2013 AGM on this coming Sunday

If you haven't heard the news - and that's entirely possible, as apparently not everyone received notice of this week's event - South's AGM is on this Sunday. Every AGM is important, but this one is going to be hard to top for the breadth and complexity of issues that are facing the club at the moment. Indeed, there are issues which normally would take centre stage quite easily in any given year, but which this year will take a back seat to the most pressing issue of them all, the status of the lease agreement.

This is, first of all, an election year. It is the first election year since the club, partly due to the FFV enforced constitutional changes, and partly due to its own maneuvering, has opened the suffrage up to so many people. After we had been promised that the social club wing of the club - the part that controls all the other parts - would remain solely at the mercy of social club members, it appears as if everyone who is a member of the club, including mere season ticket holders of South Melbourne FC, will be able to have their say.

There are always rumblings about people perhaps challenging this committee, which in one form or another has been the only committee to run for office since the end of the NSL. But each time an election comes around, no one else puts their hand up. Whatever my thoughts are on this current committee - and they are admittedly generally favourable from my end - it has always been my contention that the failure of rival tickets to emerge is a damaging prospect for the club long term.

Firstly, the lack of a rival ticket indicates that on the surface at least, there are few other qualified groups looking to take over this club. That may or may not be true, but it's not a good look. Secondly, the lack of a rival ticket gives a certain carte blanche to the current committee. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, even if a hypothetical rival ticket's proposed policies and agendas are backward, conservative, unfeasible, or (Zeus forbid) couched in the rhetoric of 'need more Greeks', at least it would provide a contrast to the agenda of the current committee.

The Lease/The Social Club/Exclusivity
The big item of course is the lease. Four years on from signing the Memorandum of Understanding, two years since we moved back into Lakeside, and we still haven't locked everything away for keeps. Still no social club, no 40 year lease, no football exclusivity, at least in practice. After being promised back in January 2013 that a deal was close, then again in July 2013 that we were a couple of months away from sealing the deal, here we are still waiting.

This is not meant to be an attack on the committee, because I'm sure they're hurting as much, if not more than us, being at the coalface of the matter on a daily basis. In the July meeting, the situation was explained quite clearly, that there were four agreements, and that they all needed to be signed simultaneously. The issue has become messier now, because the State Sports Centre Trust is clearly disrespecting the arrangement that we are supposed to have.

The lack of a social club is one thing. The Trust allegedly going behind our backs and letting A-League franchises use the venue without our permission is quite another. Unlike some South fans, I'm not averse to letting the A-League use the venue for women's and youth games. Apart from the direct income we'd get from their hiring, when the social was supposed to be up and going, there'd be another source of income coming in on a non-South match day. That, and if we didn't let them use the ground, some other club would make the most of the opportunity to make some money. And it's not like we haven't had those teams use the venue in the past.

But it has to be on our terms. If this is a big game of chicken that the Trust is playing to see if we'll blink and take them to court to sort out these matters once and for all, then I hope that we do. If the club is confident in its case, then they should go for it - of course how many legal cases can we take on at once is an issue we must also consider. If Athletics Victoria is also being treated poorly, we should seek to find a way to work with them to take on the Trust. If the Trust is also not treating its other tenants with respect - remembering that it also controls venues such as the State Netball and Hockey Centre - then we should endeavour to work with those groups as well.

There were four or so big ticket items within the lease. The guaranteed income, the football exclusivity, the social club and the 40 year lease. This is what was offered to the club by the government. This is what the club and its members agreed to. This is the least what we expect out of the situation. After finally securing that deal, then we have to work on making Lakeside feel like our home ground. The social club will be a big part of that - but externally, there must also be signs that we belong there, that it is our turf. And again, there should be ways of working with Athletics Victoria so they can make the venue feel like their home as well.

For the record, my mail is that the final sticking point is the lease. Everything else is apparently ready to go, but as we are no doubt aware, leases on Crown land are set at a 21 year limit - thus this government or the Trust trying to weasel their way out of the deal. There has already been pressure put on Hugh Delahunty, the Minister for Sport, and Matthew Guy, the Minister for Planning, by a range of organisations. Whether the situation has deteriorated since then, I guess we'll find out this week.

NPL Victoria
Lest we forget that we are still in the middle of this process. After supposedly being 'in the tent' with the FFV, then out of the tent and now leading the charge against them, it'd be nice to have further clarification on what's going on. Is the 60 odd club co-signatory group going to be happy if the scenario eventuates where South and a handful of other clubs, happy with what they've managed to wrangle out of the NPL deal, break away? What will be the consequences and costs of going to the Supreme Court? Are (us and the rest of the co-signatory group) going to follow through with the threats of not handing over affiliation fees to the FFV? And can we get a stright answer on what's going on with the supposed dealing with the FFA?

Juniors shakeup
Underneath the big ticket items, there have been significant changes to the way the junior wing of the club will operate. After reforming the junior wing, seemingly getting rid of the influence of the old Caulfield mob (unless I'm reading that completely wrong) and attempting to prepare for a tilt at the NPL as the FFV was going to run it, we've now changed things a fair bit. Coaches have gone. The lower level age groups will have more teams added, costs to players will be reduced, and the higher age groups won't have to pay a cent. There would be some who, not without reason, will see this as a cynical ploy of getting money from younger players to fund the higher age groups - unless of course these younger players are given priority over potential imports from other clubs...

Ephemera
Then there's other issues which need to be clarified. The team of course. What news there? What's going on with our A-League ambitions, if they still exist? Have we given up the ghost on ever reconciling with the women's team? Is it coincidental that their most successful period on field at least has come after they've officially split from us? And what the hell happened with this?

What I'm hoping for this week

• Proper meeting attendance/roll call taken. If you're not a member, you shouldn't be allowed in.
• Good questions from a variety of people.
  
• No putting down of new members, just because they're new.
• From new members, respect for the emotional attachment for the club held by the long term supporters.
• No shutting down of sensible debates. We need enough time to discuss the matters concerning our club. Yes, people get tired at these things, and yes, the debates can often drag on, but winding things up quickly for no good reason does no one any good.
• No disregarding the concerns of our supporters with a 'she'll be right' attitude.
• Respect for other members, even if you disagree with their point of view.
• People coming up with solutions, as opposed to just complaints. I know I don't have the best track record on this front - but there must be something that we as members can do to help. The committee does a lot of the day to day work, it's true. But the committee alone are not the club - the members as a whole are the club. Isn't this what we keep bragging about as the difference between ourselves and the franchises?

See everyone there.

Green Gully Soccer Club: 50 Years - Book Review (reprise)

This review of mine originally appeared on the now defunct Das Libero site, probably some time around 2007? Who can remember now. Here it is for posterity's sake.

A Tale of Two Gullys

Peter Desira with Richard Curmi, Green Gully Soccer Club: 50 Years, Sports and Editorial Services Australia in association with the Green Gully Soccer Club, Teesdale, Victoria, 2006, 258 pages including 16 in colour.

When you beg, borrow, steal or even possibly buy Peter Desira and Richard Curmi's Green Gully Soccer Club: 50 Years, you don't just get the history of one club, you get the history of two. Of all the many themes running through the narrative - the early struggles, their steady rise through the divisions, their National Soccer League stint, and the overcoming of its great rival George Cross - one theme stands out: how a club founded and run for 35-odd years on a shoestring is almost instantly transformed by the introduction of poker machines, thereby ensuring financial stability for years to come. Yet in this book, it is perhaps the most overlooked moment of the club's history.

The most fascinating part of the book for Gully and non-Gully fan alike is the club's early struggle in the literal nowhere of 1950s St Albans, a condition that defies the modern Gully stereotype of stability and plenty. That Gully has been run professionally for many years is without doubt; but to read of the early days when they had no running water, electricity or sewage is quite a shock. This isn't just for ‘new football’ noobs to digest: it is also important for the supporters of the once (and in some cases still) bigger clubs who were founded with the assumption that their particular ethnic community would fund them to the hilt and for perpetuity. There were few such luxuries for Gully in the early days, and the particular efforts of the club's founder Henry Moakes and volunteer Frank Kolbl are inspiring. This is the book's greatest achievement. It reminds everyone of Gully's other side, away from the club’s brilliant facilities and consistent success of recent years.

The club's rise through the league divisions is a story within itself. When they finally come face to face with their de facto biggest rival George Cross after 22 years of living in their shadow, they not only match the efforts of that one-time giant of Victorian football, but they surpass them. Yet I found something irritating about the way the authors told this particular tale. Occasionally they seem almost apologetic about the club having a support base comprised largely of people of Maltese background. I don't know whether this is a particularly Green Gully trait, or whether it's a reaction to the 'ethnics under the bed' campaign waged over recent times, but it comes across as quite jarring at times.

