Solid Sunday Entertainment - St Albans 1 South Melbourne 4

Churchill Reserve being probably the second closest NPL venue to my house, I decided to get there super early on Sunday. I even drove there, because that would only take about 15 minutes, whereas the equivalent public transport trip would take close to an hour, which does not seem ideal for a seven kilometre trip. Plus if you get there early enough, there's a nice parking spot in the shade on Fox Street. Then again, if the price of petrol keeps going up, I might as well walk to games like this.

I got to the ground in time for the under 21s, and parking myself in between the two benches, I must say that I was left asking myself a lot of questions. First, whose bright idea was it to have our away kit look like a Carlton SC away kit? Frankly, it was a little sickening, and having to see that for the rest of the year isn't going to be easy.

But more questions, this time related to junior development. Now granted that on any given topic, there's always someone who knows less than you do, I'm still somewhere near the bottom of the knowledge pyramid when it comes to junior or youth soccer. But there's always a chance to learn more, even if that attempt at gaining knowledge is limited to a couple of games a year.

Do we place enough emphasis on the difference between being robotic and being automatic? I ask this, because I have come across complaints about youth players under various methods (often attributed to this or that "curriculum"), and the tendency to create robotic players who are unable to adapt to unfamiliar or especially to dynamic situations. 

And the micromanagement of the players by the coaches! I understand that they are youth players, and that they need instruction, but at what point should players in this age group (under 21s, so say about 16-18 year olds) no longer need to be constantly told where to stand, where to run, and what pass to make? At what point do not only the individual players themselves take charge of their own positioning and decision making, but also certain players adopt leadership roles to help implement whatever game plan the coach has them playing under?

I won't make much if any comment on things like the quality of first touches, or when's the right time to play back to the keeper, or decision making as it relates to playing on a small ground that has more ups and downs than a vinyl oval from the Test Match board game that's been gathering dust in a cupboard for the past 25 years. 

One thing I do know, though, is that it's never a wise idea for match officials to get involved with banter with the hoi polloi standing behind the fence. I mean, you can usually answer a rudimentary question about something that just happened without too much harm, and maybe at a more social level the whole experience is a bit more relaxed. But that young man running the line would have done better to not take the bait of arguing with a mouthy St Albans fan (and self-declared NPL player), because nothing good will come of it.

An attempt at a well-thought out post on the senior match held last Sunday is pointless if you were standing on the outer side of Churchill Reserve. That ground has to have some of the worst sight-lines in Victorian soccer, with only the social club wing affording anything approaching near unimpeded views. And of course I didn't stand on that side of the ground, but instead on the Fox Street wing, where my view was blocked by fencing, media scaffolding, poles, metal benches, and lots of people. Imagine a finals match played there, with say, double the crowd of Sunday's match?

But let me first digress a little further. If you did not attend because you are slack, not only did you miss on another great victory for Hellas, but you also missed out on one of the worst attempts at mowing a lawn you've ever seen. While our view of the game was poor, South of the Border had a first class seat to watch a shambles of an attempt at mowing a nature strip. Not sure why the bloke living across the street decided that kickoff was the right time to start mowing a lawn, but each to their own I suppose.

Initially I thought the rumble in the background was the generator being used to keep the batteries running on the camera for the live stream, but a quick look behind us saw our man in his hat, hi-viz, and gloves wielding his machine like he was trying to stab the grass. Now I'm no lawn mowing expert, but I'm pretty sure the general idea is to just mow one lane of grass, and then go back the other way slightly to the left (or right) of whatever line you just mowed?

This bloke looked like he was a devil of a time, though he did get one bit right, when he tossed a small branch onto his neighbour's nature strip. We've all done that, because you know it will come back to your side eventually, and there's nothing malicious in the act. It's the kind of entertainment you wouldn't get in a national second division loaded with proper grounds.

The senior match seemed to go the way most of our games have gone so far this season. Fair start, messy middle, reasonable finish. That whole messy middle bit is an ongoing concern, especially when we come up against better teams. Again, there were signs of panic and an inability to wrest the initiative when under sustained pressure. The small ground however meant that in this case, flailing long balls to Harry Sawyer were automatically more dangerous than they would be on a larger ground.

Improved set piece taking - and decision making - has been a boon so far this season, and so it proved again on Sunday, with corners and such helping bail us out when we needed it most. Credit to Pat Langlois and his surely unsustainable run of headed goals. Credit also to Max Mikkola, Jai Ingham, and sub for this week Alun Webb for at least showing that we'll be a consistent counter attacking threat this season. In 2021, we scored just 19 goals in 18 leagues matches. We're already up to 12 from 4 games in 2022. 

Once we get Sawyer not trying to jump too high to connect with crosses he could really just walk to, we might be even stronger. Sometimes I'm not sure that he realises how tall he actually is.

The real hardcore cynics out there, in an attempt to outdo themselves, are still stuck in a 2018-2021 mindset, counting down the points needed to reach 30 in order to claim safety from relegation. Half-joke it may be, but I think this season's personnel make relegation extremely unlikely. If this team doesn't make finals, it'd be an astonishing failure. 

There are defensive issues, issues with tactics, issues with giving up initiative for long periods of time, and of course the possibility that we haven't exactly come up against the strongest opponents as of yet. But for the most part the 2022 team has not been a side cobbling together undeserved points, but rather one that has deserved, clearly, to win at least three of its four games so far. It might not yet be time to believe that good things will inevitably happen, but it might soon be time to start things that bad things inevitably will.

Next game

Hume City at home on Friday night. This is an ordinary match, for an ordinary three points. How dull.

In case you were wondering

That's four from four from our eight twenty-twenty-one six pointers for twenty-twenty-two. 

Here at South of the Border we're going to track this novelty as it relates to us, though good luck to anyone trying to keep tabs on how the entirety of the bespoke solution is going. Our revised 2021 points tally is now 37 points, well clear of the hypothetical relegation placings; and with Port Melbourne being docked 18 points for 2021, we're also in with a real shot at a hypothetical finals place.

For the record, we have four more bespoke six point matches to go:

• Round 9, at home against Oakleigh
• Round 13, at home against Avondale
• Round 15, away to Eastern Lions
• Round 25, at home against Dandenong City

Australia Cup news

The Australia Cup fourth round draw was conducted last week, and we were drawn against away to Avondale. Oh well, we had a good run. Just for the record, Victoria has been granted five spots in this year's national stage of the cup. Because there was no national NPL championship last season - of which the winner would receive a place in the Australia Cup as a reward - Victoria was granted that extra spot because the state's superior performances in FFA Cup tournaments past.

NPL TV app updates 

The other week on the steps outside the social club, a fellow Hellatzi noted that the Cluch app on his Android phone wasn't working - furthermore, it was asking for an update which didn't seem to exist in the Google Play Store. Whatever the issue seemed to be, it had not yet caught up to my ancient Nokia - but South of the Border eventually reached that point on Saturday while trying to catch up with some of the overnight goals. 

An uninstall/reinstall maneuver only managed to turn my phone's Cluch app into the soccer-less, and largely pointless version of the app that's been available on Google Home devices. Not ideal. A search for NPL TV in the Play Store did unearth an NPL TV specific app however; so if you came across the same problem of your Cluch app carking it, it seems like we are being migrated across to a new app.

Now, it does seem like that there are incremental improvements being made to the product, like the ability to go back and forth in ten second increments, as well as rewind in some games, but I haven't really had the chance to check it out fully. I'm not even sure if they've added the ability to pause matches. Still, what we wait for most is a smart TV app so we're no longer casting from PCs.

But I'm told it's still a much better product than whatever Paramount+ is offering for its A-League coverage, so apparently I shouldn't complain so much.

Final thought

Oh boy, those Dinamo kids behind the goal with those firecrackers. Someone could blown a finger off, or an ear drum out, or... well, since no security or marshals cared on the day, I probably shouldn't either.

Notes from the 2021 AGM

South Melbourne Hellas members are now well used to AGMs being delayed for unorthodox reasons, but the pandemic is the unimpeachable get out clause for everything these days. Attendance from committee members was poor, but that of the members was worse. A lot of regular faces at these things did not show up. Why, I do not know. Indifference? Covid? Inconvenient time-slot? Heaven help us if the senior men's preferred match day discussion ever gets combined with this topic.

And goodness knows where the armada of junior parents now eligible to attend such meetings was - thanks to Football Victoria constitutional changes some years back - because they weren't there, and have seldom ever attended since they have bee able to. Well, maybe they were at junior games. Still the meeting went ahead, and some useful information was parlayed to the small audience. 

As per usual, this is not a complete account of the AGM, because I did not take such detailed notes; nor should everything be made known to people who did not attend the meeting, or so I'm told. Then again, some people don't like any AGM details making their way into the public domain, but that ship sailed a long time ago.

