SOCCER JAMIE Skelly has been re-appointed head coach of Langwarrin and Dave Kuhanez is the new head coach of Baxter. The contrast between the appointments is stark. Skelly has an extensive senior coaching background and will be in charge of football matters at Lawton Park for a fourth straight season while 2027 will be Kuhanez’s senior team coaching debut. Under Skelly Langwarrin has finished no higher than ninth and has shown a resilience when confronting the prospect of relegation which has become a persistent issue. Yet Skelly summed up season 2026 in a positive fashion. “Overall we achieved what we…
Author: Craig MacKenzie
SOCCER SCOTT Morrison has returned to the senior coaching role at Peninsula Strikers. The club made the announcement late last week three days after announcing the departure of this year’s head coach Ross Walliss and assistant Ben Sharland. Morrison returns after a three-year stint which ended in missing out on promotion in the last game of the 2025 season when Strikers drew 3-3 with Casey Comets at Centenary Park. “This time last year we’d had three really big seasons and the emotional toll it took on me and my family was quite significant,” Morrison said. “I didn’t have the right…
SOCCER FRANKSTON Pines is the Metropolitan Club of the Year. The local outfit won Football Victoria’s prestigious award at a gala function at Crown Palladium last week in front of 1000 players, coaches, referees, administrators and volunteers. It was official recognition of the efforts of an all-female executive who have guided the club from the brink of insolvency to financial stability. “There’s an immense feeling of pride knowing how many clubs that would have been in the running and to find out you were selected makes everything worth it,” Pines president Liz Diaz said. FV noted that the club’s leaders…
SOCCER WHEN Bray Hodgkinson steps down as president at Baxter’s upcoming AGM it will end a tumultuous seven-year reign that threatened to end months after it began. Hodgkinson became president in November 2019 with his club in disarray and if not for the single-mindedness of the then 25-year-old there would be no Baxter today. “I didn’t want to take on the role but it kind of fell into my lap,” he said. Burdened with a near $90,000 debt when COVID struck less than six months into his presidency and a mass walkout by his committee he was faced with two…
SOCCER A COMMITTEE meeting this week could decide whether president Adrian Scialpi and head coach Ross Walliss remain at Peninsula Strikers. Scialpi will tell his committee that he needs help if he is to continue. First though the dust must settle from last week’s 2-0 loss to Mooroolbark and relegation from State 2 South-East. In a bitter blow to the local club that has flirted with promotion in most post-pandemic seasons it found itself fighting for and failing to save its league status this year. Last Tuesday night Berwick City provided the neutral venue for the all-important catch-up game and…