The club's rise into National Soccer League ranks is also fascinating not least for it being the scene of Socceroo captain Paul Wade's national league debut and simultaneously that of semi-famous actor Costas Mandylor. While some love to reminisce about the good old days, they like to neglect the teams at the bottom of the heap. Conversely, those who disparage the old days based on the sometimes massive gulfs in class between the top and bottom often do not pay enough respect to the difficulty poorly supported and funded clubs had in surving not just in the NSL, but also the sometimes terminal struggle after relegation. The promotion, demotion and in some cases extinction of clubs across the country due to their participation in the national league is a neglected part of the Australian soccer story. Gully managed the difficult job of survival, when other supposedly better-supported clubs such as Footscray JUST and Brunswick Juventus folded. Crucially, Green Gully accepted that they would never again reach national league ranks. Here lies a topical lesson for some other clubs.

And yet the yin to that yang, the introduction of pokie machines, is not discussed with the same vigour. The authors avoid the negative side of gaming machines. They fail to acknowledge how some other clubs rejected pokies on wider social grounds – or through keeping in mind that they were a soccer club first and foremost and that the introduction of pokies would mean becoming the sort of club that exists north of the Victorian border: high on memberships but low on actual attendances at games. Perhaps I'm being harsh here, but it is part of Gully’s stereotype among supporters of rival clubs.

The result for the neutral or non-Gully reader is that the story of the club's recent success doesn't quite have the same feel good vibe as that of the earlier triumphs, even taking into account the long wait between drinks and the post-NSL struggle to survive. Perhaps this is an inherent problem with club histories. Written or informed by insiders or fans, they almost always see the club's story as an overwhelmingly positive one, not through any deliberate bias but mainly because their story is viewed through the supporters’ prism. This book can't avoid that pitfall and is probably never meant to. Books of this sort are first and foremost for the initiated. Any outsiders who pick it up will of course already have their bias detectors on. That is the the nature of the game and its supporters’ culture after all.

It's a sad fact of Australian football historiography that apart from the odd unpublished thesis or pet project of some club obsessive, there aren't many books dealing with Australian soccer clubs. Apart from Juve! Juve!, Gilberto Martin's look at Brunswick Juventus published all the way back in 1990, and rumours of unfinished or in progress works on South Melbourne, Melbourne Hakoah and the Melbourne Knights it's slim pickings – especially in comparison with works based on the Socceroos or Australian players. Which is why Green Gully Soccer Club: 50 Years is a more than welcome addition to the Australian club genre. While the book has its inevitable flaws, it is an impressive and much needed work. Hopefully one of its effects is to inspire the production of works written about other clubs, so that the fullest picture of soccer in this country can be presented.

Soccer Boom: The Transformation of Victorian Soccer Culture 1945-1963 - Book Review (reprise)

This review of mine originally appeared on the now defunct Das Libero site, probably some time around 2007? Who can remember now. Here it is for posterity's sake, sloppy typos and grammar included.

When Push Comes to Boom

Association football in this country has been viewed as a foreign game for as far back as anyone can remember. For those opposed to the sport, this foreignness is amongst the game's chief evils. It's played by people who aren't from here; many of its customs are seemingly borrowed wholesale from overseas; when we do have decent players they are taken to foreign leagues and lands; when we have decent national teams, rules dictated by foreigners make the task of our team compiled of players playing in foreign lands all the more difficult. Those who love the game often lament Australians’ lack of appreciation of the sport, attaching to it a lack of worldliness; they denigrate the standard and players found here; or they complain that people in this country don't understand 'real' football culture, which can only be found overseas or – in an opinion held by some people in the more recent era of the game's boom – only among those who looked after the sport before it was cleansed and made mainstream.

Thus the immigrant influence has also become the dominant way in which the game has been viewed academically. John Kallinikios' Soccer Boom: The Transformation of Victorian Soccer Culture 1945-1963 is an important book because it diverts from that view. It attempts to cover soccer's change by minimising the 'ethnic' factor and instead focusing on the processes by which an amateur participant sport became a (semi) professional and spectator-orientated sport.

At the beginning of the era the book seeks to cover, the local game is in stasis. It is strictly amateur (to the point where even player transfers between clubs are rare) and most clubs play on open parklands. Tactics used are perhaps 20 years behind the rest of the world and the game’s Anglo-centric administration only has eyes for the English FA and the very occasional favours bestowed from the Old Dart. And then a sea change, primarily driven by immigrant clubs and administrators. New playing styles are adopted, spectators who demand victory necessitate enclosed venues, and players are being paid good money – sometimes more than their Rugby League and VFL contemporaries; Australian football after hibernating for 20-odd years suddenly has an ambition to be part of the world football community.

This narrative is not a major revelation. However, the originality of Kallinikios' argument lies in the contention that this wasn't done as part of some deliberate and exclusively 'ethnic' takeover. Rather the changes were necessary and occurred as part of a push to bring the game up to speed with the rest of the world, to professionalise it. Almost overnight clubs, players and administrators with the experience of participating in professional and semi-professional setups, who felt they could do a much better job than the incumbent administration, had arrived on our shores.

To demonstrate his overall point, Kallinikios delves into the varied problems of soccer's expansion. One of these is the issue of crowds. Following the post-war influx of soccer-loving migrants, match attendances rise rapidly; through this process Victorian soccer inverts from a participant-based sport to a spectator-oriented one. This generates immediate needs: identifiable boundaries between fans and players, spectator comfort, the means to collect money from spectators to facilitate these developments. Ground availability is another problem, particularly with regards to the infringement on local sporting traditions. Kallinikios elaborates on the search for a venue in Footscray, showing that the councils' reluctance to give soccer access to enclosed grounds was not solely a product of attitudes towards the ‘New Australian’ character of the clubs and the game, but also a reflection of the self-interest of Australian Rules officials (sometimes as members of the council making the decision) and fear of the backlash from the community – despite the financial benefits and the logic of making better use of council facilities.

Among the things Kallinikios does very well is put soccer in its place. The game was not merely an island enclave but part of society as well. When he draws parallels between the changes in Victorian soccer in the 1950s and the VFL breakaway of 1897, the realisation is that change is not merely that of an ethnicisation – though that is one its net results – but one of professionalisation. The administration of the time and a great number (though not all) of the traditional clubs were often unwilling, slow and sometimes simply unable to move with the times, to their eventual everlasting detriment. The fact that no winner of the league prior to 1952 won it afterwards is ample evidence of the speed and thoroughness of the old regime's decimation. The last time an 'old' club won a major trophy was in 1957 when Moreland took the Dockerty Cup.

Particularly noticeable were Kallinikios’ frequent self-references to how this work was shifting the debate, part of a new revisionist trend amongst soccer historians in this country. The suggestion is that academic soccer writers in seeking to understand the game's local history via the immigrant lens have overlooked and pushed to the margins other ways of looking at the game. Unfortunately, because the migrant influence is presented as a main theme in soccer histories the game gets further tied to that post. This argument taps into wider community notions of soccer as a foreign game. Kallinikios demonstrates this point by citing examples of soccer journalists who feared the game's takeover by migrants would be viewed negatively by the wider Anglo-Celtic population thereby reducing the game's appeal. Interestingly, their solution was for migrants to assimiliate into the existing clubs – one which bought into the broader contemporary ideology of assimilation and presaged much of the justifying rhetoric surrounding the ethnic cleansing of the A League.

While the book does a fairly good job of covering the era from a different view point of view – especially in the way it parallels the past with the present – it is not without its problems. One of these was the omission of facts which might contradict some of the key arguments. For instance, Kallinikios claims that Camberwell had no soccer tradition when there was in fact a Camberwell club in the 1930s (whether they played in Camberwell is another matter).

More significant is the minimising of the ethnic factor in regards to violent incidents and the understating of notions of national pride, avoiding such examples as George Cross only allowing members of Maltese background to join and Greek-Australian newspapers advocating the separate Greek clubs should unite for the 'glory of Hellenism'. (This eventually happened when Yarra Park merged with Hellenic, with the new entity taking over South Melbourne United soon after primarily to gain access to their Middle Park ground.) Kallinikios' assertion that this sort of thing mainly came about in a later era is where his argument falters, as there appears to be sufficient evidence to the contrary. This is partly because even though the book claims to cover the era up until 1963, in reality it falters well short, leading to the book's other main drawback, its lack of a post-script. I was disappointed that is no mention was made that Schintler Reserve, the long sought after ground in Footscray, is now gone and on its long-since faded line-markings sit shipping containers. And with so much of the book’s focus being on Juventus and Hakoah, the former's decline is ignored even as it was surpassed by South Melbourne Hellas, George Cross and Polonia. In Juve's case in particular, failure to mention their eventual demise 30 years on largely through their lack of a home should be considered an oversight.

Despite these shortcomings, Soccer Boom is still an essential read for anyone interested in the game's history in this country, especially for those looking for a different perspective. Its clarity and accessibility also make it more than suitable for someone not completely familiar with the game's past. It will be interesting to see what responses it will generate from the more traditional historians challenged by Kallinikios, as well as what will follow in its wake from among the revisionists. And as added bonus, you get an Australian soccer book not obsessed with New South Wales. Surely that makes it all the more worthwhile.

