List of questions for the 2015 AGM

This coming Wednesday evening the South Melbourne Hellas and South Melbourne FC AGMs will be held at Lakeside. These meetings are important because apart from the implied duty of members of a member owned club to attend and hold the board that represents them to at least some account - as well as take advantage of the one mandatory information session that we are all eligible for - there are a number of issues to be voted on.

As outlined in the letter that financial members should have received as part of their notification of the AGM, these include changes to the club's constitution with regards the make up of the committee, a vote to amalgamate with South Melbourne Women's FC (which has been approved at SMWFC's end), and the tabling of documents regarding the Lakeside lease.

Below are some of the questions that I would like to see asked at the upcoming AGM. They are intended to be a reference point or guide for any eligible member to refer to during the meeting, which anyone present may choose to ask. Doubtless there will also be people who do or do not read this blog who will have their own questions to ask, and for that reason this list should not be viewed as exclusive, exhaustive or pointed towards or against the interests of any particular faction of the club.

I have deliberately left off questions regarding Nick Epifano, because:

• While I acknowledge the importance of the matter to a section of our membership, I am concerned that too much attention paid to that issue will make us lose track of other very serious issues of compliance and governance.
• I expect those interested in that topic in particular to be armed and ready as a matter of due course regardless of what I may say or think, and as members they can go for their lives on the matter.

Clearly I will have forgotten other important questions that need asking, so please leave your questions and comments in the comments section, and as long as they're not defamatory, I will add them to the overall list.

Financial statements, legal compliance and NPL compliance
I'd ask more things about the financial statements except that I'm more or less functionally innumerate in these matters.

• Why has the AGM date been set so late? And why is the AGM repeatedly held late?
• Did the committee apply to ASIC for an extension to holding an AGM?
• If they did not, who would be liable for the financial penalties potentially imposed by ASIC - the club or the directors?
• Is it true that the AGM was not due to be called until the committee was alerted to the drawing up of the petition of the EGM by South members during round 1 against Heidelberg?
• If this is not true, why were the financial statements of the club not ready for viewing by the members upon the announcement of an AGM, as required by the motion passed by the members in 2013?
• What steps is the club required to take in order to have its NPL licence renewed? What criteria is the club lagging behind in terms of the future of the NPL?
• How much debt is the club carrying, and to whom is it owed?
• Does the listed item regarding expenditure on wages include only the players, the footballing department, or the entire wage bill of the club?
• What processes does the Club put in place to restrain costs?
• What is the proportion of cash vis a vis contra sponsorship? 
• What processes are being put into place to service and maintain the current level of sponsorship? 
• How much has the deal with BLK saved us compared to our previous deal with Adidas?
• Does the club still receive financial compensation for the grand prix disruption, as was the case in the past?
• What, if anything, did the club get out of the teams that used Lakeside Stadium during the 2015 Asian Cup and 2015 International Champions Cup?

Media

• Why does the club continue to push the social media numbers line, when the day to day concerns of the membership are based on the failure to deal with the practical elements of the lease and social club?
• Does the club have benchmarks regarding its social media enterprises? For example, what are the targets for overall hits and unique hits to the website? Likewise for views of the videos and TV show?
• Has the club ever purchased Facebook likes and/or Twitter followers?
• What is the current relationship between ourselves and the broader media? Are there specific media groups or persons in the media that we are looking to work closely with?

Membership/Attendance

• Since the FFV's forced constitutional changes to club membership criteria - which included making seniors players, and the parents of junior members members automatically - what has been the breakdown of paying memberships and memberships allocated to parents of junior players?
• Can you please provide at least some membership data documenting our numbers since the return to Lakeside?

Players and coaches

• Who is primarily responsible for recruitment, Chris Taylor or members of the committee? And what is the usual process for recruiting players?
• Who was responsible for recruiting Philzgerald Mbaka, sight unseen to any of the coaches?
• Who was responsible for the re-signing of Peter Gavalas?
• Did the recruitment of Mbaka have anything to do with Genova International School of Soccer?
• Does the Club have a policy in place to attract a 'marquee player' through its connection to the Genova International Soccer School?
• Who was responsible for the signing of Andy Bevin and other mid-season signings last year?
• Why were player agents allowed into our change rooms after matches last year?
• Who is responsible for the management of our PPS tally?
• Has the club received compensation for the signing of Andy Brennan to Newcastle Jets?
• Did the club receive any compensation or fee for James Musa? If not, what was the nature of the two year contract the club (through its media channels) claimed he had signed?
• What was the rationale behind the unusually lengthy contract given to Chris Taylor?
• In what way does a 'senior football advisor' differ from an assistant coach?

Social club and lease

• Why has the club repeatedly refused to provide even cursory updates to the members about the status of this matter?

Real Madrid 'relationship'

• Last year the club made a big deal about establishing a relationship with Real Madrid, yet since then has provided no details to the members or anyone about what that entails. What is the actual story here?
• What is the connection between South Melbourne and Genova International Soccer School?
• What is the connection between South Melbourne and Morris Pagniello? 
• Who paid for the Spain trip of January 2016? Did Genova or Morris Pagniello have any involvement with that trip? If so, what was the nature of that involvement?

Women and juniors

• If the women officially reunite with the men, will the club seek to join the WNPL?
• Should the women join the WNPL, will there be an establishment of a community club in order to maintain the female social players and juniors?
• If so, how would the club go about making sure that such a community club remain linked to South Melbourne FC, considering that the two entities can not share a committee?
• Four of our juniors - Andrew and Costa Mesorouni, Spiros Stamoulis and Josh Meaker, have reportedly signed contracts with overseas clubs. Why has the club made little effort to publicise these signings?
• Why did the club remove the article discussing Andrew Mesourouni's move to Spain from its website?
• Why did Strati Xynas, the new Technical Director, join the trip to Spain leaving behind a shortage of coaches for the rest of the junior teams not fortunate enough to attend? 
• Is Strati also a GISS appointment?
• Does the club have plans to join the W-League?
• What are the club's plans in regards to joining the cut down version of the National Youth League?

Relationships and the future

• What is the status of the club's relationship with a) FFV b) FFA c) Victorian government d) State Sport Centres Trust e) other clubs both in the NPL and those outside of it?
• What is the relationship between Yarraville SC and South Melbourne? Are they affiliated to South? 
• Is South Melbourne looking at entering into affiliations with other junior/lower level clubs around Melbourne/regional centres? 
• Does the Genova International Soccer School have an exclusive arrangement with the club for future commercial junior player tours? Does this organisation have an exclusive arrangement with South Melbourne youth player transfers? If yes, what financial benefit is being paid to Genova International Soccer Schools?
• Since the club's ambition to takeover an A-League licence has failed, and considering that David Gallop and FFA have ruled out promotion and relegation for at least 20 years, what is the club's plan for getting back into the top flight? Does the club now think that any sort of accession to the top-flight is unrealistic? 
• If it is not realistic, where does the club see itself in five years, ten years and 20 years time? 
• If the club does believe that accession to the A-League is possible, what is the plan for achieving that goal?
• If it is based on promotion/relegation and/or a second division, why has the club only recently come out and made their position known on this?
• How hard is the club willing to push for a national second division and/or promotion and relegation? Is it willing to go above the FFA to the AFC?

