Liberated South Melbourne eye Australia Cup fairytale against Auckland
2025 has not gone the way South Melbourne planned. But after staring down a season on the brink, the new Dockerty Cup champions will take a liberated approach into their Aus Cup clash with Auckland.
Earlier in 2025, South Melbourne appeared destined to spend the rest of their campaign desperately attempting to avoid the first-ever relegation in their history. But now, under the guidance of interim boss Siniša Cohadzić and as newly crowned Dockery Cup champions, the Victorian giants will head into a round of 16 Australia Cup clash with A-League Men foes Auckland FC with a sense of confidence and liberation.
Currently sitting ninth on the NPL Men’s Victoria table heading into its penultimate round and with finals now a mathematical impossibility, the 2025 campaign won’t go down as one of South’s best. And it shouldn’t, as for a club with the history and resourcing of a club such as this one, anything less than finals football will inevitably be seen as a disappointment. But in the context of the season that they’ve had, where they sat in the relegation zone after 14 rounds, a month on from parting ways with coach Esteban Quintas, what lies in front of them probably would have been considered a best-case scenario back in May.
Not only has the spectre of the drop been avoided, but after an admittedly controversial 2-1 win over Heidelberg in Saturday’s Dockerty Cup final – Heidelberg fans will long contest South’s first goal crossing the line, as well as the suspect disallowment of what would have been a go-ahead goal for Alexander in the second stanza – silverware has been secured for a second-straight year. The first season of the Australian Championship, which South will open at home against Sydney Olympic, is a few months away. And on Wednesday evening, they will face Auckland FC in the last 16 of the Australia Cup, with a chance to claim a second historic cupset in club history.
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“Every game [during the turnaround] was a grand final for us,” Cohadzić told JDL Media following the Dockerty Cup win. “So it actually put us in a good stead for this final: playing under pressure like that every single game.
“You've got to give the credit to the playing group. I mean, I'm here, yes, and I will implement a certain style and a certain football we want to believe in, but the players have to be brave enough to play that way.”
For players such as Marco Janković, being able to claim the Dockerty Cup, a record tenth time South have claimed the historic trophy, represented the culmination of, and a fitting reward for, months of graft that the players had put in to rescue their season.
“There were points of the season where people were making fun of us, a lot of talk about how bad we were and that we're getting relegated,” Janković, who previously scored in a cupset win over the Wellington Phoenix while a member of the Bentleigh Greens, told JDL Media. “I think a lot of people love to see us fail.
“For us to turn it around, the Dockerty Cup is a massive achievement. We beat the two best teams in the league to get here [Avondale 3-1 in the semifinal, Heidelberg 2-1 in the final].
“And I think it shows that we've definitely turned ourselves around, and we've got bigger things to come.”
Now, as far as bigger things, it doesn’t get much bigger in Australian football right now than the task of taking down Auckland.
Entering just their second year of existence, Steve Corica’s side doesn’t have a lot of history to call upon, and none beyond a 4-0 win over the Gold Coast Knights in the round of 32 when it comes to Australia Cup legacy, but what they do have is impressive.
Setting a series of records across their opening weeks of play last A-League Men season, the expansion side ultimately became just the second outfit, joining Western Sydney Wanderers, to win the premiership in their first season.
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And while the Wanderers may have been comprehensively defeated by Heidelberg on Tuesday evening to crash out of the Australia Cup, Cohadzić, even if he’s still optimistic about what’s to come, knows the challenge that awaits his side at Lakeside Stadium on Wednesday evening.
“It's a great challenge to play the premiers,” he said. “Ultimately, we had a good look at them, and hopefully we can come out and challenge them. And you never know, if we have a little bit of luck and a good day, you never know what could happen!”
Yet in a way, the lack of expectation that will accompany South into this game, something that can rarely be said for them at a Victorian level, carries with it its own set of advantages – one of the few a semiprofessional NPLM side can take into a game against any fully professional A-League Men outfit, let alone one with the resourcing of Bill Foley-owned Auckland.
“They're going to go into it being big favourites,” said Janković. “And we've come off a massive game here, and they should be fresh. But we're going to get another red hot crack. We're at home, where we've got our fans behind us. And coming off this, there's going to be a lot of confidence.
“We can play with freedom,” Cohadzić added. “We've got nothing to lose and we can only benefit from that situation and try to win that game of football.”
Header Image Credit: South Melbourne