Con Harismidis, Tony Ising, Chips Rafferty and Online Petitions From Days Of Yore

A twitter discussion earlier this year on the greatness that is Con Harismidis got me searching for whatever was left of his internet presence. I didn't find much that wasn't already on this blog - if someone can find his mainstream press appearances that would be good.


What I did find was this petition from an unknown pre-A-League date. It was a simpler time, when people still believed that online petitions could make a difference.

Dear Soccer Australia or whichever body of authority this petition may concern in the future,

We, the undersigned, the fans of Australian soccer, are excited about the prospect of a new, quality premier national competition.

We believe that an independent, quality and fully professional premier national soccer competition is essential to the success of Australian soccer, both on and off the field.

The creation of such a competition is critical if the game's most important stakeholders, the fans, are to truly embrace Australian soccer.

You owe it to yourselves, to the players, to the fans, to all Australians past, present and future, to thoroughly consider the hard work and efforts of the Australian Professional Footballers' Association and go about implementing the appropriate strategies in order to establish a league that truly embodies the gigantic potential for soccer in Australia.

We wish to express our support for the PFA's proposed Australian Premier League by signing our names to this petition.

The future is in your hands, we sincerely hope that you take full advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity and make your decisions carefully and wisely.

There are 225 signatories to it. Rather than include all of the submissions, let's take a look at some of the more worthwhile entries.

• Make of this post what you will.

Tool
The NSL club you currently support: Pert GloRi
The International club you support:Engerland
Birthplace: Oztraliya
Comments : I waiting 26 yr 4 a fu.c.king no ethnik klub in melboun!!

• It was followed hot on the heels by this:

Mike

Birthplace : Melbourne
Comments : Soccer just isn't an Aussie game. Get over it.

• Younger audiences of Australian soccer forums may not remember when the poster known as Chips Rafferty was all for draining the pond.

Chips
The NSL club you currently support: Northern Spirit
Comments: The wogs hijacked the domestic game in 1957 . Now it's time to take what's rightfully our back.

• This person was more interested in self-promotion.

australiansoccer.net
The NSL club you currently support: South Melbourne
The International club you support: South Melbourne
Birthplace : Australian Soccer
Comments : I love australiansoccer.net

• Cropower sums up the discussions that were happening at the time, in both tone and content.

Cropower
The NSL club you currently support: Sydney United
Comments : Whats wrong with the NSL ?? Too many wogs is that it ?

• I think you'll pick up the problem with this post without too much help.

Daniel N
The NSL club you currently support: South Melbourne
The International club you support: Red Star Belgrade
Birthplace: Melbourne
Comments : APL should go ahead only with non racial backed teams. Soccer is a sport for all nationalities. Good to see scum like Melbourne Knights out. HELLAS OLE!

• Anyone ever been to Bollawonger Canyon?

Australia S
The NSL club you currently support: Butt munch
The International club you support: Liverpool
Birthplace : Bollawonger Canyon
Comments : Lets face it guys we're crap at soccer. Leave it to the English.

• The man himself, Con Harismidis

Con H
The NSL club you currently support: Hellas
The International club you support: Hellas
Comments : Hello everybody. I am Con Harismidis. My favourite player is Con Boutsianis. My other favourite player is John Anastasiadis. Hellas is best team in league. There is no Hellas there is no league. Hellas is best.

• Jason, born in Melbourne, supports Liverpool, but didn't feel welcome at NSL games. How do you argue against things like this?

Jason F
The NSL club you currently support: none cos i didnt feel welcome at any
The International club you support: Liverpool
Birthplace : Melbourne

• Simun has a few ideas on what should have been done.

SIMUN
The NSL club you currently support: MELBOURNE KNIGHTS & SYDNEY UNITED
The International club you support: HAJDUK SPLIT
Birthplace : perth
Comments : ..what this country needs is a competition not an auction, I thought that the best team was the one that always won, not had the most money..if this APL is going to succeed it needs to have more advertising , I hate to say it but like the AFL, turn on any channel and theres a AFL add right there, thats why AFL have 40,000 spectators to an everyday round game not just at a final..we need to start showing the people of AUSTRLIA why its called THE WORLD GAME and why we can travel all over the world to play it unlike AFL where you need to learn a totally new sport verse another nation(aka IRELAND)

• John sounds like a charming fellow.

John
Comments : Soccer is a poofs game AFL RULES

• Chris sees a difference between people and stakeholders. What odds he has a job at the FFV these days?

chris p
The NSL club you currently support: Northern Spirit
The International club you support: Glasgow Celtic
Birthplace : Sydney
Comments :soccer belongs to the people not stakeholders.

• Manny supports Olympic, but doesn't want Olympic in a national league. I wonder if he's still following them in the NSWNPL?

manny k
The NSL club you currently support: Sydney Olympic
The International club you support: Man U & Leeds
Birthplace : Sydney
Comments : can't wait for the new APL to start....i've waited for over 15 years for the ethnic clubs to disappear so that the comp could be city vs city..just remember...more kids play soccer than league, union & afl put together

• Bryce nails down not having the NSL on console games  as the burning issue.

Bryce M
The NSL club you currently support: Brisbane Strikers
The International club you support: Arsenal FC
Birthplace : QLD
Comments About time that a change happended in ozzie soccer. Im sick of being ashamed of our australian league. There is a reason why console games forget to include our league.

• Not the first time Tony Ising used a less than orthodox manner of promoting his Melbourne Victory idea - but that story's for another time.

Tony I
The NSL club you currently support: Melbourne Victory
The International club you support: Socceroos
Birthplace : Melbourne
Comments : Let's all support the APL.

• I'm with Nick, I still don't consider it a real league. I just hope Nick is still around South somewhere.

Nick S
The NSL club you currently support: South Melbourne
The International club you support: Celtic
Birthplace : Melbourne
Comments : It wouldnt be a real league without the most successful Australian side, its like the premier league without ManU, Liverpool or Arsenal

Farewell to GeordieHellas

A bit of sad news this week, with one of our favourite blog readers and recent South converts GeordieHellas revealing that he and the family are headed back home to the UK. It was always a pleasure to chat with Andrew on the terraces (and hear his catch cry of 'Howay The Hellas!'), and seeing his young son Harry grow up at Northcote and Lakeside.

A proud Newcastle United fan, Andrew was also heavily involved with the local Australian Newcastle United supporters group Aussie Mags, who I'm sure will also miss him. On the plus side, he'll get to see his beloved Toon in the flesh again, as well as watch them at a decent hour.

South of the Border would like to wish Andrew, Vanessa and Harry all the best back in the old country.

Hello lads and lasses,

Sadly the missus and I would like to tell you all we won't be at Lakeside Stadium next season as we are heading back home to Newcastle upon Tyne to live.

The missus and I went to our first South Melbourne FC game in 2007 for three very simple reasons, we liked football, we wanted to be able to walk (we lived in St Kilda at the time) to games so we could have a drink and because I'd heard of SMFC prior to moving to Australia in 2005.

I especially very quickly fell in love with watching SMFC, the missus liked the banter and the beer mainly to be honest, and so did I too but it also filled the void I felt from no longer going to watch Newcastle United games live.

Our son was born in July 2011 and he attending his first game at 3 weeks old! The last two years we've had family memberships, and actually relocated to South Melbourne, making walking to home game even easier.

We been to Richmond away, Bentleigh away, Melbourne Croatia away and Northcote away (and home numerous times of course!).

So we'd like to thank you all for being brilliant Hellas supporters, for being very welcoming and we wish you good luck in season 2014 and beyond. We will be following events from overseas and hope one day the club creates a overseas membership and streams the games live, just an idea!?!

Kind Regards.

Andrew

No NPL Victoria in 2014

In a classic case of be careful what you wish for - remember how I got fed up with all the NPL Victoria talk, and just wanted five minutes of space so I could discuss our finals campaign? - well, that turned into a solid few weeks of eerie silence post-season, unnerving everyone with its lack of detail and information.

A week or two back, the FFV, FFA and the co-signatory clubs had a marathon 10 hour meeting, as a part of a last ditch effort to avoid the pending Supreme Court action. The FFV tried to claim the moral high ground on the matter, claiming that it was more or less their idea, but I doubt anyone bought that line.

The usual leaks and rumour mongering didn't happen, adding further tension to the situation, and perhaps led to the situation were people were predicting a break in the unity of the co-signatory clubs, and then suggesting all sorts of comprises had been made to get the new format up and going in 2014.

Well, the FFV came out today and settled at least one matter, announcing that there would be no NPL Victoria in 2014, with the leagues to run as per the usual model. So first off, welcome back Heidelberg to the VPL after an absence of one season, and also to Werribee City for the first time since 1995. Secondly, 'the we're stuck in the fucking VPL' chant lives on for another year, which is great.

But all jokes aside, the FFV have again tried to claim the moral high ground, painting the co-signatory clubs as recalcitrant. Its timing could have not been more devious. Releasing your press release at 5:00PM on a Friday? The old 3RRR show The Spin (which focused on media and PR trickery) had a name for that - the five o'clock dump.

