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A-League Blog: Welcome to the Stockade

Citizen Journalists

Citizen Journalists

Written on Friday, 13 August 2010 15:32

Sean Walsh blogs on the Melbourne Victory for BackPageLead. Click here if you want to join our blogging team.

Finally the day is here. On Saturday night a full house will attend AAMI Park for Melbourne Victory's Housewarming party. Victory fans are delighted to be at the forefront of soccer's resurgence in this country and will show it by filling the showpiece stadium.

It will be great to play on a home pitch where the ball can be passed and controlled along the ground. Sydney couldn't be with us for the event so the invite was instead sent to Perth Glory, a club whose passionate support may come to rival Victory's in the future.

More on the game later. First we need to get this name sorted out. AAMI Park is great for the bottom line but is not something the fans are likely to embrace, especially with other AAMI venues around. So we need a name for our home. We could go by location, either Swan Street or The Yarra would suffice. However to be peculiarly Victory I'd venture a little further. Since the club's beginning Victory fans have embraced a connection to the southern cross flag, much to the FFA's Big Brother like chagrin. So my suggestion is to reflect this history. Victory Fans welcome to the grand opening of The Stockade.

In conjunction with this announcment I'd like the fans to also come up with either soulful dirge or a joyful song to be sung loud and proud at the commencment of proceedings. If we go with The Stockade as a home we could also have The Ballad of Eureka, Beneath the Southern Cross or Under the Southern Cross I Stand (for a little more check out ozsportsnut.blogspot.com). For the joy factor we could speak to West Ham and borrow "Forever Blowing Bubbles". Please reply with any other suggestions.

Back to matters more pressing. Perth have some quality players all over the park and will be a tough proposition. I missed Robbie Fowler's visit with the Fury last year so am eager to see his class in the flesh. Hopefully we can expose the fragility the Fury found in Velaphi's makeup. It will be a tough game and their height will cause us problems at set pieces. There'll be goals in this one and the Victory need Dugandzic and Pondlejak to step up again and produce (along with Hernandez and Celeski) that little bit of class that leads to goals. Hopefully no more brain fades from Muscat or Berger will help us emerge from the game as 2-1 winners.

I'll be sitting over on the West Side enjoying the atmosphere provided by the best fans in the league.

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