South Melbourne have qualified for the Quarter Finals! The team remains the only one in the competition to have won all four of its matches. It’s a great reflection on the football department who recruited aggressively ahead of the competition and the coaching staff who have manage the game day tactics brilliantly.

The recent come from behind win against Olympic was a great example of both of these dynamics. Despite falling behind Cohadzic elected to make some pretty bold substitutions, including the removal of recent starboy Manny Aguek and the inclusion of new signing Bilal Habib, who ultimately scored the match winner!

It’s a joy to see the team gelling at the moment. Lampard has proven an unlikely goal scoring outlet and other players of the old guard have found another level. Just last week both Leech and Pope surprised me with their impact once coming off of the bench. New players have been performing well too, in particular Pasquali who has become our midfield maestro.

With qualification to the finals now assured the question is how we will approach the next two games. Will we experiment with tactics? We will certainly see more rotation in the squad. However, noting how short this tournament is we must be careful not to ruin our momentum. The finals are a single match knockout format and currently our likely opponents, Preston, could deliver a match with heightened pressure on the squad. The players need to be adequately prepared, and that means not going into the game cold due to excessive player rotation or confusion of tactics.

On our tactics, it seems despite our almost excessive firepower, we are simply not scoring enough goals equal to our attacking pressure. This is likely as our opponents have done a great job shutting up shop and parking the bus. The Broadmeadows game could have gone either way as a result, and the Moreton Bay game was unnecessarily tense, especially after the red card. This isn’t a knock on our players or staff, more identifying an issue that needs to be solved.

We are creating heaps of chances and the players themselves are creating moments of brilliance to find the back of the net. More impressively we are coming back from behind and getting results in games we deserve them. There is a winning mentality observable in the team at the moment, one that will be important in the finals series to come.

Do we need to change our early game plan? Typically these have been cagey, even dire affairs. Maybe not, we have tired out teams who have eventually succumbed to our pressure later on. However, this may not work as well against stronger, more hungry opposition. All due respect to the teams in our group, but Olympic missed out on finals, and the NNSW and QLD NPL systems haven’t shown a track record of interstate success. Before we get ahead of ourselves we need to understand we haven’t faced the APIA’s, Marconi’s, or event he Avondale’s of this competition yet. In fact, the last time we played Avondale we lost 5-0. I know that was in very different circumstances, however, except for our Dockerty Cup run this year, our track record against higher placed teams isn’t the best.

Anyway onwards and upwards! Broadmeadows at Lakeside next!