Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 72 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The deal that would have taken Khama Dala to Bidvest Wits has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to SuperSport United with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
The offer from Jomo Cosmos for Gift Mkhize 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.
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at SuperSport United has to find a result from somewhere.
Khama Tau 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.
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.
“I watch every SuperSport United game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at El Masry runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason SuperSport United will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Beaten 0‑3 by Bidvest Wits, and beaten everywhere it matters. The inquest starts on the training pitch on Monday morning.
The terraces31 Jan 2028
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 5 of the 25 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
Fredrick Asare 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.
Nobody at SuperSport United 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SuperSport United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Dean Mkhize 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.
A mark of 7.96, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
Squad8 Nov 2027
A place in the month's best eleven for Thulani Dolly
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Thulani Dolly has come out of that comparison in the side, and SuperSport United have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
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.
The offer from Ajax Cape Town for Gift Motupa 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.
4 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.
Fredrick Asare 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.
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 26 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Michael Boxall 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 needed Hlompho Mokoena to find the net to bring anything home at all: 2‑2 against Bloemfontein Celtic, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. SuperSport United know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SuperSport United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Michael Boxall will call it something else in private.
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.
The words a physio says slowly. 65 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Takalani Mazhamba 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 SuperSport United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Ronwen Mokotjo had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Bloemfontein Celtic were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 126th minute. Bidvest Wits will replay every second of the added time for a week.
Player ratings7 Dec 2026
Khama Mphela, 16, plays like he has been here for years — 7.85
A mark of 7.85 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 16-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 SuperSport United, and it is not being withdrawn.
Teboho Grobler 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 16 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.
Marked 8.15 — 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.