that Bulleen had a few out on national team duties, but you can only beat who's in front of you, and we managed to do that. Still a massive slog from here to make the finals, but at least we have a cup final to look forward to. Too bad it's against Calder, but you never know what could happen on the day. 

Final thought

Opposition fans turned up to a game at Lakeside last week. To borrow the sentiments of Richard Rants, it almost felt like what we do still matters.

Lens Flare - Eastern Lions 0 South Melbourne 4

More apologies for lateness and brevity.

I did not attend this game, as I decided to go to a mate's place to watch it instead. That would have worked well, were it not for multiple protests in the city curbing public transport - and me being an idiot - for not being able to get to my mate's place in time. That itself would not have been an issue if the pause button on the app actually worked. Is there even a pause button? The trick I think is to actually watch matches through the "match centre" portion of the site, which inevitably boots you out of the app to your browser. 

So I missed the first ten minutes or so thanks to public transport delays, being required to be buzzed in and taken up a lift, and then not being a pause button. Since Eastern Lions, despite their struggles in 2022, had at least had a habit of scoring first and/or early, I was concerned that we might already be 1-0 down, and playing even more catch up to Oakleigh. Oakleigh ha already dispatched Dandenong City 5-0 the night before, so not only was there the matter of Oaks having taken the lead at the top of the table, but also a matter of goal difference.

As it was, we were actually already 1-0 up, and going to the replay function showed that it was pure training ground stuff to take that lead. Eastern Lions have barely been competitive this season, and that trend continued in this match. In 2021's abandoned season, they won four games from eighteen, three draws, and tended to always look plucky. This season they've had one win and three draws, and have probably been lucky to get as much as that.

So the disappointing aspect from this game, if one is to be disappointed, was that we didn't look that threatening from general play. A corner goal, a penalty, a throw in goal, and an open play effort after a dreadful backpass was picked on by Harrison Sawyer. Players that came on as a subs, and who could've had some downhill skiing fun, didn't really take that opportunity. No matter - we got through the game with the expected win, the expected margin, and I assume not too many injuries or unnecessary yellow cards.

At home, even if not my own home, the experience was augmented by a potent negroni, and in this case by lens flare. The great thing about livestreaming at this level, is all the variances in quality. The wrong cameraman, the wrong commentator, the wrong weather, the wrong lighting, teams that can't work out a uniform clash. One thing that's harder to deal with is that you want the crowd (such as it exists at NPL level) to be visible, but that may also mean putting the camera on the side facing into a setting winter sun. And is the case with almost every single game broadcast from Gardiners Creek Reserve, the commentators staring into the sun can't see what's going on, and neither can the home viewer half the time because of lens flare. It's not exactly an appealing aspect of the live stream experience.

Next game

Tomorrow night against Dandenong Thunder. Oakleigh plays away to Avondale earlier in the day, so we'll know by our own kickoff time whether we'll be needing a win to retain top spot for another week. Top spot meaning not much at all officially, except for the hope and assumption that it will include entry into a post-season NPL champions tournament. 

Speaking of Harry Sawyer...

Earlier this year, Sawyer became the 10th known South Melbourne Hellas senior men's player to score four goals in a league match. On Saturday, he became the first known South Melbourne senior men's player to score four goals in a league game, twice.

We say "known", because the 1960 season, South's first, remains primeval in terms of lineups and scorer details. There were about ten league games in 1960 where South scored at least four goals, including two hauls of nine, and one of ten. In all likelihood, someone would have scored at least four in one of those games, and most likely more. 

But that shouldn't diminish Sawyer's achievement. To add to the novelty of this record, Sawyer's four goals on Saturday was the first (known) time that a South player had scored four or more in a league game, without any teammates scoring in the same game. Discussion however, over whether Sawyer is a better striker than Milos Lujic - as ventured into by some online South people - should be put aside for at least awhile yet. 

At some point as well, adding on the many other statistical oddities we'll have to take care of, is finding out which South player has scored the most goals against each opponent. For his part, Sawyer has scored 12 goals against Eastern Lions in four league games spanning 2020-2022.

Women's team

A week is a long time in football. Saturday the girls lost 4-2 to Box Hill, giving them a four match losing streak, and putting them miles out of the race for the finals. There was talk of player exits and holidays, and then the coach - a long-time servant at the club - parted ways with the club, farewelled with as perfunctory a press release as you can get. So far, so bad. Then on Tuesday night out at Oakleigh, they were 2-0 down against Heidelberg in the semi-final of the cup. Then came the comeback, and the 3-2 win, and progression into the final for the second season in a row. They'll meet the winner of the Bulleen-Calder match, which is taking place next week. I'm not sure we're equipped to beat either team, especially Calder, but stranger things have happened I suppose, and in a one-off game, you just never know.

Sponsor Splash-out

Here's some good news, with a strange twist. The club has just announced a record (post-NSL?) sponsorship deal with CF Capital, which will run for the next two seasons. Great, wonderful, can we afford to have Sunday games back now etc. They're even tipping in money specifically for the blind and powerchair teams, which is also good. My info on this is that after the agreement was already made to be our new principal partner, that after seeing the blind and powerchair teams at the player auction night, CF Capital decided to increase their sponsorship of the club. Who knew being a good social citizen could have such rewards?

The strange part however is no doubt this:

South Melbourne FC members and supporters will become familiar with the CF Capital brand around Lakeside Stadium as with signage featuring the logo prominently for the livestream audience in front of the Clarendon Corner. 

Are there enough people in Clarendon Corner most weeks nowadays to find this appealing? If Clarendon Corner does something stupid, do you really want to have your brand attached to that? Since we can no longer hear Clarendon Corner because of the nature of live stream filming from the opposite side of the ground, what can you actually see from that distance that makes it worthwhile? And what happens of Clarendon Corner decides, out of spite or whimsy, to just move to a different part of the stand? 

Ah, it's all moot anyway, everyone's too old to care.

Final thought

I completely forgot to take an inadvertent photo of my host's cable setup this time.

Lead at the top down to two points - South Melbourne 0 Green Gully 0

A few years ago, and probably on more than one occasion, I quipped that should the unthinkable actually happen and South return to an/the Australian top-flight competition, that there should be a special section for the fans who continued to support the club through the pee-pee soaked heck-hole years, so that we would not have to interact with all the people who jumped off the South bandwagon when the club needed them most.

Looking back, the most fanciful part of that suggestion was not that South might get into the A-League, but that there would be enough people to even fill such a privileged section. Last week's game was on a Friday night, which I suppose was more pleasing to people at least in theory, but not so many more of them that it might make a difference in the places where the hoi polloi sit. It's a good thing that assorted random friends and well-wishers of Brad Norton's turned up to add alcohol-assisted enthusiasm, after the Celtic-Ange bandwagon seemed to last about one match. We await with baited breath the arrival of the next random group of attendees to a match at Lakeside.

