Outsourcing - South Melbourne 2 Melbourne Knights 1

South Melbourne FC maintained their perfect start to the season with a hard-fought 2-1 win over Melbourne Knights on Monday night at Lakeside Stadium. Due to an athletics meet that took over the stadium over the preceding weekend, the match between South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights was played as a one-off Monday night fixture at Lakeside Stadium. However, it is unclear if the move made a difference to the number of people attending.

The hosts started brightly and were rewarded in the 23rd minute when Marco Jankovic rose highest to head home off another Max Mikkola long throw-in, much to the delight of the home fans. In the second half, they doubled their lead with Pat Langlois pouncing on Chris Oldfield's save from Marcus Schroen's curling shot.

The Knights pulled one back from the penalty spot after goalkeeper Javi Lopez made a desperate attempt to collect the ball in the box, resulting in a foul. The remainder of the match saw South Melbourne revert to overly defensive tactics. While the victory was cause for celebration, the disheartening prospect of goalkeeper Javi Lopez winning the club's MVP award again looms large. Lopez was once again instrumental in South Melbourne's win, making several crucial saves to keep the Knights at bay. 

The match saw South Melbourne's star striker Ajak Riak being kept well in check by the Knights' defense, but Langlois was a standout performer in midfield, scoring a goal and creating several other chances throughout the match. The victory also raises questions about whether South Melbourne fans should be happy with the team's style of play, given their excellent start to the season. Some argue that the club's winning record should be enough to satisfy fans, while others maintain that the team's tactics should reflect the club's traditions.

Next game
Away against Dandenong Thunder on Saturday night. I almost hope that we lose so that Esteban stops wearing that non-club branded polo top. Very superstitious man, I'm told. Me, I abhor superstitions, and especially sporting superstitions. It implies a lack of trust in your ability to get results on your own merits. Leave the augury and haruspicy to the mug punters, I reckon.

There was a cup draw
Yes, I know. Came home from work, fired up the old laptop, launched Twitter, and saw that we'd been draw as the home against Kingston. Then I went to check out the tail end of the live draw video on Facebook, and the person commenting on the draw kept saying "verse" instead of "versus", and I couldn't shut off the video quickly enough. 

What's a truck?
What's an AGM? By the way, if they don't announce a date by tomorrow, the earliest the next AGM can be held will be April, a full month after the last AGM was held, which itself was held way later than it should have been. Maybe this is all part of the plan to align our financial reporting with the actual season, rather than the financial year. Maybe I just made that up.

Amway! Amway! Amway!
32 consortia - mostly single clubs, but also a handful of group efforts or partnerships - have put in an expression of interest for the National Second Division. The expression of interest is merely a first step of course, because afterwards you actually have to make a bid. Eight Victorian clubs have put in an expression of interest, and South Melbourne is one of those eight clubs. 

Of the 32 consortia, 15 have some connection to National Soccer League participants, almost all of them as standalone prospects. Consider the numbers I suppose. There were about 40 odd teams which played in the NSL. About a dozen of them are no longer in existence; another three are in the A-League. So of the 25 odd remaining NSL clubs, fifteen are still keen on taking another stab at something approximating national league football. You can take out of that what you will.

Without going into this too deeply, showing mock shock at the gumption of some of these upstarts thinking that they can compete at that level, I will make note of a couple of interesting absentees. Queensland Lions, objectively one of the wealthiest clubs outside the A-League, are sitting this process out, figuring I suppose that once bitten, twice shy. The other surprise absentee, considering the, er, "caliber" of some of the Victorian clubs who have expressed an interest, is Oakleigh. Who knows what their rationale might be in making that decision.

Uh, excuse me, Professor Brainiac, but I worked in a nuclear power plant for 10 years, and, uh, I think I know how a proton accelerator works
Of all the... look, let's get the disclaimers out of the way. I only got to see other people's responses to whatever the original comment was, because the original comment maker has me blocked on Twitter, which is absolutely their right to do so; that is what the block button is there for. Anything else then is me inferring what was said, which was probably something to do with how great it would be for South Melbourne Hellas and its fans when the new Anzac station is up and running when the Metro Tunnel project is finished in a couple of years, and how convenient it will be for getting to and from Lakeside.

Maybe. Look, I love public transport, even when it hates me. There is no one at South Melbourne that's more gaga for more trains and more non-car ways to get to all the grounds. And as someone currently living within the catchment of a station on the under-construction Metro Tunnel line, I can't wait for the project to be finished, even if it will mean an additional interchange to get to my workplace, assuming AI hasn't made my role redundant by then. But will Anzac station make getting to Lakeside Stadium easier by public transport? 

Well, yes, kinda, sorta, under one very specific set of conditions, and even then only if you're coming in from the south-east and you don't mind a vigorous constitutional, ala Sideshow Bob. That's it. If you're coming in from anywhere else, it'll do diddly for you, because you'd still be better off getting the number 12 or the 96 or even the bloody no. 1 from the CBD, unless you really, really like walking. 

Let's assume for argument's sake that both stands and both gates are open. The no. 96, whose nearest station to Lakeside is Albert Park, is a 700 metre odd walk. The no. 1, which stops at the corner of Park and Clarendon, is about 600 metres away, though you also have to deal with slow meander through the theatre and arts district. The no. 12 is about 150 metres away, with the main bit of awfulness being the very bad tram stop, which fortunately (from a safety standpoint) rarely has to deal with large crowds.

The future Anzac station/former Domain interchange site is over 1.2 kilometres away from Lakeside. Being that far along a busy road, there are also several traffic lights which need to be crossed. The average person takes about five minutes to walk 500 metres. Realistically, you're looking at a walking journey of over 15 minutes. If you're walking along the north side of the route, it's not exactly the most pedestrian friendly pathway. If you're walking on the park side, especially within the park itself, it's not the best lit place at night. 

A few years ago now, I walked from Lakeside after a match to the now defunct Domain interchange (which is slightly to the north of the future Anzac station) in order to go watch The Godfather at The Astor with my brothers. What a slog, and I'm not just talking about the movie. I occasionally walk between Sunshine station and my house (when public transport lets me down, or when the weather's nice), which is about five hundred metres more than Lakeside is from the Anzac station site, and my goodness, what an awful experience. Looking back at my Google Maps data from the day, it says I traveled 1.6 kilometres by foot, and that I ran. That's how fast I was apparently walking.

And I mention this because it seemed to be that someone was making the claim (and I hope that I am wrong about that) that it was merely a four minute walk from the Anzac station site to Lakeside. That's pure nonsense. From Sunshine to my place, it's a leisurely 15 minute stroll, with just one set of lights and a couple of small pedestrian crossings to navigate. And one could, of course, more often than not choose to catch the bus. There is no bus or tram service between the future Anzac station and Lakeside. So in short, the eventual arrival of Anzac station is actually going to be of negligible benefit to South fans.

The answer to none of your questions
So, why was Pat Langlois' goal from the corner against Moreland not filmed by the NPL cameraperson? Because they are under instruction to film all substitutions, and being inconsiderate, we decided to take the corner quickly.

On the streams
Everyone has a vice
Someone goes to me the other day, "you seem to watch a lot of NPL TV"; a comment which sounded to sit halfway between observation and accusation, and that's the way I've decided to take it. If there was somewhere to go, I would've gone. If there was something else to watch, I wouldn't watched it. If there something else to do, I would've done it. Or maybe I'm just kidding myself? Maybe I'm sick enough about this league to stay home, and watch Gully pick up three points in a grey away with indecipherable green numbers. The flick it over to watch the Bergers look hopeless against an energetic St Albans. The next day, there was some spiciness behind the goals between Avondale and Hume supporters, and once again no one in Avondale's little shed stand; I'm told that this is because its safety permit has lapsed, and they're awaiting council approval to let people into it again. And they want to join... well, who knows.

Final thought
Sure we used about 40 odd players that year, but of all the things to lie about, claiming to have played for South Melbourne in 2011 seems like one of the more stupid lies to come up with about yourself.

Lavender Blues - Green Gully 1 South Melbourne 3

Bringing order to chaos, but at what cost?
You know I'd almost forgotten that we didn't go to Green Gully Reserve last year? Rocking up to the game, I was shocked to be welcomed to a paved parking lot. Unfortunately it's one of those hideous concoctions which actively reduced the number of available spots. That'd be more a problem if there were actually any people there. Crowd was ordinary. There was no curtain raiser game to artificially fill out the concourse with parents and reserves players. There was also no Maltese marching band. Instead there was a dated Artie K-like mix playing over the speakers (ugh), and a free match program (very much appreciated), but hardly any sort of vibe from us or them. Can't wait to take this energy into the National Second Division.

What about all the times I didn't wear a tutu?! Nobody ever brings those up! 
You wear a suit to one game, and then that's all you are: suit guy. To get around that, I got home early on Friday, got changed into my South Melbourne Gunners t-shirt, only to find that I'd started an unholy trend. Me, the fashion trend-setter. Θα χαλάσει ο καιρός, as my mum likes to say.

