Sydney Olympic Off-Season – November

We are coming towards the end of November and another month this off-season has come and gone. It has pretty much been “crickets” from the Club when it comes to any news regarding Sydney Olympic, on various fronts.

What we do know thus far, is that the squad has begun pre-season training as of 2 weeks ago. That squad currently consists of:

Paul Henderson, William Angel, Niko Tsattalios, Jason Madonis, Jinya An, Darcy Burgess, George Timotheou, Tom Whiteside, Jake De Marigny, Stephen Athanaseris, Riley Woodcock, Nicola Kuleski, Rafa Jimenez.

As was announced by the Club a couple of weeks ago Radovan Pavicevic will be re-joining the squad as he was re-signed for another season. Hopefully he can have a better and more productive 2018 in the Sydney Olympic Shirt.

Obviously this squad is not the finished product (you’d hope) as there is no way a squad that thin can compete on all fronts, hopefully we see a few more signings over the coming weeks.

The annoyance that is the “Tempe Project” does not seem like going away any time soon, as no one seems to have heard anything official about its current status. All signs point to it no longer happening, but nobody at the Club has been able to clearly state one way or another.

The lack of acknowledgement by the Club in 2017 of the milestone of 60 years existence for Sydney Olympic has also been disappointing (November 28, 1957 for anyone interested). 2017 was as disappointing on the field as it has been off the field.

You may recall that a couple of years ago the Club started a Hall of Fame, which was a fairly good concept, as Sydney Olympic is worthy of having one.

The Hall of Fame events saw the likes of Gary Meier, Peter Katholos, Graham Jennings, Abbas Saad, Ante Juric, Grant Lee, Jim Patikas, Chris Kalantzis, Pablo Cardozo, Nick Carle, Les Murray, Mark Bosnich be inducted.

I am sure that all Sydney Olympic Supporters wish to see this continue and may I suggest going back to the likes of Comino Omeros, Sotiris Patrinos, Brian Smith for the next inductions.

All this type of stuff ties in with the lack of communication by Sydney Olympic and of course the AGM or lack thereof one, where you’d imagine a lot of these questions would be put to the Board and where you would hope to receive some answers.