The latest Windows 10 update screws up my taskbar - Bulleen Lions 2 South Melbourne 2

Sometimes after games like this you think that was two points lost. Well, this time it was a point salvaged. Turning up to play an hour into the game, and not having a shot on target until probably about seventy minutes in is not the best way to go about the business of securing top spot in your own right.

But we should first acknowledge the elephant in the room - that whatever preparation the club did on synthetic pitches in the week leading up to this game, it was all for nothing. No player wearing a blue shirt had any idea what they were doing out there, with the possible exception of Milos Lujic who was provided such dire service that I am happy for him to have shown the ample frustration he did last night.

Our players who had destroyed their opponents in the first few weeks with good overlapping, hard pressing and decisive movement, could barely control the ball at their feet. Some onlookers mentioned how fast the ball moved along the ground, but there was also the way ball would just stall when it hit the ground from a lobbed or chipped pass. This meant that Bulleen's long balls along the wings, instead of running out of play, ended up sitting perfectly for players like Sami Nour and Shayan Alinejad to run on to.

Tactically, too, we were all over the shop. Lujic by himself surrounded by opponents, while our wingers simultaneously failed to get forward and got caught out on the counter by the speedy Bulleen forwards. And while one may lament getting beaten on one wing, shouldn't someone be marking the opponent on the opposite wing?

The midfield was a shambles, positions becoming meaningless not in a good, Total Football way but instead in a 'we are lost' kind of way. Now maybe the Peoples' Champ had been given free reign by Chris Taylor to drift into the middle, but all it did was add to the confusion of everyone around him. The Peoples' Champ was also in one of his 'bad' moods, sulking and refusing to track back.

Our best player by a long way was Nikola Roganovic, who pulled off several good saves. But even he was prone to making errors, giving away the ball cheaply from a kick up the field which lead to Bulleen's first goal, and then making an avoidable mistake in the second half which should have led to another Bulleen goal - if not for his own efforts to make up for the aforementioned error.

Switching to what seemed like a three man back line during the second half, with Matthew Foschini at right back, seemed to change things up a bit, though Bulleen also paid the price for going into their shell too much trying to protect their lead instead of going for a third goal. Mathew Theodore came on for Iqi Jawadi at half time, and managed to score, but as much as I like Theodore, is it time perhaps to be blooding Andy Kecojevic into that attacking mid role, even if as a sub? I suppose you can give Taylor the benefit of the doubt in that in the moment of need, he would turn to the experienced player rather than the still young Kecojevic, but at some point Andy's going to have get a run in his preferred position in a situation with more responsibility than an early round Dockerty Cup game.

But credit to the team last night that they were able to snatch a result from such a poor showing. With our entry into the cup coming up this week, we will see some different and hitherto underused players - including Chris Irwin, Leigh Minopoulos (who played a full match in the under 20s last night), or even visa player Philzgerald Mbaka who also played in the 20s?

Next game - updated
As noted above somewhat obliquely, for our first FFA Cup tie for 2016 we've been drawn against Keysborough. We will be playing as the first part of a double-header out at John Cain Memorial Reserve, this Saturday. Our game will kick off at 12:15PM, while the Northcote vs St Albans game will kick off at 3:00PM.

Entry for South members is free prior to 1:00PM. I'm glad that we've avoided some awful trip to the south-east, as well as get the bonus of seeing what is likely to be one of the better games of this round of the cup, if one chooses to do so. (I will in all likelihood be choosing to do so).

AGM news
Those of you who were financial members of the club last year will be pleased to know that the club's financial statements for the 2014/2015 financial year are now available upon request from the club.

I gripe, therefore I am
Yes, yes, it was an excellent crowd of about 2000, maybe more, but I maintain that Monday night football is awful, especially when it means I get home at midnight.

Australian Pedestrianism in the 21st Century (aka whinge, whinge, whinge your bus, 'gently' down the stream badly kept roads)
So, after having my one plausible avenue of getting a lift to the Veneto Club fall through - not that I'm blaming anybody, except for whoever was daft enough to schedule a game for 8:30 on a Monday night - it was decided that since we must go to the Veneto Club come hell or high water, that we would risk taking public transport.

Now when I mentioned the atrocious public transport access to the Veneto Club to a sort of university associate during the week leading up to this fixture, he said that I was mistaken about the poverty of public transport options to 191 Bulleen Road, and that I could travel on a bus that would lead me to the Veneto Club's front door.

See those red lines? Those are public transport routes. See that white blob inside the large green space? That's the Veneto Club. Now remember that my 'friend' had said that there was public transport which stopped right outside the ground. Rubbish. The bus (on whichever of the routes on the southern part of the map you may choose) stops a good kilometre away from the Veneto Club as the crow flies.

Oh, and what a bus trip up there. Deciding to catch the 200 mostly out of noble ignorance - it said Bulleen on the front of the bus, and I had an idea it would end up as close as we could possibly hope for to the Veneto Club entrance - we made the meandering journey through some suburbs I suppose you'd call them, but good luck noticing any of that on some of the most appalling roads I've had the pleasure of travelling on which threatened to smash apart what was left of my teeth.

This being the Middle (North-) East however, where the locals despise not only public transport, but seemingly also footpaths and anybody who may choose or simply not be able to use a motor vehicle, the one kilometre trek should have come with a pair of complimentary hiking boots and a trekking pole. Wandering through what locals apparently call 'The Manno', some sort of garishly decorated hotel and reception centre, we trudged over a lawn that had more potholes than Lakeside after an athletics meet.

Then it was time to make a decision - cross to the western side of Bulleen Road where there appeared to be no footpath, or continue up the eastern side past Marcellin College, where there was at least a gravel path, but probably no pedestrian friendly way of crossing over to the Veneto Club, what with there being a massive grass trench in the middle of the road. Deciding on the gravel path, we eventually crossed over relatively safely, all while I spent the time cursing the whole experience and those responsible for it.

The return trip was mostly worse. Standing at the gate waiting for some I'm sure obvious to everyone gap in the traffic in order to stand on a tiny island of concrete not intended for pedestrians only to repeat that again to get across the other two lanes while hoping that the delays wouldn't lead to missing the bus out of this pleb-hating middle class cesspool of bilious class war hate, was a wonderful experience.

Deciding to jaywalk across the Eastern Freeway was a good idea, because my taxes* paid for that road, and why should I have to give in to the tyranny of the automobile and wait forever for the little green man to tell me when to cross - across three different sets of pedestrian lights - when there was ample opportunity to do so. And this is from someone who shows incredible patience for the little green man to show himself when crossing Ballarat Road at Victoria University.

Anyway, this time we took the first bus on offer, which was the 905 back to the city, which was faster and more comfortable than the 200. Having said that, overall it was a rotten experience which not even the availability of chinotto at the ground could save.

*or somebody's taxes

'Clubs like South Melbourne'
Always nice to be at the forefront of David Gallop's mind.

“FFA Cup, the creation of NPL... all of these things are part of closing the gap between the A-League and the semi-professional tier and we’re well aware that the leading NPL clubs – indeed clubs like South Melbourne in Viectoria – are keen to keep promotion and relegation on the agenda,” he said.

Even better, in another article about promotion and relegation, the photo used was one of South Melbourne. OK, it was from our magnificent (wait, that's not the right word...) FFA Cup appearance, but just be glad that once again we have managed to usurp the role of being the public face of a movement that we had generally tried to avoid being the public face of. Like the NPL Victoria protestations, we weren't particularly interested in promotion and relegation while we thought we had other ways of getting out of this pee pee soaked heck-hole. It's almost like we're the Hilary Clinton of Australian soccer to Melbourne Knights' Bernie Sanders, a comparison those fascists will love.