There were two key presenters on the day, treasurer Mario Vinaccia, and president Nick Maikousis. At times the meeting resembled a conversation rather than a one-way information session, with the odd spiky exchange. But we get but one formal opportunity per year  (on average) to grill our representatives, and one would be wise to take it. 

Insofar as the treasurer's report went, there was generally good news in regards to the club's financial position as it ended at June 2021. The club made a profit of about $160,000, a good result considering the difficulties created by the pandemic with regards to sponsorship and match day revenue. The club is also on target to clear its external debts by June 2022. 

The club's business structure was once again explained. Essentially, the South Melbourne Hellas Club acts as the umbrella for a set of subsidiary organisations. Half of these are for profit businesses (the Bar & Grill, the Futsal Court, etc), and the other half are the various teams and clubs we operate (NPL and NPLW teams, miniroos, state league women's teams).

The assertion was made by the board that contrary to popular wisdom, it is the finances of the senior men's team which fills in the budgetary gaps (if and where they exist, though most teams break even) in other parts of the football business. How one gets that message out to a soccer public which takes as gospel that junior money funds senior wages (across many clubs, not just ours) is a difficult task. Because much more of the 2021 season was played compared to the 2020 season, there was less damage done in terms of refunds of fees to junior players due to the cancellation of the season.

The Bar & Grill more or less breaks even on match days, but does much better on special events. Of course, club hosted special events and the hiring of the function room by the general public have been hindered by the pandemic, but one hopes that will change as things open up again. The club's leasing of the futsal space to the Combat Institute of Australia for use as its National Performance Centre, which became official in January 2022, will see the club receive an annual six figure sum in rental fees. I think most of us will be glad that that space is finally earning its keep, albeit in an unorthodox manner. 

On the question of why no Sunday matches, it was made reiterated that much of the cost savings achieved by the club in recent times have been due to avoiding hosting Sunday matches, and especially the staff penalty rates that make Sunday games unappealing from a financial point of view. The four senior men's Friday night matches in 2022 are also being used as part of the attempt to garner and maintain sponsor networks.

Sponsorship is in a strong position, with the number of principle partners increasing substantially, as the club continues to leverage the business links of the current board. What might happen to that generosity should those members of the board - especially in the financial services sector, which we seem to have a focus on - depart, is a question left to the future. This approach is a variant of the construction industry funded teams in our league. Realistically, there would be few clubs in Victoria who can get by predominantly on gate takings, and in that sense we are not an outlier.

In short, gate takings and membership dues play second fiddle to sponsorship and other business ventures. While the club made a reasonable sum on the 2022 Melbourne City FFA Cup game given the circumstances, restrictive pandemic related trading circumstances diminished what could have been a higher taking. Still, it's nice to know that the club has a not insignificant item for its next financial report. Also to be taken into account for next year, is the already improved takings from merchandise sales. 

Though hampered by Lakeside Stadium being under the control of the state government rather than a local council, the club has improved its accessing of government grants. Most of these grants are relatively small, but collectively they help offset costs across our various football departments.

The president's report had some crossover with the treasurer's report, but also included other matters as you would expect. The relationship with the regular, match day staff of the Trust is currently good. However, the high turnover of bureaucrats at the Trust continues to make the management of that part of the relationship more difficult.

There was some discussion about further cementing our presence at some of our other locations, and the hope that there would be funding made available for the relaying of the synthetic pitches at Middle Park, among other improvements to our amenities.

With regards to Lakeside being used as a training venue for the 2023 Women's World Cup, there was little concrete news as of yet. There is the possibility of minor improvements being made to player amenities. It is also possible that the venue may be unavailable for several weeks, but otherwise there is scant detail on what the 2023 Women's World Cup will mean for us in an operational sense. That's something to keep an eye on for next year.

There was also discussion on the prospects of a National Soccer Division, but precious little of certainty to latch on to. There remain many open-ended questions about whether the NSD would be held during a winter or summer season; how long inaugural NSD clubs would be given to settle in, without the threat of being relegated themselves; how quickly full-time professionalism would be introduced; and of course, about how many clubs could realistically be expected to participate.

There was an acknowledgment that there would be need to be significant increases to membership, sponsorship, and attendance in order to the transition to an NSD work, with the club needing a large increase in turnover from its current position. The board however asserted confidence in its ability to make a successful transition to an NSD. In addition, the board was confident that the club could participate successfully in an NSD regardless of the ultimate format of the NSD,

Those members in attendance, while sharing the club's ingrained ambition to play at the highest level possible, generally had a more a wary disposition on the matter. Having said that, there are a wide range of opinions within the South community about the merits of an NSD, and the course of action the club should take. Thus it was disappointing not to have a greater attendance to have the range of those views considered. One hopes that the next AGM, which will hopefully see more concrete details released on the actual NSD format, will attract more interest from members.

A full-time sponsorship person has been hired.

The membership database issue is still an ongoing matter. 

Medium term, if the circumstances allow, the board is interested in re-aligning AGM dates and financial reporting to match the senior men's season, rather than going by the financial year.

At the end of the meeting, it was announced that Mario Vinaccia would be stepping down as treasurer, due to increased family commitments. The change will happen as soon as a suitable successor for the treasurer position is found. The membership thanked Mario for his efforts not only in cleaning up the club's books, but also for his efforts in changing the club's culture around transparency on these matters.

The Dying Derby - South Melbourne 2 Melbourne Knights 0

Another week, another six points, and that's all you can really ask for if you have low expectations combined with a sense of the absurd. Football Victoria's bespoke solution rolls on, but good luck trying to find an amended and in-progress 2021 table keeping tabs. It's not much easier finding a commentator on the match streams willing to bring it up as well, though I have come across it once.

Somehow no one at a South game seems quite sick of this nonsense arrangement yet, but what else is there to talk about? The National Second Division? Still not quite worth the digital paper its been pixelated on. The social club trying to stuff loose souvlaki-like meat into a Turkish panini instead of an ordinary, but nevertheless structurally sound bread roll? The lack of Knights fans who turned up?

On that last point, I think everyone noticed it. Maybe they were there and didn't make a sound, but if so, that doesn't say much good about their enthusiasm for all of this at the moment. It's hard enough getting any away supporters to Lakeside, so seeing another formerly half-enthusiastic visiting cohort become further diminished lessens the appeal of these so called derbies.

It's not like we haven't done the same in recent seasons, but that's usually been when we've been poor, we're away from home in the middle of winter, and not usually where this so-called derby is concerned. Maybe the Knights fans have adopted the styling of a middle-aged homebody, which is their prerogative I suppose. Maybe it's all about the near inevitable cup match ups these days, which probably makes sense on a whole range of levels, not least Knights having been largely rubbish in league competition for the better part of the last 25 years.

The game itself provided few great moments. A Marcus Schroen free kick looked good, but was saved in no small part because it was hit where the keeper should have had it covered anyway, but otherwise he'd have been more useful on patrol with the coppers trying to prevent non-existent trouble. Harrison Sawyer was reliving the worst moments of the past two seasons, when in one of our now standard phases of playing without a midfield, he was trying his best to do it all himself. He got some help in the second half, and helped set up a goal. Andy Brennan was sent chasing long diagonal ball after long diagonal ball, being reduced to the role of a dog let loose at an off-leash park. After his customary hour of doing that he was done, but credit to him for putting in some good corners.

Alun Webb didn't have a great one, and while I liked things that Max Mikkola did, getting pinged for a dive wasn't one his better moments. Still, you keep him on because he does nice things, and he can throw the ball a long way, which came in handy on Friday when Patrick Langlois headed one of those long throws from the edge of the box, had the ball bounce, and sneak in at the back post. It was an absurd goal, it won't ever happen again, but it was nice to get, especially if you're not going to be scoring more goals.

This giving up of momentum, combined with an inability to retrieve the initiative within a match until the opposition has been gifted several opportunities, doesn't fill me with much confidence about the other 23 league matches to come. We should have been punished harder last week, and this time around too, but the Knights were gun-shy to the extreme, even when staring the gift-horse in the mouth - and those were just the moments when your defense and your goalkeeper can't figure out who's meant to cover what angle. When your otherwise competent goalkeeper tries his second failed superman impersonation in as many weeks.

Nevertheless, if the opposition doesn't want to score, that's on them. We managed to get up to the other end of the ground and Jai Ingham - one of five substitutes, because that's how we still roll in pandemic times - found himself with a half-time warm-up caliber opportunity on the edge of the box. Give him  credit on two fronts - first, that he got the ball on target, and second, that he hit the ball hard.

Two-nil still didn't feel quite secure, but Knights could only manage a disallowed for offside goal. Unless their enthusiasm was tempered by seeing the assistant referee's flag go up before the ball went in, even that bit of action failed to raise a stymied response from their fans. Meanwhile over in Clarendon Corner, it was chants for more throw ins, and top of the league (for now), and six points. 

