Our Panthers celebrated Women’s round in style at Hedley Hull Field with a clean sweep of the Premier League and Reserves matches and many other great results last weekend. Read all about the weekends games below.
Women’s unit
Premier League
by Dacia Koelmeyer
Waverley 4 defeated Powerhouse 1
‘Twas a very pink round. Even the men wore bright pink socks to support women’s day.
The game started off slowly, but we found our pace shortly after. With Caley, Eliza and Gravy scoring cracker goals with great teamwork. My goal was not so exciting, however, the build up to it was fantastic- Zizi on her debut, showed her great vision, utilized Bec out wide, Bek crossed it across goals, and after a bit of cafuffle, I watched it slowly cross the line, hoping no one would be able to reach it it time- because I didn’t want to chase them down if they did…
Another great effort from my team, and I’m sure another win will follow this week against Camberwell!!!!
Disclaimer: I have a terrible memory so I may have gotten a few details wrong…
Premier League Reserve
by Ally Rake-Bolt
Waverley 2 defeated Powerhouse 0
After what started as a beautiful sunny Saturday, by 5pm the dark grey, gloomy clouds came over – something big was about to go down. The game started a bit rushed, we hadn’t had a win on the board yet so were keen to show Powerhouse what we are made of. 15 minutes into the game, the field lights turned off. Oh no, we were just getting started.
No worries – after a short break, they came back on. With the lights back on our vision of the goals couldn’t be clearer. Jess Rake-Bolt worked her magic in the D and scored a sneaky goal off her back stick. You beauty.
Half time came around, and then three quarter time. 1-0 was a good lead, but we wanted more. A short corner gave us the opportunity we needed. We set up to push to the top, but us tricksters did a little sneaky push straight to L1. A nice hard slap from L1 to Indianna on R2 and with a beautiful, classic dive, her stick touched the ball and glided it perfectly into the back of the net. Textbook. You can’t rehearse these things.
A massive shoutout to our goal keeper Sue-Anne who made incredible saves in our defensive D. Nothing got passed her. Sue-Anne was the well deserved recipient of the Women’s Round best and fairest player.
Pennant A
Waverley 3 defeated Doncaster 0
No report submitted
Pennant B
by Martina Noronha
Waverley 1 defeated by Hawthorn 2
The game was locked at nil all for the first half with skilled hockey being played by both sides. Hawthorn scored and then Nicola scored a beautiful tomahawk from a short corner which was skillfully obtained by Emlyn .Hawthorn to their credit scored a well executed second goal. We were unfortunate not to convert after their second goal.
Charlotte our goal keeper saved 10 times the goals scored by being nimble on her feet. Everyone deserved high praise for playing a wonderful game inspite of playing as a team for the first season together in a high grade. Nicola was awarded best and fairest by the umpires for this week’s ladies round.
Pennant E
by Liza Greaves
Waverley 1 drew with PEGS 1
5pm Sunday, what else would you rather be doing on Mothers day than playing hockey with an awesome bunch of ladies?!
We arrived on the pitch with some exciting attacks up forward. Naomi was on fire keeping their keeper under the pump. As Lucas always says, keep on working it and the goals will come, and they did, Chris danced up the field with the ball, there were too many touches in the circle to determine who was involved, but Leonie had the last magic touch to put the ball away.
A huge thank you to Nat and Nic for doubling up and playing with us! We definitely would not have got through the match with out you! We were also lucky to have Erica on the side lines with a mini physio clinic helping us get through.
Congratulations to Emma, winning the player of the match. It was voted by the umpires – but we all fully agree – we love what you do Em!
Metro
by Jodie Thornhill
Waverley 0 defeated by Old Xaiver 1
Fantastic effort from all the team to lock the opposition down to just the 1 goal. Super goal saves by our ‘step up from Under 12’s Goalie, Grace.
Solid pressure applied from our ever improving forward line… We’re having fun and really working well together as a team 😀
Mens unit
Premier League
by Lachy Steinfort
Waverley 3 defeated by Powerhouse 2
The Men’s PL side were back at home after two weeks on the road and a disappointing loss to reigning premier’s Southern United last week. A blistering start saw Powerhouse take the lead with a cracking drag flick into the top corner. Waverley absorbed Powerhouse’s pressure for the remaining of the first quarter, without further loss.
Self proclaimed Party King George Wilkinson levelled the score from the post in the second quarter after a sweeping counter attack and neat cross.