Already we had the situation where one of the key co-signatory representatives, Box Hill United's Nicholas Tsiaras, was excluded from the discussions by the FFV. Now the talk is that the FFV had more or less agreed to a compromise solution with the FFA and the co-signatory clubs, but later reneged on that deal. It seems like the concept of good faith has gone completely out the window.

So are we headed to the courts now? Who's going to foot the bills? Who has the staying power? Will the FFA finally come down like a tonne of bricks onto one of the two sides? One mess cleaned up, temporarily. A whole new can of worms about to get started.

2013 AGM date announced

The 2013 AGMs (and elections) for South Melbourne FC and South Melbourne Hellas have been announced. And in a pleasant change, the date (December 1) is neither

1. Late
2. Two days before Saturnalia
3. On a long weekend, when a certain rotund stats man goes surfing on the coast.

Don't you love progress? Onwards and upwards, as they say.

Oh, the date for the 2013 gala ball - I still don't know why they don't just combine the informal best and fairest night with the gala ball - has been set for December 14th, at what used to Albert By The Lake. $120 if you want to go to that. I'll probably end up going, but I'd rather spend that money on books.

The South Melbourne Hellas Hymn!

Everyone knows about Frozen Tears' legendary mid 1990s club song. However, fewer people know about the Hellas Hymn, a Greek language club song I'm guessing dates from some time in the 1980s, or perhaps really early 1990s.

I must apologise for the poor audio quality on this track - the mp3 was inherited from someone else several years ago, and I really should have insisted on them making a better copy. Then again, you may argue that the distortion on the track only adds to the cheesiness of the affair. Suffice to say, this is not my cup of tea. But if anyone has anyone details about this song and how it came about, or even if you just want to say that you remember it, drop us a line in the comments section.



The photo of the chipped case was taken during an inventory of the social club (recognise the table?) a few years ago, when I was asked to help pack away our club's valuables so the club could get started on the social club redevelopment. I think that was sometime during the Bronze Age.

I believe that Heidelberg also had their own Greek language club song (they also had a Frozen Tears song of their own - or was that for Collingwood Warriors?), and from memory, it was actually OK.

Has Mehmet Durakovic left for Selangor (again)?

Mehmet Durakovic (left) with Selangor teammate Jeff Hopkins
during the mid 1990s. I stole this photo from the
online  edition of the Malaysian newspaper 'The Star'.

Here's an interesting story I came across thanks to the much maligned poster known as 'mario' on soccer-forum (though really, if I wasn't focusing on my scholarship application today, I would have seen it first on Jakarta Casual).

There are reports flying around (see here and here) that South's technical director Mehmet Durakovic has signed up to be coach of Selangor in the Malaysian league. If true (and it appears to be so), this will be the second time Durakovic has left South for that club, after joining Selangor following the first of his two playing stints at South. Does this mean that we'll have to be on the look out for a new technical director? I still don't know what technical directors do, but get your coaching licences out people, there could be a job opening available at Lakeside soon.

In defence of 'old soccer'

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


The truly unique thing about Australian soccer fans is that they’re one of the few groups to despise the history of their own sport. Yes that's 'soccer', which is what people called it before the word was outlawed as part of the drastic re-imagining of the game in this country a decade ago.

Nobody seemed to care what the game was called then (and there were far more offensive terms for it than 'soccer' let me tell you), and in most places around the world they still don't, but it seems these days that the only time you’ll hear the ‘s’ word is if somebody’s giving what’s fashionably become known amongst fans and detractors alike as ‘old soccer’ a kicking. Throw in a few references to ethnic warfare and a body count higher than the Crimean War and you’re cleared to use it, but only in a negative context unless you want the crowd to boo you.

In the blind rush to reclaim the game from 'the ethnics' the virtual outlawing of the word was taken to with glee by the same people who have gone on to ransack their entire 'terrace culture' lock, stock and barrel from Europe. The violent hatred of nearly everything that came before 'year zero' has confined not only several generations of teams, fans and players, but also a perfectly reasonable term for the sport to an historical red card. But why?

When people lament the evil that is ‘old soccer’ I know exactly where they’re coming from. They’re talking about Footscray JUST and Sydney Croatia ‘fans’ butchering each other in a car park in 1987 for reasons best known only to themselves and their grandparents, or the night Australian ‘fans’ arranged themselves in the shape of a swastika as the Socceroos played Israel in a 1989 World Cup qualifier.

What these people represented was not ‘old soccer’ but pure, white hot racism and hated. To hold them up as representative of soccer from the 1950’s until Nick Mrdja won the last National Soccer League Grand Final for Perth Glory (‘broadbased’) against Parramatta Power (‘no fans of any ethnicity’) is the laziest stereotype in Australian sport, but one which has achieved pandemic levels in the last few years.

History is obviously written by the winners, which is why the treatment of Nicky Winmar by the crowd at Victoria Park is now spoken about as a horrible chapter in our racist history but what supporters of long dead soccer clubs did in the 1980's is still relevant today. That Australian society has come a long way on all fronts in the last 20 years is undeniable, and the racism and generally horrible behaviour of the past is treated as it is from the past - unless it happened in the stands of a National Soccer League match.

It's simple enough to lay the boots into sides which have already been nearly wiped from the face of the earth, but the truth is that by the time the NSL was (quite rightly) put to sleep the ‘ethnics’ were in the minority and very much on the run. The 2000-2001 season had just six of 16 teams backed primarily by one group, and the political parties masquerading as football clubs had been long removed the national scene and either relegated to state leagues or obliterated entirely.

The problem was that none of these 'Aussie' teams was any good, and consequently without anything more than token television coverage nobody went to watch them. Even Carlton, held up briefly as the next big thing in Australian football after making a Grand Final in their first season, failed eight games into the year. One of their final matches was delayed because nobody remembered to bring goal nets along.

Carlton had briefly been the saviour of 'broadbased' football in Melbourne. In that first season when they'd played in the Grand Final against South Melbourne the two teams had even been afforded the honour of a pre-match parade down Swanston Street. That no more than a handful of people turned up is hardly the point, but let the record show that in one bright shining moment for 'old soccer' that Paul Trimboli got to sit in a slow moving vintage car, waving at bemused people who were simply trying to catch the tram from outside Melbourne Central.

It was also probably the only Grand Final where the winning goal was celebrated by somebody tearing off their team shirt to reveal Macho Man Randy Savage merchandise, but that was as good as it got for the NSL in Melbourne after that. Channel 7 even managed to run a positive story about the match instead of concentrating on the, ahem, boisterous (AKA bin throwing) celebrations by fans afterwards.

The NSL had always been Australia's premier competition for those who enjoyed a rotating cast of clubs. Even once relegation and promotion from state leagues had been abolished sides would still crop up and fold at the drop of a hat. Who could forget Collingwood's partnership with Heidelberg that started the season with big crowds at Victoria Park and ended with the team playing in front of empty stands at the same venue?

Though they already had the numbers by the turn of the century, the 'locals' further solidified their control of the competition in its last few years despite clubs representing 'Australia' dropping like flies. Carlton were the first to go, and the Eastern Pride (nee Morwell Falcons) also failed to complete the 2000-01 season. The Canberra Cosmos at least managed to struggle through the year before being euthanised. Preposterously the league managed to get through two whole seasons (2001/02 and 2002/03) seasons with exactly the same sides participating, but the long term prospects for the competition were almost nil.

A last ditch attempt at introducing some buzz around the competition in its second last year by introducing a finals series where six teams would play a ten round home and away competition as well as a Grand Final came to nothing as: a) about two weeks in 75 per cent of the matches were dead rubbers and b) the only TV coverage they could get was on some obscure Optus channel which showed Homeart ads whenever there wasn't a game on. The league didn't even bother playing one game between Northern Spirit and Newcastle. That 38,000 turned up to see Perth Glory win the title said more for the long-term prospects of the club themselves rather than the league they were in.

So I'm not here to try and pretend that this was a sensibly run and professional competition with mass public appeal in all markets across the country, because as keen as I am on revisionist history that would be a terrific lie. But what is most certainly was not by this point was an ethnic war zone where ancient scores from across Europe were settled in the stands by chain-wielding teenagers on a weekly basis.

By the time the league folded in 2004 the balance had swung conclusively towards the ‘locals’ with a majority of eight from 13, and the last time fans had disgraced themselves on racial lines had been three years earlier. Somehow though, in the rush to take ownership of football out of ‘ethnic’ hands, we were suddenly pitched into an alternative universe where every match had been Pratten Park 1985 no matter who was involved.

In my experience that was anything but the case, and at the risk of being banned from attending any major football event in this country for the next decade I come in defence of the much maligned NSL and the brand of ‘old soccer’ that it has come to represent.

I’d grown up on highlights of the English game every Monday night in the days when you were grateful just to see your team in a five minute highlights package. Every once in a while you might stumble across local highlights on SBS, but to me the references to South Melbourne Hellas on Acropolis Now may as well have been about a team playing on the moon.