At least someone was enjoying themselves - even better that it was us.

Next game

St Albans away at Churchill Reserve on Sunday, in a top of the table clash. Get your head around that.

Final thought

During the week Port Melbourne was docked 18 points for the 2021 minor premiership race, for reasons only a select few know. You can't even call it a retrospective decision, because that title race is still going.

Random number generator - Bentleigh Greens 2 South Melbourne 3

Everyone South Park fan remembers the Russell Crowe episode. Well Friday night for me was a bit like - not the fighting bit, but the other more boring bit, of trying to watch something and having to do it across multiple screens and locations for all sorts of stupid reasons.

I hate missing games. If a game's on interstate and I can't go, I cut my losses and make do. If I have a competing commitment, same deal. But pretty much any other reason just annoys me. I'm not going to blame Bentleigh for everything that saw me not attend Friday night's game, but they did set things in motion. Bentleigh's Friday night home games usually kickoff at 8:15pm. For someone coming from the western suburbs by public transport, it's already a huge slog to get there, but you do it because you love your team, and you have nothing better to do.

On the way back, it's an even bigger slog, and you're very lucky to get home by midnight. Getting back means first catching the last bus from across the road near Moorabbin DFO. That's easy to do with an 8:15pm kickoff. For some reason though, Friday night's match kicked off at 8:30pm, and you know how these things go, delayed kickoffs, extended injury time for all sorts of nonsense like automated sprinklers goings off during the game. And all of a sudden, that long but manageable post-game bus transfer becomes very dicey.

Which again, I'm not here to blame Bentleigh, because they can start games at any time they like within the established rules, and they're not obliged to consider the feelings of the two or three people who may be crazy enough to take public transport out to an NPL Victoria game. But looking at the post-game public transport options on a couple of websites, and I just decided to chuck it in before the game. Never mind that after tweeting about it, several people offered me lifts back to Cheltenham station, which I appreciated, but seriously: I was just like, fuck it. Those 15 minutes crossed some sort of psychological threshold for me, where I'd just stay home and watch it on whatever free screen I could scrounge up.

Rail replacement buses on the Sunbury line also made the decision not to go, just that little bit easier; a decision further justified by an experience the next day with a shambles of a rail replacement service at North Melbourne station.

Anyway, I decided to warm up for festivities by getting a handle on the NPL TV service on my laptop, while also assuming that the YouTube back up option that was available last week would be there in case anything went wrong. Well, the YouTube backup has already been dispensed with, and so by round 2 we are flying by the seat of our Cluch pants. Things did not get off to a good start when watching the Knights-Avondale stream (which started at 7:30pm), with the stream not working. Even better, there appears to be no one manning the NPL TV social media accounts to let people know that there is a problem with the stream, and that someone is working to fix it.

The cameraman at Eastern Lions vs Oakleigh Cannons had a "have you
 ever seen anything fluffier than a cloud" moment during the first half.

Some of the issues with NPL TV are not specific to this service. Poor camerawork is not the fault of the streaming service. Some grounds - I'm looking at you Gardiners Creek Reserve - seem to just have shocking internet connections. But the stuttering, buffering product on offer so far - seldom so bad as to make you switch off, but persistent enough that it feels like an essential part of the product - is unpleasant at best. Alleged poorer picture quality aside, I found the YouTube option from previous seasons much more pleasant to watch.

Well, we could be glad at least that these kinds of issues didn't seem to affect the South game so much. But a new problem... you cannot pause a stream, and then resume from where you paused it. This is just madness. I had to go pick up my brother from his job, which is a good 15-20 minute round trip, and had no way of stopping the game and picking up from where I left off. So I'm watching this game on my computer, I've seen a goal each way - what was our goalkeeper doing by the way? - and around about 8:50 I'm on way to Sunshine Marketplace. 

Ten minutes later, I'm outside the smokers' exit at Sunshine Marketplace waiting from my brother, and I'm catching up with the goal we've scored from a penalty. That part of the app is good, and will be especially useful at halftime breaks at the footy when you just want to catch up on the goals. But despite offering the chance to watch how each and every corner is won, there is no option (yet) to see a penalty decision. Seems like a bit of an oversight.

Back home, and my brother having bought another Google doohickey with his JB Hifi employee discount, for the first time ever I was chrome-casting. I can't remember how much of the game I missed because of driving, logging in to NPL TV on the lounge room PC, casting, etc, but it worked well enough until the end of the game. Which we won! Well, we should be happy about that, and yet...

A word from the γκρινιάρη faction 

Anyway, some thoughts on the game itself. Going off the grand sample of two matches - one whose profitable analysis was broken by singing, jokes, and reconnecting with lost souls, and the other by living the streaming life - it looks like 2022 has brought the pleasant change of the team having more than one mode of play. 

Most of the time under this current regime, it has been one mode - defend really, really deep, stack the defense, and hope to pinch a result off a couple of chances. This ultra risk averse style of play gave the impression that despite being impotent going forward, that we were at least steady and hard to break down going the other way. Well, duh. If you play six or seven people in a defensive set-up, you should be harder to score against than if you tried to take the game on. That's not tactics, that's just sheer weight of numbers obscuring one's lack of tactical nous or ambition.

This year it appears that we've added an attacking mode, one where we press higher up the field, try to create turnovers in more meaningful areas, and generally look more keen on scoring than we've been accustomed to over the past few years. That's nice. It's even nicer that it appears to be Plan A. It's a tactic that works well in NPL Victoria. This is a league full of players who hit the panic button as a reflex, just knocking the ball forwards at first instinct because they (possibly correctly) do not trust their own collective first touch. 

(to be a little bit fair, the reluctance of players in this comp to take a touch and take control is partly due to everyone watching the games - club administrators, coaches, and fans - who will collectively turn on any player who tries to does not adhere to rugby tactics in "dangerous" areas and who stuffs it up)

Passages of broken play are so frequent, that if you have a talented enough personnel to take advantage of such circumstances, you can roll the dice on your random number generator making such an environment, and generally come up trumps. What happens when you come up against a team that not only has talent, but also even a moderate of tactical awareness and capability, well I'm sure we'll find out soon enough. But while it's not a style that will likely you see win the minor premiership (which still means nothing), if you do well enough to stumble into the finals, playing the random number generator game in a higher intensity finals match, with more adrenaline and more mistakes, just might see your team win a championship.

Heaven help us and Australian soccer in general if that happens, but that possibility is still a whole 25 games away. We haven't even played 25 league games in the past two seasons.

Besides which, the other mode, the super annoying stack the defence mode, is still with us. Which is not such a problem when it's the last ten minutes or so of a game you're leading and you're trying to play the prcentages. Two week in a row we've gone super defensive way too early. So far we've been fortunate that the Bergers were underdone and ripe for the picking, and that Jai Ingham was able to pull a rabbit out of the hat to give us the win with only our a third shot on target for the night. That's right, three shots (the header from our only corner for the game, the penalty, and Nugget Ingham's missile), three goals, ruthless and unsustainable efficiency. 

If the defensive retreat - which lasted for a good 25 consecutive minutes in the second half - was coach's direction, that's alarming. Even if it wasn't his choice, just as alarming is that no one on the field was able to show the necessary leadership to retain possession and push up the field, so that maybe Bentleigh would have to work harder for both territory and possession. To this ignoramus it wasn't like watching ice hockey, where you've sent out our your first line to do its attacking work, and then a defensive line to kill the game for a bit before the attacking line rejoins the fray.

That works well in ice-hockey, because there's unlimited interchange, but soccer is limited to making three changes. I suppose we're fortunate that one of our subs eventually made a difference.

Next game 

Melbourne Knights at home on Friday night. 

Looking ahead to 2023 already

Along with the Reggio Calabria Club and Port Melbourne's SS Anderson Reserve, Lakeside has been designated as an official training site for the Women's World Cup next year. Don't know if that will mean improved player amenities at Lakeside, but I assume it will probably mean we'll end up playing elsewhere during that time - and not AAMI Park either. Well, that's for the people of the future to figure out.

AGMs this Sunday

A reminder for those eligible to attend, the SMH and SMFC AGMs are on Sunday in the social club, with the SMH AGM kicking off proceedings at 11am.

Final thought

Another six points for Hellas!

Public transport heads up for tomorrow

Just in case anyone apart from myself had the intention of using public transport to get to the game at Kingston Heath tomorrow, here's a heads up - the match is kicking off at 8:30PM, not Bentleigh's usual kick off time of 8:15PM.

It may very well be a very tight run to the bus stop back to Cheltenham station after the game. I'm not risking it. See you next week at a more civilised time, at a more public transport friendly venue.