Still, the seating arrangements at South matches are getting ever more garish in highlighting (assumed) cost-cutting, as well as the difference between gods and clods. The so-called "painting" works remain in progress, last week creating a rather farcical situation where not just the bays nearest the social club are roped off, but also the top half of the bays in the middle of our stand. And still, those of us still attending continue to look for evidence of the painting works. 

At some point they may as well just fence us all into a little bracket - that way Stevie's confetti show can also get contained, although it may mean his shredded newspaper might have more chance of ending up in your box of chips. At least the sponsors and their fellow travellers came in good numbers, and since they're the ones keeping this club afloat, I guess we plebs should be glad for that fact; even if we can't buy a beer to drink outside like at every other ground in the state, and even if beer isn't actually that good of a drink, and who made beer the boss of sports venue drinks? I suppose there should also be options for people who don't like beer anymore. Insert the sound of a cash register chiming right here. 

But that could just be me griping for griping's sake, seeing as how the on-field performance continues to exceed by a long way the relatively low expectations I had for the team not just before the season, but also up until about some time a few weeks ago. Even being held scoreless for the first time this season, I could hardly find the effort to complain about how the team is playing, though it would have been nice to have taken at least one of the very gettable chances presented to us. All I could think of however. apart from being glad we had not lost - which would have been an injustice, regardless of Gully's own more than passable performance in this match - was just how entertaining the match was.

It really was an enormously fun game to watch. And indeed, if one dares to quibble with the quality of skill on display in this and other 2022 NPL Victoria games, one can hardly say that South games have been boring. It helps when the team's ding well, and there's something to play for beyond a mediocre position on the table, but one of the tragedies of this post-covid interrupted seasons, is that people are looking at all sorts of things to complain about, and even if they're right (and they probably are), they're missing the point that the team has been providing an entertaining product.

Even Brad Norton's yellow card was hugely entertaining. He was looking to get a yellow to get his set of five, so he could miss the Eastern Lions game where his absence one assumes would not be sorely missed. Now when he did get the yellow, either it was a case of him not wanting to get that yellow then, or it was merely a great display of kayfabe, because his reaction to being carded was a beautiful example of "selling". Then you had the carry on from the Gully bench at various times during the night. Then our squandered chances, including what looked like a shocker by Marcus Schroen. And at the other end, some ridiculous saves by own Javier Díaz López.

The match was so entertaining, time not only flew by, but we also wondered whether or not Max Mikkola really needed to make as many long throws as he did, because they increasingly seem to wear him down. Gully also seemed to figure out, at least temporarily, how to defend them, which involved a tactic no more complicated than putting a lot of numbers back deep. Even Andy Brennan managed to get to 77 minutes, which is about 17 more minutes than his usual presence on a football field. So many stories within the larger story. 

A shame that Port couldn't even get a point against Oakleigh the next day, but them's the breaks.

Next game

Eastern Lions on Saturday afternoon at Gardiners Creek Reserve. I probably won't be there, because I looked at the kickoff time, competing commitments both before and after the game, as well as the location of the venue vis-à-vis public transport, and decided to take a different course of action: namely, to watch the game at a convalescent friend's place. Looking forward, somewhat, to the the three week stretch of home matches.

Final thought

If anyone can figure out what's going on with the social club kitchen, that would be great. Last week's burger assembly would have failed to pass any reputable building inspection. Also, half-way through the pre-game dinner service, shoestring fries gave way to a slightly thicker cut of chip. Are they just winging it on supplies?

The perils of being asked to believe again - Hume City 1 South Melbourne 3

Everyone apparently hates Saturday games, so here was another Saturday game; at least this time it wasn't out fault. I watched a bit of NPL 1 and 2 action on the train. Eastern Lions vs Dandy City, with Dandy 1-0 up, and then 2-0 up with old mate Kosta Stratomitros getting sent off for what looked like dissent; a course of events which when related to another South fan prompted the response, "how could he get sent off for dissent? He doesn't even speak English!". My thinking is that it's possible that with the plentiful amount of Greeks refereeing in our division these days, Kosta could have been unlucky. 

At 2-0 I drew a line through both that game an Lions' tenure in NPL1, and moved onto North Geelong vs Langwarrin, which included old mate Fraser Maclaren in goal for the visitors. That game looked to be heading to a 1-0 win to North - whose Elcho Park home still has an NPL sponsor banner with PS4 branding - but Perry Mur must've found a penalty for Langwarrin deep into injury time; a sequence of play that I did not get to see, because I had to get off at Coolaroo station about ten minutes before the end of that game. 

I got to the ground around 5:15, with the thinking that at least I'll be able to see most of the curtain-raiser. Well, that plan was scuppered when I found that upon arrival, the match was already well into its second half, having inexplicably started an hour earlier than the match really had any right to. Hume have experimented with kickoff times for its curtain raisers - including having them not be the curtain raiser, but rather the closer - but the point of having the match finish a full hour before the scheduled start of the senior match is still perplexing to me.

Anyway, when I arrived it was 1-0 to our reserves with about a half hour to go. Then Hume got a red card, then they levelled, and then they botched about 2-3 very good chances to win the game. It finished 1-1, and I learned nothing about who may or may not be a good senior team prospect from our side. That lack of insight is probably more on me though, seeing as how apart from not being particularly impressed with either side, I was also distracted by the frequent appearance of low flying aircraft. Now I previously lived under a flight-path, and currently reside adjacent to one, but neither of those situations was quite the same as having jets fly so close so as to drown out conversation with the person next to you.

Still, there's only so many descending planes you can look at while waiting an hour for the senior game to start. That's time that had to be filled in with a chicken kebab (a little dry, but good flavour), a can of sour cherry nectar (savoured, slowly), and waiting for South people to turn up. That eventually happened, where we discussed the late collapse of South senior women's team against Heidelberg earlir that afternoon, and we then watched the frenetic warm-up of the senior men. No Max Mikolla, who was put with five yellow cards, no Josh Wallen on the bench, who was injured and also suspended. Perry Lambropoulos was back on the bench, after a long injury lay off. 

 

Hume had been in better form of late, but thanks to Dandy City's win earlier in the day, were now in the relegation zone. Their crowds - such as they were - have fallen away, much like our own and pretty much every other team's. Best indication of how everyone's crowds have dropped is people discussing how easy it is to get in and out of a car park after a game. 

In this match we reverted somewhat to early season type, and put this game out of its misery within about a half hour. No long throws, no goals from penalties, no goals from corners of free kicks. It was all rather dull, straightforward stuff. Second half, the cue was put firmly in the rack, and Hume managed to get a late consolation goal which negated the payment of a clean-sheet bonus. One couldn't call that second half performance a fade-out, though some people may still want to try, because we were so in control of the very little that happened. 

