Season Review - Blacktown Spartans 1-0 Sydney Olympic

News from midweek was that we were stripped of 3 points for fielding an ineligible player in our win over Wollongong 2 weeks ago, essentially destroying our season. It seems to have been a real blow to the morale of the team, a blow that it could not overcome.

So onto our last match of the year, there was really not much to report, you could sense that all the air had been let out of the season, the players were flat. That’s not to say that the players didn’t try, but there was a sense of resignation that there was not much to play for and it was not really a surprise to see us go down and end the season with a whimper, after it was looking like we had turned the corner during the last 6 weeks.

Overall for the expectations of Sydney Olympic, the 2016 season has been an un-mitigated disaster. A failure of epic proportions and most supporters saw it coming last November.

2013 need not be spoken about at length, but when Lee and Zorbas came in they had to sift through the rubble yet still we managed 8 wins and comfortably avoided relegation. In 2014 the team saw steady improvement, 10 wins, a 4^th placed finish and a Grand Final appearance. In 2015 we had 13 wins, another 4^th placed finish but a poor exit in the Finals, in both years we experienced decent Cup runs.

We have gone backwards in 2016, instability at Board level saw that uncertainty last the entire 2015 off-season which meant no heed was being paid to the needs of the team for the up-coming season, as a result we lost the services of 10 players. People like, Troy Danaskos, Petar Markovic, Brendan Hooper, Go Shirai, Taiga Soeda, Dimitri Hatzimouratis, Scott Balderson, Yianni Spyrakis, James Andrew and Ryan Keir.

The club responded by signing 3 players, 2 of which Mark CIndric and Chris Triantis offered very little and did not even last half a season, the 3^rd was Mitchell Stamatellis, who arguably was our player of the year and a welcome sight back in the Sydney Olympic shirt.

With that many players not being replaced, it wouldn’t take an Einstein to figure out that we might struggle and struggle we did. We managed to win only 2 of our first 10 matches and dug a massive hole for ourselves. We did manage to turn the season around with a couple of good signings during mid-season and through the emergence of some younger players who all improved as the season progressed, which was one of the few highlights and positives for this season. But unfortunately by then it was too late and it left us too much to do to seriously challenge the top of the ladder. The bungling of yellow cards and not knowing how many certain players were on only added to the circus that was 2016, that bungle put the exclamation point on the season.

Sydney Olympic as a Club, should never have been in the position that it found itself in. We were chasing our tails it seemed during the whole season. I hope big lessons are learned so that it never happens again.

Of course off the park, big questions still remain in a number of areas and they will be talked about all off-season.

Ground Situation -
The relationship between Sydney Olympic and the Bulldogs seems to be at an all-time low, the bullying of the club by the Council backed Bulldogs has led to the club being frozen out of the entire Belmore Sports Ground precinct. Of course when the Bulldogs needed Sydney Olympic to claim millions in Council money they were Sydney Olympic’s best friend, it seems that since now the Bulldogs have gotten what they wanted, they want to on top of that oust Sydney Olympic from Belmore entirely. We could be in a situation where we might need to find an alternate venue for 2017.

There have been no further updates by the Club or Marrickville Council (or whatever name that Council goes by now) regarding the alleged Tempe project. With every passing week it seems like this project will go the way of so many others throughout the years.

Lack of Media -
I’ve been mentioning this for a long time; it is of vital importance for a Club like Sydney Olympic which finds itself in its current predicament. A predicament where there is no exposure or coverage of the League that it plays in, the supposed 2^nd tier of Australia. The Club therefore should take the bull by the horns in this instance and make sure that its website is updated regularly, make sure places like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are always active and updated. The Club is failing to adequately inform the members and supporters on the goings on of the club. This must change.

AGM -
The wait goes on for an Annual General Meeting, it has been a few years since the last one and we have been assured repeatedly that there will be one before the end of 2016, we wait with baited breath.

Over the off-season this blog will do its best to inform and update the Supporters on any news that might be around about the Club.