Semi tuesday sept 8th? Lock it in for 50mm of rain and storms.

Monoethnic Social Club said:

First thing I did when I got home. JPAs goal I only saw the net shake live.... great atmosphere but terrible viewing on the hill, was always the same even NSL days.... And why the fuck did they water it before hand there was mud everywhere...

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THey were trying to water that one tree in the middle worried too many greeks would piss on it...

Monoethnic Social Club said:

There were so many frogs around I thought we were going to get attacked.

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Careful they will make claim to eating them next oops no sorry the French have that title haha

The skops should be ashamed of themselves. It’s disgusting to serve up the slop amenities that they give us. Third world goifti

Monoethnic Social Club said:

BT Connor is fuckin Wembley compared to other NPL grounds.. Dont be fussy.

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You mean the old Wembley before the renovations I hope haha

15th september 50mm rain and storms!

I'd say we should take Saturday very seriously now to secure the home final against Preston as we should be able to play our best team in that elimination final.

Any news on Preston's appeal? If they end up losing the 3 points then all we need is a draw come Saturday to finish 4th

What a night ! What a brilliant win away from home. These are the nights that make following this club so special.

The match lived up to all the expectations of being a memorable night fought out by the two best teams in Victoria. The Hellas faithful showed up in numbers. We fully deserved the win but Preston did have their chances as well.

Looking at the match stats, we literally had the lion's share (pun intended) of possession and shots. We dominated the midfield and really controlled the tempo of the match. The midfield line up of Pasquali and Retre has to be one of the best across the respective NPL competitions around the country. Add Giannakopoulos in there, and we have real quality in those spots. Like many have said, that final touch kept letting us down all night. For some reason, we were missing that killer instinct to kill off the match by converting our numerous goal scoring opportunities.

The players did not stop running all night. They played with high intensity for most of the 90 minutes, and literally asphyxiated the Preston attackers. The press worked well and Preston tried to find ways of scoring through counter-attacks. At one point, Preston was playing passively rather than trying to take up the fight to South.

We need to acknowledge the heart, resilience and character of this team. Down 1-0 away from home in front of a large vocal and passionate home support, they dug deep to keep pushing forward in order to find that equaliser. It took two moments of personal brilliance to get the goals. Yoo's great efforts to shoot at target that led to Painter-Andrews scoring the equaliser, and then the quality of Cocks (witha great assist from Uchida) to shoot from long range and put us ahead.

The defence was close to brilliant last night. Jankovic completely marked Bonada out of the match forcing him to move further deeper away from goal to get the ball and thus nullifying his efforts. Uchida, Yoo, Cocks did not stop running and their quality put Preston under all sorts of pressure. They had no response to their attacking runs.

Preston to their credit are a very good team. They had their chances and have really good players in Tevere and Cuba, Scott and Cianci. We had the best of the first half, whilst Preston dominated the first 15-20 minutes of the second half, whilst we finished off strongly.

The scenes at the end of the match were brilliant. It was a match that we had to win given what was on the line. Nothing beats seeing players, officials and players celebrating as one.

One of the great outcomes of last night was seeing no post-match incidents. South and Preston supporters exited the stadium together and everyone went home safely. That's how football should be and long may it happen.

southmelb said:

Anyone elses legs, back and neck completely wrecked? It was a tough slog behind those goals!

Atmosphere was good, still not sure how one small stand and 2 goal ends can produce almost 7k but lets go with it.

Give me Lakeside anyday.

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Went back to watch parts of the match. It looked pretty packed across most areas around the ground. I would say the crowd was somewhere between 5-6K.

Atmosphere was brilliant. Bruno on the trumpet was great.

Mangia said:

Any news on Preston's appeal? If they end up losing the 3 points then all we need is a draw come Saturday to finish 4th

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Preston did not appeal. The -3 point deduction has now been reflected on Dribl. We just need a point on Saturday to lock in fourth spot to lock in a home Elimination Final against Preston.

That means that in the event we finish 4th on the ladder, and qualify for the NPL Victoria Grand Final, then our schedule would look like this:

Saturday 5th September - NPL Victoria Elimination Final (SMFC v Preston)
Friday 11th September - NPL Victoria Semi Final (Oakleigh v SMFC)
Tuesday 15th September - Australia Cup Semi Final (SMFC v Lions FC)
Saturday 19th September - NPL Victoria Grand Final

Those 14 days could turn our season around into a glorious one.