But the really horrible thing is how soft everyone has gotten. Everyone hated the coach, the way we play(ed), and now it's like... not so much of a big deal. People have turned. Apparently all it took was 14 wins from 18 games, as opposed to a mere 13 wins, and the maintenance of a four point gap at the top. So people are now like... maybe I was wrong. Or maybe after the awful results of the last few years, this isn't so bad. And like, Harry Sawyer doesn't look a baby giraffe anymore, but rather an accomplished and versatile striker who maybe should be playing in a better league. Esteban Quintas is no longer an out and out fraud, and perhaps no longer even being carried in 2022 by the superior playing personnel at his disposal, but has been turned into a more considerate, changed man, more flexible, more willing to delegate.

Editorial extract from Soccer News,
  vol. 01, no. 02, 1948.

It's the same kind of guff I heard a lot of when Collingwood made its unexpected run to a grand final loss in 2018, with Nathan Buckley almost becoming a coach worth cheering for.  It's like watching someone who's been burned before, slowly learning to love again. And it's sickening. The team that was considered to be taking advantage of inferior and under-prepared opposition, riding its luck on set pieces, relying on 20 minutes of good play and the acrobatic exploits of its goalkeeper, is now being touted as well, a passable unit. Perhaps more than passable. Me, until that grand final trophy is in our hands, I'm going to cling on to the idea that the only reason we're good, is that everyone is actually not what we term really good.

Next game

Green Gully at home on Friday night.

Because some of you are still wondering

After noting in the most recent match report that, barring some unfortunate accident, our senior men had mathematically avoided relegation, I suppose it's only fair to provide an update on what's going with the other irrelevant ladder race: in this case, the 2021 Bespoke Championship.

Without going back to check, I believe that the last time I posted about this matter would have been around about the time we played and lost to Oakleigh away. At the time, that result was counted by Football Victoria as three Bespoke Championship points for Oakleigh, even though it should not have been counted as such because it was an Oakleigh home match, and not a South home game which should have been designated as the relevant fixture for this nonsense.

I didn't expect FV to correct the mistake this century, but it appears that they actually have. So kudos to them for keeping up with the farce. That's more than can be said for Avondale, who have gone rather silent on their socials about this monstrosity that they helped bring into existence, as well as the anecdotal suggestion that they've been blocking from their Facebook page anyone who brings up the current status of Bespoke Championship.

For our part, as you can see on the table on the left, South is out of the running for the Bespoke Championship, with only Oakleigh and Avondale left to duke it out. Oakleigh's remaining fixture is against our good selves in a few weeks time, while Avondale play against Port the following week to wrap up the meaningful part of this meaningless exercise.

Slightly more relevant

We're 15 points clear of seventh place, with just 24 more points up for grabs - and with neither sixth or seventh place able to get any more points off us.

Final thought

Thanks to Johnny for the lift back to Sunshine, it was much appreciated.

Another day, another win - South Melbourne 4 St Albans 0

Another week, another terrible crowd. One could blame the cold, the timeslot, the lack of outside beers, the uninspiring opponent, the general lack of hope, waiting for the NSD, covid, live-streams, camping, long weekend getaways, birthday parties, not being invited to the player auction night, the kids, traffic snarls, political strife at home and abroad. But I promise you, the second all those things go away, people will turn up to watch South again. 

I would have got to the ground fifteen minutes earlier than the already absurd time I got to the ground, were it not for two blokes punching on in the first arriving (and quite crowded) route 12 tram at the corner of Collins and Spencer. Well, it was more like one tall bloke punching on with a much smaller bloke, with the tall bloke being held back by a small Asian woman, and the small bloke eventually getting off the tram and having his meager possessions tossed out onto the tram platform.

Suffice to say, I was happy enough to let that tram go and wait for the next one even if it was another 15 minutes or so away. What good would turning up earlier have done anyway? I'd already had lunch, and the assumption that there would be anyone I knew in the social club to have a quiet drink with turned out to be way off base. Everyone's got something better to do. At least there was time for one member of staff behind the bar to learn about the existence of the "scotch and dry". 

In such miserable circumstances, it only made sense to pick the wonkiest table in the room upon which to sip my drink, while watching the live stream on my phone of the women's team losing to FV Emerging in the arena outside. I have my reasons for not heading outside; and I was watching the game on my phone, because none of the television screens in the social club were on, probably because the only person who seems to know how to operate them was also not in attendance on Saturday.

Eventually enough familiar people turned up that it was worth moving to a non-wonky table, and then the game was on and one had to step outside into - it must be said - the not really all that cold weather, notwithstanding Max Mikkola wearing gloves, which South of the Border will forgive for obvious reasons. Once more, as with the past few weeks, we were forced from our regular Clarendon Corner bay, into the middle of the stand. Apparently that area that's closed off to patrons is still undergoing painting works, though people are now suspecting that it's just another cost cutting measure. While we were still able to set up camp in Row H, it nevertheless feels like being a migrant in a new country trying to replicate your existence 

Some matches zip by, while others seem to hang around. This was one of the latter. When we opened the scoring at what point past the twenty minute mark that it was, I was shocked that it we weren't so much closer to half time. Credit to Max Mikkola for that opening goal, making the most of his initially crappy free kick attempt to volley home a belter that I was oohing over almost as soon as it left his boot. Credit also to Marcus Schroen for letting someone else take a free kick. It's called delegating, and every leader should become accustomed to doing it.

Max's next goal, soon afterwards, was much more straightforward, except for a bit in the lead-up which ended up seeing Nikola Jurkovic get sent off. We assumed at the time it was some sort of dissent, but replays suggest that Jurkovic tried to elbow one of our players in the head while aiming to try and block our player from running downfield. Classic Jurkovic move, and that pretty much sealed the game. One more goal from a Max long throw, and another from a Max cross, and that was more than enough to settle this one. 

Incidentally, the best bit about the fourth goal, which was achieved by a lovely angled header by Schroen, is showing exactly what Marcus is best - forward play, as a sort of pseudo-second striker, something like his performance in the 2016 grand final. 

That's something for the top brass to think about, while I muse on other things, like an injured Josh Wallen deliberately getting a yellow card, so that inevitably missing the upcoming Hume isn't a complete waste.  One person did put up the suggestion that instead of potentially scoring a fifth goal, it would have been preferable to concede a goal, because that would at least eliminate the cost of a clean sheet bonus. 

Once again Mikkola was benched early, this time about an hour in. Once more he was very upset at that, and I can see why: most players want to play as much as they can; most players having the kind of night he was having want to keep that run going; and if you're being looked at for potential A-League recruitment, you want to keep showing off your wares. But I can (this time) why he was subbed off by the coach. The game was done, so there was no point in having him out there potentially getting injured; the game was done, meaning it was a chance to give some of our younger players a run; and Max also already had a yellow card (which will apparently see him miss the next match anyway), so there the risks outweighed the benefits of him being out there much longer.

