Denis Iguma 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 is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
In brief
The dugoutEdwin Mukolwe knocks on the manager's door
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Mara Sugar will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Everything agreed with Kakamega Homeboyz, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
The fee is $41.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Shabana drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Alex Imbusia 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 terraces18 Jan 2027
Mara Sugar spend $41.0K on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $41.0K for Stephen Otieno, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Thomas Harun falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
Mara Sugar have made the call to Nairobi United. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
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 board have answered with money instead of encouragement, which is the only answer a manager ever wants. Spending it well is now entirely his problem.
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 Moses Mudavadi is on it.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Kevin Amwayi has written the date down.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Boniface Omondi signs something — a contract at Kakamega Homeboyz or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Denis Iguma 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.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Kakamega Homeboyz. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
The standards have slipped, and in a building where everybody watches everybody it has not gone unremarked. This is how a player loses a place before he loses one.
The language has come, the shrug has gone, and he argues in training like a man who expects to be here next year. None of it shows up on a fee and all of it shows up on the pitch.
Denis Iguma 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.
Moses Mudavadi was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.36. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
“I watch every Kakamega Homeboyz game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Mara Sugar runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Martin Onyango on a 2‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Mara Sugar can pretend not to have heard.
Alex Imbusia 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Nicholas Muguna has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Martin Mwendwa has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Samuel Olunga has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
16 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.