MELBOURNE, Australia -- As the last of the South Melbourne contingent were departing Olympic Village last Saturday, heading back to the social club at Lakeside Stadium to continue the celebrations after the 2-0 victory over Marconi that secured them the crown as the first Australian Championship winners, a yell rang out. It came from one of the old fellas helping to pack up, the kind of devoted figure who's been quietly helping clubs run for generations, after he had spied a t-shirt that one of the South devotees had donned after the whistle, emblazoned with Hellas is Back.
"Hellas is back?!" he said. "Hellas never left!"
It gets one thinking. Is Hellas back? Indeed, at the end of a campaign that saw some of Australia's most historic clubs return to a national stage in a first-of-its-kind competition, one asks if "old sokkah" is back? Or did South, and the old guard of Australian football alongside them, never really leave to begin with?
In a way, you can really answer in the affirmative to all of the above questions.
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To start with, as the celebratory t-shirts suggested, this did feel like a return to something for South. Back playing games broadcast on SBS (adding to a bit of the nostalgic feel), South Melbourne lifted their first national trophy since the 2000-01 premiership in the National Soccer League (NSL), capping off a tournament in which they won all but one game. As one of only two clubs -- the other, funnily enough, Marconi -- to have competed in every season of the NSL, and winning four titles in its 28 seasons, here was South on the national stage once more and winning trophies.
Not only did this cap a moment that was two decades in the making, but it also completed a remarkable turnaround that saw the club go from flirting with relegation from the Victorian top tier in April -- a fate that ultimately befell their old foes Melbourne Knights -- to appointing club technical director Siniša Cohadzić midseason and going on to win a Dockerty Cup, advancing to the Round of 16 of the Australia Cup, then completing Saturday's triumph. Hellas legend Paul Trimboli mused post-game that at times it felt like one of the worst seasons the club has had in decades, but, because South are South, it still ended with multiple trophies.
"It felt like it was written in the stars a bit," South skipper Marco Jankovic told ESPN.
One of the major goals of the Championship was to combine these points of nostalgia and potential to create new moments to be celebrated, in a competition that felt like it mattered. And while only one side could lift the trophy at the first campaign's end -- and claim the $100,000 in prize money on offer -- there were plenty of other games that spoke to the validity of this concept: APIA and Marconi's mad quarterfinal in which Marconi keeper James Hilton scored the winning penalty in the shootout, Heidelberg rallying to demolish Metrostars after coach Johnny Anastasiadis was taken to hospital, or Wollongong chasing an unlikely 6-0 win over Marconi on the final day of the group stages and ending up falling just short with five.
The eight foundation clubs that are supposed to form the bedrock of the competition mostly held up their end of the bargain, too. With the exception of Sydney United, the other seven led the Championship in attendance -- getting more than 1,000 fans through the gates of their smaller, cheaper-to-operate stadiums in the group stage. Their presence, simultaneously familiar and novel, generated a level of excitement and, daresay, something of a cool factor, given they weren't being forced to hide their non-corporate history or ethnic origins. Absent of mainstream coverage, there was also a willing collaboration between Football Australia, clubs and content creators to leverage social media and maintain a level of authenticity and awareness.
Was the competition perfect? Of course not. As a first-year startup, it benefited from a level of goodwill that will fade in future years. Preventing it from stagnating as the novelty wears off will be a major challenge moving forward for its clubs and Football Australia. But given the best point of contrast for the Championship is the various National Premier League competitions around the country, which could only dream of this level of exposure, attendance and interest, then year one is absolutely something to be built upon, with the potential to be much more if there's the unified will to drive progress among stakeholders.
But really, this doesn't mean "old sokkah" is back. More that it was given a new platform. Because this cohort didn't ever truly leave.
For as far off the radar as most of these clubs fell after their banishment to their state leagues after the death of the NSL, they never stopped operating, fielding sides at a senior or junior level, or serving as hubs for their communities. Just because the rest of us stopped paying attention didn't mean they ceased to exist. And the Championship was able to start only because there was enough inherent strength in the eight foundation sides, and enough people committed to the clubs, both monetarily and in-kind, to ensure they could reach the standards demanded by the federation.
South, for instance, has been one of the biggest voices driving the birth of the second tier. And thanks to a combination of its stature, repeated efforts to secure entry to the A-League, and its hyper-online and hyper-partisan fanbase, it's never left Australian football's consciousness. Certainly, there are plenty who hold little to no affection for the club in their hearts, but being hated is preferable to being ignored.
Now, does this mean we go all in and suggest they'd be ready to field a team in the A-League next year? To meet the costs and expectations of running a fully professional team? Likely not. But nobody's really expecting that, either. Instead, is there a path to that point, perhaps in the not-so-distant future?
Fresh off the Championship triumph, South will take part as one of eight foundation sides of the new OFC Pro League next month; it is a competition that, with generous subsidies from FIFA and reported sponsorship from Saudi Arabia, is claiming full professionalism. If they can pair strong, continued showings in that with consistent success in the Australian Championship -- maybe add a deep Australia Cup run -- maintain their strong women's program (one that could serve as the base for an A-League Women side) and junior pathways, continue to grow their administration, and get fans back in the stands, just how many other boxes do they need to tick? OFC Pro League aside, the same could go for other Championship sides such as Preston, APIA, and Marconi, too.
Simultaneously, the once-significant gap with the A-League is shrinking, less because of the growth of the tiers below it and more as the league and its clubs pursue greater and greater levels of austerity and turn to youth. Put aside the notion that clubs like South Melbourne would be unable to operate in the A-League for the moment -- because it doesn't look like A-League clubs themselves can afford it, either. Western United has been forced into "hibernation" as it fights for survival, with the prospect of strike action looming, and, amid fresh redundancies, there remains radio silence from the A-League administrators about any kind of strategy for growth. Combine this with a growing sense of fatigue among supporters surrounding the concept of newly created expansion entities, and, when the smoke finally clears, who knows what appetite and landscape for expansion, or an interconnection of the pyramid, might be.
Right now, perhaps the biggest virtue that the Championship, South Melbourne, and its other foundation sides have is aspiration. There's a desire to be something more.
Right now, Australian domestic football needs as much of that as it can get.