Granny chic
Speaking of fashion, we were thankfully spared by virtue of being the away team, from seeing Green Gully's awful grey away kit. I don't know what it is about teams that think silver and grey are god kit colours, but anyway. Gully's goalkeeper kits this year include a shade of lavender that's pure old lady hand soap. Admittedly, I pine for the days where goalkeepers wore a solid clash colour jersey, and a shorts and socks combo that matched their teammates. 

Apples and Oranges
Unusually (I think? I'm not so sure now) the NSW NPL started earlier than its Victorian counterpart this season, so I've seen a little of their games and highlights. Their synthetic pitches and too many futsal players posing as outfield players gives that comp if not quite an air of effeteness, than certainly at least a postmodern sense of digital, anodyne precision. NPL Victoria, by comparison, though being played on better quality fields than ever, still has a bit more physicality. NSW players may more regularly score top bins goals, but it's always a bit easier when the ball doesn't bobble, and there's no Nikola Jurkovic types waiting to kill you.

One may not have thought it possible based on their 2000-2011 iteration, but Green Gully would nowadays almost fit in better north of the Murray than they do south of it. Remember when coming to Green Gully Reserve as a South fan meant not just an inevitable loss, but also a bruising one? Now we haven't lost there since 2013, and it seems to get that little bit easier each time. The old grinding, ugly Gully is gone, replaced by a ball playing side that could do great things, were it not for the fact that they play in a predominantly counter-attacking league.

And which team is both more conditioned to and adept at playing pure counter-attacking football than South Melbourne? Based on a statistically insignificant (but still instructive) two matches, not much has changed for us, except for the height of the balls going forward. Last year they were very high; this year they're a bit lower. That's all down to having Ajak Riak in the place of Harry Sawyer.

Now I may have gone off half-cocked on the forum a few weeks ago when watching choppy footage of a Greek Community Cup match, claiming Riak would not score a goal this season except by accident, such was his apparent lack of coordination. People at that relevant claim that he looked OK, nothing like what us stay-at-homes were watching, and maybe they've been proven right.

Riak seems to know how play off the shoulder of the last defender, he seems to know where to move, and how to generally make the right or at least better decision when provided with two or more possibilities. His cause (and ours) were helped by being up against a team that's no longer the old thug Gully on a choppy field, (pointless baited into it Zidane headbutts notwithstanding), so there was enough space to do his thing. It might not be so useful when teams play more compactly against us.

Still, his mere presence makes us more watchable (and that's no slight on Sawyer's very productive 2022 season), but overall there's not likely to be much change to the way we play. Maybe the full backs will get a bit further up the field a bit more often. but the entire race to be runner-up hinges on Ajak not getting hurt - the rest of the squad will be rotated in and out on a needs basis. The small bonus is if we transfer to playing a more ground ball attacking game, instead of a high ball one, it will be easier to switch to someone like Alun Webb playing up front when Riak inevitably gets injured.

Next game
Melbourne Knights at home on Monday night. No, it's not the Labour Day public holiday Monday; that's the week after. Athletics has the field over the weekend; fair enough. Also, kickoff has been moved from 7:30pm to 8:15pm to accommodate apparently "overwhelming interest", which is just code for let's make it even harder for Paul to get home after the game, because there's going to be rail replacement buses, and cabs that don't turn up even though they're allegedly one minute away, and then you walk home. And all this just to watch us lose to the second best team in the NPL (after Oakleigh, of course). Should I just go home after work and watch it on the TV? Maybe. 

NSD news
More and more teams have put out their little press releases that they're expressing an interest. We haven't done that yet.

AGM news
None. Might as well just privatise the club.

On the streams
Hip to be square (balls)
It occurred to me, much later than it should have, that this season is another pointless one. Just as pointless as the usual pointless ones, when there was misplaced hope of getting people back to the club by winning stuff. More pointless than the ones where we were all accosted by A-League bid nonsense. More pointless than those seasons where winning the league didn't matter, because it was all about the FFA Cup. More pointless than those aborted COVID seasons, and the pointless (but at least ultimately hilarious) Bespoke Cup season. Oakleigh's going to win the title this season or, at best, be cheated out of it by an Act of God. So could we at least enjoy the relegation battle (24 more points to go...)? Well, no. Thanks to the NSD (which is totally going to happen), there's possibly going to be three or four or five Victorian clubs getting out of this circle of hell, which will shake up the entire local league system. So what then if Port or Avondale score bangers against relegation candidates? So what if Moreland gets an upset win against a now zero and two Bentleigh? So what if Preston drop a point here or there on their way to promotion, to what exactly? Thunder vs Dinamo eight goal banger? Pointless, unless you're a gambler living in that particular moment where you're sweating on + or - 3.5 goals. Yes, I suppose we could just enjoy the games on their own merits, as they veer from one goal from a misplaced pass to another goal from a set piece. 

Final thought
Turns out that one of the court officers I work with is a Perth Glory fan. Just when I thought I'd shed all proximity to Western Australian nonsense, it's right there three metres away. 

Be Where You Belong - South Melbourne 2 Moreland City 1

Another new season, and another year of supporting this club. Though my commitment and interest has wavered between extremes since my first game circa late 1992, here I am, a touch over 30 years later, still doing this thing. Not quite as hardcore as the majority of the past 17 years or so, because life comes at you slow, then fast, and all of sudden you're a semi-regular working man. That's why I rocked up to the game in a suit and tie, because someone thought it would be great to have us stay back late in order to try and find a suitable court date some time this year in which to finally sort out who's responsible for bringing prawn white spot disease into Australian waters.

Anyway, I got to the ground early enough to get a seat at a table in the social club, but not necessarily early enough to grab something to eat. Though at $20 for any meal that wasn't a box of chips, one has to wonder if it's worth the bother. At this stage it looks like I'm eating more food at home or away from our ground, because while the cost of living crisis is certainly getting out of hand, it's no one's responsibility to single-handedly keep our social club operation afloat. Maybe consider providing some smaller, more affordable options; or even just having the kitchen open after a game. I don't know, I'm not a business person; I'm just a middle-aged pleb working an entry level admin job.

(And who's idea was it to not have the drinks tent outside the social club on a warm summer's day, with the kind of crowd that would make it economically worthwhile? So much for the match day experience.)

So on the face of it, it's another year of complaining from me, so at least we've settled into the usual South of the Border routine. But 30 years. Seems like a long time. Strange to think that some of what we would still call the newer faces in around Clarendon Corner have been around the club for 10 or 15 years. It's strange also to think that this season might be our last in this league that we thought we'd never get out of (and still mightn't); we've dedicated songs to this interminable existence (even managing to exchange "NPL" for "VPL"), and yet maybe this is it. And thus 18 seasons in, we can pay tribute via song to the hope that we might be getting somewhere; a league for you and me perhaps.

It could theoretically be worse. If you discount the starting point of the merger which created Moreland City as we know it in the early 1990s, then people involved with that entity have been waiting to get back to this level for 60 years. 

(Moreland City is an early 1990s merger of Moreland Park Rangers and Coburg. Moreland Park Rangers was a merger between Moreland and Kew Park Rangers. Before they moved to Kew in the 1970s, Park Rangers were founded as an offshoot of South Melbourne United in the mid-1940s. Moreland itself was an early 1930s breakaway from the then Brunswick club, which folded a few years later. So in some ways, you can make the argument South Melbourne Hellas and Moreland City are distant cousins.)

1962, the last season any club affiliated with today's Moreland City was in the Victorian top flight, was a very ling time ago. Moreland won just one game that year, while South won the first of its many state titles. They brought enough people to Thursday's game to make it interesting, and their side gave it a red hot go; well, they gave it a go until they scored, and then sat back, and copped two goals thanks to heinous defending. But it's not our job to hand back gifts like that, most of the time anyway - see Wallen's miss of the season, which should have been a contender for being a successor to that Fernando goal. He even asked the ref for permission to take the shot!

Anyway, the two goals we scored weren't exactly top drawer material. The first came when from their own goal kick, three Moreland defenders went to mark Ajak Riak, leaving the centre corridor open, lost the header coming back the other way in any event, leaving Alun Webb to slot a one on one. The second goal, one of many corners, this one finished off by Pat Langlois who was allowed to run and jump at the ball as if it were a training drill. 

Of the new players on show, Ajak Riak looked... actually OK. As long as his coaches, teammates, and to a lesser extent the crowd acknowledge that he's not Harrison Sawyer, he could be useful. He's naturally more mobile than Sawyer, can shoot hard, and seems to have a trick or two up his sleeve. Everyone says he's raw, and that might be true, but he also seems to know where to move and how to time a run. At the very least, his mere presence might mean fewer aerial long balls, and perhaps some lower through balls. Danny Kim didnt have a great one. Ali Suleimani probably wasn't out there long enough.

Of the regulars, Ben Djiba was excellent, especially considering his lack of match fitness. Jake Marshall was as solid as ever, and Max Mikkola was busy. Missing three or four potential starting eleven players - Jankovic, Painter-Andrews, Schroen, Hancock - didn't end up making too much of a difference. But it's only one game, and against a team everyone is expecting to be in the bottom three or four, no disrespect intended.

Next game
Green Gully away on Friday night. Gully lost to Oakleigh last night, but since everyone is going to lose to Oakleigh this year, that's not much to go on.

