Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Team Wellington will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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 hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Alex Waine did not need any: 7.88, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
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.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Auckland City will make the call about Alex Cacace this week. Team Wellington have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Team Wellington will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
Alex Waine, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 8.01
A mark of 8.01 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
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.
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
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.
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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 90 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“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.
Deklan Colvey 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.
At 27 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 4 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.
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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Noah Boxall has improved at 31, 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.
In brief
SquadWords at Team Wellington training over how hard people work