Be happy with the comfortable win, and on to the remaining games in the home and away calendar.

The race to avoid relegation, the race to the finals, and the race to top spot

Saturday's win saw us reach the 40 point mark, well clear of the 30 point mark people have been throwing around only half-jokingly in terms of avoiding relegation. Relegation talk is all a bit moot now, seeing as how the two teams currently in the relegation zone are unlikely to get 30 points between them. In any case, with just 9 games and 27 more points up for grabs, second last-placed Dandenong City - currently on 10 points - can at absolute best only reach a tally of 37 points, a game behind our current tally. So, congratulations to us for avoiding relegation officially, barring some extra-curricular rule breaking nonsense. 

So attention now turns to the race for the finals, where we still have to play the teams currently in second, third, fourth, and fifth. We're currently 14 points clear of seventh placed Heidelberg (whom we already played twice, and thus cannot take points directly off us), so it would take a monumental stuff-up from here to fail to make the finals. I'm not saying it's not possible, only that it's really rather unlikely, seeing as how we also have to play each of the bottom three once more. But stranger things have happened I suppose.

The race for top spot however, is still very much wide-open, though you'd prefer to be in our position than anyone else's. Oakleigh's loss against the Bergers yesterday gives us back some breathing space - four points to be precise - which might come in handy come the end of the home and away season. Granted, first place offers almost no material advantage for finals, but it should (I hope) the opportunity to play in the NPL national playoffs.

Next game

Hume away on Saturday night. Assuming he even plays, will the 17-year-old Hume goalkeeper have turned 18 by now? Will there even be enough South fans in attendance to heckle any Hume goalkeeper? Even if there are enough South fans in attendance, will they be too precious to stand out in the cold, preferring instead to stay indoors, and eating kebabs while watching GWS vs Footscray?

Final thought

I still cannot comprehend how the social club can't just sell you a burger without a serving of chips, or a chicken sandwich without a serving of chips, or a lamb sandwich without a serving of chips; and yet hey also cannot find a way to serve plated meals which would naturally come with a serving of chips.

Losing sucks, and yet... - Melbourne Knights 2 South Melbourne 1

Six days a week of election work (two kinds!) has taken its toll on my social life over the past month and a bit, and thus here we are again with another ridiculously late post. I've barely even been on my computer in the last week, except to visit government and banking websites. 

And look, I'm disappointed with how last week ended, but also - it was a whole week ago. There's something to be said for writing posts immediately after the fact - or as close as possible to the conclusion of a match - because it gets the frothing anger vibes down good, which certainly makes for more visceral communication. But the further one gets away from the match, the more one sees the whole affair in perspective, which also has its merits.

So, while unhappy that we lost the game, and the manner in which we lost it, it's not the end of the season for us, much less the end of the world. After several weeks of brute force heroics which saw us win games that we probably didn't deserve to win, a couple of elementary defensive errors and some poor decision making cost us a game we otherwise had the better of. Josh Wallen was at the heart of these affairs, playing in the uncustomary position for him of right-back.

(my favourite comment on this game, perhaps the season, is the observation that Quintas' attempt to turn Wallen into a right-back is like John Anastasiadis trying to turn Gianni De Nittis into a left-back)

A few people have asked why he is playing there, when there are other options available who aren't injured or suspended. Lirim Elmazi, Morgan Evans, Chris Irwin... all more experienced and suited to playing in that position than Wallen. Maybe playing Chris Irwin at right-back would mean you could play Jai Ingham on the wing for a half, and then replace him with Andy Brennan for a half, since that is all either Ingham and Brennan seem able to manage.

(and again, what was the point of allegedly kidnapping Ingham at the airport to only play half games? or can we only afford to pay him for half a game?)

Anyway, the other big talking point was why didn't Max Mikkola start the game? Apparently he did train during the week, and thus was not selected as a starter. But apparently he did not train this week, because he was trialling at Central Coast Mariners. Which, if that is the case, it would seem silly, perhaps, even stupid, to exclude a player who was missing because of football commitments. and not because he was ill or on some kind of bender.

That's assuming what gets posted on smfcfans forum is true. 

Anyway, there were enough moments where the ball could have bounced a different way, and things would have been better for us. That's football. Well, I suppose one can be more prosaic about these things because Oakleigh are still trailing us, thanks to their 0-0 draw at Dandy Thunder. Still, we wait for them to eventually catch up and surpass us, as Chris Taylor coached teams are designed to prosper in the second half of the season, while Esteban Quintas coached sides make hay during the first half of the season and hold on for dear life during the second.

Or so the mythology goes.

As for mythology, the myth of the Original Derby took another beating, with a small crowd, and not that much tension. Maybe the last-second drama reminded people that there's something more to this fixture. Just as likely, a last-second winner in any game gets people fired up. Blame the cold, blame live streams, blame Friday nights. But all the excuses in the world won't help make the argument that these teams and this league is not only a going or worthwhile concern, but also one that deserves to developed into part of a national second tier.

Or is that what we're all waiting for? It's seemed somewhat counter-intuitive to me to talk about loyalty, and hanging in there through thick and thin, all while people hedge their bets about whether it's worth bothering to turn up unless we're in a better league. After all, we supposed to support the club, and not the league it plays in, right? 

Simple truth is that everyone's older, both literally and demographically. The young guys who used to make up the terraces are now middle-aged, with more commitments, and less time. And the young guys who should/would have replaced them don't exist. We have been staring at demographic oblivion for twenty years, and seemingly every week now we ask ourselves how much worse it can get.

Well, at least my election work is over, so I'll have to think of another excuse for why the next post is late.

Next game

Tomorrow (Saturday) evening against St Albans at home.

Positive vibes

Driving up to the gate, I could overhear the gatekeeper to the car park telling club photographer Cindy Nitsos up ahead in the queue to write something positive about the Knights. 

Then it was my turn, and I got the same treatment, after flashing my media pass, which helped me get out of paying five dollars for the car park.

But also - five dollarydoos for parking! Three was fine, but five seems obscene. 

Anyway, positive things about the Knights. They produce a serviceable match program for this league. Their players seem much less thuggish than usual. I didn't notice any racist chants this time.

Final thought

Good to see the reappearance of an old friend last Friday. Sometimes winning and losing takes a back seat to more important things.

Long throws to the rescue again - South Melbourne 3 Bentleigh Greens 2

At least for the past few weeks I've been able to palm off waning motivation for writing this stuff each week onto the fact that I have actual work. Previously that was election work that was kind of varied and interesting, and now it's an extension of election work that is repetitive and monotonous as all fuck. I get up at 5:30 in the morning, get home around 4:30 in the afternoon, and somewhere in the middle of that I work seven and half hours, six days a week, shoving senate ballot papers through a scanner and a creaser, which sometimes work well. After that, there's home business, after which there isn't much time to do anything else. My goodness, it's almost like I'm a normal person. I miss being a career student, and its attendant life of leisure. 

