Sunday evening, small crowd, terrible city traffic. We arrived 20 minutes late for the game, unsurprisingly we were greeted with a 1-0 deficit.
However, after picking up a souvlaki box, and distributing our latest issue through the social club, we found a seat in the grand stand and tried to regain composure.
Here’s what we missed. At the 3rd minute, running into the box an Oakleigh attacker fell into Lucas Inglese in the box. Not in a position to see clearly the referee erroneously called a penalty. Guest stepped up to take the shot. It was initially saved by Lopez but collected by Guest on the follow up. Oakleigh 1, South 0 and the game essentially dead.
10 minutes later South found themselves passing it with space across their backline. Jankovic collected the ball wide with Alex Salmon applying some pressure from behind the play. Well Salmon slide tackels Jankovic from behind, studs first into our captain’s Achilles and rightly so received a red card for his efforts.
Now facing 10 men the game changes. Oakleigh are content to sit back, and South are happy to hold the ball. However once again the team unfamiliar with possession doesn’t seem to know what to do with it and we end the half pretty toothless in front of goal, failing to really test the keeper and left to cross ball after ball into the box without a striker to get to the end of it.
At the dawn of the second half Oakleigh repeat the first half script. Playing the ball in from the left, Oakleigh found themselves outnumbered by South defenders, however Evans seems to trip in the box and as he falls to the ground he grabs Guest by the waist, conceeding yet another penalty to Oakleigh. Once again Guest steps up and this time he buries the ball from the spot to double Oakleigh’s lead.
With a bigger lead, Oakleigh find themselves in an even more comfortable position and played out the rest of the game sitting back. South struggled to break down the 10 man opposition and appeared to play more direct balls to try breach the Oakleigh defence.
The one bright spot of the game came at the 57th minute. Mells collected the ball deep after a run in behind the Oakleigh defence, plays it low across goal in the box where Harding taps it in to take the score back to 1-2 and give South their first goal in the League since March.
Our last three goals have come from the same play. Without a big striker it seems the team should give up on the high balls into the box as we look incapable of winning headers. If we are to persist with playing from the wings it has been more effective to cut in from deep and win the scrambles in the box.
Soon after a more sombre moment. Clarendon Corner stood and applauded at the 62nd minute for recently passed South fan, volunteer and community pillar Con Shomos. May he rest in peace.
And the rest of the match? Well what is there to say. We lost. Half way through the season now we find ourselves in 12th place. In the next two weeks we play Port Melbourne (14th) and Melbourne Knights (13th). Both of these games are must win, and both of these games are against opposition teams with new coaches. If we don’t come out with at least 4 points from these game, wrap it up folks – we’re gonna be playing VPL1 next year.
Will Brennan, Marshall or Bonada be back next week? Will it even make a difference?
Blue and White Views 
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