It wasn’t until I’d grown up and suffered the heartbreak of seeing my side relegated from the Premier League (and worse) that I took a chance on the local game and fell in love. For three brief seasons I was an NSL aficionado, and it was magnificent.

Was it meant to be confronting that South Melbourne fans called their side Hellas? After five minutes of the first game so did I. That's who they were. Not that it was compulsory; you didn’t have to swear allegiance to the Greek flag before being allowed in. In fact, to prove how ‘Aussie’ they were the NSL made you stand for the national anthem before kick-off. Even the A-League isn't insane enough to try that.

In all this time the only ethnic rivalry I ever saw was a half-hearted Hellenic power struggle between South Melbourne and Sydney Olympic, and even then that was practically identical to the rivalry which exists now between Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC with the added bonus of better sounding offensive chants in a foreign language. Who knows what they meant, but we joined in anyway because it was fun and that's what you do when you follow a team - you adapt to their culture. New Victory fans join in the chants which have become popular over the years, we did the ones in Greek which said something horrific about the opposition fan's mothers.

The argument is obviously that it's better if a side's culture isn't 'ethnically' based and everyone can join in but that was the point of bringing in at least one 'open' side for people who were into that sort of thing. Australian football might have ended up in a totally different place if the authorities had created proper 'broadbased' clubs like the Victory and Sydney FC instead of shacking up with footy sides and instantly turning off anybody who wasn't already a Carlton or Parramatta fan. Still, at least it wasn't (as some would have you believe) Croats vs Serbs, Israelis vs Palestinians or Hutus vs Tutsis by that point.

The league itself was always going to end with a whimper rather than a bang, but having walked in just as the party was ending I found myself right at home at Bob Jane Stadium. In that last season of a rapidly dying competition the idea that a brand new league would turn away a side who had drawn crowds of more than 10,000 without a dash of television coverage seemed bizarre. It was hard to believe that the people trying to lift the game off the bottom of the ocean would turn away the club who'd have made the perfect foil to the Victory in the battle for Melbourne.

They did and it still hurts today. While nobody can argue Victory’s success (despite the belated introduction of the pretty much moribund Melbourne Heart), it hardly seemed fair that New South Wales got one club in each of Gosford, Newcastle and Sydney while there was no room the team who had represented Australia on the world stage four years earlier. All of a sudden they were relegated to playing Altona Magic instead of Perth Glory.

To be fair clubs like South hadn't done themselves any favours over the years, so desperate for anybody to pay their money at the gate that they'd let pretty much anyone in no matter how impure their intentions were. I remember standing in the Bob Jane Stadium clubhouse talking to the head of security for the club about a fan who had been banned 'for life' for some reason or another, when said outlaw fan scanned his membership at the door and walked into the ground within touching distance of the guard. He continued to go unchallenged for the rest of the season and still watches the club now.

I have no doubt that many of the isolated incidents which have now become football folklore could have been stopped if the clubs had any interest in enforcing bans or if they had access to the same sort of security and surveillance which clubs do in modern stadiums, but who knows if it would have helped when the stereotype had been well and truly embedded in Australia's psyche whether it was true or not. Play my patented NSL Superquiz and humour the next person who tells you how horrible the ethnic riots were 'back then' only to then ask them to name their top five racially based conflagrations. If they can get past Despotovski vs the Melbourne Knights you may as well declare them a winner.

How foolish it seems now to have stood under, and I think held it up at one point, a "No South, No APL" banner at the club's last NSL match against Adelaide United at Hindmarsh Stadium. Not only because the FFA made the message irrelevant by changing the name of the competition, but also the fact that we thought that we were so indispensable that the competition couldn't possibly succeed without us. The truth was that the club needed the competition more than the competition needed the club, and South nearly went out of business almost immediately after they were excluded.

Perhaps they'd have had more chance if they’d bought the licence for a team in Auckland. After all, the New Zealand Knights were admitted as the successor of a club which had attracted 950 people to its last NSL match. I suppose nobody can accuse a team with no fans of having been responsible for any crowd trouble.

Over the years I've thought about the process that severed my brief but thrilling connection with Australian top flight soccer many times. Usually it's while I'm half-heartedly watching the A-League and going for Wellington Phoenix in an equally half-hearted fashion just because in my mind they don't represent the same people who gave us the boot. In these moments of reflection I like to think that the fact that a perfectly viable but ethnically based team was excluded was more to do with the FFA wanting to clear the decks for 'their clubs' than anything else, but the blanket expulsion of any side which had more than a tenuous connection to 'old soccer' has given rise to the greatest urban myth in Australian sports.

You can see it in any story hinting at football’s past. When it was revealed that South Melbourne was trying to buy Melbourne Heart the same themes cropped up in articles and comments alike. Mentioning the “bad old days” and “old soccer” was almost compulsory, and the insinuation was clear: the return of a side which drew much of its support from the Greek community would herald a “return to ethnic violence”.

Who exactly would this violence be between? Did I miss a brief, bloody conflict between Greece and New Zealand which would cause games against the Phoenix to end with the stadium blanketed in tear gas? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and the insinuation that violence is bred purely by ethnicity is hardly compatible with A-League fans being king hit in the stands or attacking police.

You wonder why Melbourne Victory fans who seem as keen as mustard for a proper local rival with more than a handful of fans can't see that instead of holding the ethnics at bay and acting like they solely own the game in this city they should be welcoming a proper rival. These are the same people who have adopted all sorts of macho bullshit 'ultra' stuff from Europe but who simultaneously perpetuate all the myths about the past while complaining about the treatment they receive from police and the media. Perhaps most of what they know about the 'evil' of the past was similarly beaten up by the press?

The NSL’s reputation gets worse every year, but how can fans behave as if the isolated violent acts in their 'new' league are somehow less offensive because there’s no ethnic background to them? A few thrown coins are dismissed as nothing much, but the behaviour of fans in the mid 90’s is still held as hard evidence against entire clubs today. Again, who are 'we' going to fight with now? Sydney FC, West Sydney Wanderers or Melbourne Victory? There doesn't seem to be any shortage of potential clashes, but if a fight happens at the soccer and it doesn't involve ethnic rivalry did it really happen?

When did it become so fashionable to put an ethnic twist on sporting violence? Imagine if 25-year-old Cameron George Frearson of Gymea had known in the mid 90’s that one day everything terrible which happened before 2004 would be blamed on nationalism. He’d have come up with a far better excuse for letting off a flare at a World Cup qualifier than "Because it creates a good visual effect when a goal is scored".

As I stood in the pouring rain watching South get thrashed 5-0 by a pub team a few weeks ago I finally came to terms with the fact that there’s no way they’ll ever be allowed back in the national competition in any meaningful fashion. Even if Heart were willing to sell, the FFA would be scared to death of a backlash from its stakeholders and would at best allow them to be called South Melbourne Heart, Melbourne United or something equally generic.

Their league, their rules I suppose, but nearly a decade on from NSL’s death it’s time that we stopped racially profiling clubs and accept that the popular stereotypes were for the large part just that? That unfortunately soccer seems to attract a proportion of dickheads no matter where you watch it, and that the first priority should be to find these people and kick them out permanently. If clubs wither and die because they've got a higher proportion of arsehole fans than others then bad luck to them.

That the 'ethnic panic' is complete bullshit is hard to argue, but the point then becomes whether South could even do better than heart. Lacking a proper geographical reason for anybody to follow a second Melbourne club was there any point in bringing one in to start with? Probably not. Would the handful of supporters who would come back from Victory contribute to a decent following? I seriously doubt it, but if the 11,000 who turned up to see South's first match back in the Victorian Premier League (tellingly the total plummeted to just over 4000 the next week) showed half an interest in seeing the club play top level football again it would be a good start.

If you were a Heart fan wouldn't you have wanted this to happen? Sure you might have to buy a new shirt and perhaps not follow a team with the pansiest nickname in sport, but your 5000 fans plus our 5000 is a start. We'll build from there, abusing Victory fans all the way. You bring the A-League spot, we'll bring the legitimate dislike for their club. You could go on as you are now, but your club's just going to go broke and you'll be left with no other options but to either skulk back to Victory and try to ignore the embarrassingly forced rivalry of the last couple of years or to give up altogether and wait for the next fool to come along asking to be parted from his money by launching a 'broadbased' Melbourne club.

That there was perhaps 1500 South fans at that Victorian Premier League preliminary final a couple of weeks ago would seem to indicate that there's no coming back for the FIFA Oceania Club of the Century. I can certainly understand that viewpoint, but there's a big difference between playing on the largest stage in the country (where we belong) and against Northcote at at a park in Port Melbourne.

Admittedly I'm not exactly doing my bit for the club these days, it was the first game I'd bothered to go to all season myself. What's the point in following your team through a mickey mouse competition every week throughout winter? I'd done it for a few years and enjoyed myself but the chronic mismanagement of the league (not to mention the rampant corruption) is enough to grind you down eventually. There's still life in the club, just no reason at the moment for it to be revived.

