The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Nasinu this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He used to be one of the options. He is now one of the men the options are picked around, and the change happened quietly enough that only the dressing room noticed on the day.
Every squad has men who were signed by a particular manager and men who were merely inherited. Akuila Kaumaitotoya is in the first group, and the man who wanted him here is no longer in the building.
Nobody at Nasinu will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Nasinu have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Dave Tuisese is on it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Nasinu, and both men came out saying it was fine.
12 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
43 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Nasinu lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Player ratings14 May 2029
Sakaraia Krishna, 17, plays like he has been here for years — 7.69
A mark of 7.69 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 17-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Kelemedi Matou 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.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
11 days since the seat came open, a list of names doing the rounds, and nobody has signed anything. Every week this drags on the shortlist gets shorter.
Nobody's fault and entirely his: a goal that goes into the book with his name against it and nothing about it intended. Nasinu deserved better, and so did he.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Nasinu this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The music was off and the showers ran late. What was said in that dressing room stays there, but Saturday will publish the minutes.
The dugout12 Mar 2029
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑4 defeat, delivered by Misaele Verevou to a room that had heard them before.
Nobody has barred the club from spending; it simply has nothing to spend that it has not first raised. Every incoming name comes with an outgoing one attached.