Birthday boy and bona fide Party Dunce Steve Jarvis gave Waverley the lead after a shoulder height forehand smash into the bottom corner from a Waverley PC. Matt “the schnoze” Steffens brought untold shame to his family and anyone with eyeballs with a disgusting skipping celebration. The tribunal will look carefully at the footage and determine if he ought be allowed to play again this season.
Current Olympian and Powerhouse recruit Tom Witherspoon nearly broke the goals with a tomahawk that I’m pretty sure Shrimp (fairly) went out of his way to avoid.
James “Trent” Knee scored the winner for the MPL side, with a diving finish in the fourth quarter as the boys desperately held on to a telling victory.
Premier League Reserves
by Joaquim Novaes
Waverley 3 defeated Powerhouse 2
Keen for a redemption off last week in-front of a home crowd, the atmosphere in the changing room/tent was that a loss was not an option. A tense tone was set early on as Powerhouse decided to cut into home territory on their warmup run – adding to the desire to send them home with no points.
Waverley chalked up the first goal in Q1 with a lethal drag flick from Braydos. Unfortunately Powerhouse answered immediately in a messy second phase of a short corner to square up the scores at 1-1 at the end of the first quarter.
This back and forth continued as Haircuts Hine clinically deflected in a Hackey ball, only for Powerhouse to get lucky with a chance deflection on a waist-high wayward shot across the goal. Liam made himself the last of the game’s scorers by confidently slotting an under-pressure ball into the onion bag from the spot.
The last 15 minutes of the game had the fans on the edge of their seats and spurring on the Panthers. As the game was in the balance Powerhouse had three players serving concurrent yellows cards and Joffa came to the rescue with additional seating to accomodate. In a mild hot headed reaction to some questionable physicality from a Powerhouse forward – I [the goal keeper] got to watch the nail biting end of the game from the halfway line with a cherry-pop yellow card. Temporarily without a goalkeeper, Waverley stepped up and mounted an impenetrable defence to keep the score 3-2 until the end of the game.
A notable red card falling on the aforementioned Powerhouse forward when Rogo’s determined physical marking finally caused him to lose the head, to my satisfaction.
Well deserved win. Same again next week.
Pennant A
by Matt Barca
Waverley 4 defeated Footscray 1
The boys fuelled up and headed over the bridge to take on Footscray on Saturday arvo.
Waverley started well attacking early, but it was hard to score with Footscray having 11 players in there own half. Once we scored the first it opened the flood gates and two more followed!
Waverley incurred a bad injury in the second quarter with Mitchell Smith sprinting down the left sideline with his first touch and tripping on the 25 yard line, popping his ankle, rumour has it he just wanted to get changed into his tight jeans and puffa jacket to go and support the Dees!
3-0 at half time
The defence held up well with Ant “red bandanna” Green chopping anything down that came within sticks length. Kyle “I hide my slides in my bag” Bibby was also great in hold up the Footscray attacking right hand side. The second half didn’t start to well with Footscray scoring through a Waverley turnover! That was just a slight hiccup and then the boys hit there straps with the young Brigade running a muck up forward.
In the end a great result, the teams first win for the year and some good improvement showing. Goals scorers were Ethan 1, Wes a blinder from baseline ! The old veteran at centre forward 2
Pennant E
by Lanky Haran
Waverley 7 defeated Southern 0
Panthers were hunting for 3 valuable premiership points after a narrow loss to Mentone last week and HHF provided an absolute picture-perfect day on Mothers Day for a winning outing.
The pre-game huddle highlighted two important words “Accountability” & ” Outcomes”. Keeping that in mind the Panther tribe took the field and from the starting minute fantastic ball movement and positioning cemented possession of the ball. After a sustained period of attack we created our first penalty corner, you know what happens next, “injection to the top, Rudi drag to the right, yours truly deflect it into the goal”, Pennant E’s short corner with 99.9% success rate.
Our consistent pressure in the attacking half overwhelmed Southern’s defence and forced the goalkeeper into a hasty mistake and yours truly made it 2-0. From here we found a very positive energy and kept hitting the back board regularly. Harrison ‘Bath Boy’ Gerling and Bailey ‘Bubbles’ Hunter ran and carried impressively creating important opportunities.
Zane was brilliant in the mid field distributing skilfully to stretch the southern defence. Old timers Rich and Jase’s timely passes resulted in young Panther Mitch Howie first seniors score and boy oh boy didn’t he bring it in style, a beautiful flat stick toma from the top of the circle to the bottom right corner. At lemons 3-0
The Panthers went into the half time comfortable with the score line, but this is where Jase ” Wise ” Lyon urged caution with a 3-0 score very frequently creating a false sense of security. As the whistle blew to mark the start of the second half, we looked to repeat the positives of the first half and put an exclamation mark behind this result.