Will it be as successful? Only time will tell.

Let freedom's cry ring, again
Remember the so called 'gimmick' forum that was set up as a rival to smfcboard? Well that site being long moribund - you can't successfully register on there, nor have your password reset - it's interesting to see another alternative to smfcboard start up. I don't know who's started it or why, how long it will last, or even if it will fall prey to the same gimmickry which sunk the older gimmick forum, but at least someone's taking a stab at trying to get something new going.

Match programmes
Uploaded a few things, but mostly issues 11-20 of Studs Up. A problem which is developing is that I may very well have to start another website to host all the non-South stuff I'm being loaned, meaning a true Australian soccer library and not just one that's an adjunct to a blog about a club that 200 people care about.

Around the grounds
Tetanus for breakfast
One mediocre side (Port) hosting a sub mediocre one (Knights). Despite giving them that epithet, the Knights go about confounding the expectations of the teeming multitudes usual small crowd by being completely and irretrievably awful. The fortunate thing for them was that Port had no interest in scoring, refusing to pull the trigger during even one of their many favourable moments in the first half. Even having Melbourne Knights player of the century™ Milan Batur sent off and the awarding of a penalty didn't help, with Alan Kearney having his penalty saved. Knights got a penalty of their own and took the lead late in the first half, and . Knights were actually good watchable in the second half, and maybe should have taken all three points - but another penalty to Port, this time converted by Stirts, Stirts, Stirts, saw this game finish 1-1. During the International Year of the Fence it was fitting that the highlight of the evening was a certain notable former Melbourne Knights committeeman almost impaling himself on Port Melbourne's fence during an exciting moment.

Bad fence quality at Port Melbourne. #fencebitters #fencegate #PS4NPLVIC #pmvmk pic.twitter.com/kJMWpDRosi

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) March 11, 2016

Still, as funny as it was witnessing the aforementioned injury because it wasn't me, one had to agree that clearly Port's fence situation is not up to scratch.

Principles of graphic design
Dockerty FFA Cup action out at Paisley Park, with Altona East hosting Beaumaris. After not giving two rats about knock-out soccer over the past few seasons, Altona East were hoping for a deep run this time around, Instead they found themselves in a deep hole (geddit?), down 2-0 and while they managed to get it back to 2-2 by half time, Beaumaris won a a see-sawing end to end affair 3-2. A exciting match but one that will be forNow there are two things that we can all agree upon:

1. I don't know that much about soccer.
2. Custard that has set firm and is eaten plain, is a pudding.

Leaving aside the second point for a moment, because I don't know that much about soccer the easy option would be to defer to expert opinion, which would mean learning about coaching, tactics, statistics etc. But the more difficult, perhaps even more noble option would be to go entirely in the opposite direction and force my unedumacated opinions on those playing the game. Watching Altona East pass, pass, pass the ball around, watching Port do the same, all for so little reward and even nearness to glory, made me think of who could possibly be employed from outside of football to teach pl;ayers how to recognise value and actuality of the spaces allocated to them to play on. Soccer coaches have clearly failed to teach players how to make proper decisions - have a think about this every time a player attempts a pass across the space-time continuum that is clearly doomed to fail.

The argument that even the modest elevation afforded to spectators at most state league grounds is superior to the atomic hurly burly of being on the field itself is a weak one. Myself and others like me, maybe even people like you, have stood on the fence line at the same level as players, and have seen them make the same errors of perception again and again. I admit that having seconds to make these decisions instead of hours, and having to contend with a moving object at your feet that makes you the focus makes things more difficult, but it's not like those of us watching on the sidelines don't have our distractions - it's not easy to pay attention to the goings on of a game while eating a souv or trying to check the footy scores.

So I think we need to bring in people from outside the game to teach players about the principles of the two and half (or is it four) dimensions the players participate in. Your first instinct would be to hire a physicist, but they would make things too complicated, what with the calculating for wind resistance and all. So I'm thinking what we need is graphic designers. Not artists, because graphic designers clearly aren't that, but someone with a basic degree who can teach players about concepts such perspective, the horizons, isometric views etc. We have tried getting people 'who know about the game' to fix these problems, and it hasn't worked. It's time to get people who know stuff about the illusions of space and sight to have a go.

#GoodWogBadWog
A valuable and succinct contribution to Ange Postecoglou's and FFA's trip to Oakleigh to announce the Socceroos squad.

@Cussen91 wog this way but don't wog that way

— Anthony Colangelo (@AnthColangelo) March 9, 2016

Final thought
Now even native bird life are taking part in the Poznan. Good grief.

A kookaburra parked itself on the crossbar at the scoreboard end during the match. #PS4NPLVIC #BLvSM pic.twitter.com/RFaVl2tkU3

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) March 14, 2016

Can't complain - Port Melbourne 0 South Melbourne 2

Puts pretend tactical hat on
Pretty good first half, pretty meh second half, but who could tell what was happening all the way on the other side of the ground with poor depth perception and a black net in the way. First half tactics seemed interesting to me. Press them high up the field, because with no Kamal Ibrahim this season, who was going to be able to take it through the midfield for them? No one, and we could even afford to let them give off the first pass because all it did was hit a brick wall of South midfielders.

Even better was when the Port defence just coughed up the ball under little to no pressure from us. Even Gal's goal kicks were slicing off his boot with unerring regularity. The main instigator of harassing tactic was Iqi Jawadi, who was having a blinder. His goal from absurdly long range was hit as much in anger at being fouled as intention to score, but they all count the same.

A pity then that he had to come off after getting injured before the half was even out. Still, by that stage we were 2-0 up thanks to Luke Adams finding himself unmarked at the back post from a set piece at this ground for the second year running. Eric Vasiliadis apparently tore shreds off his players at half time, and sure they came out looking better, but did they look dangerous? Probably not.

Were we able to be more clinical with some of our chances on the counter, we could have won this more comfortably, but all in all that part of our game looked out of synch. The runs forward from the forwards were usually all over the shop, and Lujic looked a little out of sorts too, as well as frustrated. It's not a new frustration for him to be the sole target man, nor to have that much close attention paid to him, but there were moments where he clearly seemed to be expecting a pass played through or a cross sent in, and it didn't work out the way he wanted it to.

And as much as we could all say that Andy Brennan would have provided the required delivery, he's gone and he's not coming back*, so we all need to move on, and appreciate those who are still with us now†. Besides which, we're three from three, 12 goals for and zero against. There'll be plenty of time for complaining as the season drags on.

* He may well come back one day, but it doesn't look like that will be any time soon.
† The decision to appreciate or despise the 'People's Champ' is at entirely your own discretion.

More importantly (takes ridiculous pretend tactical hat off)
What are we going to do with Port Melbourne's ground? Already accustomed to having the outer side blocked off - you know, the side with the best view of the game - yesterday saw even more of the ground blocked off, this time including the end behind the Plummer Streets fenced off. Pretty soon (recycles joke from yesterday), they'll be putting everyone that doesn't want to sit under their social club roof into a Polish style hooligan cage.

