Marked for Bernard Boakye
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad8 Mar 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Bernard Boakye
20 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Wa All Stars lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Defences have started doubling up on Thomas Atiemo
17 goals and a season average of 7.37 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Squad8 Mar 2027
“The easiest signature of my career.” Joseph Nathaniel and Wa All Stars agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad8 Mar 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Wa All Stars this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match6 Mar 2027
0‑1 to Asante Kotoko, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Boardroom8 Mar 2027
Wa All Stars release $113.3K for the manager
The board have put money on the table rather than an encouraging word. What happens to it now is somebody else's problem, and somebody else's job.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad1 Mar 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Bernard Boakye
27 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Wa All Stars lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad1 Mar 2027
A season average of 7.52 with 30 goals behind it. Opponents have started planning around him, which is the sincerest compliment football pays.
Match27 Feb 2027
The unbeaten run reaches 13. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
Kamaldeen Afful, 17, plays like he has been here for years — 7.72
A mark of 7.72 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 17-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad1 Mar 2027
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 23. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Joseph Nathaniel 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.
Match27 Feb 2027
It finished 3‑1, and it was Francis Waris’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Wa All Stars.
The terraces1 Mar 2027
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Thomas Atiemo 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad22 Feb 2027
Bernard Boakye damages knee ligaments — 35 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 35 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.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Defences have started doubling up on Jonathan Kyereh
29 goals and a season average of 7.50 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Match20 Feb 2027
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 6‑0 against Great Olympics, and it could have been more.
Match22 Feb 2027
66 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.
Player ratings22 Feb 2027
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 9.04, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Match20 Feb 2027
The unbeaten run reaches 12. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Player ratings22 Feb 2027
A brace, and Thomas Atiemo takes the afternoon — 8.39
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Thomas Atiemo provided it, and the 8.39 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Player ratings22 Feb 2027
No sign of nerves from Osman Ofori at 21 — 8.55
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Osman Ofori did not need any: 8.55, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Match20 Feb 2027
13 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.