Glad to be back - South Melbourne 3 Heidelberg United 1

After everything that has happened over the past two years, it was just nice to be back, again. Coming in on the train, I had that sick feeling in the guts which means that I still care; that's a good thing, as I have been reassured by others, because if I didn't care, then the whole thing would be work, and not mangled joy. It was opening day, it was derby day, it was South Melbourne Hellas day.

I am now 16 years into my second South Melbourne Hellas life, the one where I have been able to be the kind of supporter that I was not able to be during the NSL years. In this second Hellas life, I have spent those 16 years largely among the same faces. Some people have left, some new people have come in, and others come in and out. But the core of the group I became attached to - based mostly around the people active on the defunct smfcboard.com, and its still extant replacement smfcfans.com - are still there.

Many of them are now married, with kids who they are bringing to games. Some of them had kids so long ago, that the kids are now the age I was when I started coming back to South. Everyone's a little older, a little tireder, a little more jaded, but also a bit more relaxed. The club's been to hell and not quite back on multiple occasions, the football remains quasi-watchable at the best of times, and the persistent promise of a brighter tomorrow is a running joke that's so old and well-worn that no one even bothers to complain about it anymore; at least not that much. And why should we? Cynicism at the idea that things might get better for us is as much a part of the club as the supporters who have to listen to the promises, as well as the people who have to try and make a better tomorrow happen.

At the bottom of the stairs outside the office entrance, I realised I didn't even have the QR code for Lakeside saved as a favourite in my Services Victoria app. Then picking up my membership, and while wearing a jersey from a few years ago now, I am told by a volunteer that it's time to update to a new jersey. My response to that is that I don't wear Kappa, so that could take awhile. The food was much the same, except for the food trucks outside which included an ice-cream truck, which along with the warm weather made it seem like an NSL revival.

Having only attended one pre-season game in the lead-up to the season opener - not that there were that many games to choose from - I had no idea about form, tactics, or expectations. All I wanted is for the team to try and score goals, which would be something to hang on to after last year's dire setup. It's easy to say you've defended well when you have six or seven players sitting so deep that you have no midfield. But that's not meant to be the South way, and it comes across as even sillier when people are falling over themselves to claim Ange Postecoglou and the pretty attacking football his teams play.

Look, I get that we're a world away from the personnel and training environments that could come close to emulating what Ange is doing, but there's also this: attacking football is more fun, for fans and for players. Conceding the initiative almost from the get-go, and preferring to try and absorb pressure from deep in your own half, is bloody draining. OK, so what was served up on Thursday wasn't necessarily pretty. in part because both teams were still underdone, especially the Bergers.

But my goodness it was exciting to watch us take the game on. Was it ball playing finesse work? No. Was is it an approach which could reliably produce more than a couple of chances a game? Yes. With the exception of a couple of teams which try and play a short passing game, NPL Victoria is still very much a turnover and counter-attack based affair. That's fine. I don't mind. As long as we consistently win the ball from midfield and not so deep that the opponent's goal looks like a mirage on the horizon, good things are more likely to happen.

Instead of bombing it to Harrison Sawyer with no support and no hope, we might this year be able to play both to and away from Sawyer. Andy Brennan put in a couple of decent corners. Max Mikkola can throw the ball a long way. Players being given the licence and setup to have a go means creating more chances, and more chance of luck going your way. Who knows how it will look when we fall behind, or playing against more capable and fitter teams. Who knows where Lirim Elmazi and Josh Wallen will fit into the team. 

But the most important thing was that the first half was enjoyable. We cruised home in the second half to the point where people could later focus on arguing about how large or small the crowd was, and how many people the Tardis space in the corporate areas can fit. We could focus on gimmick chants for winning "six points", and trying to get kids to lead certain chants.

Next game

Away to Bentleigh on Friday night.

2021 AGM date set

A date has been set - finally - for the dual 2021 annual general meetings. On Sunday March 6th at 11:00AM, the South Melbourne Hellas AGM will take place, followed by the South Melbourne FC AGM at 12:00. Both AGMs will of course be in the social club.

What happens if the season is cancelled again

Unfortunately buried deep within Joey Lynch's season preview on the Football Victoria site - I would have have preferred that it be posted in massive letters at the start of the piece - lies the answer to what happens if the season is cancelled again.

However, in the event that COVID does its unwelcome thing and the season is forced to be cancelled for the third-straight year, the premiership and promotion and relegation will all be determined via ladder position on the condition that at least 50% of the league’s fixtures have been played. If all teams have played the same amount of games it’s a pretty easy determination, but in the event that there is an uneven spread then a points per game basis will be used, followed by average goal difference per game, and then average goals for per game. 

So there you go, the protocol that should have existed a year ago and which could have saved us a lot of bother and the need for bespoke solutions, but didn't. 

Show me the money

This bit of news is a little bit out of date now, in that it's from February 1st, but it's worth noting nonetheless. Channel 10 reported back then that Ross Pelligra and the Pelligra Group had made an offer of around $20 million to purchase Adelaide United. 

You may know the Pelligra name from some of the sponsor boards around Lakeside, or the brand's prominent position on the scoreboard during matches. You may even remember the Pelligra name from our most recent A-League bid, even if you'd rather not remember that we made a bid, preferring instead to pretend that you were always in favour of pro-rel and a second division. Me, I always preferred the (hypothetical) drawbridge model; that is, getting in, pulling up the gate, and filling in the moat with crocodiles. But I digress.

Anyway, for that most recent bid of ours, Ross Pelligra and his property development concern were set to be the major financial backers for the entity representing South Melbourne Hellas in the A-League. So, that's one question answered three years down the line - yes, the money was actually there for a South aligned bid. The second question was a bit more current: would the Pelligra purchase of Adelaide United, and the Pelligra Group's wider Adelaide sporting interests, see a diminishing of its sponsorship of South Melbourne? At the moment, that does not appear the case. 

Maybe people can support both the A-League and a former NSL club? Shocking if true. Also kind of icky.

Australia Cup Mk II

No one at South needs to worry about this for a few weeks yet, but just in case you haven't caught up on this little bit of oldish news, the FFA Cup has been renamed to the Australia Cup. This change was likely deemed necessary when Football Federation Australia decided it no longer wanted to be a Federation, and instead wanted to... I don't actually know where I'm going with this, except to say that an unnecessary name change in one department has led to led to a stupid name change in another.

A handful of people reading this are probably aware that there was already once an Australia Cup for soccer, which ran from 1962-1968. It ran on a sort of Champions League format, in that qualification seemed to be offered not only to champions of the various state federations, but also state cup winners, and teams that finished in the upper echelons of the bigger state leagues. The original Australia Cup was ended due to the high cost of travel, and diminishing fan interest in the tournament - which was probably a reflection of the wider cooling off of interest in local soccer as the effects of the ethnic boom started to peter out.

The FFA Cup trophy was modeled on the Australia Cup trophy, which was named the Henry Seamonds Memorial Trophy in 1963, after the then recent passing of the Australian soccer administrator. You may recall that this trophy was found in a skip outside the Hakoah club in Sydney. After a refurbishment, the original trophy now resides with Caroline Springs George Cross, the 1964 winners of the Cup.Modeling the FFA Cup trophy on the Australia Cup trophy was a clever and respectful nod to the past, without claiming direct continuity. 

This name change though comes across as neither clever nor respectful, just slack. They could've named it after Alex Pongrass. They could've named it after Frank Lowy. They could've even named it after the skip they found the old trophy in.

The PR statements around the name change claim that there was consultation with people, and that everyone seemed to be happy with the name change. Well, they didn't consult me, or the other layabouts involved with Australian soccer history. Frankly, it's just an attempt to hitch a ride on the coattails of a defunct competition that was won by several now dead clubs no one cares about, played under a different format. Instead of doing something new or thoughtful, they did something cheap and lazy, which will muddle statistical compilation and historical narrative as people inevtiable conflate the two competitions. And they'll call it respecting history.

Around the streams

The future of NPL streaming is here, and it's called npl.tv, accessed via the "Cluch" app. Horrible name, who knows where the "t" ended up. Anyway, Cluch seems to be a streaming platform which focuses on a lot of minor sports, as well as second and third tier competitions of otherwise major sports. Four state federations have jumped on board with NPL TV, Football Victoria being one of them.

The service - which you need to register for - is available via a phone app, and also via desktop through the NPL TV website. At the moment it's a free service, and I haven't seen any indication yet of if or when that might change to a paid service. You do have to wonder though at what point someone will actually try and make some money from this. 

