By Greg Blake
It was the most antI-climactic season-decider in Alexander club history. Yet the outcome of a game never played capped an often overlooked and largely under-appreciated championship-winning season in 2004. Coming off the club’s worst-finish in fourty-two years, it was a revival of significance, under a man whose career coaching record at Heidelberg United is in the elite category, yet rarely acknowledged.
The coach was Phil Stubbins. The game was the final round of the 2004 Victorian State League Division One season and Alexander had to beat rock-bottom Fitzroy City to ensure the championship and promotion back into Victoria’s Premier League, the state’s elite competition.
These days known as FC Melbourne Srbija, back in 2004 the ailing Fitzroy City had started to fracture six weeks into the season and had lost 13 straight games – including a demoralising 16-0 capitulation against Richmond – coming into their final round appointment at Olympic Village. It was all a bit much. Fitzroy United forfeited. Heidelberg was rewarded with that last Sunday of the season off and an unpressured 3-0 ‘victory’ to clinch the division one title.
Fitzroy’s decision also crushed the hopes of eventual runner-up, Sunshine Georgies and third-placed Northcote City. Northcote lost just a single game for the season, were unbeaten for 14 weeks and boasted the best goal difference of the top three. Sunshine Georgies were locked in a marvellous battle with Alexander for top spot all season long. Sunshine led Alexander by four points with five rounds remaining in the campaign. All three clubs could have clinched it in the final game of the season.
“To be honest , I’m not sure when it was that I knew they had forfeited and we’d won the title,” reflected Stubbins, a full two decades later. “It’s hard to remember too much about the day, but I do know it was a great year. Going back to this club and getting them promoted, it was really a great year”.
By 2004 the transition away from traditional print media was in full swing and the era of recording and then posting online of pretty much everything, all the time and on multiple platforms was still a few years away, thus researching the period is tough going . But this single on-the-spot written piece about Heidelberg’s unusual title-winning day I believe comes from the local newspaper of the time.
David Turner wrote: “The sun was shining, folk music blared from speakers in the stands, a huge crowd of soccer devotees flocked to Olympic Village and the lambs turned slowly and invitingly on the spit’s ready for the championship feast.
All that was missing was an opposition team. With one game remaining. Heidelberg United was on top of the State League 1 ladder, needing a win to guarantee it the championship and promotion to the Victorian Premier League next season.
Unfortunately, bottom side Fitzroy City forfeited the match leaving the Bergers with a 3-0 win and the title. “We were disappointed to win it that way but, at the end of the day, we’re over the line,” Heidelberg coach Phil Stubbins said.
With the new look national league still in limbo, the Premier League will be the major competition in Victoria and Stubbins said the club is excited at the prospect of taking on the very best teams and players.”We’ve got the chance to re-establish ourselves at the forefront of Victorian soccer,” he said.
Heidelberg’s championship win has been no walk in the park with injuries causing headaches for Stubbins on a weekly basis. “It’s been a huge relief to get over the line,” he said.”We’ve never had the same team on the park two weeks running.It’s (the championship win) been testament to the boys’ character.”
“The gap (between Division 1 and Premier League) is huge and it’s going to be even tougher in that there’s no national league. “And you’ve got the big four- Preston Lions, Heidelberg, South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights- all involved again.”
Stubbins has been an unofficial roving ambassador for Heidelberg United for as long as I can remember. Even a decade in Adelaide hasn’t diminished any of the genuine affection he exhudes for Alexander, where he was a key player in both the 1988 and 1990 championship successes and the 93/94 national cup win.
His joy in speaking about his near 300 club games as player then coach is infectious.”I’ve made some fantastic friends at the club. When we see each other it’s like nothing has changed”, he says “There’s something special about Heidelberg.that sets it apart. Once you’ve been part of it, you always feel part of it.”
“I can say for sure that even after all these years Heidelberg United is the club closest to my heart”.
And that was the case back in late 2003, when the then club president, Elias Deliyannis, approached him about coming back to Olympic Village as senior coach for 2004. It was not the most enticing proposition, Heidelberg having crashed out of the Premier League in 2002 and finished a disappointing third in State One the following season.
