83 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. WaiBOP United lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. WaiBOP United will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Liberato Singh has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Francis Fenton and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
The deal that would have taken Bailey O'Neill to Auckland City has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to WaiBOP United with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Declan Kleiboer and WaiBOP United agree another 4 years.
Bill Just was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Tommy Garbett is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation WaiBOP United are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason WaiBOP United will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what WaiBOP United can pretend not to have heard.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Team Wellington moved on, Kosta Lockyer reports back to WaiBOP United, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Makai Welch is living that version at WaiBOP United, and it tends to show in the first month.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 3 arrived, 2 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
WaiBOP United asked and Waitakere United said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.