“The easiest signature of my career.” Lungelo Nguse and Maritzburg United agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Maritzburg United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 11 combined actions and a mark of 6.95, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Position 6, 19 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Siphelele Mthembu 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Squad2 Nov 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Darren Keet
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Darren Keet has come out of that comparison in the side, and Maritzburg United have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Bradley Mahlangu could afford to be generous.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mthobisi Zondo is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Maritzburg United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Reece Braithwaite has come out of that comparison in the side, and Maritzburg United have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Maritzburg United can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 20 signed and 3 gone
That is the business done at Maritzburg United until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Maritzburg United offered $110.0K; Ajax Cape Town said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Brooklyn Poggenpoel was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Saziso Magawana 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 manager has re-ordered his thinking and Darren Keet has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.