Image: Graeme Furlong
South Melbourne have comfortably accounted for Hume City with a 3-0 victory at Lakeside Stadium on Sunday to progress to the next round of the NPL Victoria finals.
Goals to Marcus Schroen, Milos Lujic and Leigh Minopoulos sealed the progression, meaning South will now travel to Olympic Village to face fierce rivals Heidelberg United in the semi-finals.
There’s a distinct Hellenic flavour in the NPL semis, as the result today means that Bentleigh Greens will host Oakeleigh Cannons in the other semi-final.
South are a team roaring back to form after now winning four on the trot stretching back to the Round 23 derby win against Melbourne Knights, which includes 11 goals in their last three games, a similar tone to how they started their 2016 campaign.
The result ended the season of Hume City, with the Broadmeadows based outfit also knocked out of the FFA Cup last week by Melbourne Victory, ending their 2016 campaign – one that ultimately didn’t quite reach the heights of 2015 and ended with four straight defeats in both league and cup combined.
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The hosts raced out of the blocks early when Marcus Schroen propelled his side to a fourth minute lead, netting against his old club in the process.
Hume got to work to undo the deficit with Nick Hegarty busy in the middle, but his efforts in putting in numerous crosses and deliveries to the forwards were not paying dividends.
Salt was rubbed into the wound when Milos Lujic again got on the scoresheet this season with a header from close range to beat Chris Oldfield in goal.
Despite the potent attacking lineup of Hume including Theo Markelis, Tom Cahill and Craig Carley, the side struggled to provide them the right service and hence the scorers weren’t troubled.
Kym Harris replaced Cahill at half time in an attempt to change things up for the visitors, but again nothing seemed to be working for Hume.
Instead, Chris Oldfield was called upon to stop south from breaking further ahead, showing his best to deny Matt Foschini, Milos Lujic and Nick Epifano in fairly quick succession in the second half.
His heroics at one end wasn’t enough to inspire his side at the other end, however, as South finally got the third goal which effectively killed off any chances of a comeback.
It was Leigh Minopoulos who hit a strike that came off the crossbar and was eventually bundled over with less than 10 minutes remaining in regulation time.
South will now face Heidelberg on Saturday September 3 at 6.30pm in the semi-final next week, while Bentleigh Greens will host Oakleigh on Sunday at 3pm.