Now far be it for a South fan to talk about restricted areas of a venue, but at least at Lakeside you have the option of being in any one of the 2900 odd seats of 'our' grandstand, standing at the back of the stand or along the fence, or if you have money to throw around sit with the corporates. Shoving everyone at Port into increasingly smaller spaces for goodness knows what reason just makes the whole thing more and more frustrating for those who choose to go to that ground.

Next match
Bulleen Lions away on Labour Day, with at this stage the customary 8:30PM kick off still in place. Could they somehow find it in their hearts to move the game to an earlier timeslot? Oh, I know some people love Mondays at the Veneto Club, but I... no, let's save that for the next match report.

Speaking of which...
I've finally come around to the issue of night game kick off times. For Friday night and Monday night games, surely it's time to banish the reserves to a Saturday or Sunday afternoon slot alongside the other junior sides. 8:30PM kickoffs are absurd. Moving the reserves to the weekend means you can start a senior match at the more reasonable time of 7:30PM, seeing a 9:30 finish and an earlier arrival home. Readers of this blog will already know I think Monday games are daft enough as it is. But even on Friday nights, for those clubs that have social clubs attached, wouldn't it be better to have a game finish at 9:30, and have people stick around for an hour or so afterwards, rather than just go home straight away? And there's the issue of those who want to bring their children with them to games.

Specious thinking (on the live streaming of NPL games)
MFootball were conducting a live video stream of this game. I don't know where I stand in this to be honest. When the FFV did much the same operation a few years ago, I was one of the few people that regularly watched their one live game a week. I don't think it greatly lessened my overall attendance at matches, and was especially useful when the matches being covered were a long way from my former abode in Altona North.

Regardless of whether it's being done by a federation or private media organisation though, live video streaming has to answer the questions of who's watching and why. Leaving aside the gambling demographic for a moment, is there that much of an audience for this competition? Why are neutrals, especially those from interstate, watching this game when there is A-League, and soon to be rugby league, union and AFL matches on at the same time?

The concern that live video streaming will hurt attendance at games seems to stretch credulity. Being realistic, for most games I don't think there'd be much of a negative impact. The NPL is the kind of competition where either you go to games, or you don't - it's not really the kind of league for people that want to hedge their bets on attending. And on any of the regulation match days - Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays - there are already so many competing fixtures across a plethora of sports, that your potential audience already seems to exist very much on the margins.

This must go for the radio productions as well, though to a far lesser extent. At least for traditional broadcast radio (restricted to the Greek language 3XY Radio Hellas these days),e there is a very specific target market. For the internet radio broadcasts, while theoretically aiming for anyone within the FFV/NPL social media sphere (the only way potential audiences will find out about it) seems so broad and aimless that again, you wonder who's tuning in? The online radio broadcasts also have the dilemma of if you're listening to the commentary of a match you're actually at, the commentary may be so delayed that it's a pointless exercise.

The trickiest aspect to deal with though may be the issue of important matches. Matches between two leading sides or an FFA Cup qualifier between traditional rivals, or hypothetically a match between Melbourne Victory's NPL side and South or the Knights. The temptation would clearly be there to believe that the setting would be right to take advantage (whatever the hell that means) of the atmosphere or feeling in a match.

But in these cases, could it be that the appeal of those kinds of games played at our level (and probably of the FFA Cup scam as well) is the act of being there in person, looking cool, being a bandwagoner, while knowing full well you won't be seen at "insert venue of relevant peasant club" until the next 'event' game? In other words, shouldn't most of the effort be put into getting people through the gates?

I suppose as long as the host clubs get a say on whether or not people can live stream their games, each club can choose it's own course of action, they can do whatever they like. It's not like anyone's paying us broadcasting money for the rights to do so.

I joined NUGAS, again
The National Union of Greek Australian Students - aka, NUGAS - have been around for a very long time. Not usually giving a damn about 'tavern nights', I have taken very little interest in their affairs during my career as a tertiary student, and lord knows I've had enough opportunities to do so over a uni stint spanning two different institutions, three or so degrees and I don't know something like eleven years or so hanging around.

That, and there was a stupid incident involving right wing front ticket student union election bollocks involving NUGAS back at Melbourne Uni in 2003. Someone made a documentary about it, go watch that if you can some somehow find it. Mind you, the documentary maker probably left out the bit where someone piffed an ashtray from the balcony of the UBar down at some arsehole Young Liberals. Not that I'm endorsing that kind of behaviour mind you, and luckily no one got hurt, but it was a very tense moment in the lives of some mostly over privileged people (from both sides of that political divide) in their early 20s who mostly ended up who knows where. (I think one ended up co-authoring a book on why Australia's cities are broken, but the writing style was too much of an ordeal to persist in reading it).

All of which is a very long winded way of saying that whoever at South was responsible for lining up the deal with NUGAS to get them to offer three game passes, would be moderately pleased that they did in fact mention that deal to me as part of their membership pitch. It did help that I was wearing one of my South hats though. Less successful was the attempt to get one of the adjacent non-Greeks to join up with the offer of a South Melbourne three game pass.

Me, I'll be surprised if they even manage to send me an email this year, considering they didn't manage to do it last year.

Match programmes
Starting to clear the little bit of a backlog that's accumulated here. Most updates from this week are of away games from 1993-1994, but there have also been some items from other seasons scattered around. More to come from these batches next week.

Final thought

It's finally here, the new @smfc social club. #pmvsm #ps4nplvic pic.twitter.com/L3btckXmBI

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) March 4, 2016

It's only round 2, no need to get excited - Northcote City 0 South Melbourne 4

A beautiful afternoon for soccer, the field in near perfect condition, and the souvs in unusually good form, too. Despite this the hype from this match up is well and truly a thing of the past. Northcote had a mediocre 2015 season, and the early signs for 2016 are not good either. So where in previous years there would have been some angst as a South fan about coming to John Cain and getting away with all three points, yesterday there would have been a lot more confidence - avoid doing anything stupid, and we should be all right.

And so it proved to be. For all the complaints that we only have one striker - and let's be clear, that this is still a valid complaint despite us scoring ten goals in our opening two games - having only one striker is still better than having none. That wasn't the only difference between the two sides yesterday, but it was an important one, even if Milos Lujic only got one goal and the other three were shared between Nick Epifano and Marcus Schroen.

Aside from our opening goal from the spot, which was fortunate from start to finish - fortunate to have the ball rebound to Miller who was still on the ground after having taken the shot, allowed immeasurable time to get up and play the ball again, find a stray hand of a Northcote defender, and then Epifano's penalty shot somehow ending up over the line - all our goals had the sense of being bundled in via the most messy ping pong fashion. Our goals weren't pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but at least there were plenty of players on hand to keep the attacks going until there was a satisfactory result.

More of a concern was the tendency to give the ball to Northcote too cheaply in the first half - in particular in the period after we scored the first goal where we found ourselves if not on the back foot, then at least having to deal with an opponent that was finally coming out of its shell once they needed to. Northcote had chances to score which had they fallen to us we would have likely buried one way or another. A penalty to match our own, saved by Roganovic when our own shot squeezed underneath their keeper; a header onto the crossbar; a goal cleared off the line by a desperate Brad Norton; and several other botched counter attacks foiled by offside calls.

Still, you can't keep sides chance-less game after game, and the fact that we can recall Northcote's chances in such detail indicates they didn't trouble us too often. Matthew Millar and Schroen look like promising attacking acquisitions so far, with Miller especially looking to fill in the space left behind by Andy Brennan, by getting behind defences and sending in crosses usually at first opportunity. Matthew Foschini also looks to be the kind of big bodied defensive midfielder we've been waiting a while for - someone who will be able to counteract similar players, an area in which our smallish mids have been vulnerable in recent years.

