The 2017 NPLV Grand Final Soccer Marathon

One of the great Melbourne institutions is the HSV7 (7 Network) Grand Final Footy Marathon. Late night on Grand Final Eve the station would run highlights or full games of previous VFL/AFL Grand Finals all through the night, leading in to the coverage of the Under 19's then Reserves Grand Finals leading up to the main event.

This year I start what will hopefully be a new tradition, the NPLV Grand Final Marathon as we build up the big clash between Heidelberg United and Bentleigh Greens at Lakeside Stadium on Sunday. There's all the links to the highlights or full games of  previous VPL/NPLV Grand Finals that I have found so far.

Maybe next year we can find a few more videos to add for the next marathon.

1992 North Geelong v Brunswick Juventus

1995 Altona Magic v Bulleen Lions

2003 Green Gully v Frankston Pines

2005 Green Gully v Heidelberg United

2006 South Melbourne v Altona Magic

2009 Altona Magic v Dandenong Thunder

2010 Green Gully v Richmond

2011 Green Gully v Oakleigh Cannons

2012 Dandenong Thunder v Oakleigh Cannons

2013 Northcote City v Bentleigh Greens

2015 Bentleigh Greens v South Melbourne

2016 South Melbourne v Oakleigh Cannons

Transparency, Or The Lack Thereof

Back after the first week of the NPLV season, the contributor known as Kiss of Death on the South of the Border blog uncovered the fact that Trent Rixon should have served a suspension in the opening round. In light of the revelation in the post from March 17 it is interesting to see how the matter was handled.

If Northcote City did indeed seek clarification of his status from the FFV prior to fielding him in the game against Melbourne Knights and were told he was eligible to play, it is fair enough no action was taken against them. However it should be incumbent of the FFV to be transparent and explain what occurred. Given the player was not on the team sheet the following round, can we assume it was because he was serving the suspension that week?

An explanation should have been given, it is hard to trust an organisation that sweeps things under the carpet.

Speaking of trust, we can't trust people not to cheat in junior football. Every child must have an ID card (with photo) in the hands of the match official before they can take the field. It is strictly NO CARD, NO PLAY.

In the high stakes NPLV, however, the FFV is yet to share with the public the Player Points System information of the competing clubs. A transparent body would provide a list of each the players registered for each club and their individual points values so everyone could see how clubs stood.

We have players clearly listed on FFV documentation as being suspended playing without any apparent sanction. We have a new PPS which we can't check is being fully adhered to. Then we have kids being treated like criminals if their parents/club haven't been up to date with their paperwork. Seems to be the wrong way around to me.

I'd rather let the kids play and be more stringent on the supposed professionals and elite.

The Good and Bad of the NPL Victoria

With the opening round done and dusted it's an opportune time to consider what worked and what didn't as the season got underway.

Good

Crowds, most notably at Olympic Village where more than 3000 witnessed Heidelberg United v South Melbourne. Two clubs with tradition and a strong rivalry. Had the original vision of a zonal NPLV with generic clubs/consortia come to pass, would SE1 v N2 or NW1 v S2 have been able to draw comparable figures?

Bad

Sprinklers coming on during the game and causing an abandonment between Whittlesea Ranges and Kingston City. Even in one of the more modern NPLV venues, things can go wrong and despite the attempts to increase professionalism across the board, we may not have made the great leap forward just quite yet.

Good

Radio commentary on NPLV LiveCast. Solid coverage judging by the opening game. If you can't get to a match, a radio call should suffice. If you really want to watch a match, get to it. Video live streaming games to an audience of 30 or 40 for a match that may only attract a few hundred spectators is counter-productive. Radio is the way to go, I say.

Bad

Suspended player controversy, as revealed by South of the Border. Another black mark against the administration, especially if the club queried the FFV and was told the player was eligible to play.

Good

Both NPL Victoria and NPLV1 leagues getting the full FFV match commissioner treatment of team sheets posted on twitter as well as live match updates. A few games being filmed and highlights packages hitting the internet rather promptly. Excellent.

Bad

Only 40 NPL badges for shirts being allocated to each club. That covers a senior home kit and a senior away kit. What about the junior teams? Are they not NPL elite as well?

