Official South Melbourne Hellas thread 🔵⚪

[Monoethnic Social Club]

There are too many matches in a short period of time between 6th-12th May. Plus you do not want to risk a potential semi final appearance just to beat George Cross.

This highlights again we are 3-4 quality players short to really balance these 2 competitions.

I dont think we are short these 3-4 players, just that we got our recruiting of cover players wrong this year....

 

[southmelb]

The Bergers game is a write off, its on the 8th of May, we play on the 6th and 9th. The best you may see is winning the first 2 matches and leaving our scrubs to play the 3rd.

I suspect with flights and accomodation booked once we leave nobody is coming back until the 3 games are done.

Its hard to say. I think what killed us in Fiji is we had the main guys here for Preston and had to send everyone else for the game the day after. The club would have been concerned that our backups could lose all 4 games, so we got forced into a situation where everyone had to go.

This time i think we can leave about 4-5 back but it will be the Singh and backup keeper types, nothing that will get us close to getting an npl result. Its more about having a few stronger bodies kept behind, we cant play those kids at the village and not expect to lose potentially by 10. Unlike Oakleigh who prefer not to have the ball and play on the counter. We cant expose all of them to heidelberg.

From those who went to Fiji im leaving behind Pope, Singh, Inglese, one of charlston/gumby and perhaps one of Bonada/swibel. All this in the name of damage limitation more than anything.

 

[Monoethnic Social Club]

The Bergers game is a write off, its on the 8th of May, we play on the 6th and 9th. The best you may see is winning the first 2 matches and leaving our scrubs to play the 3rd.

I suspect with flights and accomodation booked once we leave nobody is coming back until the 3 games are done.

Its hard to say. I think what killed us in Fiji is we had the main guys here for Preston and had to send everyone else for the game the day after. The club would have been concerned that our backups could lose all 4 games, so we got forced into a situation where everyone had to go.

This time i think we can leave about 4-5 back but it will be the Singh and backup keeper types, nothing that will get us close to getting an npl result. Its more about having a few stronger bodies kept behind, we cant play those kids at the village and not expect to lose potentially by 10. Unlike Oakleigh who prefer not to have the ball and play on the counter. We cant expose all of them to heidelberg.

From those who went to Fiji im leaving behind Pope, Singh, Inglese, one of charlston/gumby and perhaps one of Bonada/swibel. All this in the name of damage limitation more than anything.

Players and coaches have been flying to these hard to get to places for the past 3 months and you think they are going to stay in Auckland when there are usually 4-6 flights per day? You can write off the Bergers game if you wish, I wont and I dont think Sinisa will either.

 

[southmelb]

It wont be possible, we play on the 9th in Auckland which will be a must win, so the bergers game on the 8th will be a write off.

Unless the plan is to fly a bunch back after the Auckland match and look to play a much weaker team in the 2nd Auckland game. Its too many games, whoever plays Auckland on the 6th is not playing Bergers 2 days later.

May be a tiny bit of wiggle room for the George Cross game.

Its actually a joke we cant get one of these games moved to the catch up round.

 

[SMFC1959]

Given we are playing Auckland first on May 6th and South Island on May 9th, we are effectively playing the two best teams with the Heidelberg match falling in between. The focus will be on the three Leaders Group matches.

This time i think we can leave about 4-5 back but it will be the Singh and backup keeper types, nothing that will get us close to getting an npl result. Its more about having a few stronger bodies kept behind, we cant play those kids at the village and not expect to lose potentially by 10. Unlike Oakleigh who prefer not to have the ball and play on the counter. We cant expose all of them to heidelberg.

From those who went to Fiji im leaving behind Pope, Singh, Inglese, one of charlston/gumby and perhaps one of Bonada/swibel. All this in the name of damage limitation more than anything.

That's a good outline of what will likely occur. The approach to the Heidelberg match will need to be similar to that taken against Oakleigh - damage control and limit the number of goals conceded. What we do not want is a cricket score against us at Olympic Village. Even with the strongest starting XI against Heidelberg, there are no guarantees.

I still think with a couple of decent reserve players we could defeat George Cross. That would be a bonus in the May month madness.

 

[SMFC1959]

Its hard to say. I think what killed us in Fiji is we had the main guys here for Preston and had to send everyone else for the game the day after. The club would have been concerned that our backups could lose all 4 games, so we got forced into a situation where everyone had to go.

If we had at least 3-4 first team players against Auckland, we would have held on for a draw at a minimum, if not held out for a win. It just happened that we needed to face Preston the day before. If that were the case, we would not have only had 2 outfield players on the bench and left the coach without options to bring on fresh legs in that second half. Plus we would have avoided getting into trouble with the OFC about the lack of bench players.