Still, it would be nice have a back up striker for Milos... it would also be nice if our players stopped collecting daft yellow cards. There are signs also that at least some of our players are a bit underdone in terms of fitness, with Lujic being top of that list. This will work itself out over the course of the season, but considering the mantra of previous seasons and he investment in fitness and recovery teams, it's a little bit of a concern.

Next week
Away to Port Melbourne on Friday night. One wit asked yesterday how much smaller they'll make their field even from last year, in order to counteract our wing play. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Pretty sure they'll close the outer side to the general public though, which sucks.

I'm a pretend literary scholar, not a...
The 2015 South Melbourne FC and South Melbourne Hellas AGMs are coming, on Wednesday 23rd March, or so they say - they have to get the letters out to the members by Wednesday 2nd March to make the notice valid - unless just telling everyone via email qualifies as due notice. Don't ask me if that's true though, what am I some sort of lawyer or something?

Along with the notice of the AGM, as per the motion carried two AGMs ago, the financial statements need to be released alongside the announcement of the AGM. At the moment you have to contact the club directly, which seems a less than proper arrangement considering the last AGM saw these financial statements made available online with a password. Again, I'm no accountant, so it's not like they're much good to me, but those of our members who do understand those documents or at least like to pretend that they understand them should have easier access to the financial statements.

There are also significant resolutions to change the club's constitution, which are part of the process of reuniting the men's and women's clubs - the women have already voted for these changes to be adopted via SMWFC last year. At some point, hopefully this week (but realistically, probably next week), I will be posting a list of questions that I would like to have asked, as well as general concerns - it would also be good if you guys could contribute to that list when it comes out (or in the comments section in this article), and help make it as comprehensive as possible.

Cheerfully withdrawn! (George Donikian vs South Melbourne)
In the midst of a Con Stamacostas article on FourFourTwo about South Melbourne calling for a national second tier (blerrgggggghhhhh), newsreader, media personality, former South Melbourne president and one time number one ticket holder at Heidelberg United, George Donikian made a very serious allegation (since removed from the article) against both the club and the media team.

"What fills me with frustration is, one of our stories for the Fields To Dream was the South Melbourne story. We did that on our initiative and we paid for that. So you know what South Melbourne’s management at the time did? They went and told the Herald Sun that they commissioned the documentary. I should send them an invoice." 

This appeared to be news to people in South's inner sanctum, who quickly responded to Donikian by asserting that:

@pavlaki1969 @constama10 @smfc @3NerdsTV was at the meeting with herald sun, the club mentioned the doco Paul Zaro, John and I are doing!

— George Kouroumalis (@TheeeKou) February 24, 2016

While fight fans out there may have been hoping for a long running brawl to emerge out of this, it appears that Donikian has since withdrawn the comments, claiming that they were based on a misunderstanding. How very anti-climactic. Still, one had to wonder how another run of the mill story on South's ambition ended up asking for Donikian's opinion on what South is doing these days at all.

To be fair, for all the flak that Donikian has copped from South fans over the years for his 'traitorous' behaviour of promoting all sorts of disreputable organisations since his South Melbourne presidency (including on this blog), it should be remembered that he did step up to the plate in 2004 and 2005, in the most difficult period in our history, with no small risk to his livelihood caused by the carelessness of others.

So, yes Donikian was president of our club, but it was for about a 12 month period all the way back in 2004 and 2005; it has been over a decade since he has had any involvement with the club. In the intervening years, in his public guise as a 'generic quasi-celebrity football fan', he has spruiked for all manner of other 'soccer' teams, such as here and here. I like Con Stamacostas, but he may as well have asked Nick Giannopoulos for his opinion on what South's doing with itself these days.

Apostolos Giannou
The one time South junior and Greek international (one cap in a friendly) has apparently been convinced by Ange Postecoglou to switch his allegiances to the Socceroos. Another name to put onto alongside all the other non-existent names on our Socceroos list in the Lakeside players race?

Match programmes and such
A little bit of a slow down on this, not for lack of materials - which we have - but more so because I've been focusing a little bit more on my thesis work. Not a ton of South stuff this week, but there have been some odds and ends on that front, including one from the 1985 West Adelaide away fixture. More joy in the 'library', with a few editions of Simply Soccer, as well as Newcastle KB programmes, Oceania Confederation and even a Carlton SC fanzine.

Around the grounds
The other side of the quarry...
Avondale Heights hosting Hume City at Knights Stadium. First the new fence, now ground rationalisation. Will the Knights ever pull back from this relentless pursuit of modernity? Arbitrary and incomprehensible parking 'rules' aside - I symbolically drove over the yellow Rubicon security tape in a manner of which Caesar would have approved - this was unmistakeably an Avondale home match: Blue Thunder Security, ridiculously long and mediocre canteen menu, Italians wearing Victory merchandise. The only Croatian aesthetic apart from the sponsor boards was the music filtering through from their social club. Avondale ran around manically - how could they not with Mass Murdocca in their team? - but could only find one goal to Hume's two. Not a happy homecoming for Chris May in the Avondale goal, but he'll likely get another 13 chances at least to sort that out.

Final thought

Bus driver abuses the fuck out of other drivers in Greek. Ah, but of course, it's #Antipodes weekend.

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) February 27, 2016

Sunshine and Gloom - South Melbourne 6 Heidelberg United 0

A strange game, which was hard to enjoy at times for reasons not related to the game. Still, any match when you get to see George Katsakis blow a gasket ('a mechanical seal which fills the space between two or more mating surfaces, generally to prevent leakage from or into the joined objects while under compression') is worthwhile. Heidelberg had more of the ball, especially in the first half hour or so, and had us scrambling to clear balls from our own penalty area - and with a bit of luck they should have had a goal or two. As it turned out, we were unusually clinical in our counter attacks, and went into half-time 4-0 up and with an extra man on the field.

References to local and international geography and an alternative
design for the Australian flag.  Photo: Cindy Nitsos

Three of those goals were down to The People's Champion, providing temporary alleviation to the question of where are the goals going to come from apart from Milos Lujic. Whether said People's Champ should have even been out there yesterday after being red carded last week against Bentleigh in the Community Shield, is an interesting question. Clearly the bloke is un-bannable, certainly not by the club and not by the league either, a fact we may as well make the most of. Unusually, he was one of the players thanking the fans along the fence after the match. Θα χαλάσει ο καιρός as my mum would say.

At the other end of the field, even though the Bergers had some good chances to score, by and large the defence was solid. Goalkeeper Nikola Roganovic in particular had an excellent match, pulling out several good saves. But really, after you beat your oldest rival by a record margin - beating the 5-0 hammering we gave them at Middle Park during the 1991/92 season - there's really no point in looking too deeply for the negatives or potential weaknesses, especially so early on in the season. Those will reveal themselves as the year elapses as a matter of course. Chances are that Heidelberg aren't as bad as that scoreline suggests either.

I was pleased to see such a good crowd, though I won't put a number on it, and sadly our crowd counter from 2015 has hung up his green eyeshades. The now annual custom of not having our full range of merchandise available for round 1 is a continuing pain in the arse. Apart from round 1 being everyone's best trading day, our lack of early season home fixtures compounds the problem. Membership collection was not a problem, though I did get to the ground reasonably early. This year barcodes have given way to cards that need to be clipped. Word went round at one stage that we ran out of membership cards; but then again St Gerry's who were serving loukoumades also ran out of crushed walnuts. So it goes.