AGM
Do we even need to have one? I think we've had enough of them. Anyway, legally obligated corporate governance is for wimps.

NSD News
A few clubs have made expression of interest announcements about their intentions regarding the NSD. We're not one of those, yet.

On the streams
Not as bad as Paramount+, or so I'm told
There are saving graces of sorts to following a club in this league, and not a higher one. You get to see your team in person every week, if you so choose. You don't have to deal with VAR. And you don't have to deal with what people tell me is a very substandard streaming service. NPL TV has its problems, but it is apparently not as bad as the streaming service that the A-League relies on. Still, that doesn't mean that one can't complain. Stuck at home, with not much to do, I've been flicking through a few games this week, and look... there's only so much that can be done about about grounds with poor elevation, poor sight-lines, poor sun position. But camera operators can still, ideally, make the correct choice about what to film. So, player coming off the bench or a corner being taken? Thank goodness that Abraham Zapruder SMFC TV had its own reverse angle camera in place to capture Langlois' goal. Elsewhere there were the usual breaks or delays of the stream kicking in. Now that goal clips are being added to social media, it's troubling to see some clips producing content that is unusable, because of its frame skipping quality. 

But my biggest bugbear with NPL TV coverage - commentators who yell at me, the viewer, in the mistaken Brian Taylor inspired idea that volume = excitement - was missing this week, and for that I am glad. Thus I enjoyed seeing North Geelong embarrass Bentleigh; Altona Magic and Hume score within 30 seconds of each other; 10 man Port snatch a draw against Avondale; the Bergers going down at home to Dandy Thunder; and St Albans demonstrating that maybe attacking will get you further than playing deeper than 2013 Southern Stars.

Final thought
Look, this is just something that occurred to me, for no reason at all, and I'm certainly not here to tell people how to live their lives; but maybe some people would allegedly be better off with a raspberry lemonade instead of the limitless (at least compared to what's available to the plebs) alcohol available in the corporate box. That's especially the case if consumption of that plentiful booze only encourages certain people to allegedly pursue silly internet beefs on real world terraces, when they could be building the stadium they allegedly promised to have ready several years ago now. Allegedly.

Unwatchable / Unwatched - Mill Park 0 South Melbourne 2

Well, I was going to miss the first ten minutes of the broadcast of the Greek Community Cup final, because of "errands". Then I got home, and tried to watch from about 12th minute onward, only to be met with persistent issues with the stream, which kept dropping out. During this period we scored two goals, of which I might have seen the second, though I think that's where the feed went a bit cuckoo. Then I gave up on it, and I went to the supermarket for my main weekly shop. So it goes. At least the real stuff begins this week.

Here comes the Aldi NSL...

Disclaimer - a good chunk of what follows assumes that South Melbourne will be a successful applicant for a national second division.

Well, knock me down with a feather, it's finally here. Or somewhat more precisely, just over there, somewhere between reality and social media clamouring.

The other week Football Australia announced that expressions of interest for the National Second Tier were now open. The competition format isn't settled yet, as that will depend on the level of interest from prospective parties. Assuming that enough clubs are capable of competing in a league competition, the NST competition would be a standalone tier between the A-League and NPL, with promotion and relegation happening only once the NST had become "mature". If not enough suitable clubs are found - a minimum of ten - then we're looking at a Champions League style, post-season group format.

Participating clubs would be required to withdraw their senior team from their state NPL competitions.  You'd hope and assume that our upper age youth team (the 20/21/reserves) would still play in their NPL competition.

(but there's also this requirement: "investment in and operation of a full talent development pathway within their club structure", whatever that means)

Among the concerns I've seen is what happens if the whole thing falls over after a year or two - what happens to us then? Do we get straight back into the NPL competition, or would it be a complete mess like after the dissolution of the National Soccer League? 

The first thing to remember is that in 2004 there was overlap between the end of the last NSL season and the beginning of that year's Victorian Premier League season. That wasn't an issue that couldn't be overcome - it's just there wasn't the willingness (hello fridge magnets!) from some people to make the effort. The other thing to remember is that it's not 2004 anymore. Let's assume for argument's sake that this thing gets up, at least for one season., but then goes belly-up. There were changes made to the rules after the 2004 debacle in the event of something similar happening to an A-League team. While you could never rule out colossal stupidity on the part of a governing body to stuff something like this up, you'd like to assume that such provisions would be carried over to the NST; especially since the eventual goal is to implement promotion and relegation.

At first, the NST will have a winter season, with a March 2024 start. Not a great outcome for those hoping to boost crowds by getting out of the winter soccer quagmire. I suppose if you're of the belief that merely being back in a (quasi) national competition will be enough to get people out of their boycott of what we do now, that's not an issue. For those who believe that winter and competing soccer (senior and juniors) and AFL seasons - in addition to ongoing degraded prestige - have a substantial impact on our current numbers, there's a lot more doubt about how many people would return, and for how long.

That goes also for the potential "revival" of old rivalries. Assuming that most of the NST's participants will be former national league teams - and throughout the process, that has been the main assumption of both NST supporters and detractors - will there really be enough and sustained interest? It's easy to point to classic/pinnacle NSL matches with big crowds. It's also easy to point out matches where crowds were not so good. And away crowds for interstate travel - never a strong point in the old days, even taking into account much higher travel costs - well, I'm not sure how many even the "big" clubs will be bringing to an interstate match. 

There's additionally a requirement to have access to "a suitable high-quality match day facility 12 months of the year", which seems fair. I suspect that requirement is in place in the event that the competition eventually moves to a summer alignment. Such a requirement does pose an interesting question about how South's tenure at Lakeside qualifies. It's not that we don't have access to the venue 12 months of the year; but our winter priority period does muddy the waters a little, assuming an eventual summer switch. There's also the grand prix and other special events which sees our access to Lakeside curtailed from time to time. I'm sure it'll be fine, though.

I've also seen some contention about the requirement of squads being made up of players on professional contracts, being paid 52 weeks of the year. Some people have inferred that this will mean full-time (and thus non-affordable) professionalism, when it's not quite clear that that's the case. In Australian soccer, we tend to get too much confusion about professionalism means. There are two different concepts which should not be conflated: professionals vs semi-professionals, and professionals vs amateurs. The first concept is a social distinction, while the second is an administrative one. 

So we don't know yet how many, if any, NST teams will field squads made up of full-time professionals. It's got to be the aim at some point that full-time professionalism will be the default, as opposed to the exception. In South's case, at any rate, the club has long moved to a contract and payment system adhering to these standards (or so we've been told), in part to spread the payment load across an entire year, and to avoid contractual disputes (not always avoidable, but you know).

For those who come from outside the South supporters bubble - especially those who get most of their knowledge about the views of our fanbase from social media - it's hard to get the point across that the views of our supporters are much more varied than is actually the case. Those holding the view of getting into the A-League or NST at any cost are just one part of who we are as South supporters. So while on social media you see the gung-ho attitude of the loudest people, on our forum it's a lot more circumspect and cautious. 

Is this idea actually viable? Does our board really think that the NST's financial and attendance targets are achievable for us? How much of it is being driven by the fear that if we don't apply and get in, that we'll be left even further behind? But despite the many unknowns of an NST, we do know what we've had to put up with for the past 18 years, and thus it's a choice between two unsustainable competitions, one which is moribund, and the other which is, at best, untested. For us, it looks like "better the devil you know" is likely to give way to "swim, until you can't see land". 

What's the point of going out? We're just going to wind up back here, anyway.

Last night, in front of people that matter, South Melbourne 4, Essendon Royals 1. Video highlights make it all look like a bit of kick and giggle to be honest.

This Saturday, in front of people who can be bothered, it'll be South Melbourne vs Mill Park in the Greek Community Cup final. Why 1pm? Why at the exact same time as the 3rd vs 4th match Shield final? I don't know. Seems like a waste to even use two fields, when they could just chuck all four teams on the same field.

For your convenience - assuming you're not going to the match - the final will also be screened live on Channel 31, which I'm sure will disappoint those people who park themselves on their couch to watch ten uninterrupted hours of fishing shows. 

Set expectations to... - South Melbourne 1 Kingston City 1 (South won 5-3 on penalties)

This was the first chance I'd had this season to have an extended look at what our senior men's team has been doing. So far it's been highlight snatches of deliberately obscure friendly matches, which it would be unsuitable to use to gauge anything resembling form or style. Whether it's much better to use a Facebook stream watched on a phone while making and/or eating dinner to make the same judgments I would have done anyway, is an ethical-philosophical question I'm not particularly equipped to answer.

Although, seeing a few familiar faces in that part of the crowd nearest to the camera, I was reminded that the years have been kinder to some heads of hair more than others. Also, I didn't think it was actually shorts weather on Saturday, but there were people in the crowd wearing shorts. Always the big issues on South of the Border. 

What I can say is that of what I saw in the first half of this game, I wasn't terribly impressed. We were dog's balls. I understand that the field a was a little bumpy, and that there was a fair bit of wind, but that didn't seem to effect Kingston in any significant way, as they maintained possession and played the ball on the ground, while we either panicked and belted the ball long, or hit stupid short passes not on the ground, but at shin height. And that goal Kingston scored? Sure, our midfield may as well have not been there, but it was an entertaining move nonetheless. I'd like to see us score more goals like that.

