Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Ajax Cape Town they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Luke Baartman 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.
2‑2, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Squad27 Sep 2027
6 new faces, and Ajax Cape Town are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Nobody at Ajax Cape Town 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Erick Modiba signs something — a contract at Ajax Cape Town or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Ajax Cape Town they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Ajax Cape Town, and it is not being withdrawn.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Luke Baartman 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.
Add another name to the list: Bidvest Wits have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Rivaldo Ngcobo. The answer from Ajax Cape Town has not changed — yet.
7 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
$1.3M is a serious amount of money and it does not play centre-forward. Everybody in the dressing room knows who used to be looked at when it went wrong.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Thamsanqa Mokoena was one of the reasons people came, and $1.3M does not replace that by itself.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Ajax Cape Town can pretend not to have heard.
Khama Hlatshwayo 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Themba Kekana and Ajax Cape Town agree another 4 years.
At 23 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.
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.
Add another name to the list: Kaizer Chiefs have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Thamsanqa Mokoena. The answer from Ajax Cape Town has not changed — yet.
Ashley Du Preez 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.
Marked 8.11 — 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.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
The offer from Orlando Pirates for Erick Modiba was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Luke Baartman 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.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Themba Vilakazi from Black Aces for $95.0K, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
7 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Words at Ajax Cape Town training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rivaldo Ngcobo 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ajax Cape Town this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A season average of 7.02 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Ajax Cape Town know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
The terraces26 Jul 2027
Ajax Cape Town spend $1.2M on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $1.2M for George Matlou, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
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.
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Luke Baartman will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Ajax Cape Town escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Player ratings25 Jan 2027
Luke Baartman, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.10
A mark of 8.10 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
The phone has started ringing about Themba Mokotjo again, and this time the name on the line is Bidvest Wits. Ajax Cape Town are listening politely and promising nothing.
Rivaldo Modiba 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.
Player ratings25 Jan 2027
Erick Modiba was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.12. 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 did not go to Maritzburg United to sit and watch. I want to come back to Ajax Cape Town and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 21 matches say the rest.
A mark of 8.18 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 18-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Ajax Cape Town, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ajax Cape Town this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 18-year-old it feels ownership of. Thamsanqa Mokoena has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Marked 8.03 — 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.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Rivaldo Modiba and Ajax Cape Town agree another 2 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 Ajax Cape Town this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A mark of 7.87 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 18-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Ajax Cape Town is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Luke Baartman 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.
At 18 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.
“I did not go to Maritzburg United to sit and watch. I want to come back to Ajax Cape Town and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 13 matches say the rest.