Thursday 18 October 2018

Sydney Olympic Off-Season – October

It has been a month since our season ended disappointingly in Adelaide at the Semi-Final stage of the NPL National Finals Series. We will just have to make do with the 2018 NSW NPL Minor Premiership-Championship Double.

And now, we settle in for one hell of a long and boring off-season.

Looking ahead at 2019, being Defending Champions next season will certainly bring its own difficulties and challenges. Every season Sydney Olympic is the hunted, no matter who, when and where we are playing, but that will be ratcheted up big time next year, given we will be the Defending Champions.

With that fact in mind, our players will be and already have been, the target of other clubs. Money and all sorts of other promises will be thrown at them, to lure them away from Belmore.

When it comes to recruitment, currently it is all fairly quiet on that front. There are a few rumours and whispers floating around about the possible return to Sydney Olympic of Mitchell Stamatellis, Michael Gaitatzis and others, but nothing has been announced by the Club as of yet, so that is merely wishful thinking for now.

On the departures side of things, it was made public last week, that Max Burgess had left the Club and has decided to take up an offer to play in the a-league with the Wellington Phoenix for the upcoming season. He was outstanding for us in 2018 and fully deserves this opportunity, so good luck to him.

But with our main concern here obviously being Sydney Olympic, the loss of Max Burgess is a heavy blow and will have a huge impact on our ability to defend our Title. It will be a very difficult task to try and replace him.

Onto the Tempe Reserve redevelopment, it is as you were in regards to that issue, with Sydney Olympic and the Inner-West Council remaining locked in negotiations over the future of the project. It’s all pretty hush-hush at the moment, but we should definitely know come the end of 2018 or by early 2019, which way it goes.

Finally, very sad news this month was the passing of ever-present supporter Steve Argyros, if you didn’t know him, you definitely heard him every week. Going to matches next year and not hearing Big Steve is going to take some getting used to. Condolences to his family and friends.

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