Now maybe I overreacted on the forum with criticisms of the first half performance, and my observations of certain players when I completely wrote off this team's chances for season 2023 based on 15 minutes of footage. But I hadn't quite gone to the lengths of suggesting that we play the youth team (who had done the heavy lifting in this tournament thus far) in the season proper, and just tank the league season and save some coin doing so, ala when Ballarat Red Devils did the same in 2013 in state league 2 north-west, in the belief (later proven true), that they would get promoted to a higher plane (inaugural NPL season) regardless of results. 

(And how sobering it must be to see in that same table two teams we'll be playing against this season. Well, that's promotion and relegation for you.)

I mean, assuming we can find nine more equally deluded clubs to join us, we're already guaranteed a place in the National Second Division, no? Otherwise what would be the point of basically setting up the ideological and operational framework for the NSD if we weren't first cab off the rank? Don't answer that question; not because it might be uncomfortable to think about, but because it's a question for another day.

Anyway, the second half was better. Not that these things should matter, especially in a pre-season match, but you'd like to think we would be better than an opponent a division below us, consisting in part of players (at senior and junior level) that we'd discarded, alongside two former coaches who happened to be in the same dugout. Also, we are nothing if not fitness machines compared to everyone else at this point of the year, so we could at least expect to overrun our opponents.

I looked away for a moment, and Marcus Schroen scored. Looking later the replay, it was a very nice team goal, so whatever gasket I'd blown about our lack of aesthetics was really a waste of everyone's time and energy. Unfortunately the side couldn't win the game in normal time, but won a penalty shootout (with backup keeper Willem Lejeune between the sticks), using an inordinate amount of left footers to do the job (and right-footer Alun Webb who fluffed his line, but got a second chance thank to a letter of the law assistant referee).

The great tragedy of winning this game is that now we're in the final, against the much lower league Mill Park. Ideally you'd have wanted another NPL opponent, but they'd all either been bundled out (Oakleigh, Heidelberg), or never entered in the first place (Bentleigh, Port). So the dilemma here is play the full senior squad, or the youth team, or a mix of youth and fringe senior players, while fielding the stating eleven against another opponent in a friendly.

Pre-season news from far away places

Did you go? I didn't. 
Last Saturday arvo at Lakeside, our senior men drew 1-1 with South Australian side Campbelltown City. I don't if we played well or not. I suppose it doesn't matter.

Did you go? I didn't. (reprise)
On Sunday evening our under 21s team defeated whoever was representing Heidelberg 1-0, in the Greek Community Cup quarter finals. At least I had an excuse for not attending this game, as I was on a bus somewhere between Dunkeld and Port Fairy, for work purposes.

South fans everywhere but where you need them (but then again...)
Upon arriving at my Port Fairy accommodation, I struck up a conversation with the person in the apartment next door, who recognised my Hellas cap. Turns out he used to go to South games back in the day, and he spent the next few minutes reminiscing about Lefteri and the old grandstand. The next morning there was some ungodly yelling coming from that apartment, which possibly related to [redacted] plans gone awry, so maybe it's for the best that my new friend no longer goes to South games.

Another new keeper
Looks like we've signed another backup keeper, one Willem Lejeune. Apparently this is because Ben Ratajczak has suffered some of injury.

Next game
Barring some mystery friendly which you only learn about after the fact, our next pre-season match is against Kingston on Saturday in the semi finals of the Greek Community Cup. Kickoff is at 3:30, and this is a 90 minute match. Expect to see more senior players in action than has been the case for the tournament thus far.

Late pre-season fixture changes

The Greek Community Cup game against Heidelberg that was scheduled for tomorrow, is now scheduled for Sunday at 5:00 PM. Expect a youthful team to be fielded once again on our behalf. Here's hoping that the decision to move that and the other quarter final fixtures was taken because of the very hot temperatures forecast for tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, there is another pre-season match tomorrow at Lakeside, between our more senior players and the visiting South Australian side Campbelltown City; but since our club's official social media wing has not advertised it whatsoever, I am going to assume that it will be played behind closed doors, as has become customary for pre-season matches at Lakeside.

In other pre-season matches you didn't know about, we drew 1-1 with Green Gully on Wednesday.

International club (of the century) of mystery

So last Thursday in the Greek Community Cup we beat Altona East 3-0, and then on the Saturday we beat East Kew, also 3-0. Some highlights packages have been put up of other games in this tournament, but oddly enough, not ours. Our game against East Kew was streamed live on Facebook however; which would have been nice for those watching on delay, had one not stumbled upon the result before even getting close to pressing play.

At any rate, the South team playing in this tournament so far appears to have been made up of 20s players, which would explain why the team rocked up in a uniform without any numbers of the back of their shirts. Somehow they weren't even the first team to do that during this tournament; I'd excuse smaller teams by saying it's just the pre-season, but we're supposed to be... well, maybe not a big team anymore, but could we maybe be at least a less small team? 

Because Altona East had lost two matches (one of them to us), by the time we got around to playing East Kew, we'd already qualified for the tournament's qualifying stage. So the only thing left to do sort out was whether we'd finish first or second in a three team group. Well, we finished first, and our next task is a quarter final match against Heidelberg United, who somehow finished second in their group. That'll be on this Saturday at Lalor, at 1:00 PM. 

These things happen I suppose, but assuming that we care about this cup, you'd reckon we'd have rather faced someone else, thereby allowing us to play our 20s for one more match. The quarter-finals are still only 70 minutes long, which may or may not suit the preparation of the senior team for the season proper. Of course the seniors could just organise their own friendlies, as they did last week when they played a closed doors friendly against Pascoe Vale at Lakeside. The overseas gambling community (at least those not conscripted by Putin to to bolster numbers on the frontlines) must be apoplectic with rage that they're not able to bet on games no one knew were happening.

Mid-January 2023 digest

Friendlies you didn't know about
Last Saturday morning our senior men played against North Geelong in Shepparton, winning 2-1, Jankovic and Schroen the scorers. 

I can't believe it's not the Hellenic Cup
A new pre-season tournament, the Greek Community Cup, begins next week. It's not the Hellenic Cup, I guess because the rights to the Hellenic Cup belong to a separate organisation of the same name.

At any rate, we're in Group One, with Altona East PAOK and East Kew Olympiakos. Group games and the quarter finals are 70 minute matches. All matches are at Partridge Street Reserve, Lalor.

We play on Thursday (19/1, 7pm) against Altona East, and on Saturday (21/1, 1pm) against East Kew. 

I have no idea if the souvs at Lalor are any good, or if there even will be any souvs on offer.

Better than you remember, perhaps
Remember Carl Piergianni? He was a tall central defender type who was on holiday in Australia circa early 2017, when we picked him up. It didn't quite work out; he wasn't quite fit, which only made his lack of pace worse, and he headed home (without heading in any goals from corners, as promised by the YouTube montage) and resumed his career in England's lower reaches; first at Salford City, then Oldham Athletic, at the latter under the management (for a brief time) of Harry Kewell.

Old mate Carl is now captain of Stevenage (currently sitting second in League 2). And they're doing OK in the FA Cup, having just knocked off Premier League side Aston Villa 2-1 at Villa Park, with both Stevenage goals coming late in the game, including the winner from a bloody short corner. Our man is looking quite slim, too, Carl and Stevenage will face Championship straggler Stoke City in the fourth round, and South of the Border wishes them all the best. 

Not quite as good you remember, perhaps
But it's not all sunshine and smiles for ex-South people playing abroad. Harrison Sawyer, NPL Victoria's golden boot winner in 2022, hasn't been having the best time of it in the Indian Super League. After an OK start where he provided a couple of assists (read, headed the ball on from a cross or throw-in), Harry's Jamshedpur adventure hasn't gone quite to plan. He's been coming off the bench, and his team has barely won a game all season. Still, Sawyer came off the bench and scored in his team's 2-1 win over East Bengal, just Jamshedpur's second win of the season. It'll be interesting to see what Harry's next move is after this - the ISL season is short one - just 22 rounds - and it ends at the end of February.

December 2022 digest

One friendly down
Normally I'm falling over myself to tell you people about upcoming friendlies and such, but when it's a 6:30 PM Friday kickoff at Knox - with mixed messaging about whether it was even going to be on a Friday or a Saturday - well, even I have my limits. But having said that, there was a game some time before Christmas on a Friday evening, which we "won" 4-3 against Kingston City.

Scorers were Ajak Riak, Andy Brennan, Max Mikkola and Marcus Schroen. The only thing of meaning that I could glean from the available footage was that one of our scorers had gotten a blonde dye job. The blurry footage made him look like the People's Champ had made a comeback from lower league obscurity, but sadly for gimmick-lovers everywhere, it was just Max Mikkola making very poor hairstyle decisions.

But what about the next one?
If you're wondering when the friendly will be, well, I don't know. It looks like there will be a friendly against North Geelong up in Shepparton in a few weeks, which makes me think that there now familiar yearly pre-season week up Shepparton will also be taking place this year.

2023 memberships and season tickets
They're now available, with no change in price. But also we're probably going to have two fewer games at Lakeside, so it's a kind of price rise? Stop complaining, just buy one.