That was the club’s worst finish since 1962, when Alexander ended that season fourth in the then Metropolitan League One North-West. And missing promotion in 2003 meant Alexander were facing their second consecutive season out of the top flight for the first time in four decades.
According to Stubbins, Deliyannis – who spent nearly a decade as Alexander president and during some particularly tumultuous times – was pretty candid about the task at hand. Heidelberg United needed rescuing. “He (Delyiannis) was terrific and really supportive all the way along,” he explained. “It was a plea from the club and to be honest I was thrilled to be asked”.
“I saw it as a terrific challenge and an opportunity”, he said. “It wasn’t a case of if it does work out because I had aspirations of doing really well. Elias Deliyannis was a great president. He made contact, I listened to his proposition and I said yes without any hesitation.”
Stubbins was on a hiding to nothing. He had plenty of options, having already led Westvale Olympic to a succession of championships on the journey from fourth division and into Victoria’s Premier League in the mid to late 1990’s. It was a similar story with the fledgling Whittsea Stallions, with promotion, a first division title and into Premier League finals between 2000 and 2003.
He’d also successfully secured his Australasian PGA Tour card in 1993 and 1994, leading the field at qualifying school in 1993 by shooting a five under par 68 on the opening day. But the Deliyannis appeal to help rebuild Alexander was compelling enough to get Stubbins over the line
“I love the club, so to get the opportunity to coach the club was a great feeling,” recalled Stubbins. “Like I said, I didn’t hesitate.” Stubbins’ memories of the nuances of a season played two decades ago are hazy, but “you do remember moments”, he explained.
“Yusuf Yusuf, for example. This kid just comes along and scores at Port Melbourne and you think wow,” says Stubbins. The goal came on opening weekend of 2004, Alexander coming away from the Port game with a 1-1 draw and commencing a seven game undefeated streak to start the campaign.
The Warriors won their next six straight, including winning a 3-2 thriller at home to Western Suburbs thanks to a Billy Damianos hat-trick. “Such a well respected player, he was terrific for us”, said Stubbins of Damianos’ contribution in the championship run.
Sunshine Georgies were also undeafeated in their opening seven games of the year when they traveled to Olympic Village to take on the Warriors in round eight. In their first big test of 2004 Heidelberg lost both the game – going down 0-2 – and league leadership.
With eventual season top scorer, Joe Tricarico, grabbing two goals and Robbie Liparotti the third in a 3-1 win at Richmond the following weekend, the Warriors regained some traction and top spot as Sunshine was held to 1-1 by the Sharks.
“Rob Liparotti was an inspiration”, says Stubbins. “In a team of leaders he was the stand-out. A great team leader.” And the coach is still lavish in his praise of Joe Tricarico. “A great player, a really great player. He was a match winner, an instinctive goalscorer”.
Heidelberg next test ended scoreless at home against Northcote, but Sunshine Georgies stumbled for the first time in 2004 on the same weekend, losing 0-2 at Altona East Pheonix. Evan Papadopoulos and Yusuf Yusuf did the damage in a 2-1 win at Fitzroy City in round eleven and at the half way point of the campaign Heidelberg had opened up a two point lead over Sunshine Georgies and a commanding eight point gap over Northcote City.
Stubbins recalled how well the team had bonded in just half a season. “It was terrific, really”, he explains. “The players had completely bought into the idea of bringing the club back up to its rightful place in the game. They even worked together cleaning out what these days are the the changing rooms, which was all full of junk. We needed a meeting place and the boys got together and made one”.
When I was working on the club’s sixtieth birthday documentary, I recall Yusuf Yusuf telling a wonderful story about how Heidelberg United brings people together better than most “I remember I got my first car by a Heidelberg supporter”, he said. “Because I used to walk after training, because I lived just around the corner. And he used to see me carpooling with some of my teammates”.
“And one day he’s like, Yusuf, you walk all the time. You don’t have a car? I’m like, no, I don’t. And he’s like, OK, come. He gave me his address. He goes, come to my house. I went to his house. And his name was Bill. I went to his house and he gave me a Toyota Corolla. Old car, but still got me from A to B. Yeah, so that’s the kind of love they have for you. Once you put on the yellow and black shirt, you just become part of them”.