Next week
Northcote away on Saturday evening  A 5:00PM kickoff at Northcote seems a little insane to be honest. While the days are still relatively long, what happens if it becomes suddenly overcast? Would the meagre lighting at John Cain be able to do the trick?

Post-coital afterthoughts

Also confirmation that our AGM will be held on Wednesday 23 March - further details will be released in the upcoming week

— South Melbourne FC (@smfc) February 21, 2016

While we're on the topic
Yesterday, myself and another South supporter, Foti Stavrakis, circulated a petition calling for an Extraordinary General Meeting to take place. This was due to the constant delay by the board on the announcement of an AGM date, as well as the lack of any information on the issues of the social club and lease situations.

In the call for an EGM, we decided to keep things relatively simple. We wanted a statement on the financial details of the club as they were at the end of the most recent financial year, as well as now. We wanted an update to the social club and lease issues. We also asked for the situation regarding our part in the re-unification with the women's team to be dealt with. We also included the condition that should the club call an AGM during that time frame we would be happy to have the call for an EGM put aside.

Our aim with the petition was to be low-key, non-confrontational, and to primarily circulate it among those we knew and affiliates of such. In future, should the need arise to do this again - and I hope it doesn't - we would aim to circulate such a document to a wider selection of members. After amassing what we understood to be the minimum number of signatures - 40 - in order to successfully compel the club to call an EGM, we presented the list of signatures to president Leo Athanasakis, who informed us that an AGM date had already been decided. We were glad to hear that a date had been announced, but like many of you, we find it hard to such a comment take at face value considering the already significant delays.

While we wait to see whether or not the club actually does call an AGM, Foti and I would like to thank everyone who signed our petition. At the very least, your signatures mean that we have an insurance policy should the club not call an AGM. More importantly, it is a demonstration that there is a desire within the South Melbourne membership to take a more active interest in the club's affairs, and not allow the board to have complete carte blanche over how it runs our club.

A related and belated word on where and when South Melbourne exists
Going through a process like this reminds one that South Melbourne Hellas is a living, breathing entity. It is not merely memories to be brought up on Twitter or Facebook. It is not a museum exhibit of life as it was 12 years ago, or 25 years ago, or 50 years ago. People from other clubs can be excused to a degree if they treat it as such. Those who still claim to be South fans however cannot. If you calcify the club in this way, you also calcify yourself. Yes, 1991 was great. But the present matters, too. You can make all the excuses in the world for not being here now, or you can come to the games, swell the numbers, help the club, and see that we're still more than alive. Waiting on the sidelines merely hoping that things will improve by themselves or because of the efforts of those already attending is just a cop-out.

The higher costs of NPL living
Since we are about to embark on our customary early season streak of away fixtures, it is worth noting the maximum adult ticket price for NPL matches has increased to $15. It will be interesting to see how many clubs will choose to go up to that level - my guess is most of them. Of course patrons visiting Lakeside in the last few seasons already had to pay more because of the Ticketmaster surcharge, which is probably what lead to last year's trial of variable pricing across the board.

On the plus side, Ticketmaster is apparently no longer in charge of ticketing at Lakeside, which while it probably won't mean the lowering of ticket prices at South Melbourne, will hopefully at least mean that the club will be able to pre-print tickets and thus facilitate quicker entry at the ticket booths than the gloriously tedious process of the past few seasons.

Keeping up to date in this fast paced, 24/7, digital world of ours
Those of you among the Twitterati should by now be aware that the FFV is no longer providing score updates for NPL matches. Instead, their new account @FFV365 will be re-tweeting whatever competing clubs and media accounts bother to publish during all Victorian matches. What this means is that some matches will be much better covered than others.

It's quite plain to see that with hundreds of matches each week, that the @FFV365 account will eventually get overwhelming for some users. It may be best to stick then only with select club based or media accounts, or use the Futbol24 app for following only NPL score and key incident updates. Either way, for those who like a bit more detail in our tweets, we will be disappointed when we hope to follow matches that aren't being covered by clubs, or where we don't find out the names of the scorers.

South Melbourne media team need to work on their photographic filters
Last year we had the situation whereby our red vee heritage top came out looking decidedly pink in the media photos. This year we had the situation where our home tops as presented in the online media release looked like a sickly pastel blue instead of our traditional royal blue, causing a small amount of disgust and panic among the supporters. Yet on game day, the colour of the strips looked fine. Nice touch with the hooped socks, too. You know, while we're talking about the important things.

Match programmes
I have completed uploading the batch of NSL cup final and NSL league finals series booklets lent to me by The Agitator stretching back from our last NSL game in 2004 to a rare 1980 NSL souvenir brochure. I have also uploaded several home match programmes from 1993/94. In addition to those, after flicking through one of my bookshelves I found copies of three programmes from 2014 - the South Hobart NPL finals match, and the women's knockout cup and grand final programmes. I've also uploaded the first ten editions of 1990s Australian soccer fanzine Studs Up,  all of which are searchable thanks to the magic of text recognition.

One procedural achievement in this process was finally learning how to use the university's scanner to make collated PDFs, which will come in handy when having to deal with large documents which don't fit in my home scanner. Catching up with Mark Boric over the weekend has meant that I've also been able to upload four or so match programmes from the early 2000s and 1997/1998 and Mark's Richmond vs South Melbourne VPL era match programmes.

There's more material to come, as more people show the generosity by lending me stuff to scan. Finally, apologies to Balgownie Rangers, who had some issues trying to access the 1960s copies of Soccer World I have stored in the 'library'. Inexplicably these were not set as 'shared' as they should have been, but hopefully that issue has been sorted out now.

Around the grounds
#fencegate #fencebitters
So a healthy crowd of western suburbs soccer folk turned up to Somers Street on Friday night to see a fence. A fence! But not just any old fence. It was a new fence! A new fence symbolising modernity and gentrification! No more internment camp feel! Basically, a fence which stands for everything that the Knights stand against. Anyway, it was a good thing that the new fence was there as an added attraction, because this game was pretty rubbish now that I think about it. That last half hour, especially after Knights equalised against the run of expectation even if not the run of play, was especially dire, as both teams went about demonstrating how they'd forgotten how to play soccer. Based on this highly scientific sample size, Knights will be lucky to finish higher than 10th, while Gully will make finals because there are six slots and someone has to fill them.

And with strange aeons even death may die
Poetry and football are suffered only by the living, and each of these curses will only be sated once the living have been disposed of. We hope to hear words crafted into something ethereal, but must deal mostly with doggerel. We hope to see smooth, free flowing play, but must deal with matches so turgid that even their potential agricultural purities become coarse and unpalatable, as is often case at Chaplin Reserve. Moreland City, with a fit Trent Rixon, didn't do enough to win. Sunshine George Cross, with an overweight Ahmet Turer, did enough not to lose. Those present to mourn the loss of their friend probably had other things on their minds.

Final thought
I guess you just had to be there. Not that I was, but I'm reliant on other people's imaginations as it is,

Round 1 match day information

A few quick notes on today's match.

For those going to the game
Membership collection: The club has stated that memberships will be available for collection at the ground from 4pm onwards.