The opening weekend hasn't been all smooth sailing for the new service, with reports of crashes, games not even starting, and people struggling to sign up. Having not watched any of the games on a television via Chromecast or some such, I can't vouch for whether the video quality is better (significantly or otherwise) than the YouTube or Facebook streams. I don't know squat about smart TVs and such, so I can't elaborate on how those things will work, except that Apple TV and Android TV applications are in the works

I have a pretty dated Nokia smartphone, with a small screen and not much of a memory cache, but I was surprised at how well the app worked for the most part. There was some minor, occasional buffering, but otherwise I didn't seem to run into some of the problems others were reporting. I was not exactly thrilled however that the phone app seems to redirect to a browser function rather than merely running the stream through the app itself.

The desktop variant is much the same, but here's where I ran into some problems - namely that some streams didn't even seem to be working, as in the case of Avondale vs Bentleigh, including the quite unhelpful message "this video file cannot be played: error code 232011". At least there was a backup YouTube stream for all of this week's games, which I found myself defaulting to in preference to the app and desktop options. In time, once the new app overcomes its teething problems, it is likely that this service will see the end of the Facebook and YouTube streams we have become accustomed to using for the past few season. The Facebook streams are already gone, and the YouTube streams seem to exist mostly as a backup. 

This is a pity, though I do understand the reasoning behind it. No point in making a big song and dance about a new streaming platform, and then having a competing service running against it. Part of NPL TV's reason for existing will be to gather more accurate demographic data about who is watching Australian second tier soccer, likely minus much of the European and Asian gambling fraternity which piggybacked off the more easily accessible Facebook and YouTube streams. It's the kind of data that might prove useful for trying to figure out how to make a possible national second division broadcasting arrangement work.

The NPL TV desktop and app options have a couple of nice features, the best of which is a list of videos of important moments within each game such as goals, shots on goal, corners won, and cards dished out. Of these, the "corners won" feature is clearly the most pointless, but it's nice not to have fling back and forth on a whole match timeline looking for footage of goals. 

Switching to that highlights menu, and especially switching between games, is a pain in the arse. Others have also bemoaned the inability to start watching a game from any given point in time, being forced to watch the game from that moment you log in. After giving both the app and desktop version a run, and despite being pleased with some of the NPL TV add-ons, I still find the YouTube stream easier to use, just because it's so much easier to switch between different simultaneous streams. With so many overlapping matches, I'll likely be sticking to the YouTube option until its no longer available.

Scaffolding news

Viewers may have also noticed that many of the camera angles on the opening round's streams were closer to ground level than is usually the case. I noticed this at first on the stream of the Port Melbourne vs St Albans game yesterday, though I should have also noted that it was the case at some other games I watched, like Dandenong City vs Melbourne Knights.

This is because the kinds of temporary scaffolding many clubs use for camera and commentary positions are no longer covered by Football Victoria's public liability insurance. It's a change in policy which seems to follow in the wake of the tragic death last year of a Queensland man, who was crushed by collapsing media scaffolding while watching his son play.

The only way to change the status of such temporary scaffolding is to convert the relevant temporary structures into permanent ones; or to follow a three step process whereby the third party provider/installer of a temporary structure (which may include a local council) provides a certificate of currency, as well as significant liability insurance of its own.

It makes you wonder about the day in 2014 when South fans put together a temporary gantry out at Werribee. Goodness knows who would have been liable if anything happened to Tim the cameraman on that day.

Final thought

A shame about the minute's silence for Ulysses Kokkinos. Hell of a time for the PA system to go awry. So it goes.

Friendly vs Manningham tomorrow

The match against Manningham is at Lakeside on Wednesday night, with kickoff at 8pm. Memberships will also be available for purchase and collection.

An assortment of items

Except for a lucky few, the flicker of love fades over time. Or at least it changes. Nothing stays as it was. But never doubt my commitment to this club on my good days. Sure, those good days might be fewer in number than they used to be, but what kind of idiot would otherwise take a train out to Dandenong on a Saturday evening for a practice match, unless his level of commitment was at some sort of peak?

I decided to add value to the trip by making a stop into the State Library, ostensibly to check out a couple things on newspaper microfilm. First, anything to do with two matches in Shepparton, one in 1960 and the other in 1961, between girls teams from Shepparton and Echuca, following a lead in a copy of Soccer News that has otherwise been lost to the digital ages. 

Going through the Shepparton News though, I did find one South Melbourne Hellas item of interest, a match report of a post-season friendly against Hakoah from October 1961, played at the Shepparton Showgrounds. There's all sorts of curious moments, but the one I want to focus on today is the observation by the journalist that Hellas played a short passing game, and Hakoah a long ball game. Oh, to be following a team that plays the short passing game that Hellas is adept at, instead of whatever it is we were trying to do the past few years.

Anyway, the journey from the State Library to Dandenong was interrupted by a rail replacement scheme, which meant that I missed the first bus connection to George Andrews Reserve from Dandy station, and had a 25 minute wait until the next bus... so vending machine chocolate and Christos Tsiolkas' latest thing to pass the time. Arriving to the ground five minutes late, I am made aware that we scored within the first 30 seconds of the game. But what game? I can safely say that collectively, our new and old attacking options look a cut above what he had last year, and that in general the whole team looks more assertive.

But it's just a pre-season friendly, against a mediocre looking opponent, who were absent their talismanic striker from last season because he's shopping himself around for better offers. So, several below par opponents might help build a bit of confidence and fitness, but it's nothing reliable to attach your hopes to. Even Marcus Schroen scoring another free kick - this one looking a lot more legit than some of the other ones against dodgier looking walls and goalkeepers - does nothing more than set up a situation where I get made when he doesn't get close during the whole season proper.

The thing is, however, that any sort of show of concern - of anticipation or of dread - would be stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. It used to be that there was chat about what every team is doing, who they'd signed, who they playing against pre-season. Now there's almost nothing. I know I've said it a few times, but this is really worrying. Hopefully the first few rounds, stacked with a couple of derbies for us, helps light things up, but at the moment we're in an awful, league-wide state of malaise, that might be only partly due to the pandemic.  

But like I said, love is a funny thing. A few years ago I would've moved heaven and earth schedule wise to get to South's next friendly, probably on Wednesday, likely against another lower league opponent. Instead I'll be at the Myer Music Bowl with a mate, at a concert by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. I was told a few years ago, by the most alarmingly intelligent and well-read student I came across in my uni teaching days, that the MSO was more or less a third-rate orchestra; but since I'm a comparative philistine in such matters, and the concert is free, that it doesn't matter so much as long as you have good company. 

And pandemic permitting, there'll be plenty of chances to see South this year, right?

Like doughnuts signings, and the possibility of more doughnuts signings to come

The club has signed another attacking player, one Jai Ingham. People may remember Ingham from his Hume City days; while others will remember him playing for Melbourne Victory, because they are bad people who watch the A-League. Ingham was very recently signed by Gold Coast Knights, who also put out a terse press release noting that Ingham was no longer a player of theirs. How long he remains one of ours, well, that's for Fate to decide.

In any case, it looks like we are throwing the cheque book at all sorts of older already credentialed people, while the stated goal, made so many AGMs, of trying to get more of our own juniors into the team, becomes something that only gets said at AGMs. "Yoof!", as the Victory fans used to say about something or other.

By the way, when is the next AGM?

Accredited again

Just a passing note that I have once again been accredited as an official media pass holder by Football Victoria. It was a near run thing though. I tried to apply roughly when the applications came out late last year, or early this year, but the system would not accept my photo upload. Wouldn't have a bar of it. Not interested. A sloppy email sent to the FV communications team alerting them to this fact, and letting them know to just to re-use last year's application if that was allowed, was met with no response. The application deadline drifted by, and I just figured to myself that maybe I would just pay to get into away games in 2022, I'm on a concession card anyway; and besides, the blog's output has been comparatively crap for years now.

Then FV extended the application time-frame, I tried the site again, and this time it worked. And later I got an email saying you are accredited, and isn't that nice? No need to lineup, no need to pay to get it, and all I need to do to maintain that status is keep up a reasonable output of nonsense. A more daunting task than it used to be.

Friendly on Saturday night at Thunder

7pm senior kickoff, 5pm for the u21s at George Andrews Reserve. 

Welcome back to the 2021 season

For those of you who haven't yet caught up on last night's news, here it is. A classic case of the Friday night dump, at 5:44PM last night Football Victoria released a press release which required a few attempts at parsing because a) it didn't make much sense, and b) once it did make sense, it came across as insane. Pity the poor communications staffer (though not so much the legal team, who would have also been involved) who had to draft this dross. 

But back to the beginning of this mess, which means going back to 2020. You may remember that we barely got through five games in the top NPL division before the pandemic came in and killed off the remainder of the competition, despite efforts to revive it before the big lockdown kicked in. Since there'd only been five games played in NPL 1, and none of the other leagues had even started, there really wasn't anything for anyone to argue about. The whole year was a bust.

