Well, What Can You Say?

Seriously, what can you say after another black day in one of the blackest years in Victorian football history?

It's not everyday someone you know is arrested for alleged match fixing. It's not every day Kevin Bartlett Reserve gets mentioned in the mainstream media, including making the SEN promos all day as Robert Walls recycles the old comb-over grass gag.

On SEN, issues like these do show up how little their supposed experts know about the game beyond what is shown on Foxtel or ESPN.

Seeing as I was there, and this is the one article to focus on the game, I'll take a closer look:

http://www.theage.com.au/sport/football/how-friday-nights-fixed-match-unfolded-20130915-2tswp.html

As the final whistle sounded over a patchy pitch in a unregarded corner of outer suburban Melbourne, a nil-all draw seemed a fitting result.

If Burnley is outer suburban Melbourne I wonder what Nino would call Dandenong or Epping?

The game on Friday night was unlikely to linger in the memory, a scrappy match between two sides seemingly so hopeless they were no longer even capable of losing.

Can't dispute that.

But thousands of kilometres away, an international criminal syndicate was counting its winnings after betting up to half a million dollars on the hapless Southern Stars drawing with Richmond in the Victorian Premier League.

And as the players who allegedly fixed the match were getting changed, they had no idea plain-clothed police, sitting alone in cars parked behind the city-end goals, were plotting their arrest.

In the GE Carpark at the Heyington Bridge End, site of many a wrong-doing I would suspect.

There was little in the game that roused the small crowd. Apart from the occasional shout of ''c'mon Southern'' and Richmond's reserves heckling behind the Stars' goal, the small crowd stayed silent. Passing traffic on the Monash Freeway drowned out the occasional shouts of players. An elderly woman with a Richmond scarf sold $2 raffle tickets, and the canteen had a well-stocked bain-marie.

Nice to see Annie get a mention, hopefully he bought a ticket. The loudest calls on the night, in a bit of an indictment really, came from some workmates of Andrew Viola who provided more vocal support for him than anyone else did for either of the two teams combined.

Less than 48 hours after the final whistle, police swooped. Those arrested include players who may have once held aspirations to play first-class football in Europe but whose last match may have been on Kevin Bartlett Reserve.

          How these football journeymen lost their way remains unknown.

Last year, Nicholas McKoy debuted in England for Tamworth in a third-round FA Cup match against English Premier League side Everton at the famous Goodison Park. Even though his club lost, he and his teammates were met with a standing ovation from the Everton fans as they walked from the pitch.

Another Stars' player, suspected of involvement in the match fixing but overseas when arrests were made on Sunday, had previously trialled for Arsenal.

          A the start of the season, Southern Stars coach Zaya Younan was upbeat: ''It would be silly of me to say we 
             want to win the league, although I'd love to win the league.'' On Sunday, he, too, was arrested.


It's interesting that the police would have the media on hand to record the build-up to the bust. What I recall was the man identified in other reports as Reiss Noel was very vocal on the sidelines. For a team with no chance of avoiding relegation, he was taking it very seriously and encouraged every Stars tackle and appealed for every decision from the referee. It was something that stood out even before the subsequent stunning revelations.

Already the debates are raging. There is the line that the club should have suspected something was up when players were offered with only accommodation and local transport costs expected to be covered. If that's the case, surely the FFV should be considered slack in allowing a broke club to sign so many imports (reasonably well-credentialled for "amateurs") during the mid-season transfer window. Even Tom Waterhouse copped a whack, though it is bookmakers in far away lands on internet sites that will be impossible to ever regulate that would be at the heart of this scandal. 

An Incomplete Wrap

So the weekly VPL wrap is a little incomplete, as there is still no resolution on the likely outcome of the abandoned game between Richmond and Green Gully on Friday night. In the era of emails and smart phones, waiting for the FFV to take possession of the referee's report seems somewhat inadequate. Maybe they need the time to work out how to handle the situation, given the current rules are written in shades of grey rather than black and white.

The other Friday night games saw two outcomes of 4-2 scorelines. Oakleigh Cannons went down at home, 2-4 to Hume City. If Miron Bleiberg had a towel, he'd be contemplating throwing it in already, with Oakleigh only sitting above Richmond and Southern Stars on the table. Not good enough considering you could combine and then double those club's wage budgets and still not be close to what Oakleigh pay. Turhan Sumbul was a hat trick hero for Hume, with the ever dangerous Nick Hegarty on the also score sheet once again.

Port Melbourne triumphed 4-2 at home to Southern Stars. Stars let an early lead slip before Port gained the upper hand, and there was no coming back after Andrew Viola was sent-off for two yellow cards in quick succession.

