Government support only really matters if the government are going to provide financial support. No where in this article does it actual state anything about government money. SM checks a lot of the right boxes, but they are let down by their stadium. If they can secure some funding and commitments to actual renovate and upgrade Lakeside to increase the capacity, then that will make them a real contender. The deal they have with Lakeside is good and all, but it only has a capacity of 7.5k seated, so they really need to secure some plans for expanding the stadium for them to be a real consideration.

The stadium is fine, seated capacity is not total capacity. The view is miles better than Etihad, the seated areas are more than enough to accomadate a growth of season ticket holders and the standing areas allow for cheaper tickets for casual fans.

Agree it is fine for a season or two, but they need plans in place now to expand the stadium. Without solid plans in place now they will never be in consideration.

It was expanded fro Nitro Athletics, can't see why they just couldn't replicate that.

Absolutely it can be done, but what I'm saying is they need those plans in place as part of their bid if they want to be seriously considered. Unfortunately they would not be a preferred bid, so they will need to do absolutely everything in order to be considered.

It will be a very complex task to convert any current inner city football fans to choose them when they already have two choices from a/league ( that most would’ve chosen a team already) a d if they don’t follow a-league they probably already hate south :)

Hard to imagine south will be given a franchise on their own , their best bet is to harness their energy push more towards getting Football fans to demand a second division/timeline for pro rel

I think that the fact that they are already hated is one of the best selling points, as a Victory fan. We want those big derbies.

^ but only hated by npl clubs. I reckon the majority of MV fans (besides the die yards) could not care less. In fact I reckon most run of the mill types don’t even really know they exist or much much about them.

I know it was a decade ago but the friendly between the 2 clubs was a record crowd between an npl/A league non cup matchup. A match that meant nothing got 8,000 people. I think MV fans want this matchup more than the one against City.

The intetest/ hate factor is also huge, did anyone go on souths fb page/ffa cup page etc after the cup exit to hume? Hundreds of comments demonstrating their disgust or delight at the result, the type of stuff you would expect from a Victory or wanderers loss. By contrast the Wollongong Wolves were dumped by a team a division below them and only about 2-3 people bothered to comment on it.

I cant imagine team11 being able to trigger such emotion from fans and non fans alike. 

Lakeside gets a bad wrap because of the athletics track, but its only 6 years old and was built with expansion in mind, with or without souths incolvement it would be absolutely criminal if this venue was permantly used for npl level football only. The place would be rocking in summer, situated on the very vibrant clarendon strip with plenty of eateries and pubs people would flock here to watch summer top flight football.

Yeah but if SM = IN, and they will inevitably bleat on about being Oceania Team Of The Century or whatever, there'll be plenty of people wanting to put them in their place. You just can't buy that sort of history.

http://www.insideworldfootball.com/2018/05/14/violence-rioting-hff-won-wager-paok-vs-aek-cup-final-ends-chaos/

^^ It's a joke.   CALM DOWN.....

Did laugh when I saw the headline this morning though.  Flew in a Spanish ref and it still ended up a shit show.

Greeks.......they're great.

Some choice extracts....

Greek media reported “savage beatings” before the start of the match, poor crowd control,  burning cars (a particular feature of Greek football violence), and numerous fans with head injuries.

Inside the ground, immediately after PAOK took their winning 2-0 lead, the crowd became uncontrollable with AEK fans charging police and the in-gr website describing “the bleachers of the stadium resembling a war zone for five minutes. At the same time, PAOK supporters, instead of celebrating that their team won the cup, decided to start a new circle of clashes with riot police (MAT). That resulted in the firing of at least five flares” directly at the pitch.

Spaniard David Borbalan was picked to referee the game, and some 5,000 officers appointed to try and safeguard the game, a repeat of last year’s final.

The cup final marked an extraordinary a year for Greek football chaos in a country that had already set the bar for political infighting and entrenched factions. FIFA and UEFA have floundered hopelessly in the market, seemingly caught up by their own political requirements or perhaps the naïve belief that commonsense might prevail.

