The words a physio says slowly. 14 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Team Wellington this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
119 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Team Wellington lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Team Wellington they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Team Wellington will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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 The request is on a desk at Team Wellington, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ben Rufer will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Team Wellington the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Team Wellington this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad1 Sep 2031
Chris Waine 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Team Wellington can pretend not to have heard.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Team Wellington have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Chris Stamatelopoulos will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Team Wellington the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Stefan Waine 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.
Squad28 Jul 2031
Junaid Sait 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.