Sydney Olympic Off-Season Blog #5 – January

Well we are now into 2017 (can you believe it) and hopefully everybody has had a nice and relaxing Christmas/New Year period and are ready for what hopefully will be a big season for Sydney Olympic, as we are now only a couple of months away from the 2017 season starting.

Firstly, onto one of the great bugbears of Sydney Olympic Supporters, the lack of communication from the club, whether it be the website or on outlets like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, there simply is not enough engagement with the supporters, who want to know what the latest is with the team and want to know what is going on generally.

I understand the need for a break over the recent Christmas/New Year period, especially since the Club does not operate in a full time capacity, but even still, the lack of presence by the Club during the last month and more generally over the past 12 months is disappointing.

Holidays or not, there should have been some form of news or message put out by the Club over these past 3 weeks. Also get someone to fill the job who firstly knows at least the basic history of the Club and what we’re all about. It is not that complicated surely.

The word around the traps is that the squad is taking shape and the players have taken to the new ideas of new coach Jaime Monroy, the environment in and around training seems to be a good one.

The squad at this stage to my knowledge seems to be:

- Paul Henderson, Eoin Montford, Mitch Stamatellis, Jake de Marigny, Niko Tsattalios

- Will Angel, Howard Fondyke, Jason Madonis, Yianni Spyrakis, Peter Makrillos, Darcy Burgess, Hagi Gligor, Paul Katsetis, Nikita Andricopoulos

- Michael Gaitatzis, Evan Patramanis, Max Burgess

I am also lead to believe that there is room for a couple more players and they are on their way.

After last year’s debacle and farcical end to the season, all the Supporters are hoping for a big year for the team and the Club as a whole.

Sad news for the Club and for Australian Football in general was the recent death of former; Supporter, Player, Administrator and President of Sydney Olympic, John Constantine, a Giant figure for our Great Club.

John Constantine also held the position of President at the NSW Soccer Federation and at the Australian Soccer Federation.

Once again condolences to Mr. Constantine’s family and friends.

Finally some news of our first pre-season match of 2017, which will be on Saturday Night, January 21, at Valentine Sports Park against the Bonnyrigg White Eagles, Kick-Off is set for 6pm.