Good

After getting the Alex Ferguson hair-dryer treatment from the FFA, the FFV are promoting the League as if their life depended on it. Which is a nice change. Maybe now we can get somewhere if they and the clubs start pulling in the same direction.

Bad

Player Points System transparency. How is it being managed? With a suspensions shambles already arising, how can we be sure teams are meeting the PPS Cap? Should there be a list of players and their points value open to all? Maybe people can keep tabs on things through that? At the moment the whole thing seems to be shrouded in secrecy.

Good

It's nice to be able to go to see some local football again. Melbourne Knights v Northcote City was an exciting game, with a cracking goal from Marino Gasparis. Plenty of goals at Richmond v Box Hill United, even if they didn't go the right way from my perspective. Good crowd at the Veneto Club for Bulleen Lions v Moreland Zebras, with a couple of tidy goals for the home side.

And We're Underway

The inaugural NPLV1 season is underway with South Melbourne recording a 3-0 win against Heidelberg United at Olympic Village in the opening fixture. A big crowd was in attendance, but I chose to listen to the game on the NPL Vic Live radio commentary through Live Cast.

Host Teo Pellizzeri did the play-by-play commentary, and put in a solid, professional performance. At times it became a bit formulaic, as he'd first ask Adem Barolli, and then Ryan McGee for an opinion. Often there was no need for the second opinion, and by the time the Scot got to talk he was often left with little to do but back up what had just been said. With a bit of hash-tag pimping going on, things did seem repetitive at times.

Early crosses to Shaun Moran on the touchline seemed to have a few technical difficulties, with his volume quite low and hard to hear, but they were later resolved. There was a weird exchange after a goal where Pellizzeri asked Moran about the coaches reactions. Moran seemed a bit taken by surprise, and informed us that George Katsakis was still standing up and then walking around. I'm glad he was not paralyzed at the shock of seeing his side fall behind.

The lack of excitement in the game, and Survivor starting, saw me pay less attention to the second half. The Heidelberg fan who runs up and down in time with play got a belated mention. I know Griffin McMaster is going to be part of their team, but coupled with what I suppose was a bit of A-League Fanboyism, they seemed to over-rate him a tad.

Some of the NPLV hype has started to grate, the way in which the wheel seems to have been re-invented. It's the same teams as the VPL would have had with two added country bumpkin teams. Not really akin to landing a man on the moon or anything like that. All the hype shows is that the FFV seem to be putting in a bit more of an effort, possibly after years of tanking.

Was also bemused by a tweet from the official NPL Victoria account which read "Congratulations to @smfc midfielder Mathew Theodore on scoring the first ever #NPLVIC goal!" Given they wouldn't know who scored the first ever League goal in 1909, the first ever District League goal in 1927, the first ever State League goal in 1958 or the first Premier League goal in 1991, are they celebrating actual history or the creation of their own Year Zero?

The cynic in me asks did any of the bigwigs brought in for the NPL Victoria launch attend the game? How about the former South President who is now the Bergers No.1 ticket holder?

It's good to have local football back, and I am looking forward to getting to Knights Stadium tomorrow night for the clash between Melbourne Knights and Northcote City. Two good teams, great people at both clubs to catch up with, that is what it's all about.

Long Time, No Blog

Been busy, and too many topics to choose from that I didn't know how to get back into the swing of things.

http://video.news.ninemsn.com.au/?uuid=2682493707001

When I say busy, things at work became more chaotic when the warehouse I delivered from went up in flames. Some may recognise former NSL Championship-winning South Melbourne goalkeeper Bruce Maclaren in the video link above.

Spent some time at Officeworks on the self-serve photocopiers, copying and reducing pages from the Sydney Soccer World newspaper from A3 to A4 so that I could scan them at home. This produced the following documents:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n5iqoyzuv75jzf9/SoccerWorld1969.pdf

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3w4wmagu9zbx4fs/SoccerWorld1970.pdf

They are the NSW First and Second Division match reports and results pages, as well as the interstate results pages from Soccer World in 1969 and 1970. The NSW First Division all-in-one results, line-ups and match summary pages are brilliant, and I don't think those years are fully covered on OzFootball yet. Some great names to be found. For local content, the Cook's Tour of Melbourne column is also among the scans taken.