A league match between the teams in March was abandoned after PAOK’s Russian-Greek owner Savvidis entered the pitch bearing a sidearm, to threaten the referee. Both he and the club were sanctioned while the league was briefly suspended amid a warning from FIFA to the Greeks to get their house in order or risk being handed an international ban.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said about this season Greek football is that it is over.

I love finals football.  Passion expressed!

Western Melbourne (Werribee region) > South Melbourne. 

20 years ago....

Last century's news.

No last century, no Ange, no Asian cup.

Ange - the worst record for a Socceroos coach in the last two decades.

A credible showing in Brazil just a few months after taking over a crumbling empire, winning the nations first major international trophy on home soil and somehow getting to another World Cup with probably the WORST SQUAD in the last two decades. When you throw in working for a bunch of morons and fuckwits at FFA land then Ange did ok.

Ange got most of what he wanted from FFA. Sure, a bit of a "difference of opinion" here and there, but he was well resourced to do the job. That's one thing FFA generally does well.

He didn't come up against a bunch of farmers in Oceania, of course his record would be worse with actual competitive matches with a shit squad.

Neither did Verbeek or Osiek.

Verbeek 18 wins, 9 draws, 6 losses, 54.5% win ratio.
Osiek 23 wins, 10 draws, 11 losses, 52.3% win ratio.
Postecoglu 22 wins, 12 draws, 15 losses, 1 walked out on the team, 44.9% win ratio.

Have you got the figures without friendlies?  I really want to know.  I seem to recall Holger doing well in them and Verbeek not giving a toss.

I just counted them up in my head as I checked on the Ozfootball site so these might be slightly wrong knowing my short term memory. :)

Verbeek - 13 wins, 6 draws, 4 losses.
Osieck - 12 wins, 5 draws, 3 losses.  There were a few East Asian Cup games but I haven't included them as they were with a 3rd 11.
Postecoglu - 14 wins, 6 draws, 5 losses.

So 0.565, 0.6 and 0.56 win % respectively. Very even while the former 2 didn't have to face the group of death in 2014 on short notice or the group of death in the Confed cup.

Surprisingly similar in the games that matter.  Osieck also had a short lead in to the away 2011 Asian Cup and took the team to a late loss in the final.  Verbeek's team had to go through more qualification rounds to qualify for both WC and AC than Ange's team and he actually picked up 4 points in the WC.  There are lots of ways at looking at the stats but at best they are useful as an aid in assessing performance.  Anyway I started trolling the SMH supporters that have to go back to last century to find relevance and Ange came up out of that.  :)

He didnt walk out on the team. He left the FFA. 

Semantics.

Arnold 5 wins, 4 draws, 5 losses, 35.7% win ratio.

Was only a fill in.  Of the permanent Socceroos coaches since Rudi Gutendorf only Eddie Thomson has a worse win percentage than Ange.

Ange actually won a trophy though which is all that really matters. 

Ange had 3 things to achieve, save the furniture in brazil in 2014, win the Asian cup, qualify for Russia, done, done and done. His relationship with the ffa deteriorated so be it. 

You SMH people are biting today.

No, he had 4 things to do and walked away from the 4th one.

With good reason.

A reason he refused to share with the football public.

How the fuck can anyone rate Verbeek and Osieck more better than Ange?
Only Ange won the Asian Cup in style with good performances while the others failed playing boring shit football. 
In the world in a group containing Netherlands, Spain, and Chile you would have to have rocks in your head to expect him to get anything out of that with a fairly young squad, without the so called Golden Generation that failed in the Asian Cup with Arnold as manager. And apart from the game against Spain we actually played good and surprised many.
The only negative for Ange was the last qualifying path this world cup coming up which although wasn't great, yet again we qualified.
He's easily the better manager out of Verbeek and Osieck, especially when you consider how he brought in so many youngsters unlike the previous two which had so many of the older experiences guys still playing at a decent level. 