AGM
What's an AGM?

More South Poles
It looks like we've signed a new goalkeeper, one Ben Ratajczak from Western Australia. You would think he would be the back up the league's reigning goalkeeper of the year.

Calgary, again!
Former South player Jesse Daley has left Brisbane Roar, and signed for Calgary's Cavalry FC We brng this up not only because we wish certain former players well, but to also note the minor trivia that he will be the second former South player to play at Cavalry, after Oliver Minatel.

15 years, and doesn't it show

Thank you to everyone who still reads South of the Border fifteen years into its journey. It's not as good as it used to be, I know that. Times change. I've changed. I seriously thought about wrapping it up this year, but I figure that there's a second division coming, and someone should be around to talk it down. Also, maybe a bad South of the Border is still better than no South of the Border. I'll keep plodding along until I don't. I might take this thing back to its roots, and post more frequently, even if the quality isn't there. See everyone in 2023.

I never promised you a rose garden

Things got to the stage where people would expect South of the Border to post on all sorts of matters regarding Australian soccer, however tenuous the connection may have been to South. People also expected a certain degree of promptness, and usually I delivered, in great quantity, even if the latter was not quite as welcome in a time-poor reading environment. Sometimes that approach worked for the best, other times not so much.

Things are different now, and so there are fewer people clamouring to demand that I talk about the "latest big news", whatever that might be. Someone wants me to discuss this "A-League grand final in Sydney for three years" deal, and I'm like, pfft, nothing to do with us. Better off making a few pithy comments on Twitter while that site is still a going concern, while waiting for our own season to start.

But then this odd thing started happening, and I guess I just couldn't let it pass without at least some comment. That "thing" being the quite emotional reaction by some A-League fans to the A-League ownership's decision to fund its way out of some money problems; and the suggestion made by some of these disgruntled fans of coming down to NPL and grassroots levels to clubs like ours. 

Hey! Clubs like us! We're a club like us!

Some people were smoother and more subtle than others in trying to make a move on these sheep newly separated from their flock. That includes overselling, I hope more by accident than design, the actual experience of watching a team like South at a level like this.

And overselling means a higher chance of under-delivery. Following NPL Victoria and South Melbourne (for example) is a lot of things, and often enough a lot of good things, but it's also not a like-for-like replacement of what people conditioned to following the A-League are used to. The standard of play is worse. The grounds, in general, are worse. The weather is worse. The media coverage is much smaller. The feeling that you're part of something bigger, that's much worse. Oh, and the perks of having voting rights are, generally speaking, overstated.

(but yes, there are also good things, and you will come across them if you give it a chance; and I'm also at pretty much every AGM, so take that into consideration, too, when reading my downplaying of voting)

Of more importance is the fact that as a newbie fan, you're going into something that has existed for much longer than what the A-League and its teams have. The chance to move into an environment either on the ground floor, where every fan is at least nominally culturally equal, or at least within an environment where you can be anonymous among thousands? That's gone.

Unless you are a returning apostate or lapsed believer - which has its own issues - you will stick out. You will feel out of place. The crowds are low enough that even if regular fans don't know everyone by name, they know most people by face. Back when clubs like South had a lot more fans, it'd be a little easier to blend in. Still, clubs like South were always a bit insular - it was an ethnic thing, and a soccer thing - and in the post-NSL era, insularity becomes more instinctive.

But to be fair, we're not the worst, and the long-term existence of our outward looking social media efforts means that we have not regressed completely into our own shell. (and we still, remarkably, have our own independent fan forum) But people coming to South, knowing little about South other than what they've read from perhaps more dubious online sources, and knowing nothing of what it is like to follow a team at this level... it's just not that easy.

And the thing is, it's also very difficult, and actually counter-productive, to discard one set of long-standing ideologies regarding following soccer in Australia, without only gradually replacing them with another. A-League refugees coming across to a club like South might be keen for the first little bit, but then if they get lonely, or feel isolated, or feel like outsiders - or if it just doesn't match the hype they've been sold - they probably won't come back. 

Then they might come up with things like it was "too ethnic" or some other reason, when just as likely the reason was that they did not get the chance to build a social connection to the club. Their friends or family that they went to A-League games with didn't come along with them. They had no one to discuss the team or the league with, in a way that they would with a more popular competition. 

So, to those contemplating coming across (or back) to a club like South I would say: absolutely, yes, we'd love to have you join us. But also: temper your expectations of a revelatory experience, especially an immediate one. Don't force it if you don't feel it; but also, give yourself time to feel it. And come have a chat with me - I'm happy to initiate people into supporting what I think is a pretty OK club, one that's much less bad than others. 

And for South folk encountering new fans, focus on talking about South. Don't worry about running down the A-League. These people likely had a lot of good times at the A-League. In time, you want people to learn to love being with us, and then becoming one of us, on their own terms. Few as they are in the post-NSL era, we still have enough examples of people who came in tentatively, and are now all in.

2023 fixtures released

Let's try make some sense out of this.

OK, so there were going to be unavoidable issues of ground availability regarding Lakeside and its use as a Women's World Cup training venue. Thus we have eleven confirmed home games at Lakeside, and two remaining to be confirmed. Either venues have't yet been secured for those two games, or we may even be allowed back in to Lakeside at that time. The World Cup training venue issue also applies to Avondale, so the details of their home game against us also remain unconfirmed.

The grand prix also comes into its own, as per usual, seeing us away from Lakeside for three consecutive weeks in March and April, followed by five consecutive home games. The fixture finagling associated with the exclusion from Lakeside means we'll be playing our final five matches away from home.

Now, to the elephant in the room.

The justification for Friday and Saturday night home matches in 2022 (apart from trying something new) was that sponsors prefer Fridays, and that Sundays are too expensive because of penalty rates and such. It was also the case that having the women play standalone fixtures at Lakeside was too expensive. 

So we had a lot of Saturday home games in 2022, which included double-headers with the senior women. Now we're back to a mix of (mostly) Fridays and Sundays, and more standalone NPLW fixtures, including a couple of home games for the women out at Knox. Go figure. 

And if that wasn't confusing enough, we've also got what looks like a home game against Bentleigh on Orthodox Good Friday. I'm also not sure why we are playing a Monday night home game against the Knights the week before the public-holiday Monday. 

Still, one should be glad I suppose that we've got some Sundays back, and that there's still a few Fridays especially during the warmer months. No Saturday home matches might mean the chance to attend some state league soccer for me for the first time in a long, long time.

Some other NPL clubs have also changed up or mixed up their home game scheduling. Green Gully are back to Friday nights. Bentleigh's Friday night kickoff times have now been brought forward an hour to 7:30, while they're also throwing in a few Saturday afternoon games, including their game against us. 

Knights are keeping their Friday nights of recent years, but also chucking in a few Sundays, though not the game against us. The Bergers have gone almost all-in on Friday 8:30 PM kickoffs, including against us. St Albans are mixing in Fridays and Saturdays in among their usual Sundays.

Of the newly promoted teams, Moreland continue their tradition of being a Saturday afternoon side, even at their 2023 home away from home, CB Smith Reserve. North Geelong will largely be a Saturday afternoon team, including against us. Speaking of which, this year's final home and away round will be on a Saturday, not a Sunday. That might be because the final of the Women's World Cup will be on the Sunday. 

Speaking of which, for those like me attending Women's World Cup games in Melbourne, no South game will be going up against any World Cup matches in Melbourne. That's because they'll all be weekday matches, or held during the catch-up round / Dockerty Final weekend in between rounds 24 and 25.

November 2022 digest

Hall of Fame news
At a function held just prior to the recent Matildas vs Sweden match, Ange Postecoglou and Ted Smith were inducted into the Football Australia Hall of Fame last month. You already know all the things that Ange has done, but what about Ted? Ted played a couple of matches for the Socceroos (before they were even called the Socceroos) in the Melbourne Olympics, while he was at Moreland. Ted later joined Hellas and won a title or two with us, then joined Hakoah. He was an assistant coach during the early NSL years, including coaching one match while regular manager Dave Maclaren was ill (a 4-0 win over JUST). Mostly though, Ted's accolade is due to his tireless work in establishing the Hall of Fame, and especially his efforts in organising events and such for past Socceroo players, including getting former players their national team caps.

But also

Neither Ange (overseas) nor Ted (ill on the day) were present to receive their awards, but fellow Hall of Fame inductee Walter Pless was. While I'm generally cynical about the merits of Halls of Fame, it was great to see Walter receive official acknowledgment for his over four decades worth of work covering Tasmanian soccer for a variety of news publications, as well as his own blog. Reporter, photographer, historian, and mentor, Pless' nomination was greeted with jubilation by both Tasmanian soccer fraternity, as well as the anorak Australian soccer history brigade which pushed for Pless' nomination.

The anorak Australian soccer history collective celebrating a legend of the local game.
From left to right: George Cotsanis, Mark Boric, Paul Mavroudis,
 Greg Stock,  Walter Pless, Ian Syson, Greg Werner, Tony Persoglia.

Pre-season training
Get ready for the social media collage of players sweating, running, lifting, etc. Not sure when the friendlies at home will start that we can't open to the public, nor the friendlies in the middle of nowhere.

