Everything was agreed until it was not, and Dane Kirwan reports back to Canterbury United with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Canterbury United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A conversation is coming this week. Canterbury United will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Ryan Garbett 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.
7 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Canterbury United and Auckland City in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
A performance of 8.41 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Chris Singh 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kosta Smith 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Canterbury United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Position 2, 24 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Canterbury United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I watch every Canterbury United game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Auckland City runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
At 22 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.
In brief
SquadRyan Garbett falls out with a teammate over standards