Geo400

You never mentioned ethnic, you said nsl.

Umm 4 current A league teams are ex nsl

Personally i know a lot of people who would have been happy to see the license remain local. Old Heart supporters were going to be disgruntled one way or another. Not like we didnt see our fair share of sooking when CFG took over.

So the bids that dont have teams should be out of the running? Bergers will struggle when Avondale poaches all their stars next year. Inevitably South will rise near the top again...tends to go in cycles.

Simply sensational, good distribution and even towards the end just very clean with everything that came near him, heart in mouth with that last cut back across the goal and he took it with ease.

His name is Dean Bouzanis.

Hard to watch but 3 points is 3 points. its going to be intriguing to see how we go when we travel interstate, will need a big lift.

it was almost Sydney like the way we grinded that, let's not give too much credit to victory, we deserved our lead at half time, should have been up by more in fact, I couldn't give a rats about possession, it's what you do with it that counts and I thought we were for the most part effective, we became a bit ragged after going 2-1 up but for the most part blunted them out pretty comfortably, these are the type of performances it takes to win finals, fo, what I've seen through 2 games is that we are nowhere near as flashy as what we showed early last season and that's understandable with the players that are out, I don't wanna jinx it but it looks like we are finally going to make ourselves hard to beat. Again it's out of the Sydney playbook but it gets the results.

Socceroos games against Syria also hogged all the spotlight which took a ton of publicity away from it, might have even affected last nights attendance as well considering it was 7,000 down on the corresponding game last season.

Would be pretty happy to come away with a draw here.

The club pre sold 4,900 tickets in less than a week, only got a walk up of about 800 on the night, weather was brutal.

I think you are correct partly, my general feeling is people don't like souths ambition, the club is just trying to better itself, they aren't murdering anyone. South fans do have a larger online presence, in general more fans and I think you will find most are pretty switched on from a football point of view. Fans of the other ex NSL clubs are probably largely in the elderly age bracket. Now with social media it's given people a platform to talk crap, and that's obviously going to annoy people as well, last week I had to read that upon entry into the stadium the security asks you if your Greek, another writes that Fans were singing Greek war songs, wtf is a Greek war song? I'm not sure what purpose these people are trying to serve, but for the most part we stick to defending the club, at least I do. At least from Heidelberg Supporters it's understandable, we played a part in them getting thrown out of the NSL, their hatred of us is completely justified, for others though not sure what they are trying to prove, general feeling is most don't want to see a Deep South cup run, or a big A league tie featuring south, purely on the off chance that it increases souths small chance of future relevancy. Even in the npl where south lost 2-0 on the weekend, I'd hear people next to me say "haha and they wanna be in the A league"...when south wins though and in last years case end winning the title it's "pfft who cares it's only the npl"...as if south would ever join the A league with an npl caliber squad regardless lol.

South fans get offended by the idea that the club can't be Australian because it was formed by Greek migrants half a century ago. I'm not Greek and I've been a fan since the early 90s, people love and respect the history of the joint, it is what it is, it doesn't have to define the future though. I remember waking up on those mornings in 2000 when south were in the world club championships and the games were televised on sbs, the commentators always referred to the club as Australian, I recall a south official actually trying to explain the clubs origins to the local media over there and the response was basically "Yeh nice history but your still Aussies". The club is often accused of being self hating Greeks and selling out its heritage, that couldn't be further from the truth, it's simply a natural change as generations pass. Great result for Heidelberg last night, dominated the game and are clearly the best team in Victoria as of this moment, ever since south smashed them at aami park in June they have been on a great run.

Most football fans in this country are eurosnobs who would struggle to name you an A league player let alone someone from the npl. You only have to see the crowds the exhibition games get with touring teams to see where the real interest is. I took a mate to our game against sydney fc last year and he asked me why del piero wasnt playing lol.

Ultimately this is the problem with Australian football, not enough clubs are relevant , even some that are in the A league now, and the ffa are sending the code as a whole down the path of boring oblivion, at least last night was refreshing, I mean all the cup games not just the south one. And South aren't irrelevant in Victoria, they top the league in every age group from juniors, women's team right up to the men's seniors. They would be even more dominant if the npl didn't have a cap which means they are forced to play sh1tcvnts like Matt Millar.

