3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Matt Tuiloma 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.
Callum De Vries was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.63. 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.
A performance of 8.45 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Matt Tuiloma was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.06. 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.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 1 on the scoresheet, 7.49 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
Matt Tuiloma 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Francis Lewis is 16, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Callum De Vries. 3‑1 against WaiBOP United, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Joe Lockyer and Canterbury United agree another 1 years.
At 20 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Callum De Vries was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.62. 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.
Marked 8.25 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
“I did not go to WaiBOP United to sit and watch. I want to come back to Canterbury United and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 10 matches say the rest.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
At 30 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 4 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Hawke's Bay United moved on, Cameron Smith reports back to Canterbury United, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Matt Tuiloma 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Oliver Tuiloma has improved at 30, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Canterbury United, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
Oliver Tuiloma 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Matt Tuiloma is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.