61 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. BA All Stars lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Andre Mensah 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.
“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 words a physio says slowly. 68 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.
The kind of year that ends with a name being read out in a hall. BA All Stars had the benefit of it every week and now have the problem of everybody else knowing.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at BA All Stars this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
BA All Stars asked and WAFA said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The words a physio says slowly. 97 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.
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.07, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings7 Dec 2026
Yaw Waris, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.84
A mark of 7.84 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Isaac Boakye 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.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Andre Mensah was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
At 21 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.
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.
Andre Mensah 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at BA All Stars training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bernard Asante 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.
At 25 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.
Successful dribbles: 17. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
It needed Isaac Boakye to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Wa All Stars, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Osman Ayew was not hiding it after 1‑1, and nobody in the BA All Stars dressing room was either.
a squad player keeps BA All Stars in it on his own
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 10 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what BA All Stars can pretend not to have heard.
Andre Mensah 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 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Amos Amoah 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.
In brief
Player ratingsIsaac Boakye was on a different afternoon to everybody else
The dugoutThe view from the dugout
SquadWords at BA All Stars training over how hard people work