All the while as we're looking on with jealously the A-League continues to grow. Plenty of us sneered at the idea of it taking off, but it seems to be doing just that. I'm still not sure investing your money in a team is any more sensible than buying an NBL side or giving your credit card number to a Nigerian prince but the crowds in most venues are well above what might have been expected a few years ago, and other than a couple of hastily created expansion teams (as well as the Knights who were practically dead before they'd even began) most clubs appear to at least be keeping their head above water. The FFA are even happy to bail out major market clubs who fall over and help them back on their feet.

Yet while all this is happening a generation of fans sits on the sidelines waiting for a chance at redemption, looking at A-League fans waving banners that read 'against modern football' and falling about laughing at the idea that they know anything about hardship. It's fun to play the victim, and we're still doing it almost 10 years later, but the idea of once again having a team to spend my summer following is enough to make me pay more attention to the A-League now than I have in the last few years.

If we're going to be kept out please at least let it be for the right reasons, that we don't have the appropriate financial backing and have shed most of our fan base, not because of some antiquated racial notions of what European people are likely to do at a soccer game.

Is it OK for South fans to like Ange Postecoglou again?

Here's a confused ramble focused on confusion.

So, while waiting for a bad episode of The Simpsons to start, I was watching Ten news yesterday evening, the sports segment to be precise. The first item was on the Geelong Cup, a group three race, whatever that means. Then some racehorse trained by Tom Waterhouse's mother being retired. Then AFL trade news, including Heath Shaw being traded to GWS for Taylor Adams. Then finally, four stories in, the fact that the Socceroos had a new coach. It makes you think that we still have a ways to go yet. Today online on The Age's sport section prominence is given to Bradman and Warne getting a perfunctory honour, and after that a washed out one day cricket match.

But back to Ange - who could have foreseen this situation after that interview on SBS all those years ago? One of the more humorous comments on the matter in the week leading up to Ange's appointment was made by 'Chips Rafferty' on Football Anarchy:

Imagine, Ange the NT coach and Craig still the SBS weather girl.

Some people have talked (vaguely) about his stint in the VPL before making his comeback to the national scene via the A-League - which really, nothing much can be made of, because that team was doomed from the get go. More interesting for me is the fact that, like his 1991 championship teammate Joe Palatsides, he actually tried his hand at coaching in Greece, getting out of the comfort zone of milking a local career, lower league club by lower league club. In our boredom, South of the Border was probably the only English language 'press' (and we use that term lightly) that covered Ange's stint at Panachaiki in the third division, and that was mostly relaying basic progress updates.

What it means to me is that he's willing to take chances, something that became evident as well when he went through the process of creating his Brisbane Roar team. Despite the success he had in his years as South coach, there was always (and still is) talk that he more or less inherited Frank Arok's team, a team that after a tumultuous period would have supposedly come good anyway. And that's no post-A-League sour grapes - that line of thinking existed even among contemporary South fan commentary.

During his A-League coaching career, the attitude of South fans towards Postecoglou has ranged from a certain matter of factness - coaching is his career, and he should be able to continue it anywhere he wants - to calling him a sellout for becoming a part of the system which has relegated us to dealing with an ethnic club glass ceiling (and taking Paul Trimboli with him as well). He's not alone among our former players, sponsors and fans to do this, but he's by far the most high profile.

Postecoglou overseeing South training in Brazil in 2000.

Most though probably never wished him either well or ill, taking a more ambivalent, philosophical approach - he's not at South, so who cares? That's certainly the approach I've taken since he left Panachaiki, a stint I covered more as an oddity than as anything serious. Perhaps those attitudes stem from the way his recent Australian soccer history has shone a light on the general South experience post-A-League, at least from the point of view of those of us in exile from the top-flight. Here's someone who, because of his association with old soccer, the NSL and especially its most powerful (ethnic) club, was thought to offer nothing to the new dawn, who would usher in an era of new players, coaches, methods and history divorced from whatever happened before. Now he's in charge of the goddamn national team, while we've got A-League reject Mehmet Durakovic.

When I celebrated Mitch Langerak's rise to Borussia Dortmund and Socceroos representation, I did so because yes, it's a magnificent achievement, but also because South was a small, perhaps unusual stepping stone on the road to those achievements (which he acknowledged with re-tweet, swoons). Can we then ignore Postecoglou's even more incredible rise? He's one of the few who came through the South system and had a sustained career at the top as a player. The only one involved with all four of our NSL titles. Someone who had been doubted repeatedly, and yet is one of the few players or coaches who left the club both on his own terms and as a success.

The variety of reactions with which South fans have dealt with Postecoglou and others like him, is reflective of the alienation seemingly inherent in being a South supporter these days, at least for those of us who don't split our time between South and an A-League team. Who are we now, compared to who we were? Can we be something like what we once were, in terms of status? What if we never make it back to the top-flight? Just how much has everyone who once supported us moved on from everything? Far enough to forget us completely, or within reach should we ever once again reach where we 'deserve' to be? At least once a year, most often in the quiet of the off-season, I seem to ask this question, and every time I think I get closer to an answer, I find that it's just as elusive as it ever was.

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Here's a couple of articles from the mainstream/legitimate press that are worth a look.

Ray Gatt's article charting Ange's coaching career path isn't too bad, including some good South history with David Clarkson.

Ange Postecoglou's path: from near-death experience to the Socceroos

Ray Gatt, The Australian, October 24, 2013 12:00AM

IT was early November 1996, in the days of the National Soccer League, and Ange Postecoglou, a wet-behind-the-ears coach, was conducting a training session with South Melbourne, oblivious to the lynch mob gathering around the back of the stands.

Only five rounds into his first senior coaching job and with just a single point to show, Postecoglou had already come under intense pressure from fans and officials of the Greek-oriented club.

That night was supposed to be his last in charge of the club he had served for 193 games as a player. The committee had made its decision and the president would be the one to deliver the coup d'etat.

As the committeemen nervously shuffled their feet waiting for the president to arrive, they received news he had fallen ill and could not make it. Reluctant to complete the hatchet job without him, they made a hasty retreat and decided to leave him in for one more week.

The rest is history. South Melbourne won its next game 1-0 against Newcastle Breakers and went on a winning streak that saw it climb from the bottom of the table to the preliminary final, which it lost to Sydney United.

Under Postecoglou's positive "follow-me" coaching philosophy, South Melbourne won successive NSL titles in 1997-98 and 1998-99.

Postecoglou's coaching career, give or take one or two hiccups, has gone from strength to strength and today he is the new coach of the Socceroos, entrusted by Football Federation Australia to lead the national team out of the abyss and into a new dawn.

David Clarkson, who won two championships under Postecoglou at South Melbourne, always knew his old boss would climb to the top of the coaching tree.

"Who knows what would have happened had it (the sacking) gone through," Clarkson told The Australian. "But, he got that luck. We won two titles, were Oceania champions and played in the world club championship against Manchester United."

Clarkson said he always saw the drive and the passion for coaching in Postecoglou.

"He was a winner, very intense and a lover of the game. You could see it in everything he did," he said. "Yes he was passionate about coaching, but he was also very passionate about the game and how it should be played."

Clarkson said if Postecoglou had a fault it was "maybe he did not manage players as best as he could back then".

"But it was never personal. He always had his end goal and he'd tell us he would take people on the journey who wanted to be there ... if not 'you can go'," he said

"I was always scared of him, to be honest. Why? Because I was afraid of letting him down. He expected such high standards and I respected him so much that I just didn't want to disappoint him."

Postecoglou did it tough as coach of the Young Socceroos between 2000 and 2007, struggling to come to grips with international football and drawing intense criticism from past players and coaches.

Some might have thought that was the end for him as a coach, but his stint as an analyst on Fox Sports showed he was a deep thinker about the game and the critics did not affect his fierce pride and burning ambition.

Postecoglou has stayed true to his philosophy of playing entertaining football based on retaining possession and playing out from the back, even when under pressure.

He is not afraid to make the tough decisions on players. It is the "my way or the highway" mentality as he showed when he first took over Brisbane Roar midway through the 2009-10 season. Postecoglou was ruthless, releasing Socceroos veterans Danny Tiatto and Craig Moore, and journeyman Bob Malcolm.

Young players were drafted in and while Roar did not get anywhere near the finals that season, he was sowing the seeds of success. And success came quickly.

The Queenslanders won the A-League title the next season then followed up with a second in 2011-12 as he became the first coach to win back-to-back titles in the A-League - something he had already done in the NSL.

Postecoglou will be vastly different to his predecessor, the sacked Holger Osieck, in many ways.

Firstly, he understands the Australian sporting mentality. He won't be as rigid in his thinking and will rejuvenate the team with younger players. No player will be safe from his scrutiny. They will all need to fit within his system.

He will go with what he knows and believes in. It is best explained in an interview he did after he was appointed Victory coach before the start of last season.

"I'm in it to win championships, but what drives me is that it has to mean something. A title must reflect the way we've played, behaved on and off the field. When people went to watch Brisbane Roar, they knew how they were going to play and conduct themselves, win or lose.

