Author: Craig MacKenzie

SOCCER SOMERVILLE Eagles are flying high after last Friday’s announcement that goalscoring legend David Greening will be the club’s new player-coach for 2018. Greening is the second founding member of Rosebud Heart senior club to switch to Somerville after Neil Herd moved there at the end of the 2016 season. The switch leaves Heart firmly on the back foot without a coach, still searching for a suitable ground and now without the man who in three seasons delivered 108 goals from 57 league and cup appearances. Greening had been mentioned as a possible Heart player-coach, Baxter offered him a player-coaching…

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SOCCER MERGER talks between Rosebud Heart and Bayside League club Rosebud have stalled after the latter recently applied to join FFV ranks. Rosebud is keen to join the Metropolitan Leagues so that it can continue to play on Sundays and give its players a more challenging level of competition. State 4 South outfit Heart has shown interest in merging with its neighbour and sees the move as a great opportunity to create a large club on the southern peninsula with over 300 juniors, and senior men’s and women’s teams playing out of Rosebud’s home at Olympic Park in Besgrove Street.…

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SOCCER HE is preparing for his 49th straight season at Monterey Reserve and he’s one of the most recognisable characters in the local game. Tommy Mitchell is a living legend. The 66-year-old is a life member of Frankston Pines and wears his heart on his sleeve. In more ways than one. If you haven’t seen the Edinburgh-born Mitchell at a senior match wearing one of his Heart of Midlothian scarves and bonnet festooned with club badges then you’re a newcomer to the local scene. Mitchell has three brothers – Colin, Bruce and Grant and the family migrated from Scotland in…

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SOCCER LUCAS Elliott is just a fortnight old but Mornington fans owe the infant a debt of gratitude for the part he played in his father re-signing with the club last week. Stevie Elliott is a class act, one of the finest central defenders outside NPL ranks and for the past two months the word was that his switch to Langwarrin was all but done and dusted. Until last Thursday when the 29-year-old Englishman ended a 45-minute meeting with Mornington gaffer Adam Jamieson and assistant coach Dale White by re-committing to the club for a fourth straight season. “At the…

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SOCCER LANGWARRIN has finalised its under-age squads for its inaugural season in the second tier of Victoria’s National Premier League competition. The Lawton Park outfit attracted triallists from such distant climes as far north Queensland with three Cairns teenagers from Leichhardt Lions FC getting the nod to join Kevin “Squizzy” Taylor’s under-20 squad. Taylor is a former Seaford United senior coach who was appointed coach of Bentleigh Greens’ under-20s in late 2014 and guided the youngsters to the 2015 NPL reserves championship. “I’m very happy with the squad we have put together at Langy. They are a very talented group,…

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