Fixturing news
The ridgy-didge fixture apparently comes out today! If it does, I'll make sure to report on that some time before the 2023 season starts.

Speaking of which

Remember how we said that we'd be out of Lakeside for a couple of months around the Women's World Cup? Don't be surprised if we play a couple of our home games during that time at McIvor Reserve in South Kingsville. The home ground of Yarraville Glory, our senior women have played there before, and now that we have formalised (whatever that means) our sister-club (also whatever that means) our relationship with Yarraville, it looks like it would make sense to play a couple of lower key games there. 

See you, too, in 2023

Lirim Elmazi, Jake Marshall, Javier Diaz Lopez, Alun Webb - more or less everyone who wasn't let go last go last month, is going to be back on 2023. 

Extra people

Filling out some of the spaces of those let go are Dandenong Thunder attacking midfielder Ali Sulemani; Jack Painter-Andrews from Bentleigh, a full-back; Bentleigh midfielder DannyKim; and striker Ajak Riak, also from Bentleigh Greens. All of these were noted on the forum before being announced by the club, so the official announcement was not very surprising.

Somewhat out of the blue was the signing of young winger Kosta Emmanuel from Eastern Lions. So, one biggish name, some good players with (we hope) upside, and a couple of players we're gambling on being bolters. I'm keeping expectations muted, as per usual.

AGM

No date yet. 

Second division
Expressions of interest in 2023. Winter season to start in 2024. If you believe that, which you're entitled to do. You're also entitled not to believe it, but how boring is that?

At least it's in South Melbourne, I guess
It's a fickle world. Until last night, he was the greatest Australian manager of them all. Still, at least he was good enough for long enough to get a mural. The mural, by artist Shaun Dev, doesn't depict any local connection of Ange's to South, but that's my gripe with the Ferenc Puskas statue as well, so maybe it's a me problem. I believe the mural is located somewhere on Coventry Street, if you want to check it out before it gets defaced, or painted or with something else.

Amir Abdi

The article doesn't mention us, but The Guardian nevertheless had a decent piece on South Melbourne blind footballer Amir Abdi. All told, it's a pretty interesting story.

Hellenic Cup coming back?

At least three ex-South players (Peter Skapetis, Anthony Giannopoulos, Kosta Strotomitros) were involved with Greece's win in the All Nations Cup at Knox. In the Neos Kosmos article discussing that win in the final over South Sudan, there was also mention made of bringing back a Hellenic Cup tournament as early as next year, run under the auspices of the Greek Community of Melbourne rather than the former Hellenic Cup organising committee.

October 2022 digest

This blog's not dead yet, which might yet be considered a virtue.

Goodbye 

The first farewells so far this off-season have been announced. Back-up goalkeeper Chris Couesnon played only the one game - that cup game against Avondale - so it's little surprise to see him moved on, as is often the way with second choice keepers after a year of limited opportunity. Winger and youth-team product Matthew Loutrakis made several appearances this season, but I guess someone made the probably not invalid observation that he had hit his ceiling with us; like many before him, it's up to Matthew to prove them wrong. 

Chris Irwin's 21 appearances in 2022 was the most he'd achieved in his five seasons across two stints at South, but he could never quite cement a starting spot, and I suppose being a depth player makes you more likely to being seen as disposable. I will miss having a player around the club rocking a pair of spectacles, even if he didn't wear them on the field.

Lastly, Jai Ingham played in every single match this season, a fact that you would have had to pay real close attention to in order not to find it incredulous. Ingham started well - two goals in the first three games - but never got fit. He rarely started matches, and when he did, he'd rarely finish them. So he mostly came off the bench, and to be fair, didn't did all that much. I think we all wanted him to do more, because he clearly has talent, but one moment or half moment per match just isn't enough. 

Back again
Max Mikkola, though who knows who he's going to throw it to next season. Patrick Langlois, who scored ten goals in 2022, and I fear may not score that many in the rest of his time with South. Marcus Schroen, hovering on the edge of mug punters' tolerance, but not that of the decision makers. Skipper Brad Norton, turning 32 next season, and approaching 300 matches for South - will he make it?

Speculation
Players from Bentleigh, that forward from Thunder.

Déjà vu
If you've wondering how Harrison Sawyer's been going, here's your answer. He also headed down a corner that became another assist. 

Free feed round-up

In the spirit of 2022, this is another South of the Border segment well past its newsworthiness. 

Quite a few Wednesdays ago I was invited to attend South's low key presentation night, in the week after the grand final. I think I was invited because one of the people set for the media team table was taking his mum to the airport or something.

The presentation night was held midweek and at short notice, probably because everyone was going to piss off on holidays soon after. Fair enough. Attendance were senior men's and women's teams and reserves, as well as the blind and powerchair teams. Also sponsors. Many sponsors. One can cry about the lack of supporter oriented events, but... well, yes. There should be more supporter orientated events like this. 

But I digress. 

Awards were handed out, some small speeches were made. Revelations? Not many that I can recall. Esteban Quintas loves the club. Our goalkeeper deservedly won our best and fairest. Long serving treasurer Mario Vinaccia was awarded the Sam Papasavas award for services to the club. There are plans for a testimonial for Brad Norton.

Second division news
Apparently it's still coming. 

Scoreboard news

It is my understanding that the Lakeside Stadium scoreboard might be getting a renovation, or even a replacement.

AGM news
Nothing yet.

2023 fixturing
There's an interesting fixturing problem coming up next year for a couple of clubs, namely ourselves and Avondale. Lakeside Stadium and the Reggio Calabria Club are designated as official training venues for the Women's World Cup next year, and could well be off limits to both clubs not just for the duration of the tournament, but also some time before that. If that's the case, there's going to be some pretty big fixturing headaches for us especially, considering that we have both men's and women's teams which play out of our home ground, and considering the restrictions we face (albeit recently diminished) around the time of the grand prix.

At a surface level, it looks like there's really only a couple of ways around the issue. It's possible the women will play out of Darebin or Knox during that time, as has been the custom in the recent past. But for the men? Unless several home matches are scheduled at the start of the season, it looks like we could be playing home matches out in the suburbs. If that were to be the case, my preference would be Northcote, but we'll see I suppose.

At least some of the problem could be ameliorated if the NPL Victoria (and perhaps even the whole football system) took a couple of weeks off during the group stage of the tournament. Again, we wait and see.

2022 South of the Border awards

Player of the year: Max Mikkola. South and non-South media people agreed upon Javier Diaz Lopez. Coach agreed. Even I agreed until this morning, then I remembered Max's long throws and goals.

Under 21 player of the year: The Cliff Hussey Memorial Trophy goes to Morgan Evans. Kid did good when called upon.

Goal of the year: Max Mikkola free kick vs Avondale at home for the lead.

Best performance: The come back from 3-0 down to beat Avondale 4-3. And I missed it.

Best away game: Green Gully away in Ballarat, for the novelty of the thing.

Call of the year: The allusion to one of our more famously combustible supporters - who kept it all under control until blowing up in the grand final - to Ned Flanders going off his nut after the hurricane.

Chant of the year: "Swoop the ref!"

Best pre-match/after match dinner location: Lost my public transport travelling buddy this year, so this award almost went into abeyance. But despite the small size of the burgers, The Pickle and the Patty on Clarendon St was pretty good after watching the Dandenong City game on television at the aforementioned former travelling buddy's apartment.

Friends we lost along the way: The "choke like Oakleigh" chant. We had some good times together, but all good things must come to an end.

Barely related to anything stupidity highlight of the year: Accidentally bringing my 2021 media pass to Port Melbourne instead of my 2022 media pass. 

One game too many - South Melbourne 0 Oakleigh Cannons 5

What a letdown, and yet... I almost expected it. I think many f us did, even if half of that would have been setting up excuses for any possible loss. I don't think anyone was expecting it to be quite that bad, obviously, but still. Losing Harry Sawyer when we did always made something like this a possibility, even if we kept scrounging up wins in his absence. But the game plan largely revolved around two things - a big guy up front, and a big performance from the man between the sticks. on Sunday, we had neither. Conceding two goals from corners to an unmarked player at the back post only made things harder. Putting in our corners short didn't help. The rest was just a result of us chasing the game.

For all the controversy around Oakleigh getting to hire goalkeeper Lewis Italiano, his presence was almost a non-factor. He barely had to make a save until the game was beyond us. It would have been nice to test him, with the ball and without, but we seldom got close. So much of what passed for getting forward for us resembled a bunch of angry kids just getting stuck in and belting the ball long. Composure, spending time on the ball and moving it around, out the window. That's fine in the last ten minutes when you're a goal or two down and desperate, but if it makes up a good chunk of the rest of your day, you're not going to get far. 

There was a spell from after about the 15 minute mark where things weren't so bad, but the rest was largely a mess. When Max Mikkola left the field with concussion, after receiving an elbow from the eventual man-of-the-match that everyone seemed to miss at the time, that was pretty much it. No Sawyer, no Mikkola, no Andy Brennan, and having to make to do with the woefully underdone Jai Ingham for a much larger part than we should have ever done.