So on to 2021, with knowledge gained about what it would take to survive another cancelled season. Well, some knowledge, but clearly not enough preparation and planning in one regard - what to do in the event that a whole lot more than five games were played, across multiple leagues. And thus we ended up in the situation where it became untenable to resume play and complete the league season, but also the situation where a something in between half and three-quarters of a season had been played.

Football Victoria managed to complete its men's and women's cup competitions at the end of the year, but all the leagues remained incomplete. Many would have been happy enough to dismiss this as another bit of pandemic related misfortune, but not everyone - namely teams up and down the Victorian league pyramid who were leading championship and promotion races, and who had spent a good chunk of money getting into those spots.

Regardless of whether they were even allowed as amateur clubs to be spending that much money on winning games is a moot point. These clubs wanted to be crowned as champions and/or awarded promotion to higher leagues as a reward for their incomplete efforts. Magnanimously, these "winning" clubs also wouldn't seek to punish clubs that had found themselves in the relegation spots, without the opportunity to dig themselves out.

So that meant expanded leagues, and filling in gaps left by disappeared or inactive teams, as the case may be. If only we could say that this was all new. In the last 15 years alone we had the farce of the 2006-2007 relegation shambles whereby muddled yellow card bookkeeping saw both George Cross and Essendon Royals stay up, and the Victorian Premier League expanded to 16 teams. Then there was the start of the NPL, which included as a compromise to its tangled legal wrangling the inclusion of two new country teams that were not equipped for life in the Victorian top-flight.

With a history of such messes in the not too recent past, and a cancelled season in the even more recent past, you'd think someone at Football Victoria would have had the foresight to draw up contingencies just in case something like another cancelled season happened thanks to a pandemic that was not yet over. Maybe they thought that the clubs would be more gracious and understanding of the exceptional circumstances we've all found ourselves in.

If FV did actually set up constitutional or regulatory contingencies for a re-occurrence of 2020's interruptions and subsequent cancellation, clearly none of these rules was remotely watertight enough to withstand even the slightest pressure. Blame the FV board and the lawyers on retainer. And thus into this void of bylaw uncertainty came a set of aggrieved clubs, with Avondale loosely set as its figurehead - and I mean loosely, because the "bespoke" solution adopted seems dedicated entirely to placating them, and setting every other aggrieved party adrift. 

So now we have the patently absurd "solution" of the 2021 home and away season being revived within the confines of the 2022 season fixtures equivalent to those not played last year. There will be no finals, no relegation, just points awarded simultaneously to two different minor premiership races, all to soothe the ego of whoever is funding Avondale.

Apart from a lack of foresight and preparation from FV, part of the problem, too, is an issue of nomenclature. For most of the past 30 years in Victoria, once we adopted a finals system to decide who would be the competition's champion team, the grand final was the be-all and end-all. Finishing on top of the ladder saw you crowned "minor premiers" as was the case in Australian rules, a mostly meaningless title. As a bonus for finishing top, you got a week off, a nominally easier route to the grand final, and a double chance to help you out if you needed it.

Then we had to go and copy the confusing A-League methodology of having "champions" and "premiers", based on the long running New South Wales practice of making it clear as mud as to who was ultimately the winning team from any given season. (we also adopted the A-League's horrendous finals system, which makes finishing on top less of an advantage than it used to be, but that's another story).

Still, there's little enough doubt that in Victoria, it remains the grand final winner who gets the ultimate kudos. So why all this effort by Avondale to win what is still effectively a secondary accolade? Finishing on top of a zombie 2021 campaign won't make add to the list of Victorian title winners. It won't get them to the NPL national playoffs, and with it the chance to qualify for an FFA Cup berth. The entire effort makes so little sense, especially when put up against the concerns of teams lower down the pyramid, who are at least attempting to snatch a place in a higher division.

While it would be ironic if Avondale somehow managed to cock up its chance to finish top of the table, I'd hate to think that there would be other clubs who would attempt to claim such a title as a victory in its own right. Still, as part of this compromise, FV could have at least reinstated the three point deduction Avondale incurred in 2020 for payment irregularities in the 2019 season, and which disappeared into the ether once 2020 was flushed down the drain. Another missed opportunity. 

Friendly against Pascoe Vale tonight

8:15PM at CB Smith Reserve. There's even a 21s curtain raiser beforehand. But there's also heavy storms being predicted, so you know, use your judgement. 

Friendly against Brunswick City tomorrow night

Kickoff at 7pm at an inexplicably open doors Lakeside.

And for the record, Brunswick City is an NPL2 team.

2022 memberships and season tickets available

And the response from some fans to this year's various offerings has been underwhelming at best.

Prices have gone up - that happens - but other little things seem to have been pared away. Every member or season ticket holder gets two "bring a friend" tickets, social club members get a $30 voucher that I assume is for use at the club's merchandise shop... and that's it.

Now I'm not one for angst about what comes in my membership package apart from voting rights and entry to matches. I don't need that many scarves or hats, and goodness knows there's enough of that stuff clogging up my wardrobe.

I can understand removing the heavily discounted 2021 "covid renewal" option, but the lack of a promise of free entry to FFA Cup matches is disappointing. More concerning to me is that the membership offering as presented here has the sense of an austerity budget.

Friendly against Mornington on Saturday evening

Just like the headline suggests, a 4pm kickoff this Saturday at Dallas Brooks Park. Since attending this fixture would require a five-hour round trip by public transport, I won't be there. But you kids enjoy it if you make it out that way.

Little bits of news from the first week of January 2022

Preparing for another season that, at best, might only partly be

The fixtures are out, but still we wait for news of memberships. Maybe next week or the week after. And as for the scheduling of the 2021 AGM, that's still largely a mystery to me. But I'm not panicking, because I've been assured that everything is above board, and that all the necessary things will happen in good time. There's a pandemic on, just in case you haven't heard.

Meanwhile the senior men's team - or at least some of that team, because it's hard to tell from the social media output exactly how many made the trip up - are in Shepparton for their now customary week long trip. The club's social media output - mostly vox pops with select players - is emphasising camaraderie, fitness, and even new tactical approaches. 

My expectations for many things South Melbourne Hellas are so laid back, they're horizontal; still, new tactical approaches, eh? I can't say I'm not mildly intrigued, while also anticipating disappointment. Can you believe the new season is just over a month or so away?

Still here

While you shouldn't trust anything you read on the internet, just because, it has been fun this week looking at a small subsection of the Indonesian football social media scene, and their speculating on who historic club PSM Makassar will be signing as a new forward option.

The speculating led to suggestions that PSM were looking at one Harrison Sawyer - our Harrison Sawyer - as a possible signing. Now I had to put all the relevant tweets and websites through the not altogether trustworthy filter of Google Translate, and it was a wild wide for the ten or so minutes it took to get through the commentary.

I can't vouch for the credibility of any of the sources, but it seemed to be a toss-up between Sawyer and A-League journeyman Golgol Mebrahtu. Debate centred around who PSM fans would prefer, about Sawyer's age, why another white guy, and most curiously, doubts about Sawyer because he played a second tier, semi-professional level with no promotion to the top league. 

Maybe someone should work on fixing at least that last item, but I digress.

Anyway, for those keeping track, the club signed Sawyer to a two-year contract at the tail end of 2021, which doesn't necessarily mean big transfer bikkies if he was to be signed by PSM. Are Indonesian clubs even accustomed to paying transfer fees, or are they a bit like us? 

At any rate, someone edited Golgol's Wikipedia page to add the "citation required" detail of him being signed by PSM. Meanwhile, Sawyer was verifiably in Shepparton at Camp Moray Agnew as recently as yesterday. Whether Sawyer did indeed follow PSM on Instagram - as mentioned in of the Indonesian reports or tweets - is something only someone who bothers with Instagram can know for sure. That's not me by the way.

 

Collector Graeme McGinty found this runners up
medal from the 1970 Dockerty Cup in the UK,
suggesting that one of South's British players returned
home, and either he or his family discarded
 his personal football collection at some point.

Piece by piece, bit by bit, one scrounged detail at a time

The next item is of little concern to anyone but the most obsessive, but the match details for the 1970 Dockerty Cup final have finally been completed. Previously both starting eleven's had a player missing, and as it turned out, one of Juventus' subs was also unknown. The missing Juve players were Keith Lackey and Alistair Sandison, while the missing player for Hellas was David High. 

1970 was a bit of a bust for South. Sure, we won the Ampol Cup, but coach Lou Brocic was gone by round 1 (despite a win), and the team muddled its way through the league campaign for a mediocre finish of fifth, four games behind champions Juventus. A league leading nine draws from 22 games probably didn't help.

The one remaining chance for silverware was the Dockerty Cup, which to that point we had not won. Reaching the final thanks to narrow wins over Polonia and Hakoah, and a 7-1 win over Alexander, here was the chance to salvage something from the year. Instead we put in what a very thorough Neos Kosmos match report described as a soulless performance. So it goes.