Rudi went one like its none, two on the cue, three when the goal was free proving why he is Pennant E’s Finest, even scoring a goal from a ball that bounced at least twice in front of the keeper. As minutes ticked down Southern’s defence was clearly already thinking about Mothers Day lunch and had given up when Nick ” Leading Goal Scorer” Glossop did the impossible by scoring a flat stick rocket from the line.
Mikey provided another clean sheet for Waverley working cohesively with Ash, Dave, Macca and Trenners in defence to thwart Southern’s attack.
Full time 7-0 and Panthers took a very crucial 3 points in climbed to the 3rd place in the ladder.
Pennant G
by Craig Batten
Waverley 1 defeated by Melton 3
Due to a team withdrawal HV have adjusted our fixtures for the rest of the season. The early bird offer is another trip to the wild west (Melton), but wait there is more for a once off non-refundable fee we get not 1 but 2 YES 2 consecutive weekend trips up the Hume to Craigeburn.
Another week another game against Melton (number 2 of 4 this season), at lease it was a home game note that Andy “I’ll be on time” Lee was actually on time this week. Our newly promoted warm-up captain Richard X (not to be confused with Malcolm X) lead us on a few laps of the HHF turf and compared to last week our warm-up was solid and focused.
Some how Melton hit us with an early attack which we watched and wondered how it happened but alas we were 1-0 too early in the game. As usual we fought back hard and created quite a few chances but were not able to find the final stick to level the scores. Some poor marking from me lead to the Melton 2nd goal, after coaching Hook in to Hockey and drumming “don’t ball watch” into the kids you would think I know better!! We created a short corner late in the 1st, however when it came to deciding who would take the shot no one put their hand up. I offered and promised nothing however it almost (which doesn’t count) lead to our 1st goal. Not long after, after good build up play through the halves into the forwards Bailey scored his 1st for the season. This now means we have 2 young guns fighting out for top scorer.
We pushed hard in the 2nd half and some great runs form the Bens threatened to open Melton up but with a bit more composure in the coming weeks we will start to convert the effort into goals. A well worked short corner saw Melton increase their lead to 3-1.
Thanks to Chris for coming to the game and running the bench.
Metro
Waverley 2 defeated by Old East Malvern 4
No report submitted
Midweek hockey
Open Age A
by Nick Dallimore
Waverley 1 defeated Doncaster 0
The undefeated open age (bunch of 40 year old’s plus Timmy Wish and Barca) travelled to Doncaster on a beautiful Monday night to play in front of a huge crowd of 2 people. Wes Moore was a LARGE out with his calf playing up for the second away game of the year and Corey also out with a groin issue being replaced by two quality ins of Nav and Bozza meant playing for the third week in a row with no player on the bench.
With Corey and Brad Wish both out due to groin related issues, the 3 cylinder engine was to rely on Timmy Wish as the sole running engine.
The first half saw the team string together a series of solid attacking moves, with some slick ball movement and running from the midfield. After Dally missed 3 tap ins and a penalty stroke (some said it was a penalty hit) he managed to get onto the end of a magical run down the right side by Shags, Macca and Timmy W to deflect the ball into the back of the net to take a 1 nil. The panthers were lucky to take lead into half time after a failed smell the cheese from Yammo as the last player in defence almost led to a goal but luckily Joffa had learnt to keep is legs closed after his failings from the week before.
At the break everyone had the opportunity to say one negative thing about another player and surprisingly we didn’t come out firing in the second half.
The second half was much of the same with team creating and missing more shots than Danny Brennan has club shirts (that’s a lot!). Bozza was solid in defence, Ant continued to question any call that went against him, the right side of Shags, Timmy and Macca providing some great runs and likewise on the left with young buck Barca, Yammo and Horse.
Waverly finished the game with 77% possession, 48 goal attempts, 21 shots on goal, 1 missed stroke, 2 goalie saves from Joffa, no subs and 26 post game beers!
Open Age C
Waverley 3 defeated Glen Eira 1
No report submitted
Masters 45d
by Mark Adams
Waverley 0 drew with Camberwell 0
Round 4 – Dominance and Frustration Monday night at Camberwell saw the Mens Masters team dominate on the field against our rivals Camberwell – strong offence and defence, constant pressure, good communication , great passing and all round superior play but unfortunately we just couldn’t capitalise on the scoreboard.
It was great to welcome back Will, Ashley and David R to the side who contributed to our dominance
We sit fourth on the ladder, out of 14 and look to stay near the top as the season progresses