Anyway, one thing which has remained constant is consensus that there is a diminishing interest in all things South Melbourne - not from me, mind, but from pretty much everyone else. This isn't new, and we have all moaned and despaired for a good 17 or 18 years or so now. Sure there's an argument to be made that's even worse now, with even former rusted-ons looking for reasons not to turn up. It doesn't help that the club does give them reasons not to attend - inconvenient match times and lack of beer outside the social club cited as two recent examples - but on the whole, it's not a new problem. People have been saying the same or similar for the past nearly 20 years, and those of us still consistently attending will keep saying until we are no longer there to say it ourselves. 

In short, we keep learning the lesson that being loyal is like being pregnant, in that you are until you aren't. Me, I blame streaming more than most other options as being responsible for league-wide declines in attendances, interest, and general banter. Soccer-forum's dead, Twitter is dead, and like our club, everyone at this level has put their effort into standby mode until the National Second Division happens. And yet South supporters still have an old fashioned web forum like it's 2002. It may not be going strong, but it's still going, which basically sums up everything

What's somewhat tragic about all of this is that our support is becoming more diminished even as the team is having its best run of results since 2017. That's not quite the same as saying that the team is plating great football - but it is winning a lot of matches, even if these wins are sometimes/often painful to endure. 

Cue the howls of derision from opposition fans who watch us as we despair over a team clear on top of the table. They have a point, it's true. Results wise, things are better for South then they have been for some time. And it's also true that South fans tend to have a reflex that nothing is ever good enough, even with the allowance that there is an abhorrence (from some, if not all South fans) at the methods we're using in getting these results, and the apparently huge amount of luck also being amassed along the way. But most opposition fans also don't watch our games in full, so they're no more likely to be reliable interpreters of South's 2022 season up until this point than South fans with all their own biases and hangups.

A case in point - how do you make sense of what happened last Saturday night? At times we were comprehensively outplayed. Once again it was revealed that we have a weakness against teams that keep it on the deck, like Bentleigh, Avondale, and Oakleigh do. 

It's not just the keeping it on the deck that causes us issues - it's also that these teams play keepings-off well, not turning it over cheaply. We rely too much on teams giving us the ball back in midfield, so that we can quickly release Mikkola or Webb on the counter attack. Teams who play short passing games to get around our insipid central midfield presence, will keep on having a field day. And if we do win the ball back in defense, we tend to just pass it around the back before launching it to Sawyer. We keep trying to use Schroen as a midfield distributor/link man/play breaker-upper, and it doesn't work because he's almost none of those things, except in very specific circumstances - which is pretty much him facing the goal we're going to, or where he can turn on to his left.

And yet, with the exception of Oakleigh, most of these teams have also managed to repeatedly also concede a barrage of goals against us. Our team has scored in every single match this season, which is astonishing considering how apparently awful we are. Perhaps much as we are deficient in all sorts of ways, we have managed to expose that many opponents are also deficient in one specific area, and that is in defending set pieces. Remarkably, the particular set piece that opposition sides are having difficulty defending against us is long throws. 

I'm not sure if Max Mikkola's throw-in technique is legal, even it's surely more legal than all those dinky little drop at the feet throw-ins that are obviously foul throws. I don't know if his technique - or any long throw-in specialist's for that matter - is teachable. At some point late in the game, a Bentleigh player attempted a long throw, which wasn't too bad for what may have been a first try. But then Ben Djiba chickened out from trying the same after Mikkola was subbed off, and all you could do was laugh. 

As nice as it was to win, even if two and a half of our three goals were a result of the long throws, much time was spent o the terraces trying to figure out why Bentleigh goalkeeper Pierce Clark and the Bentleigh defence were having so much trouble defending the long throw in. Was it the angle? Was it dip, was it the lack of pace on them, compared to a corner kick? At face value, it seems pretty straightforward - a ball is thrown in a straight line, at a relatively flat trajectory. And yet time after time, Bentleigh floundered. The third goal was the was epitome of this failure, because Clark ran more or less underneath Mikkola's long throw, wherein the ball landed on an unmarked Harry Sawyer's head.

At the other end of the ground, Javier Diaz Lopez was making save after save, all of which got turned into a well-meaning though ultimately depressing compilation video, which showed how lucky we were in the greater scheme of things at both ends of the ground. Every week I say it's not a sustainable way to a title. Most weeks it turns out I'm wrong. As long we keep winning, I'm OK with being wrong.

Next game

Tomorrow night at Somers Street against Melbourne Knights. 

Final thought

Time to get some insurance for Max Mikkola's arms.

It's not what it used to be - Heidelberg United 2 South Melbourne 1

If I was still the younger me, things would be very different. OK, maybe only slightly different. This post certainly would have come out on Sunday evening, or Monday morning at the latest. But in what has become a common and tired refrain, that was then, and this is now. Back in (insert glory days of this blog) I was a career student making the most of ample leisure time and low responsibility. Now I'm scratching around temporary work scanning senate ballot papers alongside a resentful work-wife, waking up at 5:00am like every other alienated prole. 

At least I made it to the actual match this time, after missing two games a in a row before this one. Mind you, getting to away grounds via public transport continues to be a hell of an adventure. This time there were some sort of indecipherable (to me) alternative transport shenanigans on whatever the relevant train line is that I use to get to Olympic Village. This resulted in me ditching the train network around Dennis station, and catching some bus up to Southern Road and walking up to the old turnstile entrance, which I was informed during the week would be open for this game.

Miracle of miracles, it was. And there wasn't even a line, just one bored turnstile attendant, and one bored security guard. Even with delays, I got to the ground early enough to watch a good chunk of the second half of the under 21s with the very scant number of South fans that were at the ground at this stage. At least the line for the souvs wasn't very long, though for $15 I'd want my lamb a little less overcooked. I'd like to say it was nice to be back at Olympic Village after its renovation, but so much of the improvement is for players, that spectator amenities seem to have come a very distant second in consideration.

OK, so the running track is gone, and people on the western side of the ground can now be closer to the action. Problem is though, that it's been turned into the classic flat outer where a crowd any more than one deep is stuffed - and that's without the non-transparent benches. The hill underneath the shed on the western side has also been carved out, so if you don't want to stand on the fenceline, or behind the goals, or in the eastern stand and burning your retinas out facing the setting sun for a good couple of hours, you're basically being exiled to remaining hilly areas on the western side, basically in the corners. 

And then it gets cold, and dewy as the night falls. And it gets dark as the sun sets and the not fit for match days lights aren't turned on. And unless you time it yourself or use the Futbol24 app, you can't keep time because the scoreboard isn't in operation yet.

