“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what SuperSport United can pretend not to have heard.
Rushwin Dortley 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Bryn Deeley was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout17 Apr 2028
Bryn Deeley is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at SuperSport United, and both men came out saying it was fine.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at SuperSport United, another week without a signature from Moustapha Sanogo.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Teboho Grobler has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Player ratings8 Nov 2027
Percy Lorch was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.25. 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.
“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 SuperSport United, and 6 appearances in 22 say he has earned the hearing.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Mpho Padime is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SuperSport United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bryn Deeley 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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Isheanesu Mauchi has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. SuperSport United told Sifiso Ngcobo something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Bryn Deeley 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.
9 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. SuperSport United told Zuko Mdunyelwa something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at SuperSport United, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. SuperSport United know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
He looks like a man who lives here now rather than one who is working here. It took most of a season, and at SuperSport United the difference is visible from the back of the stand.
They sit in position 6 and they will be waiting. Away form is where a season shows its true character, and this side has a point to make about its own.
Luther Mabunda, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.70
A mark of 7.70 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Teboho Mphela 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.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. SuperSport United have lost him in all but the paperwork.
“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 SuperSport United, and it is not being withdrawn.
SuperSport United have gone to Orlando Pirates with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
SuperSport United have gone to Maritzburg United with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Naphtali Mokoena has just signed for SuperSport United, and for once the answer mattered.
SuperSport United asked and Kaizer Chiefs said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Behind, and beaten by any honest reading, until minute 88. Bloemfontein Celtic had the points in their pocket and a corner of the ground still believed, which is generally when it happens.