Marked for Deklan Lockyer
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market5 Jul 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Waitakere United can pretend not to have heard.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Cameron Barbarouses is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Deklan Lockyer has improved at 32, 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad30 Nov 2026
Stefan Sutton damages knee ligaments — 15 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 15 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.
Match28 Nov 2026
Deklan Lockyer had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Southern United were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
Market30 Nov 2026
“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 The request is on a desk at Waitakere United, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Joel Obi in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Waitakere United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words at Waitakere United training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Joe De Vries 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.
Player ratings30 Nov 2026
Joe De Vries was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.03. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad2 Nov 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Stefan Sutton
46 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Waitakere United lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match31 Oct 2026
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 4‑0 against WaiBOP United, and it could have been more.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
A brace, and Jai Cacace takes the afternoon — 8.70
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Jai Cacace provided it, and the 8.70 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Market2 Nov 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Waitakere United can pretend not to have heard.
Match31 Oct 2026
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Tommy Lockyer 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.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Joel Obi gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Tommy Lockyer was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.07. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Joe De Vries was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.02. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad26 Oct 2026
Tommy McCowatt damages knee ligaments — 51 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 51 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.
Match24 Oct 2026
At 2 goals adrift this was a formality, and the formality lasted right up until it did not. Waitakere United found something the first half had given no notice of, and Hawke's Bay United could not hold what they had.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match24 Oct 2026
A 4‑3 win over Hawke's Bay United, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Joe De Vries 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.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
A performance of 8.92 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Jake Bell in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Waitakere United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
A performance of 8.30 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Marked 8.08 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.