The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Nadi people have started saying his name in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Nadi this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Newcastle Jets have kept their man, and Nadi go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Nadi have made the call to Newcastle Jets. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
A loan enquiry to Western Sydney Wanderers: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Nadi can pretend not to have heard.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Penisoni Tirau will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Nadi the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Nadi this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nadi asked and Sydney FC said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Western Sydney Wanderers have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
Nobody at Nadi 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Tuiba Batiratu signs something — a contract at Nadi or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Nadi, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Nadi have lost him in all but the paperwork.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Nadi can pretend not to have heard.
Jimson Abana 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Team Wellington have kept their man, and Nadi go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Nobody at Nadi 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.
Jimson Abana 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.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Simon Esosa Aibangbee is on 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 Nadi, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Dantel Hodges, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.99
A mark of 7.99 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.
1 for Vinayak Rao, marked 7.73, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Jimson Abana 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 23 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.
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.