It was thanks to that article that we found the missing players, which just goes to show, that even sources that amateur researchers have likely gone over multiple times, can still yield useful details.

Speaking of which

One name missing from the South lineup in that final was Ulysses Kokkinos, who passed away seemingly suddenly on Monday. Kokkinos leaves behind a complicated footballing and personal legacy, which South of the Border may or may not muse on at some point, perhaps after the round 1 memorial planned by the club. I wouldn't hold your breath though.

Anyway, back to 1970. South were scratching around for form, but Kokkinos was in good touch, at least for the first half of the season - and then his name just disappears from the team lists and scorers sheets. What happened? Well, it looks like a serious leg injury suffered during South's fifth round Cup fixture against Polonia kept Kokkinos out for what seems like the rest of the season. 

Apparently Kokkinos wasn't the only star player to come out of the relevant cup weekend with a serious injury, with George Cross' Lou Kastner and Juve's Sandy Irvine also suffering heavy knocks. Kastner and Irvine ended up playing out the season, while Kokkinos unfortunately missed out. As with much to do with Kokkinos, it's another case of what have been had he been around more during the peak of his powers; but that's a story for another time. 

Thank you for following this for fourteen years

My sincerest appreciation to the people still reading this thing.

Even more sincere appreciation for all those who have done nice things for me, and for the people I like.

I have given up on even vague promises that things here will improve, but that's probably for the best.

2022 fixtures are out

A long time ago now, it didn't used to be this way - but nowadays Football Victoria does a consistently excellent job of getting its fixtures out before the arrival of a new year. You can see our fixture here.

Of course in these pandemic times, who knows how long any of these fixtures will stay in their allocated slots, or whether they'll get played at all. 

But let's assume that everything somehow ends up going smoothly, here's the gist of the fixture as it relates to our senior men's team. What days are our home games on? 

NPL match days

One Thursday night home match, our opening round game against Heidelberg. Four Friday night home matches, with two of those in the early part of the season. Eight Saturday evening home games, all with 6:45PM starts. 

The Thursday and Friday home games will all be standalone affairs - no reserves curtain raiser, as was mostly the case in 2021 for Friday night home matches. All eight of our home Saturday games will have an NPLW match as a curtain raiser, expanding the experiment that the club has been tinkering with for a little while now.

Home and away, seven of our matches will be on Friday nights, while the majority of our matches will be on Saturdays, with most of those being night games. That marks an interesting shift away from Friday nights, a situation which had reached saturation point when five games would be played on the same night. 

For fans of old fashioned Sunday soccer, you'll have three away games - St Albans, Heidelberg, and Avondale on the final day of the season.

FFA Cup rounds

If my understanding of Football Victoria's 2022 calendar is correct, it looks like cup rounds for all matches involving NPL teams will be midweek affairs, scheduled initially around NPL rounds 6 and 7. Usually an NPL team's first match in the tournament would be on a free weekend allocated for this purpose, but not in 2022 it seems. 

The final of the Dockery Cup is scheduled for the weekend between rounds 24 and 25, which is otherwise designated as a catch-up round.

Easter complications

In 2022, Catholic/Protestant Easter is on the weekend of April 16th/17th. We have a home NPL/NPLW double-header on the Saturday night of that holiday weekend, which is no big deal for us.

The big deal is the following weekend, with Orthodox Easter coming through to create fixturing chaos for everything below Australian soccer's top tier. 

Somewhat strangely, on Orthodox Easter Saturday we are scheduled to play away at Altona Magic; a club which, like us, has a heavy Orthodox Christian contingent withing its supporter base. 

Usually the fixtures are arranged to try and avoid having any team with a predominantly Orthodox supporter base from hosting games on Orthodox Easter weekend. 

An early Saturday evening time slot seems like an OK compromise, outside of the solution Oakleigh are adopting of playing on the Monday after that weekend, or playing on the Saturday afternoon up against most state league fixtures. 

I somehow can't see Heidelberg sticking with its scheduled game on Sunday afternoon, but that's not our concern.

The grand prix

What is our concern is the scheduling of the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix, and the chaos which sets in for us every year as preparations for the event see us go on long streaks of away games, and which flings us far and wide looking for training grounds.

The 2022 Australian Grand Prix is scheduled for the weekend of April 7-10th. We're, sensibly, playing away that weekend, but have NPL/NPLW double headers scheduled for the weeks immediately either side of the race. Can we really believe that we'll somehow have almost minimal disruption to our schedules from this event?

One more thing

I can't see anything on the Stadium Trust's calendar for upcoming events at Lakeside. Usually local athletics has its big events in mid-to-late February, which occupies entire weekends and scuffs up the playing surface a bit, usually requiring repair and resurfacing works.

Friendly tonight against St Albans

On Sunday arvo I heard what were then unconfirmed rumours about South's senior men playing a friendly away at Churchill Reserve against St Albans; those rumours appear to be true.

Home duties mean I won't be there, a fact which is deeply upsetting to me. But if you yourself are keen to see who knows what kind of exhibition of football by who knows what melange of lineups, kickoff is 7:40PM.

Very strange people: Nike Cup Final - South Melbourne 0 Calder United 3

To begin with, how we got here.

While everything strictly local football was cancelled several months ago, Football Victoria decided to persist with closing out at least some of its competitions with a winner in 2021. So as with the Dockerty Cup for the men, won by Avondale a couple of weeks ago, the women's knockout cup also forced through an outcome and title winner, courtesy of two semi-finals last week, and a final yesterday.

Last week our senior women played against Bulleen at the Veneto Club in one of those semi-finals. Because it was at the Veneto Club, and because it was on at a somewhat lousy time of day, and because it was screened on YouTube, I took the not altogether reprehensible, perhaps even soft, decision to watch the game from home.

What was less excusable was not writing about the game, but that's the state of South of the Border these days, the blog that continues its trajectory of becoming exponentially slacker.

That game against Bulleen was a strange one. I get the urge to at least get something out of this awful situation, but the competition came across as farcical when most of the remaining teams were hampered by some or many regular senior players being unavailable due to competing A-League Women commitments. I can't speak for the other three teams, but South reputedly had around about ten players unavailable because of this. Add to that the lack of training and match conditioning, and you end up pretty close to conducting glorified pre-season matches.

But I guess that's how much people in this country love soccer, that everyone pulled together to get this tournament over and done with, in order to salvage something from 2021. Last week South utterly dominated the early stages of their game against Bulleen, couldn't put them away at first, let Bulleen back in the game, before finally rolling over the Lions for a comfortable 5-1 win. I'm rather ignorant of who's playing for South's senior women at the best of times, but even by those standards there were a lot of names that I was unfamiliar with.

It wasn't a particularly fluent performance, but why be harsh under the circumstances? Still, it didn't fill me with much confidence that we'd beat Calder in the final; but seeing how it was a final, and it was at the comparatively easier to get to venue of CB Smith Reserve, and what with there being a much more family friendly kickoff time than the semi-final, I decided to go to the game to support the team. That, and it probably wouldn't kill me to be a little bit more social, though who knows what disease you'll catch if you dare leave your house these days.

There was some chatter on our forum that a bunch of Clarendon Corner people who never go to any women's games would actually go to this game, but the likelihood of that happening was always very remote. As things turned out, it was probably for the best that they didn't turn up - there was no need for two sets of supporter groups taking away from the spectacle and the still generally positive, non-aggro vibe of a women's soccer match. Having one such set of self-absorbed fans at the game was more than enough. 

When your attention span gets shorter by the day, you forget things which on reflection you actually kinda knew at one point. As with everything, it's easy to blame the pandemic, but I think I can be forgiven for forgetting that Calder United now has some affiliation with Western United as part of the latter's eventually getting an A-League women's team, to the point of Calder adopting Western's colours. I'm not even sure if it was just a new away kit, because most of the obviously legacy Calder fans in the crowd still sported the team's usual navy colours.

With Western United and Calder being affiliated, the Western Service Crew - a Western United supporter group - rocked up with a megaphone, a drum, and a banner or two. Parking themselves to the left of the grandstand, they hoisted up a hastily made banner with "NO LICENCE" written on it. It was petty and stupid, and didn't have much to do with the game at hand or with Calder, but that's football fandom for you. 

Being behind the goals at the opposite end of the ground, it's a wonder that either side's fans bothered to try and abuse each other, what with the wind swirling around as it was, especially in the first half. Thank goodness the ground at least looked in amazing condition compared to the Dockerty Cup final's potato field from a couple of weeks ago. The wind was blowing across the field mostly, and if it was favouring either end it was the one that we were kicking to in the first half, but we couldn't make the most of that advantage, and went into the break at 0-0.

