There is a quiet kind of stubbornness that lives at the foot of a league table.
The sort that has stopped listening to the maths a while back and is now just turning up, week after week, because the work is the only thing left to do. That is where the Cavaliers find themselves walking into Round 13.
The table reads what it reads.
There is no clever way around any of it. What Friday night offers is the next chance to start writing a different paragraph, and the boys in green and white have already started picking up the pen.
Last Friday at Churchill Reserve was the cleanest performance this group has produced in a month of football.
The defensive shape held against a St Albans side coming in off a four-two win at Bentleigh. Luka Romic was outstanding. The block did not crack until forty-eight minutes in. Marko Bulic at the other end had to be sharp in stoppage time to keep the scoreline at one-nil. The reward did not come, but the foundation did. Andy Vargas saw the kind of effort he has been asking for.
The challenge in front of us this week is heavier. Melbourne City NPL come to the Reserve on a roll. A two-one win away at South Melbourne in Round 11. A seven-nil demolition of Bentleigh Greens last Friday.
Twenty-four goals scored across twelve rounds, joint-second in the league. A goal difference of plus nine, the same number as Heidelberg United in third. They sit seventh on the ladder with games in hand on most of the sides above them, and they will arrive at Green Gully convinced they leave with three.
The honest read is that this is the toughest fixture our season has handed us in form terms. The more useful read is that City are exactly the kind of side a struggling group needs to test itself against.
Hold the structure that worked at St Albans for ninety minutes against a side scoring at almost two goals a game and the lessons inside that night carry into every fixture left this year.
Our goals-for column reads five from twelve. That number has to start moving, and Friday night at home, in front of the Gully Army, is as good a night as any to find it.
Scott Lochhead worked the channels until his legs went last week. Diego Cuba ran himself into the ground. Samuel Pisani and Thomas Woerndl left everything on the park. The shift is there. The first goal is the one that breaks something open.
Andy Vargas knows the brief. Repeat the defensive shape from last week. Compete in every duel. Find a goal. None of it is glamorous and none of it pretends the table is going to look kind on Saturday morning. What it is, is the honest version of how a season starts to turn.