Pascoe Vale and South Melbourne engaged in a 0-0 draw, Paco holding on to claim a point after having Luca Santilli sent-off inside the first ten minutes. After a rocky start to the season, Pascoe Vale have become the new number one plucky little club mixing it with the big boys in the VPL.

The top of the table clash at John Cain Reserve saw Northcote City drop their first points of the season in a 1-1 draw with Bentleigh Greens. The Metropolitan Fire Brigade has been negligent in their duty, as Dean Piemonte is still on fire, notching his seventh goal for the season.

The celebrations for Melbourne Knights continued from the Australian Croatian Association (A.H.D.) Croatian House in Footscray on Saturday night to Knights Stadium in Sunshine on Sunday afternoon. The day after celebrating 60 years of Melbourne Croatia/Knights, the Knights twice came from behind to claim a dramatic 4-3 win over defending champions Dandenong Thunder with a goal from skipper Adam Zilic in stoppage time. Zilic features in the following video on the club's history, a fantastic tribute to a great club.

 

A Weekend Wrap of the VPL

Time for a wrap of the weekend's action in the VPL. Only got to the one game, Richmond v Hume City on Friday night. Can't to any worse than The Football Sack's weekly VPL review that gets linked on the FFV website and it's simple rehashing of the round's results.

So on Friday night, Richmond threw away an early lead (again) to succumb to a seventh successive defeat. The drama for the Eagles had begun early in the week with senior keeper Rani Dowisha departing for South Springvale. An attempt to bring back Stuart Webster to the club was thwarted by the FFV on the grounds that only Griffin McMaster is allowed out of window transfer exemptions. So young Oscar Vonk was thrown into the deep end for his VPL debut.

When he spilled a free-kick from Naum Sekulovski it was Turhan Sumbul who was on hand to equalise, heavily collecting Vonk in the process. Hume took the lead in the fifty-third minute with a great counter attack seeing the ball played out to Ersin Kaya who broke down the right before crossing to an unmarked Jarryd Barnes to simply head the ball into the net.

With eighteen minutes left Richmond conceded another poor goal, a free-kick from Nick Hegarty wide out on the right eluded all those line up at the top of the box and then bouncing and curling in at the far post to make it 3-1 for Hume. A late Richmond rally saw them pull a goal back at the end of regular time, a neat chip over the defence by Sam Gallagher being well met and finished by Kliment Taseski. Richmond then had a couple of chances to snatch an equaliser, substitute Gideon Sweet blazing a shot onto Bastow Oval No.2 with some well placed passing options available, and then Nick Krousoratis volleying a free-kick that fell to him at the far post a little too hard back across goal for Timmy Purcell to be able to meet.

At the same time Bentleigh defeated Melbourne Knights 2-1with David Stirton and Like Sherborn scoring for the home side before Jacob Colosimo pulled a goal back for the Knights. It was not the best performance of the season from title contenders Bentleigh, and the Knights were certainly ruing the chance to grab all the points.

In the final closed doors game of their FFV Tribunal punishment, defending Champions Dandenong Thunder fell to a 0-2 defeat at the hands of Pascoe Vale. The experience and class of Michael Ferrante has lifted the youthful Paco squad, his return from injury leading to the club finally finding it's feet in their first ever season in the top flight. If the traffic on the Dandenong Bypass wasn't already doing it, the Dandenong crowd behind the fence on the way to Eastlink would have been silenced in the tenth minute when Marco Santilli opened the scoring. It was Ferrante who converted a second half penalty, as Pascoe Vale recorded their third win of the season.

A change of coach didn't fully bring about a change in fortunes at Green Gully, who drew 1-1 at home to Port Melbourne. Luke Bowen pounced on the rebound from a Daniel Visevic strike to give the Sharks the lead after twenty-four minutes. In the second-half it was Bowen who was the villain, his handball in the box to block a shot from Matthew Sanders leading to a penalty which was duly converted by Jason Hayne. Not sure if the draw gives the Gully powerbrokers enough to make a conclusion one way or the other on whether the interim appointment of Jeff Fleming as coach will be extended.

Northcote City have gotten off to a flying start in 2013, and made it seven in a row with what would have to be considered a reasonably comprehensive victory over Southern Stars. It was 4-0 in the end, with the in-form Dean Piemonte grabbing two goals. Stars sit only ahead of Richmond on the table, and it remains possible that by the time of their clash on June 22nd neither team may yet have won a game for the season.

I won't go into the final game of the round, South Melbourne defeating Oakleigh Cannons 2-1, as I'm sure South of the Border will give more detail in due course, complete with the Under 21's Match Report by Steve from Broady. The bigger news on Sunday evening will have come from Knights Stadium, where an Extraordinary General Meeting saw Knights members vote not to submit an Expression of Interest in joining the proposed NPLV in 2014.