I reckon the game was pretty much lost right there for South, and the second half kinda showed that. Our small gaggle of regular and regular-ish watchers of the South senior women moved around to the other end for the second half. We copped a couple of goals early enough in the second half - the second of which was an absolute belter of a finish - to pretty much be out of the game. Hitting the crossbar from about eight yards out at 2-0 down was the icing on the cake unfortunately. For whatever it's worth, though we were generally outplayed, I didn't think that we were bad. Indeed, I thought we were better yesterday than the previous week, but Calder were better drilled and had that bit more experience and polish. 

It's not great to lose a final, especially of a competition you haven't won yet, but hopefully at least some of the players out there for us got valuable experience, and some knowledge about what it's like playing senior football. 

Now that we've got all the cliches about incremental personal improvement and grudging acknowledgment of a superior opponent out of the way, it's time to get into what you're really here for - reports of επισόδια and/or φασαρίες. After our earlier mentioned gaggle moved behind the southern goals, a portion of the Western Service Crew moved around to the western side of the ground next to the Calder benches. Maybe they realised eventually that their "no licence" banner (eventually joined by a "no cup" banner) wasn't visible to the cameras at home, what with the game being filmed from the grandstand and not the outer side.

This group then also began directing chants our way, about us, most of which were nonsensical and not really worth responding to. "You're not singing anymore" - well, we hadn't been singing at all. "Who are ya?" - well, like Bodie said to Marlo, "you know my name". And dumbest of all, "what have you done". I mean, you can slander South Melbourne Hellas about all sorts of things, but not having done stuff, or won stuff? Of course, when your focus is on chanting things about SMFCMike, maybe you don't have the best interests of the women's team you're allegedly supporting at heart.

(the less said about their first half rendition of the Great Escape theme when the game was still 0-0, the better)

Anyway, security and Western United officialdom got themselves in all sorts of a tangle trying to figure out what to do about that group and its banners. As the game was winding down, their group wandered around behind us en route to rejoining their mates on the grandstand side of the ground, some of them decided to get mouthy and dawdle instead of continuing to shuffle on; harsh words were exchanged, and a small child belonging to one of the Western United fans began crying. All in all, a rather unedifying, unnecessary, and rather avoidable experience.

The game done, it was time go home, except CB Smith only seems to have one exit - or at least one that anyone bothers to open. Blue Thunder Kosta had the players race closed lest (I assume) any members of South's media team, office bearers, ordinary fans, and one itinerant blogger, decided to go out with a surprise attack on the celebrating Western United supporters. When the gates to the players race were eventually opened, we all managed to walk through to the exit without hitting anybody, so kudos to us I guess. 

Out / In / Still Here

Out

As the senior men's season has finally come to an end - the senior women's team season persists in their state cup tournament - we arrive at that point in the year where some of our senior men's team players are departing. To start off - Luke Pavlou, Zac Bates, and Gerrie Sylaidos are all officially on the way out. All three were the subject of rumours among fan circles to be on the way out, and so it has come to be. 

The player departure that South fans will be most viscerally unhappy about is Sylaidos, principally because the opinion exists that Gerrie didn't get a proper go under the coaching arrangement we have at the moment. Looking back, that's only half-true; Sylaidos played almost every match in 2019 (initially under Con Tangalakis, and then Esteban Quintas), 2020 was a bust for everyone, and 2021 wasn't a whole lot better than 2020.

And it's not like Gerrie didn't have his drawbacks. He struggled to run out games, and his small frame provided obvious disadvantages. However it's also fair to say that Quintas' frequent changing of Gerrie's role and position, the coach's lineup rotations, and especially his defensive set-ups, did not help to maximise the potential of a player whose best attributes lay in the forward third of the pitch. 

As for the psychology of Gerrie being in and out of the starting eleven, and having other non-winger players playing on the wing instead of him... that's for those closer to the situation to judge, but I can't imagine it helped Gerrie much when it seemed the coach would not or could not place his trust in Gerrie.

Still, maybe some of us on the terraces got too far ahead of ourselves with Sylaidos, and overrated him. But then again, if any of us overrated Gerrie, we were not alone. He was the league's 2018 under 21 player of the year, and had trials with Central Coast Mariners in mid-2019. We were impressed by the glimpses he'd shown, especially against us, and thought that there was much more to come. 

And because Gerrie was (in our minds at least) one of us - a South fan, or at least someone with South feeling - we wanted him not only to do well, but we also wanted to protect him from the opposition who targeted his light frame, from referees who wouldn't protect him those attacks, and from a coach with a game plan which seemed to be geared to getting the least out of Gerrie.

Zac Bates, too, was a player that was in and out of the starting lineup for reasons similar to Sylaidos. Starting eleven rotation policies didn't help Bates' cause, as did his inability to run out games. To that, Bates had the added problem of hamstrings which seemed perennially on the cusp of exploding. 

When he did manage to get on the field, there was a player with speed and the potential to frighten opposition defenders, especially those instructed to play a high line. But like a lot of his teammates Bates' finishing was just not good enough, and in a setup which created few chances on goal, every opportunity missed counted for more.

It would be interesting to see Bates with a proper preseason under his belt, as well as consistent and uninterrupted first-team football. He may just end up showing everyone that he was actually worth a better go at Lakeside. I fancy though that like Sylaidos - who like Bates, has ended up at Northcote - Bates will have become tired of Lakeside even if he was asked to stay.

Defensive midfielder Luke Pavlou has also gone, apparently by his own desire. I'm not sure why we brought him back for a second stint. Some will say he was one of our better players this year, but I don't think he ever overcame the deficiencies that were evident in his first stint - namely his skill with the ball when under pressure. That, and we already had other defensive midfielders who I think are better. 

To the official departures, we can also add two rumours. First, young defender Giorgi Zarbos is apparently out, which would not be a surprise given his very limited first team opportunities. More substantially, Neos Kosmos reported last week that midfielder Daniel Clark has agreed to lucrative terms with Oakleigh, knocking back offers from South and Bentleigh.

And honestly, I'm OK with that. I was never a fan, and that's no secret. A journeyman midfielder of little note from a club of similar mediocrity to our own, the signing screamed of a lack of ambition. Even from the point of view of trying to snaffle a bargain in cost-cutting times, I could not see where the upside was going to come from. And largely, it didn't.

I couldn't (most times) fault the effort Clark put in, but clearly as the player that more than most was designated as "the guy" - the one most relied upon to do good stuff that would lead to other good stuff - it just didn't work. And if you have any doubts that that's the job Daniel Clark was asked to do, think about how many games he missed; he was basically the first outfielder picked every game.

I sympathise to a degree with the predicament he repeatedly found himself in, being asked to be that creative everyman with very little numerical support, because of how far back we sat in most games. But even if you were a fan, or at least recoil from making him the scapegoat for our troubles, one must agree that Clark leaving would open up all sorts of possibilities. At the very least, it means that the fixation on that one player can be dispensed with in favour of something more flexible and dare I say. democratic.

No word on whatever it is that happened to goalkeeper Pierce Clark, and I suspect we will never get a satisfactory answer.

In

As with the departures, almost without exception every 2022 player signing announced by the club had already been foreshadowed either in the press or on the South forum. I've said it before, but the days of the Chris Taylor era vault are long behind us. Also, maybe it doesn't even matter if everyone knows what we're doing, and that getting upset or even defiantly nonplussed are not worth the bother.

So yes, Andy Brennan is back for a third go, but we've already spoken about that. Also coming onboard is Alun Webb, a forward most recently of Melbourne Knights, and defensive midfielder Pat Langlois of Hume. Signing two players from a single club in one go, especially as that club is one of the more proficient ones of recent times - especially as that club still has FFA Cup and Dockerty Cup matches to play - raises all sorts of questions.

Most of those questions to me come back to money - how much we're paying, and how much the relevant opposition club is no longer willing or perhaps able to pay. Hume City's major sponsor (for both front of shirt and stadium naming rights) is in a bit of strife. One doesn't to write off an entire club's short-term future based on one sponsor (potentially) leaving, but it does open the door to speculation.

Attacking player Henri Scott is the real wildcard so far, in that he wasn't someone whose signing was mooted anywhere else before it was announced. That, and he comes from Warragul in the state leagues, which is a baffling origin story, and something more like a (dare I say it) CT-era attempt to pluck one player out of obscurity.

Oh, and another Queenslander, forward Max Mikkola, just because.

Still Here

Brad Norton has signed for an eleventh season, putting him in the esteemed ranks of our longest serving players by number of seasons, with only players such as Paul Trimboli and Steve Blair ahead of him. Marcus Schroen is also coming back next year, as are Harrison Sawyer and Marco Jankovic. Fullback and winger Chris Irwin is also onboard for 2022, after missing the entire of 2021 with injury.

And one more thing

How's the homegrown, young talent plan going?