The A-League starts next weekend. South Melbourne Hellas, as it stands, are not in it.
That surely has to change.
In the two decades since this famous old club was tossed out of Australia’s top division and banished to the state leagues, there have been plenty of words spoken about what it could do for the sport if it were restored. But words are only words; now, we have feelings, sensations and memories, the vivid images to match, and they are all undeniable.
After Saturday night, Australian soccer will never be the same again.
Coach Sinisa Cohadzic said it best after steering the four-time National Soccer League champions to a stirring 4-3 penalty shootout win over Melbourne Victory, just a few moments before a handful of his euphoric players dumped a bucket of orange sports drink over his head.
“What else can I say after this result? Not just the result in itself, but look at the atmosphere, look at the support of this club behind it,” Cohadzic said.
“We’ve really got to be putting a blind eye if we don’t give opportunity to clubs that [have] got a set up like South Melbourne does.
“I really cannot find any excuse not to see this club play in the A-League: support, infrastructure, resources, people are passionate, and there’s people that have history at this club, and that history makes the passion what you’ve seen tonight.”
Well, there’s one obvious reason why South might not get to play in the A-League: the current asking price for a licence fee to participate is believed to be around $15 million, according to sources.
But how much were the scenes at AAMI Park worth to the game? A record sporting crowd for the venue of 29,911, the awesome sight of two sets of fans battling it out in the stands, egging on the two sets of players on the pitch, who thrashed out a contest for the ages.
Even vanquished Victory coach Giovanni Savarese had to tip his cap: “It was a proper Australia Cup, the way it should be.”
Can the ailing A-League afford not to have them in?
That’s the question now – and the pressure is on those in charge, because the evidence speaks for itself, and to look past it is to miss the forest for the trees.
This night was a vision of a new tomorrow that is within reach for the Australian game, a brilliant example of what can happen when its warring tribes – here, “old soccer” and “new football” – are brought together, instead of bickering at one another from afar.
Don’t be mistaken; nobody was singing kumbaya. There was a serious edge to this game.
“As a Greek boy myself, it was insane,” said South’s Thomas Giannakopoulos.
“It felt more like, as bad as this is to say, but Greece versus Melbourne Victory, instead of South Melbourne.”
Many will instinctively rush to call for promotion and relegation to immediately be brought into the A-League after this. That will not and cannot happen, for a multitude of reasons – one of which is that there are not very many clubs like South Melbourne, if any at all. They are special.
This is the club of Ange Postecoglou, Paul Trimboli and John Margaritis and so many other names that might not resonate with the mainstream, but mean so much to those who know them. And that includes the players of today, who carry that legacy on a week-to-week basis in Victoria’s NPL, and know they are standing on the shoulders of giants.
Their proud history was woven into nearly every facet of this night.
“There’s a mural on the wall [at the club] of the past legends … and when you walk through that every morning, I mean, you can’t not help but be invigorated by people who put their life and blood into this club,” said Max Mikkola, the substitute who scored the 117th-minute equaliser which sent Hellas fans into bedlam and set up the penalty shootout that blew their minds.
“This is for the people that we wear black armbands for every second week, the old ones … people who dedicate their lives to South. I don’t think they could have imagined this, let alone me or us boys imagining it.”
The life of an NPL player is not easy, especially at a club aspiring to lift the standards like South Melbourne. They train four to five times a week, and because most players also have jobs, they do so very early in the morning, from around 6.20am, often having to convince themselves to go through it all again each day.
Javier Lopez, South’s veteran goalkeeper and the winner of the Mark Viduka Medal for best afield, is a case in point. The Spaniard followed his partner to Australia seven years ago when her employer relocated her here, and has played with South for the past five seasons. He now has a young daughter, with whom he has sacrificed precious time to travel interstate and overseas for South’s many other commitments.
On Saturday night, he saved the same penalty twice from Victory’s Harrison Sawyer, South’s former captain, after being ordered to face a retake for leaving his line too early. Then, with Victory’s hopes hanging by a thread, their captain Jason Davidson – whose father, Alan, is one of South Melbourne’s greatest ever players – spooned the decisive spot-kick over the crossbar.
This was the biggest crowd he’d ever played in front of. For a man accustomed to squeezing football around work and family, it was a glimpse of another world, one he thought he’d never experience when he failed to make the grade as an elite goalkeeper back home.
“That is so beautiful, to play like that,” Lopez said, the two medals around his neck clanging as he spoke. “You feel like a professional player.”
Indeed, South Melbourne’s squad no longer think of themselves as mere NPL players, and fair enough, too. They are on full-time contracts and play in multiple competitions: the Victorian NPL, but also the Australia Cup, the second-tier Australian Championship, and the OFC Pro League. They travel just as much as the professionals, and play twice as often: the cup final was South’s 55th fixture of the calendar year, which is more than double the number of matches in a regular A-League season.
Add to their busy schedule, now, a berth in the AFC Champions League Two, which they have qualified for by becoming the first team from outside of the A-League to lift the Australia Cup.
How they will manage to fit that in is anyone’s guess, and it remains to be seen whether FIFA and the respective confederations will allow the same club to compete in both Asia and Oceania, which would be unprecedented.
These are good problems to have for South Melbourne, but they can wait for another day.
“Sometimes the reality surpasses even the most beautiful dreams,” Cohadzic said. “Tonight was one of those nights.”
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