The worst part was that Oakleigh played the kind of soccer that South fans would like to see us play. On the ground, attacking football. Look, I get it - it was a one-off game, one loss, and these things tend to even themselves out over the entirety of a season. Thus we finished well clear on top of the table, a reward for consistency (however flukey you want to consider it), and had every right to feel ike we had been the better team over the year. But this is Australia, and for the most part we do finals. There have been times when that has been to our favour,. This time, it wasn't.

So, with the game being a bust, one then turns to the only other matter of interest, which was the match day experience, which left a bit to be desired. Considering a good chunk of people were coming from parking at Northland - and your correspondent from public transport also at Northland - only having the main Catalina Street entrance as an entry point was crap. I got there early enough that the queue wasn't an issue for me, so I can't comment, but I didn't bother trying to buy any food or drink, because that seemed chaotic throughout the entirety of my time there.

Quite why a drinks table wasn't set up at the southern end of the grandstand is really for Heidelberg to know, and the rest of us to guess at. And despite all the welcome improvements to the venue of late, quite why a PA system that works across the entirety of the venue isn't in place seems like the kind of thing that could rectified sooner rather than later.

In any event, there was a very healthy crowd of South people, augmented by Heidelberg fans, others neutrals, and Oakleigh friends and family, in that order. Someone put out the nice round number of about 4,000 people, which was good considering the negligible Oakleigh presence, lousy kickoff time, and especially lousy weather. It rained people. It rained before the game, during the game, and after the game. It rained light, mediumm and heavy. The ground held up, and there was enough shelter for everyone.

Now imagine that same weather at City Vista, or some similar venue. Really, you don't have to imagine it, because this is Melbourne, and it rains sometimes, and the weather doesn't even care if you have a major sporting event on. Quite why or how Football Victoria personnel couldn't figure this out is something for those with more intimate access to FV operational conduct to consider. 

Atmosphere wise, considering how poorly we played, it was quite good. The grandstand had a festive feel, as you'd hope for such occasions. Matthew Foschini copped his share of grief, and he sought to give it back. You could almost hear a pin drop when Oakleigh scored, really, but that's just the way it is when you get outside the big four or five in Victoria (South, Knights, Bergers, Thunder, Preston). Losing to an opponent with fans that can appreciate it hurts differently to losing against an opponent with negligible support. You're cheering for your team of course, but you're cheering against a phantom when you play these kinds of teams.

You become overly reliant on pantomime villains, worrying about focusing too much on pantomime villains, and in the case of one person, letting it all blow up Ned Flanders post-hurricane style after bottling it up all season long. We lost, it sucked, we try to do better next season in the same sucky league, while we wait for a new league that may or may not be less sucky, and which may end up being made of all these old teams we used to play against on the old days anyway. If you wanted a more psychologically healthy hobby, you'd do that instead.

Shambles to shambles, farce to farce - South Melbourne 1 Green Gully 0

This Federation! This competition! Every week there's something new. In especially good weeks, you may get several bits of nonsense all on top of each other. And if you've been very good, the Victorian soccer farce fairy might even bless you with the gift of multi-farce in grand final week. This week has been one of those glorious occasions - and we still have grand final day itself yet to come. The way the events transpired, Football Victoria comes out looking like an organisation that did not seem to have a Plan A, let alone a Plan B.

I can't help but think this is all South Melbourne's fault. If only we had folded in 2004 like we should have. If only we had not won the 2006 grand final that Oakleigh didn't qualify for, thanks to their legendary choke. If only we hadn't won the 2015 Dockerty Cup final at Lakeside against Oakleigh. If only we hadn't won the 2016 grand final n home turf against Oakleigh. If only we'd smiled and said "please sir, can I have some more" whenever Oakleigh inevitably came for another one of our players, in their vain and ongoing attempt to be us. If only we had sucked just that little more than we have managed to over the past 17 years - not quite as bad as Melbourne Knights, but somewhere in that ballpark - then there wouldn't be an issue at all.

Can you imagine anyone caring about all the things that happened this week, had it been an Oakleigh vs Green Gully final instead? Sure, there might've been some fuss-kicking, but it's probably fair to say that had Gully qualified for the grand final instead of us, the grand final double-header would have been played at Lakeside, Lewis Italiano parachuting into Jack Edwards Reserve onto the corpses of Oakleigh's seven or eight eligible goalkeepers would have been grumbled upon mostly by a handful of Heidelberg fans, and there's no chance that federations and clubs would feel the need (at implied gunpoint, in some cases) posting notices reminding people not to take recourse to abuse on social media.

But we mucked things up making the finals, then by winning the minor premiership, and we especially mucked up last week by defeating Green Gully despite much inconvenience. Within the first 20 minutes, the referee missed (apparently due to an unfortunate angle) Ben Djiba having his leg snapped by a Gully defender. The we had Andy Brennan go off with a groin injury. Twenty minutes gone, and two of five substitutions gone, and two of the three (not including half time window), substitution making slots gone. And yet, somehow despite this - and despite having to take off substitute Josh Wallen early, because had a yellow card, and who'd want to (hypothetically) play with ten men for 50-60 minutes deep into injury time in the event that Wallen got sent off - we got through.

Sure, we were the better team for most of the game, but my goodness was there also some arse involved. Morgan Evans had a solid game replacing Djiba. Alun Webb's outside-of-the-foot winning goal, past a wrong-footed and blindsided Gully goalkeeper, looked magical live, and much less magical on replay. I haven't even dared look at the last ten minutes of the match, where we sat back to hold the lead, and saw one cross after another flash across the face of our six-yard-box. I don't even really want to think about long throws, or no Harrison Sawyer, or as some (including this pseudo-reporter) have put it, getting this far with basically no midfield. I'll say this of this team - one thing it hasn't lacked for all season is heart. Normally that shouldn't be enough to get you this far, but here we are.

You won't die wondering this year. "Swoop the ref" has
 already been crowned South of the Border's chant of the year.
I will not be taking any further questions on this matter.
Photo: Luke Radziminski.

So on Sunday evening, having won our way into our first grand final since 2016, we were faced with the absurd situation that no-one knew where we were going to play the grand final, or when. To be fair, the warning signs were there even in the lead-up to the finals, when media pass holders received an email to apply for grand final access, and there was no detail about when or where the grand final would be played.

Normal people had perhaps assumed that as per the most recent grand finals prior to the Covid cancelled seasons, that'd we end up at AAMI Park. But as the finals series wore on, it appeared less and less likely that would happen. Uncertainty about if/when Melbourne Storm would host an NRL finals match was certainly something to consider. Cost too exorbitant to hire, especially in the event that South didn't make it, especially against an equally marquee opponent? Also sensible to take on board. Where else could they play it? Knights Stadium, with its pitch troubles? Olympic Village, with its lighting troubles? Anywhere else, with its everything else troubles?

It was a surreal moment when post-match some South fans threw out as a suggestion - completely in jest - Caroline Springs George Cross' ground in Plumpton, I mean, it was just a joke. It was also surreal seeing South championship winner, former Football Victoria president, and current Football Victoria CEO Kimon Taliadoros being corralled in our social club by several people, all asking the same question: where is the grand final going to be played? And all he could offer with certainty was "not Lakeside". Which, despite all the rumours going around, seemed to be the most certain detail once we'd qualified for the final. 

That only serves to reinforce the conspiracy theory that our winning the game on Sunday was the worst thing that could've happened to FVs grand final plans. You can almost guarantee that had we lost, the grand final would have been held at Lakeside, and pretty much no-one would have complained. But we had won, and our opponent would be Oakleigh, a long-term grumbler on being made to play cup finals and grand finals against South at Lakeside.

So Lakeside was out. And night fell, and no announcement had been made. And then the next morning, and still no news. Until finally the announcement came. City Vista! With 280 odd seats, limited shelter, and no elevation around the outer. City Vista, with its small car-park and poor public transport connections. 

Some of us have been around long enough to remember the 2013 preliminary final at the neutral SS Anderson Reserve in Port Melbourne, and what a magnificent occasion that was: lines out the door, crap sight-lines, rain pissing down with next to no shelter. Some of us are also able to recall the 2016 grand final at Lakeside, and in particular its shambolic organisation. Limited ticket booths and that slow Ticketmaster printing mess. People not getting in until 20 minutes after kickoff. The outer stand not opening until the second half. Not enough food vendors. The crowd being let in for free because of the gate shambles. 

Some of the people who made the City Vista decision were literally in charge the day they realised too late that they should've opened the other grandstand for the 2016 grand final. Instead of remembering that farce, they decided to play the 2022 grand final in a phone booth. What about the elderly, those with children, those who are unable to stand for long periods of time - hell, what about short people? A venue chosen purportedly in part for its accessibility - unlike some other options, it has four changerooms, which can accommodate both the women's and men's finals - ironically excludes almost every other class of soccer person.

Even as a relatively tall, able-bodied person, I can't say that I would want to watch a match of this importance at a venue like that. Judging by the highlights videos that Essendon Royals made from their away games there, the only elevated part of the non-seated areas is the media tower. And you've also got those big, black benches like Hume City have, which also obstruct views, and those big black fences at each end. 

