A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Canterbury United will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Canterbury United can pretend not to have heard.
Francis Garbett and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Stefan Nelson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Francis Garbett was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Noah Kirwan 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.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 2 on the scoresheet, 8.88 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
1‑4 to Auckland City, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
“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 The request is on a desk at Canterbury United, and it is not being withdrawn.
Dane Lockyer and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Francis Garbett 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.
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.