Scanning the full papers is a task too big for me, and I mainly focus on results because I want to complete the gaps in this document I started a few years ago:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cx2j0mqd5mn1zmd/VictorianFootballStatisticalHistory.2.pub

There was more than a bit happening on the current football front. The Socceroos reached a bit of a low, and Holger Osieck got the chop. Melbourne Knights and South Melbourne drew nearly 5,000 people to their clash in the VPL Finals, a figure unlikely to be reached when Bentleigh Greens and Northcote City meet in the Grand Final at AAMI Park at the ridiculous kick-off time of 1.00 pm this Saturday.

On the NPLV front, the injunction sought by the 60-odd co-signatory clubs will go before the Supreme Court. It's hard to see the FFV's vision up and running next year if this drags on any longer.

The A-League is back up and running, with the Melbourne Derby drawing a big crowd that witnessed a game that didn't live up to the hype. This also means Goal! Weekly is back in print, so get to a newsagent and read something better than this blog.

Consistently Inconsistent

Let's start with a look at various abandoned games (mainly VPL, but one Provisional Three North West) in recent years and how the FFV handled the situations:

2006

Friday March 17 Richmond 0 Heidelberg United 2
Abandoned after 33 minutes, floodlight failure.
Replay from 33rd minute
Wednesday April 5 Richmond 0 Heidelberg United 3

2008

Saturday July 26 Altona Magic 1 Coburg United 0
Abandoned at half-time, floodlight failure
Full replay
Wednesday August 20 Altona Magic 4 Coburg United 1

Wednesday August 20 Melbourne Knights 0 Oakleigh Cannons 0
Abandoned after 18 minutes, floodlight failure.
Full replay
Tuesday August 26 Melbourne Knights 1 Oakleigh Cannons 0

2009

Saturday June 13 Dandenong Thunder 0 Green Gully 0
Abandoned at half-time
Full replay
Sunday July 5 Dandenong Thunder 5 Green Gully 1

2010

Sunday April 11 South Melbourne 1 Heidelberg United 1
Abandoned after 91 minutes, pitch invasion.
Match awarded 3-0 to Heidelberg United
Upon appeal, 1-1 score reinstated and South Melbourne deducted 6 points

Saturday June 15 Watsonia Heights 3 Upfield 0
Abandoned 70th minute, serious injury to Upfield player.
Full replay
Tuesday August 24 Watsonia Heights 1 Upfield 1

Saturday July 25 Dandenong Thunder 1 Northcote City 4
Abandoned after 58 minutes, floodlight failure.
Full replay
Wednesday August 18 Dandenong Thunder 1 Northcote City 4

2011

Saturday May 14 Dandenong Thunder 0 Melbourne Knights 0
Abandoned after 20 minutes, floodlight failure.
Full replay
Saturday July 23 Dandenong Thunder 3 Melbourne Knights 1

2013

Friday May 31 Richmond 1 Green Gully 2
Abandoned after 71 minutes, waterlogged pitch/lightening
Replay from 71st minute
Wednesday June 19

No wonder the FFV have people calling them corrupt on their Facebook pages. Combined with the anomalies/inconsistencies with the outside of transfer window goalkeeper signing rule, the discretionary decisions of the FFV are usually highly questionable. Given the decision regarding the Richmond v Green Gully game yesterday, Watsonia Heights in 2010 can feel highly aggrieved. 3-0 up, twenty minutes to go, an opposition player suffers a back injury and can't be moved leading to the game being abandoned. Yet they has to come back and start from scratch.

The greatest injustice was inflicted upon Northcote City that same year. 4-1 up at Dandenong when the lights went out, they didn't get a resumption of play from the 58th minute either. Instead indecision from the FFV and a drawn out appeal saw them finally have to squeeze in a full replay in midweek (which ended up 4-1 again) before the final round of the season. Not ideal playing three games in a week when they were chasing a finals spot.

Hang your head in shame FFV. Full replays for all games abandoned prior to 70 minutes like it used to be, or all abandoned games to be restarted from the minute they came to a halt. One or the other, it's not hard.

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.