Michael Payne

Goalkeeper - Southern United
31 Oct 2027
Sunday
Process

Marked for Michael Payne

62 Edition

The Team Wellington Gazette

4 Oct 2027
From our football correspondent Uneasy

Boardroom

Michael Just has until the next board meeting

What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Team Wellington can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.

Boardroom

Crisis meeting at Team Wellington

The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.

Squad

Simphiwe Mtsweni signs on for more

“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Simphiwe Mtsweni and Team Wellington agree another 2 years.

Squad

James Cacace 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.

Squad

Bill Nelson gets it from the manager

“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.

Loan watch

Michael Payne has seen enough of Southern United

“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 Team Wellington, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.

In brief

Back issues
57 Edition

The Southern United Herald

30 Aug 2027
From our football correspondent Steady

Squad

A knee injury of the worst kind for Michael Tuiloma

56 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Southern United lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.

Match

Southern United up to position 3

24 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.

Market

Wellington Phoenix come back empty-handed

The bid was some way short and Southern United did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.

Squad

Jackson King is a better footballer than he was

Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 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.

Market

Southern United sign Jai Fenton for $29.0K

The paperwork is done: Jai Fenton joins from Team Wellington in a deal worth $29.0K. Now comes the harder part.

Squad

Joe Waine has improved at 24, 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.

In brief