Put these current south players in city shirts and it would be lucky to be 1200. I was there last year at the wanderers game the cahill debut..slightly over 5k. South would get over 5k against wanderers with its current scrubs let alone if they had name players. Basically lets just wait for a potential encounter with an A league team and then judge.

City v Sydney with 22 pro players on the field valued at millions compared with 2 current npl clubs of semi pros is hardly a realistic comparison. Would city v edgeworth have attracted a larger crowd last night if played at aami park? Doubt it. Which is why I laugh when people take the on field component of the ffa cup so seriously, as if any of those south players from last night would ever feature in a south A league team. They're are npl players for a reason.

2,600 was the crowd, seats up the front were wet and many decided to stand up the back of the grand stand instead, 2nd largest crowd between 2 npl clubs in the ffa cup and I believe the largest in the round of 32, fair effort, home tie against an A league side would be very interesting,

They always chant hellas, what they don't do is chant in Greek, big difference. Pretty diverse crowd last night, atmosphere top notch, nsw visitors a bit unlucky though particularly in the 1st half.

Oakleigh won the minor premiership in 2006, south Melbourne won the grand final that year, the grand final winner is recognised as the champion. Oakleigh draw some ok crowds when they play on Friday nights but the Sunday games are brutally bad crowd wise, I use to spend a lot of time in that area when I was young and it wasn't until they closed the road that lead to what would become eaton mall that it became a big Greek hub..before that it was no more Greek than northcote, this was around 2003 from memory, the soccer club began its rise around that time as well. Ambitious club but never really delivered, and failed again last year at the final hurdle. being a northern suburbs guy now I lean towards northcote city, so I don't like oakleigh lol, wish city would come out this way for a friendly,

Those 9 premierships are lower level titles, oakleigh has never won the victorian top flight despite being the biggest spenders in the last 10-12 years, unfortunately the club has no notable fan base to speak of. I went to one of the home games last season and the crowd was literally 60 people. They will get a big crowd against south obviously and maybe bentleigh but thats about it. What i do agree on is that oakleigh are much more greek than South in how they operate and promote themselves, especially since the area became the main greek town about a decade ago...south was obviously able to attract a sizeable amount of non greek support in the nsl days, which is still very noticeable compared to other npl clubs today.

Signing khalfallah? pulled off the great escape tonight, 4-1 down to dandy city with 10 to play, win 5-4 to qualify for ffa cup.

We had these guys on the ropes after going 1 up but didn't have the killer instinct to finish them off, and it just sums up everything that's negative and timid about this club. We are doomed to finish outside the top 3 now and that's our season done because our best hope for finals was taking on victory in a derby semi final, now we will be lucky to make it out of week 1. as for the goal yes it's clearly offside, berisha is making a deep offside run and Muscat is tracking that illegal run, he is forced into a sliding attempt on the ball by an offside player, its interference and a terrible decision, worse yet the commentators seem oblivious to this fact. fornaroli having his foot stomped on in the box could have been penalty 1 geria charging into Brandon's back nowhere near the ball could have been penalty 2 of course neither was given. fuck this Mickey Mouse league seriously, can't wait until footy, npl etc starts,

Lets not forget it was another coast to coast goal on the counter that killed us, it absolutely kills me when i see teams move the ball so quick against us and we inevitably get sliced open whilst we have these painfully slow build ups that vo nowhere, we have been cut open with ease by adelaide and the mariners in recent weeks..we arent getting anywhere near the top 2. Im not fussed on valkanis, i wish he had the balls to do things his own way but our style of play is dictated to by CFG so nothing was ever really going to change from jvs to valkanis. We are already held up with the salary cup we dont need our hands further tied by a style of play that does not work here, hell its barely working for pep in manchester.

This team has actually gone backwards from last season, the ladder position might end up being the same or one spot less but we are further away from a championship now compared to this time 12 months ago. Waste of another season