All of which complemented a pretty ordinary atmosphere, which saw a pretty ordinary South performance in a pretty ordinary game overall. Credit to the Bergers for the win - they deserved it, but even they'd think twice about putting this match on DVD and flogging it off for $25. They certainly looked fitter and more organised than they did in one round 1, and for whatever reason we chose not to press them up the pitch as we did in the season opener. In fact we seemed to sit off their midfielders throughout most of the match. What's more, we reverted to 2021 tactics in attack, bypassing our own midfield in favour of bombing it to Sawyer.

And as happened in 2021, bombing it to Sawyer meant Saywer getting mauled by the opposition defence. Marcus Schroen came on and kept spinning around in circles in search of an angle amenable to his left foot. After allegedly kidnapping diverting him at the airport on the eve of the season Eusebio style, Jai Ingham has remained largely disappointing. Oh, it all started well enough as he scored that corker against Bentleigh to win the game, and then we assumed he was building up to full fitness. But full fitness seems not to have arrived. Neither has full interest on his part, otherwise he'd be worth more than an average of a singular moment per game where he will do something significant or fail to do something significant with the opportunity on offer.  

Funnily enough, we could have been 2-0 down and/or 3-0 up in the first half. I'm still not quite sure how we scored from our worst attempt on goal in the first half, taking the lead, but by the end there was no argument: we sucked. Some are taking that 98 minutes of suckage as proof of much more suckage to come, almost desiring it, coveting its apparently imminent arrival like they were waiting for the rapture. Oh no, Oakleigh's going to catch up to us. Oh no, Oakleigh has caught up to us, after beating Knights in a midweek game I don't think anyone bothered to note the significance of. Oh no, Oakleigh will surely beat Eastern Lions and take top spot off us. Or at least draw.

But I get the point, even if its custard is over-egged somewhat. We have a good squad, which too often plays horrible looking football. Anyway, getting home meant taking the bus from Northland back into the city, which apart from a delay in setting off, was rather painless. Considered taking the 903 Smartbus all the way back from Northland to Sunshine, which would have been a good hour and a half trip.

Next game

Tomorrow night at home against Bentleigh. It's a very crowded schedule tomorrow - pretty much the entire comp has scheduled matches for tomorrow afternoon, evening, or night, which is a bit old fashioned. Let's just call it Super Saturday.

You know, I learned something this week

Yes, it's five subs you're allowed, but apparently you have to make them within a maximum of three windows. Should just go for full interchange.

Fickle me

Has the senior women's season turned a corner of some sort? I put on the stream of their game against Bulleen on at halftime, saw them concede early in the second half to fall 3-1 behind, and then I went to bed. The next day I see that the game finished in a 3-3 draw.

Final thought

Has anyone seen Oakleigh Harismidis lately? Feels like I haven't seen him for years. Heidelberg Harismidis meanwhile is still kicking on.

Brute Force - South Melbourne 4 Avondale 3

Home responsibilities meant that I missed this game in the flesh. It was the first time I'd missed two games in a row since... I don't even know when. Not happy about that, but not much to do be done about it.

There was an almost satisfactory alternative in the form of the live stream service, but there is no substitute for actually being there. So while the few hundred that were at the game will have a story to tell for years to come (assuming there are indeed years to come), most of what I can do is relay what it was like watching this game from home.

In a nutshell, a lot like the other times I've had to watch a game by myself at home. Not unemotional, not detached, but also not quite attached. The stream running on delay behind social media means that I couldn't watch it alongside say, Twitter. Having to go out to pick up my brother at a certain point meant that I had to let Dave (who was messaging me on Facebook) to pause with the interactions, because it'd just mean spoilers. But at least there's a pause option now, which I suppose we should be glad of.

Of course, what was there to spoil in the first half? That was a fairly ghastly opening 15 minutes or so, for reasons which I don't think anyone's really looked at in the wash after the eventual comeback. It's not like we didn't create our own comparatively inferior chances during that time, or during the first half as a whole, but each Avondale goal was concerning because of its repetitive nature. Each time we were picked apart with ease. They kept the ball, moved it around, moved us around, and eventually worked their way into a situation where they had people lining up for easy shots.

It was devastating to watch. The only assumptions one could make about what was likely to follow on from that start, was that we would lose 7-0 or win 4-3. I'll let the gambling community opine on what would have been a more likely outcome at 3-0. 

It's not like there weren't signs that we couldn't score a goal. But every time the ball went up the other end, it almost looked inevitable that Avondale would score. It should put paid to the idea that we're some of awesome defending machine, because we're not. Our opponents have often been stupid when playing against us, or profligate, or both. Thanks to the heroics of our goalkeeper, Avondale didn't score any more goals, and we managed to brute force our way back into the game.

And while this brute force lacks the more violent aspects, the process reminds me somewhat of Gully's teams under Ian Dobson. No one ever said of those sides that they played pretty football, but they managed to bully and force their way into winning positions through solid fundamentals. Set pieces, physicality - in our case that physicality manifesting itself pace, rather than strength - and creating contested situations. 

Avondale were all about avoiding contests. Ball possession, teamwork, short passes. When it works, it's glorious. When it doesn't, how do they reliably win the ball back, except by virtue of poor passing from their opponents? Which, to be fair, we were excessively guilty of in the first half.

The aesthetic ugliness of our style even extended to our goals. Two deflections, a penalty, and a power free kick as opposed to a curling/precision based one. If that sounds like a lot of whinging for the sake it, it kinda is. I want my team to score goals but also play something a bit more aesthetically pleasing than this style. But all goals count the same, and as the momentum shifted, one could not help but be drawn in to the spectacle.

Being at home meant that the spectacle also had to be shared with the commentary team. I'm not one who likes to criticise mostly young guys (and occasionally gals) doing commentary for very low pay, but if there was anything which reinforced my wishing I was at the game, it was the standard of commentary. Lots of yelling and screaming, lots of cliches, and an unbearable number of references to Ange Postecoglou. 

Look, I get it. Like us, these guys have just witnessed a miraculous comeback, and they feel like they need to put their stamp on it. But it was like listening to two Simon Pijacas, and it was unbearable. It's made watching the highlights near impossible for me, to the extent that I wish the club would release a a highlights clips with ambient crowd noise from the go-pro and sideline cameras.

And another thing, which is not just a problem with this game. Please, whoever's in charge, if it's going to be two people hosting, make it so it's one match caller, and one special comments person per game, as nature intended. Having two people trying to fight to get on air to do commentary is not working. I don't expect it to be like the days of NPL radio, where Teo Pellizzeri's match commentary was interspersed with analysis and conversation. But I do expect it adhere to successful soccer commentary templates. 

