Sydney Olympic Off-Season – October

At this time of the year it is always fairly slim pickings for news, especially in a competition where there is no news coverage anyway nor any media attention paid to it. In what is supposed to be Australia’s “2nd Tier”, a “2nd Tier” that has a 6-month off-season.

Anyway, at this point of the off-season squad wise, Sydney Olympic has re-signed the following players for next season:

Paul Henderson, William Angel, Niko Tsattalios, Jason Madonis, Jinya An, Darcy Burgess, George Timotheou, Tom Whiteside, Jake De Marigny, Stephen Athanaseris.

Since the Club announced this a few weeks ago now, they have also added Riley Woodcock, a Left-Back who played for Sydney United last season, Nicola Kuleski, a DM/CM type from Sydney FC’s NPL team and Rafa Jimenez from Spain who has represented Australia at youth level, he is primarily a Centre-Back.

So put them all together and we have 14 players so far for next season, most of them are Midfielders and Defenders.

The Achilles Heel for Sydney Olympic clearly has been, and every Sydney Olympic Supporter will tell you, is the lack of goals, the lack of Strikers and Centre-Forwards who can regularly put the ball in the back of the net.

Obviously, 14 players is not going to do it for you as a squad size, especially if you want to be challenging on all fronts.

Hopefully there are still a few announcements to come in terms of signings for 2018 and that a few of those are players who can score goals.

Onto other items of interest:

- First the AGM, no news has been forthcoming for this, maybe the fact we had one last year means they feel there is no need to have one this year? Defeats the purpose of the “Annual” part of the equation, maybe early next year, who knows, we will wait and see I guess.

- Second, the whole Tempe business, it certainly does not look good. Given the lack of any news about this I am going to assume yet another Local Government has put the pen through yet another Sydney Olympic Home Base plan. Other smaller park sides seem to be able to get what they want out of Councils and Governments yet Sydney Olympic cannot for some reason, frustrating.

- And Thirdly, bring back the Souvlakia to Belmore next year (I can’t believe this even needs to be uttered)

Sydney Olympic - Club Records

Over the last few weeks through my own information and thanks to the assistance of several others who have helped by providing additional material, I am close to completing what I think are the Records and Statistics of the Club ie. All-Time Appearances and Goals from our First season in 1958 till today.

I still require Appearances and Goals information from our First 3 Seasons in the NSW 2nd Division - 1958, 1959, 1960 - as well as the 1975, 1976, 1980 NSW 1st Division seasons to complete this task. So if anyone has that info or knows where to get it, that would be great.

Appearances and Goals include League and Cup matches. 

It will surprise no one that Gary Meier comes out on top in the Appearances list, despite not having information for 3 of his seasons and therefore it is incomplete, he has so far amassed 342 Games for the Club, between 1972-1994. Fair to say that if the missing information is added he will have played well over 400 Games for the Club over 20 years, remarkable.

The Top 10 in terms of Appearances at this current time is:
1- Gary Meier - 342 Games (1972-1994)
2- Gary Phillips - 312 Games (1982-1993)
3- David Barrett - 281 Games (1988-1997)
4- Peter Raskopoulos - 259 Games (1977-1979 & 1981-1989)
5- Tony Spyridakos - 251 Games (1982-1990/91 & 1992/93-1995)
6- Brian Smith - 212 Games (1962-1972)
7- Elias Augerinos - 210 Games (1991-2001/02 & 2003/04)
8- Ante Juric - 210 Games (1994/95 & 1997-2004)
9- *Paul Henderson - 198 Games (2010-)
10- Robert Ironside - 193 Games (1988-1994 & 1995/96)

In terms of Top Scorers the Top 10 is currently as follows:
1- Brian Smith - 72 Goals (1962-1972)
2- Pablo Cardozo - 68 Goals (1990-1993, 1998-2001 & 2003/04)
3- David Harding - 61 Goals (1969-1975)
4- Marshall Soper - 60 Goals (1983-1989)
5- Norman Tome - 60 Goals (1993-2000)
6- Abbas Saad - 56 Goals (1987-1992, 1993/94 & 1996/97)
7- Mark Koussas - 53 Goals (1979-1985)
8- Robert Ironside - 44 Goals (1988-1994 & 1995/96)
9- Peter Katholos - 42 Goals (1981-1986 & 1991-1993)
10- Chris Kalantzis - 40 Goals (1983-1987 & 1997-2000)

Obviously all this is subject to change should I come across more information, particularly from the missing seasons.