Ticketing: As Ticketmaster is apparently no longer in charge of ticketing arrangements at Lakeside, the club should have more flexibility in its ticketing arrangements on match days. This should mean that the club will have pre-printed tickets available throughout the season, making the tedious queues that occurred during more popular games of the past few seasons more bearable. Of course the best way to beat the queues and help the club is to buy a membership, but we all hope this season's ticketing system will make it more attractive for more casual, neutral and opposition fans to attend Lakeside.

Discounted entry: South is offering a two for one deal for this match, in this case two adult tickets for $10, on presentation of the relevant voucher,

No social club: For those looking for a bite to eat or something to drink before the game, my understanding is that The Limerick Arms, now a club sponsor, will be providing discount food and drink for South fans.

For those not going to the game
Radio broadcast, English: There will be an online radio broadcast of the match - at this address or search "MFootball" in the Mixlr App.

Radio broadcast, Greek: For those who prefer Greek language commentary, 3XY will be doing their own broadcast on radio frequency 1422AM, as well as via online streaming at TuneIn.

For those following the game online
Twitter: FFV will no longer be providing score updates for NPL matches via Twitter. Instead their new account @FFV365 will be re-tweeting items from all Victorian matches based upon whatever clubs (in this case @smfc or @hufcwarrior) or media people tweet themselves.

Token of our appreciation artefact Wednesday - Goal Weekly mementos

For several years I was an intermittent contributor for the print edition of Goal Weekly. Indeed, most of the copies of that paper that I still have are because of the complimentary copies sent to me when I had an article printed in there. It is one of my chief regrets of the past few years that I did not stump up the cover price of three or so dollars more often than I actually did.

A couple of Christmas cards and sturdy mug from
Goal Weekly. Missing from this photo is a wooden
plaque. I've got no idea where it could be.

Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun writing for Goal Weekly. I think I got one genuine match report published in there. There were of course a smattering of book reviews, all of which you can find on the blog. I also filled in several times for Southpole's state league round-up when he couldn't do it - though there was one occasion where I botched the results of a Provisional League 2 North-West result and hoped no one would ever notice. I even watched a World Cup qualifier between Singapore and Malaysia on a dodgy internet stream, and wrote a report on that and had it published.

But my favourite things to write were the quasi-journalistic and quasi-factual news blended with opinion pieces, especially those dealing with the oncoming implementation of NPL and the furore that was causing in Victoria. How could I write such pieces without breaking my own unwritten rule of pretty much never interviewing anyone? I don't know, but I somehow made do with attending the odd information session, reading media releases and doing a lot of summing up the more reputable posts from the various forums.

Eventually this process saw the production of pieces that were way of out control, and ended up with then the FFV CEO Mitchell Murphy penning a not entirely unreasonable letter to Goal Weekly to complain about what would turn out to be my final piece for the paper. That was two years ago now, and while I have some regrets about some of the material that I ended up producing for Goal Weekly, I still had a blast providing a variety of content for what was a wonderfully ramshackle production, which gave a lot of writers a chance to learn their craft - both those who saw their work as the starting point of their journalistic vocation, and those amateurs who felt they performing a public service.

As for the artefacts, Costa from Goal Weekly had a habit of sending out these items at the end of the year, as a way of showing his appreciation for the efforts put in by his writers. I'm not one for Christmas cards and such, but the mug got a good run until the enamel/plastic label started peeling off, and it was forced to retire to a dusty corner of some built in wardrobe in West Sunshine.

Anyway, all the best to the people who'll be doing the hard yards for Victorian soccer reportage in 2016. Don't ever forget that we're clearly the most important demographic in Victorian soccer.

Dooooooooooomed! Bentleigh Greens 3 South Melbourne 0

With Leigh Minopoulos being kept in mothballs and moonboots in the lead up to season proper, and Milos Lujic reputedly in Kokomo on his honeymoon, we were short-handed up front for our defence of the Community Shield, sticking Andy Kecojevic and Marcus Schroen up front. The question then was not if we would lose the Community Shield, but rather by how many goals. To be fair, in the first half we at least managed to match Bentleigh, if not in clear cut chances (their one, hit straight into the oncoming Roganovic, to our none), then at least in hustle and bustle.

That hustle and bustle however lead to a rather more torrid affair than perhaps one would have expected for even a more formal pre-season hit out, so much so that there were several flare ups during the course of this match. The passion on display from us was fine, but the apparent willingness to get sucked in to the opposition's antics always threatened to become costly, and thus Nick Epifano managed to get himself sent off with a straight red for retaliating. The eye witness accounts differ between Epifano kicking or stomping on his Bentleigh opponent.

Either way, it was a damn foolish thing to do, and Epifano will probably miss the opening two or three games of the season. Other than that there were moments where our interplay was rather pleasing to the eye, even if the end product was never going to amount to anything. As the game slipped away from us and Bentleigh took their foot off the pedal somewhat, our finishing only became more comical. Unusually in the mood to make bold statements, it seems to me that if we don't end up getting a strike partner for Lujic, we'll probably miss the finals. If we do, and he's half decent, then we'll win the league.

Next week
Round 1 at home vs Heidelberg. You may as well make an effort to come to this, because afterwards we have our customary slog of away games to start the season.

That's OK, I wasn't looking for a long term relationship anyway
Jason Hicks, once lauded as 'an experienced player', 'a versatile option', and a player who we were excited to have 'join us' has left us to join Melbourne Knights. Apparently we are openly crying into our cornflakes about this, which is news to me. Hicks' departure does open up a visa slot however, which according to scuttlebutt in the crowd yesterday will be used on an overseas striker.

Making things up again
Now I'm sure that Chris Marshall is a lovely bloke who loves puppies and hates mean things, but why is the club calling him a 'senior football adviser'? Is assistant coach too old fashioned?

Optional extras
Every NPL game will have a fourth official with one of those electronic boards informing the paying public of substitutions and the number of minutes of injury time to be played. Those of us not paying to enter venues should probably look away at those moments.

AGM? What's that?
Still no announcement of the AGM date as of this moment, though I have been lead to believe an announcement is 'imminent'.

Candy/Iron anniversary approaching
Someone looking far further into the future than your correspondent has noticed that the sixth anniversary of not having a social club will actually land on a South home game. According the internet the traditional gift for the sixth anniversary is either candy or iron.

Who was Robert Stewart?
In the match programme for our 1981 away fixture against Blacktown City, there is mention made of a young striker from Hearts of Midlothian named Robert Stewart. Now I've never come across this name before, so I assume that Stewart played no games for South Melbourne. But how did he get to South and where did he end up? Is he the same player as Rob Stewart, who is listed as playing for Frankston City in the 1981 Victorian state league season? Seeing as how the Victorian season started a week after that round six match, it's not an implausible theory.

The system works
Yes, your correspondent has once again been granted FFV media accreditation for 2016. This is despite my steadfast refusal to step into a press box, conduct interviews or write proper match reports. Best of all, I have been listed as a freelancer rather than being under the auspices of the club. Not that it'll make much difference to what I write, of course, but it's nice to have on the pass anyway.

New season's resolution
In order to try and actually pay more attention at our games this year, I will no longer be tweeting during South matches. Thus, those of you who wait with baited breath for my withering observations of modern life during Hellas match days will have to either wait until I get home or actually come and hear my comedic slivers of gold in person. Given phenomena such as Bentleigh charging $12 for a souv, I expect this vow to last all of abut five minutes.