No ones rating them better than Ange but the stats show they were more successful in internationals.

Well I'm glad no one rates them better because clearly the simply is no comparison. 
Ange shits on both of them. Regardless of what the blind stats say. 

South Melbourne bid has run out of steam from the looks. They burst out the blocks. Now at crunch time they have rivals announcing massive government packages, and SMFC fires back "announcing" a politician who has been a supporter for 10 years is, in fact, a supporter.

Focus your energies on the second division boys. When you win promotion I'll be cheering.

I agree with this. Even for themselves I think it would be better to start off in a new second division, that's if the FFA are capable of running a second division. And no I have zero confidence those clowns can pull that off.

They're announcing packages supporting the construction of new stadia... of which SM already has.... (upgrades aside, I haven't been there so wouldn't know). I wouldn't worry about them 'running out of steam' if their supporters here are anything to go by, they're a persistent lot!

The reality is when you already have a stadium, facilities, hundreds of juniors etc you can afford to pace yourself in bid terms.

Team11 are similar to southern expansion, they HAVE to make bold statements. Wollongong are the NSW equivalent of South largely playing it quiet for now, and like South they already have something the start ups dont have.

The South Melb position is simple, if team11 are handed the $200 million+ required fair play to them. South doesnt need to beg for a venue to be built. Even a simple announcement of an extra stand being built at lakeside probably puts it ahead of the pack.

Go back to what i said the other day, if lakeside was in Dandenong this would already be over.

My gut feeling is team11 will not receive the funds required, the ffa will not give South a license not now or ever, expansion in Victoria will be bypassed all together.

SMFC needs to be in the top flight. What's best for SM is they get there in a way that inflicts the least harm on them in the process. To me that means the better bet is to support the second division and wait for pro/rel. To a point I think it quite disingenuous from FFA that SMFC step aside to allow a new national league then get charged upwards of 15 million to rejoin it. 

If Team11 is what they are promising then it's a no brainer. Agreed it's a big if.

When I'm dying of old age and looking back on the history of our game I think SMFC will be the club everyone talks about that did the most to shape the fortunes and structure of our game and bizarrely because of the measures used to exclude them from it. To those who rail against SM from the position of what impact they will have by being allowed in, they need to take stock of what impact they're having as outsiders as well. It is skewing the administration of our game in strange ways, and not just along the lines of ethno centric bias but also on an economic level.

It's often forgotten that the 4 pts we picked up in 2010 was the equivalent of what we picked up in 2006.  Actually, might be worth more because in 2010 we didn't get to play against an Asian country.

For the good of the league and the game in Australia, SM has to be one of the 11th/12th clubs admitted, for many reasons.

1) They will serve as the one real the link between the NSL and the AL, ensuring that Australia's history in domestic football is not totally forgotten. Yes I know AU and PG played in the NSL, but only in the final 2-3 years. But most people who think NSL, think SM.

2) Established fan base, history, trophy cabinet, tradition, etc.

3) Seriously, how can FIFA's Oc club of the 20th century be permanently shut out of the top flight in its own country? Strange. It needs to be in the top flight.

4) Ambition. They have plenty of it.

5) The derbies against MV would be epic. Probably bigger than Victory/City and on par with the Sydney derby in terms of intensity amongst fans. I go to a derby when City is the home team and it feels like MV is the home team because we got more fans at the game.

6) They have the potential to be one of the league's bigger clubs.

7) Say what you like about Lakeside, but they have a good stadium deal with Lakeside, it won't be the cause of SM folding or defending winding up applications.

The FFA have screwed up 3 times in the past, Auckland, Gold Coast and Wellington. Time for common sense to prevail and admit one of Australia's traditional clubs and this part of the world's club of the century.

And I say this all as a Victory fan and member.

And then when they get in, hopefully MV belts the living suitcase out of them in the first few years (yes I know we lost to Heart first up but I'm hopeful).