Anyway, there's Harry Sawyer at one end, Javier Diaz Lopez at the other, holding together two ends of whatever is in the middle. On Friday they put a dent in Avondale's 2022 minor premiership ambitions, as well in the Avengers' (snarf) hopes of winning the 2021 Bespoke title. I tried my best (sort of) to keep with that, but it's over to you guys to keep proper tabs on what's been dubbed by Mark Boric as the Bespoke Choke.

Next game

Bergers away on Sunday afternoon. A chance for all the people who love Sunday afternoon soccer to show up in big numbers.

Final thought

Congrats to the senior women for picking up their first win of the league season last weel.

I'm voting for apathy - Dandenong City 0 South Melbourne 1

Sincere apologies for another short and late post. I'd blame work, but work actually pays for things, whereas following South only tends to cost me. Better to learn this later rather than never, perhaps.

I didn't venture out to Endeavour Hills for this match, and I was so much the better for making that decision. Hiking out to the middle of nowhere, standing in the pouring rain, eating another chevapi roll. It's been done.

Instead I decided to go and visit an old South supporting friend who hasn't been able to go to games as of late. Watching the live stream with someone else sure as hell beats watching it by yourself. And no problems getting a gin and tonic.

Nevertheless, even in good company, a stream is not as good as the real thing. That's especially true when the stream doesn't even work. And waiting to see when or even if the stream will start, isn't all that fun. Cue a photo of said "stream will resume shortly" making its way to social media, only for the commentary to focus on the shocking state of my friend's cable management, with people thinking that it was my room and my TV and my cables!

Also, I didn't realise how much people cared for cable tidiness.  

Sitting on my mate's couch, waiting for something to happen on the TV, and then seeing that on the phone app, the stream and the match had started, and the just waiting for the TV stream to catch up the minute or so it was behind some version of reality. 

We got there in the end, though as the match went through its ebb and flow, you couldn't always tell who was the ladder leading team, and the team that very much nearer the other end of the table. Post-game people bitched and moaned about this, and I suppose I can't really get too crestfallen about that, because I've done it, too. 

But last week I was just, do you even remember where we were not that long ago? Farcical, flukey, or otherwise, it's still just nice that we're in a good place ladder wise, even if people think were not that hood, or the competition's even worse, or that it'll all fall apart sooner or later. That could just be more contrarianism from me though.

Yet, really, so what if Dandy City stuffed up several chances, and that we had to rely on former South championship player Shaun Timmins putting the ball in the back of his own net, or if some of our players were arguing among themselves post-match. Take the last as evidence that they care, if not about South, than at least about playing the game, which is something to latch onto in these apathetic times.

Next game

A 2021-2022 six pointer against Avondalet at Lakeside on Friday. Maybe with a sea of green and white, the likes of which we have not seen since the Bohemians visited in 2014, but probably not. Not even sure I'll be able to make it. Hope that I can, of course.

Final thought

I'd make an observation about some conditional changes recently made to the operation of the no. 12 tram when the footy's on, but I'm the only South fan on that tram most times, so forget it.

Forgot to add a title - South Melbourne 3 Port Melbourne 0

All gripes about poor crowds and cruddy scheduling seem to miss a crucial point - and that point is that South Melbourne Hellas has reached its nursing home stage. Our best years are behind us, the food is sometimes iffy, but most importantly, our nearest and dearest only come to visit sporadically. A handful of times a year is probably too much. A celebration (read: grand final) or Christmas (read: opening game), sure, that might get the relatives to come around and visit. 

Most of the time though, there's a million and one excuses about why people don't come anymore, all of which are an attempt to avoid saying the bleeding obvious - you're old, and no-one likes you. The club's children and grandchildren are basically ingrates who occasionally visit out of a latent sense of filial piety, and it doesn't really matter if it's Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, there's almost always something better to do.

Now having said that, and without actually doing anything resembling a count, there were about 100 more people there than I would have expected, even if this game was played on a Sunday. They got to see another ridiculous match in this ridiculous run. Sure, last year's opening 12 or so games were ridiculous, too - remember how we were somehow on top of the table despite genuinely not being very good? - but this year is something else.

2022 has so far been the season where we have been pretty good for about 15-30 minutes each game, pretty ordinary for the rest of it, and where that has somehow managed to be enough to be well clear on top of the league. This includes gradually losing players to various injuries, which now includes the aging Brad Norton, the perennially injured Josh Wallen, the apparently hurt himself why trying to do a scissor at training Andy Brennan, and our favourite utility Perry Lambropoulos. Also Marcus Schroen was out.

You'd think we were ripe for the picking, but Port did it its best to throw this game away in the first ten minutes, and just about succeeded. Harry Sawyer hit the post, then Port tried to Nuna its way out of defence and that was 1-0. 2-0 was two minutes later, when someone from the back line hit the best long diagonal pass they will ever achieve, and Alun Webb ran through the middle of the too high Port defence to score. At some point Max Mikkola threw a huge bomb to Sawyer, who only had to nod the ball down into the back of the net.

The next 60 odd minutes were then pretty much what we've come to expect. South had the lead, and we did our best to invite the opposition to eat into that lead, to no avail. Port had ample opportunity to score, but could not. Sometimes it deadset looked like we were letting them walk through to Javier Diaz Lopez. More of the same included Mikkola not finishing a game, and Jai Ingham not playing a complete either, this time coming on as a sub again.

Still, top of the league, so enjoy it. I am. Even the burger was more than tolerable this week, though they could ease off the ridiculous amount of chips provided. Which might also mean that they wouldn't run out of chips so fast, but goodness knows how they run out of chips anyway. Also, running out of gas for the drinks, also not a good look. 

Party like it's 1969

The best bit about the game - apart from nonsense chants - was that if you weren't at the game, then you missed all the good action. You see, despite having their cameras and commentary in place, someone at Football Victoria or Cluch scheduled the stream for Sunday instead of Saturday, meaning that viewers at home did not see the majority of the game, and certainly not the best part which was the first ten minutes. It was a bit old fashioned, really - even at the ground, you actually had to pay attention, because there was no NPL TV replay function either. Should have handed out complementary flat caps at the entrance.

Other things

You may or may not have seen the Knights vs Oakleigh game abandoned after 20 odd minutes because of unplayable conditions. I went to the Knights FB page to see people lining up into the "they should have/should not have played" debate, and instead could see only tons of posts by irate gamblers, and people trying to sell tickets to the eventual replay.

These people have made reading Facebook NPL comments sections impossible. No amount of moderation and deletions and key word and phrase shadow-banning can keep ahead of this scourge. Why would any normal human being want to engage meaningfully on these pages looking for discussion or information when it's full of this crap?