Just on that...
$12. For a souv. A not even very good souv, hugely overrated in part because people from Melbourne's south-east generally have no clue what they're talking about on these matters, and in part because of this particular souv's appearance at the Food Federation Cup a couple of seasons ago. Now I know I'm very tight with money (I prefer the term frugal), but $12! And burgers $10! Absolutely outrageous! What's the thinking behind this? Are their profit margins in the canteen that bad? I'm not usually one to make too much comment about food at grounds, nor am I really the right person to complain about food prices at grounds since I get in for free most weeks, but what about those people that don't? Do we have to follow the FFA Whole of Football Plan manifesto of squeezing every penny from people in the game?

Match programmes and such
Received a couple of folders worth of match programmes, finals series booklets and the first ten issues of Studs Up. I have started scanning and uploading some of these things, but will be delayed a little by the fact that I've only now just figured out to apply OCR (text recognition) to the documents, which will allow users to perform searches within documents but also hopefully for search engines to be able to dig through them.

What that means alas is that I will gradually have to re-upload most of the stuff I've put up already, which is irritating but probably necessary. Not that the text recognition effect always works or works well, but usually it seems to be OK and something is better than nothing in these cases, especially with the very large and data dense yearbooks.

Final thought
No, I have not become a Berger, I just happened to figure out the answer to their quiz question, OK?

The 3/4 serious stuff starts this week

So, South played two games in Sydney over the weekend. We drew 0-0 with Olympic on Friday, and because there was some sort of cup on the line, we had a penalty shoot-out which we lost. Matthew Foschini and Philtzgerald Mbaka missed and/or had their shots saved. This afternoon, we played on a synthetic pitch against Sutherland Sharks, and lost 2-0. No Milos Lujic on this trip, which may or may not back up the claims of those who think that we're going to be a one trick monkey when it comes to scoring goals this season. I think Friday night's Community Shield game against Bentleigh will be more indicative of the season to come.

Player movement news
Jake Barker-Daish is officially no longer a South player. Though he was not at South at all during pre-season, no had bothered to make note of his exact status. He's ended up signing for Richmond it seems.

AGM news but not really, we'll see I guess

@PaulMavroudis @sthmel @tom_kalas Agm date to be announced next week.

— Leo Athanasakis (@LAthanasakis) February 4, 2016

More historical artefact goodness than you can a poke stick at
Super thanks to The Agitator, with whose help we've added heaps more match programmes spanning the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, almost completing several 1990s seasons. The seasons from 1977 onwards in which we have no match programmes at all uploaded on the blog are:

• 1977
• 1978
• 1982
• 1987
• 1989/90
• 2009
• 2012
• 2013

Which I am sure we will rectify as time goes on, especially once I start meeting up with people during the season proper.

Thanks to a combination of The Agitator's efforts, as well as a visit by Chris Egan, we've been able to upload every match programme where Perth Glory hosted South Melbourne, Though South had a rotten record in Perth, these programmes are worth a look for their density, professional presentation and overall glossiness, especially in the latter years. There's also some new stuff under the 'library' tab, including:

• Two Melbourne Knights programmes from their 1995 Japan tour.
• 1977 and 1978 VSF yearbooks,
• A companion to The Score fanzine from the Iran game.
• An ASF newsletter from May 1995.
• 1994/95 NSL preview booklet put out by the ASF.
• Eastern Lions 40th anniversary booklet (via Mark Boric)

In time, I hope to add the Studs Up collection we're hosting here - which is currently limited to what's available from OzFootball's sources - as well add match programmes from Australian national team matches. I also still have four VSF yearbooks to scan and upload.

Show me the money! artefact Wednesday - Hellenic Cup cheque

In this week's artefact segment we head back to the year 2007. Truly, it was a great time to be alive. South weren't yet in the A-League (any minute now some must have thought), but we had a state championship to defend, and a social club in which to socialise while eating bain marie dim sims.

There was also no South of the Border to upset people and take up my precious time; instead I was spending too much time posting on forums. And while we're still stuck in this interminable death spiral of irrelevance, at least back then the pre-seasons were more interesting if for no other reason than due to the existence of the Hellenic Cup.

Ah, the Hellenic Cup. Instead of spending your weekends travelling to public transport black holes to see a bunch of people try out for South that you'd probably never see again, with no food on hand and nothing even remotely at stake in a game played over three thirty minute periods, you could do the following.

You could go to a ground that had food, multiple teams in multiple categories playing in 70 minute matches on rock hard grounds in a compressed fixture, and for which pleasure you were asked to pay an exorbitant entry fee. It was expensive, it was often shoddily organised, but compared to this aimless schedule based almost exclusively out of venues that Chris Taylor seems to have the keys for, it was brilliant. South playing too far away from home in a midweek fixture? No worries, you could get out to the other side of the draw and get some spying going on. Oh, and there was prize money! Good prize money at that, too, rivalling what you'd get for winning the VPL championship proper.

In the 2007 Hellenic Cup final itself, played out of Northcote, we beat Oakleigh in a penalty shoot-out, celebrated with a low key pitch invasion, and collected 10,000 dollarydoos for our efforts. I don't know whether or not a giant novelty cheque is as legitimate as a normal one, but this item was in the boardroom when I took the photo now many years ago - so many years, in fact, that the various Christian denominations will probably agree on a date for Easter before we actually build a social club.

Late January 2016 news and/or update

I couldn't make it up to Bendigo for the various games against Bendigo City last night. Seems like the men won 5-1 (Epifano x3, Schroen x2), and the women won 6-1.

Squad news
Forward triallist Velibor Mitrovic has gone to Kingston City in NPL2, having played there in the past.

Takis Mantarakis' funeral
Is on tomorrow (or Monday 1st February if you get to this late).

What exactly is South's relationship with Genova International School of Soccer and Morris Pagniello?
So it's a few months now since we announced our 'we're in a relationship or is that partnership or is that friends with benefits' deal with Real Madrid. Despite that passage of time, and even a tour to Spain by some of our junior teams, I don't recall ever being fully informed about what this relationship entails.

This is the case even as we've had a number of youth players achieve contracts in Spain over the past few months, including Spiros Stamoulis, Andrew Mesourouni, Josh Meaker and even under 20s coach Sasa Kolman. It seems as if most if not all of these have included the involvement of Morris Pagniello and his group Genova International School of Soccer, or 'GISS' for short. So what's our relationship with GISS?

It's a question that's sure to come up at the next AGM - if it actually ever happens (late February 2016, maybe) - but more to the point, why haven't the SMFC media team made as big a deal of it as they have with other, far more ephemeral news items (cough, A-League ambitions, cough)?  I am interested in particular in learning what the financial arrangement is between South and GISS, as well as whether or not it fits in with the idea of the NPL trying to get rid of academies.

We're seemingly not alone in working with GISS - GISS is also running clinics at Casey Comets and Bendigo City, the latter of whom I'm told have a coach there with connections to GISS, as well as interstate and has also transferred young players from a range of local clubs to overseas sides. But it's our involvement with GISS that I'm most concerned with. I'm sure it'll be an interesting story.

More match programmes!
Huge thanks to The Agitator who has sent us pdf files of match programmes from the 1992/93 season, as well as some later stuff from towards the end of the NSL era. Check out what we've uploaded so far.

Thank goodness for Google Translate

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

South 1 Comets 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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