"I'm not going to do exactly what I did at Roar, but there will be a strong identity there at Victory."

With eight months, maybe half a dozen friendlies and a couple of camps to the World Cup in Brazil, the odds are that there is not enough time for Postecoglou to impose his will on the squad.

But unlike with Osieck, FFA has given him a mandate to produce talent, revitalise the squad, jettison some of players and set up for the future, including the Asian Cup on these shores in 2015.

Even at Brazil, you wouldn't want to bet against Postecoglou at least turning the Socceroos into the competitive team fans have grown to love and admire.


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Joe Gorman's article from The Guardian isn't too bad either, though it probably didn't need the music analogy. The comments on the cultural cringe in Australian football are worth noting.

Ange Postecoglou: the Socceroos' very own Paul Kelly

Like the musician, the new Socceroos coach shows respect and a deep knowledge of the medium in which he works

Ange Postecoglou has graduated from the A-League to become the new Socceroos manager. Photograph: Julian Smith/AAP

After almost a fortnight of rumour and recriminations, the FFA has appointed Ange Postecoglou as Socceroos coach. When Frank Lowy confirmed last week the next coach would be an Australian, it was always going to be either Ange or Arnie. Both worthy choices, the FFA has put its faith in a local for the first time since 2005.

Melbourne Victory have made the noble decision not to stand in Postecoglou’s way, although not before criticising the FFA for tapping up their coach and baulking at the seven figure compensation package.

In a statement to the media, Victory Chairman Anthony Di Pietro said, “we are disappointed with the process undertaken by the FFA, given the outcomes we tried to secure could never have been achieved within the timeframes offered, which ultimately forced us to accelerate our decision not to stand in Ange’s way.”

As much as the Socceroos are the pinnacle of the football hierarchy, the clubs are also entitled to defend their own patch of turf, as are state league clubs below them. Developing players and coaches comes at a price, and it is not for the FFA to be cherry-picking the best talent without recognising the investment of the clubs.

That said, it is a milestone in Australian football for several reasons. In the ninth season of the A-League, Postecoglou becomes the first coach to graduate from an A-League club to the Socceroos. In doing so, he’ll also become the first Australian coach to take the national team to the World Cup since Rale Rasic, who led the Socceroos to the nation’s first World Cup in 1974. Forty years is certainly a long time waiting, but it is a change that will be welcomed by the vast majority of followers of the national team.

Having an A-League alumnus at the helm of the Socceroos will certainly be a boost for the profile of the competition. After three successive foreign coaches, the football community has been heavily in favour of a local, and now that we’ve gone native, the cycle will likely continue. With so many former Socceroos completing their coaching licences and receiving jobs in the A-League, Postcoglou’s appointment may be a harbinger of change in the selection process.

In elevating Postecoglou, the FFA has pushed him into a new realm of prodigal son. As one of Australia’s most successful club coaches with South Melbourne Hellas, Brisbane Roar and Melbourne Victory, he comes into the job with huge expectations. Despite the Young Socceroos hiccup in 2006, Postecoglou has been something of a King Midas at club level.

When he took over from Frank Farina at Brisbane Roar in 2009, he quickly moved to purge several senior players from the squad including Craig Moore, Charlie Miller and Bob Malcolm, building a new-look team around midfielders Matt McKay, Massimo Murdocca and Erik Paartalu, all of whom he had previously worked with at youth level. After two successive A-League championships with Brisbane – which included a record breaking unbeaten streak – he took up a new challenge at Melbourne Victory.

Postecoglou may have taken a little longer than expected to make his mark in Melbourne, but when the Victory are on form, they play some of the best football in the competition. And as he did at Brisbane, Postecoglou has given young players a chance, putting faith in the likes of Marco Rojas, Nick Ansell, Andrew Nabbout and Connor Pain in important matches. In round one this season, Postecoglou continued this trend by granting the highly rated Rashid Mahazi a start in central midfield in the Melbourne derby.

In this regard, Postecoglou offers the Socceroos a sound knowledge of local players and a willingness to experiment with young talent, two qualities sorely needed in the national team. With the team in serious need of regeneration before the Asian Cup on home soil in 2015, many senior Socceroos will no doubt be uncomfortable about their future in the green and gold with Postecoglou in charge. As the Postecoglou motto goes, "you don't sign players but people". It’s about time players are selected on their current standard, not reputation.

Notwithstanding his credentials, Postecoglou is also a fitting appointment for symbolic reasons. Having grown up a South Melbourne Hellas supporter, he spent his playing career at his boyhood club, before taking them to two NSL titles in the late 1990s, as well as a Club World Championship in Brazil. His has been a career at the coalface of Australian football.

The question of nationality has not been far from the debate about who should take over from Holger Osieck. Sections of the media, particularly Michael Cockerill and Robbie Slater, have been banging on for some time for an Australian coach to be appointed to the national team.

Others prefer to look simply at the credentials of the coaches in question, rather than the passport, with Craig Foster going as far to say that some of the discussion has reeked of “xenophobia” in his Sunday column for Farifax Media. Certainly Foster has a point, although his own Sam Kekovich on Pim Verbeek during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa would suggest patriotism is indeed the last refuge of the scoundrel.

While too much has already been made of nationality in the current coaching debate, the importance of Postecoglou’s emotional attachment to the local game should not be understated. David Gallop expressed his delight that Postecoglou happened to be "someone who’s learned his football in this country and who lives and breathes the mission of Australian football." For too long, Australians have held a cultural cringe towards the game’s history, cultural position and importance to the nation.

In many ways, Ange Postecoglou is to Australian football as Paul Kelly is to Australian music. Where many Australian musicians entrench the cultural cringe through gratuitous imitation, Kelly spent his career chronicling Australian culture through his songwriting. In several columns for Fairfax Media, as well as numerous media appearances, Postecoglou shows the same careful understanding and critical engagement with his surroundings, highlighting both a fundamental respect and a deep knowledge of the minutiae of Australia’s unique relationship with the world game. Like Kelly, his is a reflective nationalism, not the shouty, chest-beating, face-palm kind.

Moreover, when Postecoglou talks about learning from coaching greats such as Kevin Sheedy, Mick Malthouse and Wayne Bennett, as he did when he took over at Brisbane Roar, we get of a glimpse of a man unburdened by the insecurity that blinds many other football fans, coaches and commentators. In appointing Postecoglou, the FFA have found an ambassador for Australian football, not just a new coach.

South of the Border Awards 2013

Hmm. Is it worth doing a season review? Probably not. You can just go back and read about what happened in the usual way.

In a blog full of self-indulgence, this is just about the most self-indulgent of posts. A person who has never played the game, who can barely make out what's going on the field, and even if he could, is usually too apoplectic with rage to make any useful judgments anyway.

Which is just another way of saying it's time for the 2013 South of the Border Awards. For previous editions of this mini-extravaganza, see this link.

Player of the year: It could have gone to Pete Gavalas for his massive turnaround in form. It could have gone to Brian Bran for being our best over the second half of the year. It could have gone to Tyson Holmes for being a thorn in Steve From Broady's side. But this award has never followed any sort of logical decision making process, and we're not about to start now.

Trent Rixon gets my vote in 2013 because when he finally got fit, he showed us not only the form which saw the club bring him over in the first place by scoring several goals, but he also displayed a joyful combativeness up front. For the first time since he made the move from Northcote, he looked like he was actually enjoying being at and playing for South - the highlight being his celebration with statsman Steve from Broady away at Port Melbourne.

Under 21 player of the year: The Cliff Hussey Memorial Trophy (this year selected by Steve From Broady) goes to Baggio Yousif. I'm not going to disagree with that.

Goal of the year: Ljubo Milicevic. Now, unlike last year, there were several brilliant/crazy/timely goals scored in 2013. Andy Vlahos' belter of a free kick at home against Green Gully. Soolsma's free kick at home against Hume City. Holmes' overhead at home against Richmond, or Hopper's excellent control in the away fixture against Richmond. Either of Fernando's goals against Preston in the cup, for the pure emotion of it if not the execution.

But for the way the planets aligned for Ljubo's own goal, I couldn't bring myself to award it anyone else. His return to Lakeside, finally playing for the club he apparently supported as a kid, South down 2-1 due to some comical defending, and the out of absolutely nothing, Ljubo heads it into his own net, and the South fans start chanting his name. It was a lot of a fun.

Best performance: Hmm. The win against Northcote in the Dockerty Cup was pretty epic. The win against Bentleigh away was awesome. But I'm going to go with Green Gully away in round 1. Seriously, I was happy to have the season end right there and then. We killed them from start to finish and nothing went wrong at all. See in you in another 27 years when it happens again.

Best away game of the year: Melbourne Knights semi-final. It had to be something special to beat our first away win at Gully since 233 BCE or whenever it was. Without any intentional disrespect against all the other clubs, that night against our old foe Melbourne Croatia, it felt like we were in a real league, playing against a real team. They even booed our goal! When was the last time that happened? And what a beautiful smash and grab win it was. Pure joy.

