This game was effectively a dead rubber for us with finals and relegation already off the table. On a mild Sunday night a smaller crowd at Lakeside gathered to watch us take on Gully, likely with hopes of seeing some experimentation ahead of the Dockerty Cup and Australia Cup games to come.

The women had already secured an amazing last minute win against Preston to breath some life back into their season, but the men’s game to follow ultimately didn’t end in the same heroics.

A pretty strong line up started this game with Nagamatsu, Brennan and Bonada leading the line. Mikkola was out but Jankovic was back after his red card suspension. The first half was pretty even until the 24th minute, when Green Gully handled the ball in the box leading to South’s first penalty of the season! Nagamatsu scored from the spot to give us the lead, which we maintained for a solid 15 minutes.

Gully unlike us, had something to play for with finals hopes necessitating a win from them. At the 42nd minute Brennan lost the ball in the middle and Gully quick to capitalise on transition played direct to the top of the box where it spilled to Kifle at the edge of the D. Kifle took a touch to create some space and shot a beauty from outside the box to level the score, where it remained until the break

The second half was s relatively mute affair with neither team able to take the lead. South elected to experiment with a number of changes bringing on Inglese, Menelaou, Mesourouni and Dovison. Cohadzic clearly looked to to both rest key players and keep fringe players in contention for the big games coming up.

The 1-1 draw doesn’t do much for us but we left with a point and without any injuries or suspensions which is certainly positive. We now turn to Heidelberg for the Cup final next week.