Evan Papadopoulos scored goals in three successive games and Tricarico bagged a pair to beat Thomastown 2-0 in round fourteen before injury problems became an injury crisis and the Warriors went six games with just one victory. At the same time Northcote and Sunshine continued winning and made up ground on the ladder.
Alexander lost for just the second time in round fifteen, albeit narrowly, in a single goal game at also-rans North Coburg. They drew the next three, against Westvale, Dandenong Thunder and it took a couple of goals from Papadopoulos to save a 2-2 game against Western Suburbs.
“I remember we had some injuries towards the end of the season, but this group were galvanized and we had a great culture and there was harmony in the dressing room,” says Stubbins. “We’d come this far but there was a great spirit and I was still confident”
The next three games would shape the season. In rounds 19, 20 and 21 Alexander faced off against the three teams immediately below them on the ladder, starting with a trip to Sunshine Georgies. Albert Gjuni’s only goal of the season was priceless in a 1-0 victory. Robert Murone followed suit a week later, scoring his only goal of the campaign to beat fast-finshing Richmond 1-0.
Stubbins remembers very clearly probably the key moment of the 2004 season, in the penultimate round of the season. Alexander was trailing by a goal at Northcote until very late in the game, when Tom Karapatsos – with his only goal of the season – snatched a dramatic equaliser to ensure the Warriors would stay top of the ladder going into the final round of the season.
“I jumped off the bench and he ran towards us and just the look in his eyes was unforgettable,” he says. “Tom was terrific for us, so what a moment”. Heidelberg now faced a final round clash at home to ill-fated Fitzroy City with a goal difference advantage over Sunshine Georgies and a game ahead of Northcote City. All three clubs were still live chances until game time on September 12, when we learned that Fitzroy City had declined their invitation to play out the season.
And so, without kicking a ball in anger, Stubbins had lifted Heidelberg to the first division title and back into the Victorian Premier League for the 2005 season. “To go back to the club and win the league and get promoted was a bit special,” he say. “It was an exciting journey with a terrific team. Yeah, it was a great year”.
Again, records of the season are sketchy, but between Stubbins, myself and Nick Rahovitsas here are the squad members of the 2004 championship-winning Heidelberg United team. Apologies if we’ve missed anyone. And in no particular order:
Tony Ouliaris, Leigh Tsoumerkas, Lou Acevski, Yusuf Yusuf, Robt Liparoti, Eric Vassiliadis, Adem Kose, Ivan Vanis, Billy Damianos, Brendan Beni, Steve Mangos, Tim Paton, Albert Gjuni, Evan Papadopoulos, Tom Karapatsos, Joe Tricarico, Theo Petidis, Jason Dimozantos, Ivan Jolic, Robert Murone. Coach: Phil Stubbins
Footnote: Stubbins led the team into a 2005 Premier League competition as strong as it had been for twenty years following the return of the two Melbourne-based NSL clubs following the final season of the original national competition. Despite the challenge, the Warriors made the 2005 grand final and Stubbins was voted Victorian Coach of the Year.
Stubbins and Heidelberg oddly parted company midway through the 2006 season. The Warriors’ were in the top five and had lost just one of their previous eight games when Stubbins departed. He left with a club coaching record which is outstanding by any measure. Only current boss, John Anastasiadis, has a better winning percentage of any senior coaches since the early 1960’s.
Stubbins – whose record over 66 games stands at 33-22-10 – winning percentage stands fourth best on the list of the 30 senior coaches who have been in charge of Alexander for ten games or more since 1960. Here are the top dozen:
1 – Michael Triantafylidis 93.1%
2 – Tasos Petrides 90.9%
3 – John Anastasiadis 68.5%
4 – PHIL STUBBINS 67.7%
5 – Kon Pappas 67.6%
6 – Dusan Brnovic 66.7%
7 – Jack Reilly 66.1%
8 – Jim Pyrgolios 65.6%
9 – Jim Rooney 64.6%
10 – George Katsakis 64.5%
11 – Len McKendry 64.2%
12 – Brian Garvey 63.4%