Call of the year:
"Hey goalkeeper, you look like a highlighter!" (David, host of SMFC TV), said during the cup match against Northcote, in reference to their goalkeeper's get up of fluoro green jersey and shorts with black socks.

Runners up:

• "There are ten players out there for South called 'cunt' and one called 'Andy' (Vlahos)" (Ian Syson, Southern Stars at home)
• "He went down like he ate a hot dog from Green Gully" (Steve From Broady, during the under 21s game at home to Green Gully)

Chant of the year: "You're supposed to be in church!", Oakleigh home match. There were a couple of other contenders, especially late on in the season, such as:

"Dodgy Asian Betting, Now We're In The Finals!" (Gully final)

and

"Our social club
Does not exist
Our social club does not exist
It's got no door, and no window
Our social club does not exist" (Northcote final)

But the winner had a certain, je ne sais quoi to it.

Best after match dinner location: Man, I missed a lot of these this season, and there were a lot of disappointing affairs here. Chief among the disappointing places were that trendy ramen place on Lonsdale Street (bland, bland, bland), and the deplorable Coconut House (except for the incredible soy milk). So, almost by default, it goes to Thai Deli again, for their Pad Thai. Good to support a local South Melbourne business as well.

Friends we lost along the way:  The Brunswick City souv. Our FFV media pass holder status.  Our position of being somewhere about fifth or sixth in line for news that 'you can't tell anyone, seriously'. I think we're about 23rd in line now, behind the Cypriot peanut man who they don't let in the ground, but still ahead of Michael Lynch. Small mercies and all that.

Barely related to anything highlight stupidity of the year:  We have to go right back to the start of the season. I'd given Gains and Steve from Broady a lift to Green Gully Reserve, as is my custom. Now, we were all in agreement, based on many previous experiences, that you do not eat the food at Green Gully, except possibly the hot jam doughnuts, because even Green Gully couldn't manage to fuck those up, surely?

So anyway, we won the game, we were all happy, and it was time to go home. Now, if you've never driven Steve from Broady anywhere, you should know two things are likely to happen. Firstly, he'll try and tell enough stupid stories that will make you laugh until you black out and crash into an oncoming truck. Secondly, he will pummel you with so many crackpot theories or stupid questions that eventually you'll just ask him to shut the fuck up already.

Well, we hadn't even got out of the car park yet (an ordeal in itself at Green Gully) before he's already worn my patience thin by asking a really daft question. I abused the fuck out of him for doing so, and then he was very quiet all the way home. So quiet, that I actually felt really bad about the whole situation.

Well, a few months later, upon reminiscing about that drive home in a conversation, Steve casually mentions that he wasn't quiet because of the abuse I'd dished out. No, he was quiet on the ride home because he felt sick as a dog, and was very close to throwing up. And why was he close to throwing up? Because against everyone's experience and advice, including his own, he'd had a Green Gully hot dog.

That's your expert food reviewer right there.

Rain, Hail, Shine, Wind, More Rain, And That's Us Done For 2013 - Northcote City 5 South Melbourne 0

You Get An Inkling It's Not Your Day When...
You cop a goal in the first five minutes. The one thing we'd managed to avoid letting Northcote do in our previous encounter, and we'd botched it nice and early. And to make matters worse, it was from a set piece. Still, it was only one goal, and there was time to pull it back...

You Really Know It's Not Your Day When...
Your keeper catches the ball, gets shoved over the line, and the ref awards a goal. The shoulder charge on goalkeepers hasn't been seen in Australia since about the early 1950s, and we've all become used to goalies now being classified as a protected species. And yet we found ourselves 2-0 down due to the non-decision of the referee, who otherwise punished every push, no matter how inconsequential.

We really needed to have pulled back a goal before half time, for psychological as well as scoreboard reasons. Instead we fluffed our two good opportunities. One shot was palmed away by the off balance Northcote keeper. The second saw a cutback delayed after some good work on the byline, and Northcote's defence managed to scramble the ball away, much as we did last week.

We had several crosses, corners and free kicks in dangerous areas, but for the most part we couldn't get them into the really dangerous areas around the six yard box, where Northcote's defence would be most vulnerable. Their early goal allowed them to sit back and hit us on the counter.

Then the weather turned nasty, the rain hurtled down and the wind decided that it wanted to barrack for Northcote in the second half, as it blew hard towards the Plummer Street goals. Then Northcote scored their third, and we were done like a dinner.

Junk Time Blues
The last 40 odd minutes was an exercise in futility. At 3-0 down, Soolsma sliced his volley, and that was about it for us. Rixon picked up a stupid yellow card for a challenge on the Northcote keeper, which would have ruled him out of the grand final had we somehow made it that far. Heads dropped, the wind blew back every ball of a certain height, and Northcote picked us off for a couple more goals. There's little doubt that they were the better team on the day and over the course of the year, but a five goal difference between the two sides? That's a little harder to stomach.

End Of Season Stupidity (or Why Pitch Invasions, No Matter How Well Intentioned, Are Never A Good Idea)
Well, at the end of the game about 30 odd Northcote supporters jumped the fence yesterday and even went up the players race to celebrate with their team. Of course this lead to stupid scenes in the players race (not helped by some of the Northcote players deciding to turn their focus towards the South fans instead of just making their way into the changerooms).

It will be interesting to see what comes out of this, as it was actually rather hard to tell what the hell was happening there at the end, except that a large green plastic bin lid was thrown towards the players race. Like that was ever going to do any damage. There are allegations of spitting by both sides, which is just great. Still, considering the punishment we got (in my mind, justified) for our pitch invasion against the Bergers all those years ago now, what will happen to Northcote will be worth watching. Also, it was well noted by one of our forum peoples that Blue Thunder Security really dropped the ball on this one, by having all their attention focused on Clarendon Corner, with none on the equivalent Northcote group.

Peter Tsolakis, Luke Byles
Were happy that we lost. Good for them. Whatever helps them sleep at night.

Chants
A couple of late contenders for chant of the year

Our social club
Does not exist
Our social club does not exist
It's got no door, and no window
Our social club does not exist

Where this chant falls over though is that, when we did have a social club, most of the people who were chanting this ditty preferred to drink away from the ground before a game. Still, some marks have to be awarded for the cleverness of the lyrics, which is more than can be said about the sharing our ground with Victory chant. Newsflash, we did that even before the reconfiguration of Lakeside.

There was also the 'your nose is bigger than your dick chant' directed to the Northcote player who had also been re-christened 'Gonzo The Great' (he had a large protective covering on his schnoz, after having broken it against in our previous meeting; he even managed to cop another blow to his nose during yesterday's game).

The 'What Were They Thinking' Department
Now I have nothing against Port Melbourne as a venue (if I did, I wouldn't go and watch games as a neutral there), but once a match attendance reaches a certain point, it is clearly not a suitable venue for a game.

Quite why the FFV decided to use this ground for a game of this stature is anyone's guess. There was one ticket booth, meaning that even 10-15 minutes into the game, there was a still a significant line waiting outside the ground.

The ground also has limited shelter and poor sight-lines. The latter was not helped by only opening up a small portion of the outer side - apparently due to some incident two or three years ago which no one can remember - which would have improved the viewing experience considerably.

Of course the weather, which had been wavering between comfortable and slightly unpleasant, turned to absolute crap at the start of the second half, and Port's limited shelter was unable to cope with the demand. Others, seeing no way back for South and not wanting to deal with the wind and rain, just upped and left. The fans who braved those conditions deserved better.

There were surely more suitable options available. Knights Stadium, Kingston Heath, even Epping Stadium or Olympic Village. Hell, I would have happily allowed Northcote to host this match.

Next Year
Who knows what's going to happen there. NPL Victoria? State League 1 South? If there is a VPL, we can be safe in saying that Heidelberg United and Werribee City will come up, but who will go down? What will happen to Southern Stars? I know that the only constant is change, but this is getting out of hand.

Around The Grounds
Got there early enough to watch the second half of the Sandringham - Heidelberg WVPL preliminary final. Sandy were up 1-0 at halftime, went 2-0 up after a nice cut in and strike, before the Bergers pulled it back to 2-1. There it stayed, with the Bergers probably unlucky not to pull it back to 2-2. Very tough conditions, and not a particularly impressive game.

As For The Blog
Our usual winding down process begins. At some point a season wrap and awards. In December, our usual birthday/thank you spectacular. Some news as it trickles through. Which players will stick around? Who'll be out the door? New faces?

We have the prospect of elections - will a rival ticket finally emerge? Will the entire current committee stick around? We also still have the protracted social club and lease issues to sort out. After two seasons back at Lakeside, it's gone beyond a joke.

I'll also provide as much NPL Victoria news as I can stomach. It's already been a draining experience covering that issue, not just for its complexity, not just for cutting through the competing narratives, but especially in the way it has infected everything that's happened this season.

And maybe the odd book review here and there to inject of bit of culture.

Final Thought
Now what do I do with my weekends? Join my brother's Dungeons and Dragons group?