While things have changed over the past couple of years for me and my sojourning around Melbourne's grounds, I still like to think that I generally make an effort to get to far-flung and below par amenity wise grounds. I think my record on that speaks for itself. And yet, the decision to play this match at City Vista was so insulting, so degrading, I made the choice early on that I would not go. I'd watch the game in the social club, or at a mate's place, or at home. I'd rather not do that - I'd rather be at every game we play, especially this one, supporting our players -  but at some point even I have to think about my own sense of dignity. Others were torn on the matter of whether to attend or boycott, and I had no quibble with that. But it's fair to say that regardless of whether you were planning to go or not, the reaction to the announcement of City Vista as the grand final venue was intense.

What a way to start grand final week. The original
 announcement on Facebook had attracted tons of
mostly negative commentary before the deletions
 started; and then it was locked completely. 

And it wasn't even just South fans having a go. No one loves a crisis (and a whinge) more than Australian soccer fans, but it's been years since I've seen this level of engagement with Football Victoria's social media efforts. Like most social media efforts at this level, most posts enter the world while barely leaving a footprint in the digital engagement snow. Here though, it got to the stage where there were so many people voicing their frustration, that a Facebook post promoting the first local grand final in three years had to lock comments. Just about the only people defending the decision were a couple of George Cross supporters. I feel sorry for the people running the social media for FV. They're the ones being asked to put lipstick on one hell of a pig. This should be the week where they get to do some of their best work; yet they've been relegated to deleting comments to shield an incompetent and unaccountable board from their incomprehensible decision. 

So FV couldn't promote the final. South Melbourne couldn't promote the final. Even Oakleigh weren't promoting the final. This wasn't just because of the backlash, but also because even after having announced the venue and timeslot, and having announced the time that tickets would be available for purchase online, no tickets - not even a link for those tickets - were available at that designated time. 

One hoped that the radio silence was because alternatives were being thrashed out. It's hard to admit when you've got it wrong, especially with everyone hammering you - but there was still time for FV

to fix their mistake. Take the social media outrage on the chin, and just do what was best for the game. Show some leadership. Maybe even make a display of that core value of "openness", and explain how we got here, and how we're going to move forward to a better solution.

Somewhat incredibly, that's (kind of) what happened. 

Football Victoria put out a press release announcing a change of venue for the double header from City Vista to Olympic Village. It even explained that AAMI Park was ruled out due to expense, and that Lakeside was ruled out because it would not be a neutral venue. Fair enough. But surrounding those brief explanations about why two grounds weren't used, there was also some extremely salty prose on why City Vista, and why that was actually still a good decision. And that justification basically comes down to the venue having four changerooms, better accommodating the men's and women's matches, making sure that "the player, officials and sponsor experience would be exceptional."

The fans appeared to have been nowhere in FV's consideration of choosing a venue. What's quite astonishing about that is that it reveals a belief within Football Victoria that they doubt that there'll be much of a crowd to a first NPLMVIC (and even NPLWVIC) grand final day in three years. It's one thing for fans to moan about the state of local soccer crowds but it's quite another for the organising body itself to come out and say that a venue with 280 seats (many of which will have their sight-lines blocked from people standing on the fence line), no meaningful elevation, no shelter, big black benches, and big black fences at each end, would be more than adequate. 

Either that, or Kimon's comment in our social club following the Gully match - that they had no idea where the grand final would be played, except certainly not at Lakeside - was absolutely true, and that they made the City Vista decision on the run. Honestly, I don't know which would be worse - that FV were going to play the grand finals at City Vista all along, and only pretended to not know that in advance; or that they had no plan of what to do in case Lakeside did not present itself as an option, and then had to get their PR crew to write retconned guff about how City Vista was the perfect venue for such an occasions, if only it wasn't for the pesky fans demanding that they be allowed to enjoy the day, too. 

And even though Olympic Village is an improvement, it still could have been better. Pave Jusup, president of Melbourne Knights, noted that his club had offered Knights Stadium to FV weeks in advance of the finals, and that the problematic pitch would have been prepared with due care for the day. The lack of changerooms which apparently ruled out Knights Stadium, with its 4,000 seat covered grandstand, plentiful parking, and elevated terracing, did not rule out Olympic Village. One could gripe about not making the "perfect the enemy of the good (enough)", but the persistence in playing both men's and women's finals on the same day is an obvious part of the problem.

Given that they apparently had no plans about what to do either way, it doesn't make sense as to why FV didn't just choose to play the NPLW grand final on a different day, as a standalone fixture. They've done it before, and it was fine, good even. They could even have played it at the City Vista venue that they apparently think so highly of. That way you could also play the men's 21s grand final - which also includes South - at a venue with only two changerooms, but also one that can accommodate fans in relative comfort. The decision to play the NPLW and NPLM grand finals on the same day at a venue with only two changerooms, also means that there will be incredible delay between the two games. The men's final will now start at 6:30PM on a Sunday. If there's extra time and penalties, with all the post-match awards guff it might not even finish until 10:00PM. People have work the next day. Kids have school the next day. If we win, we can't even celebrate it properly.

As if everything else wasn't farcical enough this week, FV decided to crash a fuel tanker into the flaming rubble of grand final week, by finally making a public announcement of journeyman goalkeeper Lewis Italiano's eligibility to play for Oakleigh. He has been allowed to arrive at Jack Edwards well after any and all transfer windows have closed, but apparently because all of Oakleigh's (four, or six, or eight, or whatever it is) other eligible goalkeepers are not fit enough to play, well they were allowed to sign him. Was Heidelberg allowed the same dispensation for their goalkeeper availability issues? Do the medical certificates all check out that, over Italiano's last three or four weeks at Oakleigh, not one of the other keepers has come good?

I really want to see the hospital records, or the death certificates, whichever may be relevant. I want to know which of Oakleigh's keepers is in hospital due to gigantism caused by abuse of brain and nerve tonic. I want to know which Oakleigh keeper is lying on the barroom floor having come off second best in an argument about who was England's greatest prime minister. And I certainly want to know which Oakleigh keeper Chris Taylor sacked, because said keeper wouldn't shave off his sideburns.

Such antics are not without precedent in Victorian soccer, and yes, there are rules which make allowances for replacing keepers. Your correspondent recalls late in the 2012 season, when Bentleigh Greens lost their on-loan keeper Lawrence Thomas back to Melbourne Victory with three games left in that home and away season. Thomas was replaced by Griffin McMaster, who up until that point of 2012 had been busy playing in a hopeless Moreland Zebras side. McMaster came in for Thomas, was part of a team that scraped into the finals (at our expense), and got knocked out against an Oakleigh side who featured some bloke called Lewis Italiano; that Oakleigh side went on to lose the grand final to the rocket flare powered Dandenong Thunder side coached by Chris Taylor. 

Which just goes to show how pathetically small Victorian soccer is, and that we need more Queenslanders just to open up the family tree which seemingly more resembles a stump. And yes, Oakleigh also have a bloke who played in a championship with us eight years ago (and against in our loss in 2015), and another bloke who played in a championship with us six years years ago. 

Anyway, history lessons aside, there's now a venue and a time, and those of who can go, should. But my goodness, I am expecting the worst. Not just on field, where I expect our luck/charm/whatever to come wanting, but off it, too. Kimon Taliadoros has already copped it online, but so has FV president Antonella Care - who just so happens to be the spouse of one Aki Ionnas; the long time and well known - and already not very much loved among South fans - power-broker of Oakleigh, whose management of that club over the past 17 years has had more than the whiff of trying to become a pseudo-South Melbourne.

You can imagine the commentary that's come out, both level-headed and otherwise, trying to draw connections between Oakleigh being in the grand final and not wanting to play at Lakeside, and getting their wish; by being able to sign a replacement goalkeeper, when another club could not. Just about the only thing that they haven't got is a changing of the date away from tomorrow, which would allow them more rest before (or after) their upcoming FFA Cup semi-final. I imagine that vitriol tomorrow will be much worse which, from a purely angry perspective, I understand. What I don't hope to see is the clu  getting punished because things go too far, especially of things are going badly for us.

I guess the best that I can hope for is that nothing said or chanted tomorrow crosses the lines of targeting someone based on protected category (race, gender, etc). I already expect for any all FV officials to cop a worse reception than Tony Labbozetta did after the 2001 NSL grand final. Maybe the aim tomorrow should be for sarcasm? Instead of chanting "fuck the FFV", how about "we love the FFV"? They couldn't do much against something like that. 

Anyway, all this, and the grand final to come tomorrow.

Awards

Somewhat lost in the kerfuffle over the venue, South picked up a few awards at the Gold Medal night on Monday. Our media team won some kind of award. South fan and photographer Luke Radziminski won the Les Shorrock award for best photo. Harrison Sawyer was officially awarded the golden boot, and finished just one vote behind the two joint winners of the Gold Medal; one naturally wonders what would have happened if he'd closed out the home and away season with us, instead of heading to India.

Our biggest win on the night - and really no surprise - was Javier Diaz Lopez winning the goalkeeper of the year award. That sees Javier join Dean Anastasiadis (2005, 2006), Peter Zois (2010), and Peter Gavalas (2013) as state level goalkeeper of the year prizewinners. 

Final thought
Only just figured out this week that my new job is basically Dodgy Asian Betting commentary, but in a courtroom.