Waverley Wanderers made it five wins out of their last six games to maintain their lead in the race for the State League 3 SE title, defeating visitors Frankston Strikers 5-2 in their Round 15 encounter on Saturday.
On a cold and wet afternoon, the Wanderers stormed to a three goal lead in the opening eight minutes of the game. Ira Howitt exploited a hesitant Frankston defence to open the scoring. Grant Kennedy produced a fine headed goal on the end of a Chris Papageorgiou cross to make it 2-0. Kennedy then scored his second following a comedy of errors involving a missed clearance by Frankston keeper Ashley Hupe.
This threatened to become an avalanche early in the second half, as the Wanderers added two more to open up a 5-0 lead. Ira Howitt continued his rich vein of goal scoring form, bagging his second of the day following a Papageorgiou through pass.
Marcus Wallace completed Waverley’s scoring with a long range strike which flew over Ashley Hupe into the Frankston net.
Frankston’s first goal came in the 63 rd minute when Graham Watson converted a penalty for a push on a Frankston player in the box. Their second came from midfielder Scott Buchanan who rifled home from 30 metres in the 88th minute.
A disappointed Frankston coach Billy Buchanan said afterwards, “ We were hoping to get something from this to day. We were up for this today. Yet eight minutes into the game, we’re 3-0 down. And they’re a good team. Best team we’ve played probably. Most composed.” Buchanan added he’s struggling with a lack of depth at the club forcing him to rely on veterans and very young, inexperienced players.

Waverley coach John Kennedy said afterwards, “ When you play bottom sides anything can happen. I noticed they had five defenders in the first five minutes of the game. I’m sure they came here for the draw. But because we got the early break, they had to come out a little bit and we thumped them after that. To be honest it could have been seven or eight.
I thought young Ira was fantastic up front. He ripped them to shreds. Scored a couple of good goals. I thought Grant scored a couple of cracker goals as well.
We’ve got a tremendous skipper at the back in Jim Nezos.”

Team: Vasilopoulos, Roberts, Nezos, Mazzeo, Shortall , Kennedy, G,( Willcocks, 51’,) Papageorgiou, Wallace( Sfindilis 61’), Daoulas, Howitt , Apostolopoulos

Best: Papageorgiou, Shortall, Kennedy, G. Howitt, Nezos.

Goals: Howitt, 5’, 50’, Kennedy, G. 6’, 10’
Wallace 58’
(taken from the Waverley Wanderers Website)