Sam Payne

Central Midfielder - Southern United U18
2 Oct 2027
Saturday
Process

Marked for Sam Payne

57 Edition

The Southern United Herald

30 Aug 2027
From our football correspondent Uneasy

Squad

The knee: Liberato Sutton out for 41 days

41 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Southern United lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.

Transfer targets

Fee done, terms next for Marco Lockyer

Southern United and Waitakere United have settled on $2.0K. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.

Market

Winston Just hands in a written request

“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Southern United can pretend not to have heard.

Transfer targets

Southern United make their move for Alex Rufer

$21.0K on the table at Canterbury United. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.

Squad

Words exchanged at Southern United

Bill Colvey 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.

Squad

Sam Payne is a better footballer than he was

Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 17 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.

Squad

A late step up for Bill Colvey

At 25 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.

Loan watch

Oliver Lewis wants to come home

“I did not go to Team Wellington to sit and watch. I want to come back to Southern United and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 5 matches say the rest.

The dugout

Monty De Vries knocks on the manager’s door

“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Monty De Vries trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.

In brief