The WaiBOP United Gazette
Squad12 Oct 2026
The knee: Oliver De Vries out for 116 days
116 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. WaiBOP United lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Market12 Oct 2026
Matt Van Hattum 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 WaiBOP United can pretend not to have heard.
Squad12 Oct 2026
The step up is real for Liberato Van Hattum
At 23 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Kosta Van Hattum has improved at 27, 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. 4 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Liberato Van Hattum 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.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Tim Singh
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Loan watch12 Oct 2026
Marco Wood has seen enough of Team Wellington
“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 WaiBOP United, and 0 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
Market12 Oct 2026
The Matt Van Hattum question follows WaiBOP United around
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Matt Van Hattum’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Dane 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 Dane De Vries trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
In brief
- Looking ahead Looking ahead: the trip to Hawke's Bay United
- The dugout The manager comes out for Deklan Reid