It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Team Wellington this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
SquadWords at Team Wellington training over how hard people work
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Team Wellington can pretend not to have heard.
Chris Smith 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.
“I did not go to Auckland City to sit and watch. I want to come back to Team Wellington and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 5 matches say the rest.
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.
Nobody at Team Wellington will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Liberato Cacace is 36 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 32 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Team Wellington this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Add another name to the list: Waitakere United have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Kosta Waine. The answer from Team Wellington has not changed — yet.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Deklan Colvey 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 83 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
0‑4 to Waitakere United, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Clayton Tuiloma and Team Wellington agree another 2 years.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Team Wellington can tell you which week it ends in.
Chris Smith 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.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.88 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
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.
At 29 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Team Wellington this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Deklan Nelson 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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Noah Lockyer has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Deklan Nelson is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Ethen Sampson 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Chris Smith 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. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Team Wellington can pretend not to have heard.
The words a physio says slowly. 22 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.
“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 Team Wellington, and it is not being withdrawn.
Chris Smith 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.
In brief
SquadDeklan Colvey falls out with a teammate over standards