So our club, and I suppose a few other clubs, are in that nursing home stage, and the only people making an effort to talk with us are grifters and conmen. Fantastic. As Knights president Pave Jusup said, we should get rid of Facebook and go back to forums. At least you knew that the idiots who populated bulletin boards cared about the local scene enough to tailor their vitriol and trolling to local tastes and customs. 

The other thing which happened. Following on from last week's brief discussion about commentators not being up to speed with the rules around certain states of play, I asked the question on Twitter about whether at NPL commentary induction (if there was such a thing), whether there was actually anything about correctly identifying the way rules are actually applied, as opposed to how people think they are or should be applied. I only got the one response, in a private message, basically saying  "what induction, lol" and that, no, there was no coverage about how to deal with that aspect of a match.

So, maybe something for the comms team at Football Victoria to consider. Or not.

Next game

Dandenong City away on Saturday afternoon/evening. I doubt that I will be there, but I will hopefully be catching up with the fixture via a working stream.

Final thought

You see, my wife, she has been most vocal on the subject of the second division."Where is the second division? When are you going to get the second division? Why aren't you getting the second division now?" And so on.

In case of emergency, break "set piece" glass - Altona Magic 0 South Melbourne 1

Used to be a time that South playing at Paisley Park meant an almost certain loss, no matter how well we played. Nowadays it's kinda the opposite, though of course one must take into account the relative merits of the Victorian Premier League era Altona Magic, and the one from the National Premier Leagues Victoria era.

Then again, there used to be a time that volunteers ran canteens at this level, and service was relatively speedy, even if the food options were rather basic. Nowadays either nobody wants to sit inside a hot canteen booth for several hours while others enjoy the game, or there's actually no one left to take up the role. So private operators step in, service tends to be slower, but if you're willing to wait (possibly forever) you can get 12 hour slow cooked brisket, or an overpriced chevapi roll. 

Another thing which has changed, or is at least something I've never seen before, is a coach passing notes to his players during the game. Not vocally relaying instructions to a player who then informs teammates further away from the coaching staff. Actual instructions written on actual paper and passed along from player to player. I would say that I've never seen anything quite so strange, except that the change it wrought seemed to be even stranger, in that the team that was already copping a bath on both wings and had no midfield, reset its formation into a doughnut scheme that was even worse than what had preceded it.

Not that whatever preceded it was going well, but I'm not sure that moving Patrick Langlois to right back was quite the masterstroke that the brains trust thought it was, because the doughnut remained, and Magic waltzed through non-existent resistance. Thank goodness their finishing was absolute rubbish, and that they failed to convert even one of the four very, very good opportunities presented to them in the first half.

But it wasn't just the doughnut shaped formation that was the problem. Our passing from the back line into said doughnut midfield was also dire. Even in situations where the players recognised - at least theoretically - that we were all over the shop and needed to reset was only useful in theory. To wit: stand Marcus Schroen, standing is as captain for the injured Brad Norton, exhorting his teammates late in the half to stay focused, keep a clean sheet with a minute to go in the first half and reset in the second, soon afterwards finding himself in possession in midfield, making a blind pass square across the field, which was easily intercepted.

He wasn't alone in producing this kind of garbage, but it was the most egregious example. The only way to overcome the problem was to long balls to Harrison Sawyer, who was once again employed in the largely thankless task of having to fight for and chase long balls, which were the only way we were reliably getting forward. Of course when it's one against three or four, there's only so much any player can do. Even worse when the selected line up had no one willing or able to win a ball in the midfield, so we ceded possession and territory on a terrifyingly frequent basis. Very good way to expose an inexperienced left-back as well.

Nevertheless, that we managed to go into the break not 4-0 down was a victory itself, even if it was hardly a moral one. Second half, Lirim Elmazi was introduced into the middle, and things changed. I was critical of Elmazi's game against Oakleigh, but here his mere presence changed things for the better. All of a sudden there was a ball-winning midfielder playing in midfield, and the mere sense of there being an anchor set things right. Then it became a case of waiting for our goal, though it took its sweet time getting there.

When it did arrive, it came via... you guessed it, another set piece. And not even the first really good set piece opportunity, which was a penalty saved by Chris Oldfield. 

But first, a necessary digression.

From my viewing angle, I'm not even sure it was a penalty. But that's beside the point. Oldfield was penalised for his foul with a yellow card, which then led to several South fans asking for a red because Oldfield was "the last man".

So I tried to set the record straight at the ground (with some success!) and I'm doing it here again. In the first part, there is no "last man" rule. The rule is about denying "a clear goal scoring opportunity". But more importantly, under rule changes designed to rule out "double jeopardy" punishments - where a penalty is awarded and a player sent off - Oldfield s "accidental" foul now only warrants a yellow card at most.

People at the ground were asking me when did this rule come in, and I said at least 2-3 years ago. Well, even I was way off, because it was actually back in 2016.

So what counts as a "deliberate" foul then? According to the rules, a deliberate foul is:

Those include holding, pulling or pushing, not playing the ball, serious foul play, violent conduct or deliberate handball in order to deny a goalscoring opportunity.

None of which Oldfield got near to achieving. So, when you hear more guff at a ground about "last man" and why someone isn't being sent off for a foul in the box, educate them! The worst thing that could happen is a punch in the face. 

Anyway

Saved penalty and follow up gone, 0-0 looked the most likely outcome. Until, well, you know the rest. Someone swung in a corner, Sawyer timed his run well, and we scored another set piece goal. For keeping tabs at home, this is the 2022 set piece goal tally so far:

• corner vs Heidelberg
• corner vs Bentleigh
• penalty vs Bentleigh
• long throw vs Knights
• corner vs St Albans
• penalty vs St Albans
• long throw vs Hume
• penalty vs Gully
• long throw vs Gully
• free kick into box vs Thunder
• corner vs Magic

11 goals from set pieces. We only scored 19 goals total in 18 league games last year.

How long we can keep that run up, I don't know. Should be fun finding out.

Next game

Port Melbourne at home on Saturday night. Women playing against the Bergers in the curtain raiser.

Living in the past is the best kind of living

You wanted it, and now you've got it. The boffins at Football Victoria's competitions department have managed to find a way to get the 2021 Bespoke Solution ladder up and running, and it is a thing of beauty. 

Well, almost.

Unlike Avondale's recent attempt to keep track of this nonsense, FV has included Port Melbourne's pointless 18 point penalty. Yet the Bespoke Table says South have three "2021" games left, when we should have four - I reckon FV has mistakenly counted our game away against Oakleigh as part of our tally, when only our home game against Oakleigh should count. Under this format South should still games against Avondale (Round 13 at home), Eastern Lions (Round 15 away), Oakleigh (Round 22 at home), and Dandenong City (Round 25 at home).

Hopefully someone sorts out the inconsistencies and mistakes by the end of the 2022 season.

Final thought

Credit to the Altona Magic physio, who spent more time upright on the field than most of Magic's players in the second half.