“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 The request is on a desk at Waitakere United, and it is not being withdrawn.
Player ratings21 Dec 2026
A brace, and Stefan Smith takes the afternoon — 8.49
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Stefan Smith provided it, and the 8.49 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Ben Lewis 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.
A 2‑0 win over WaiBOP United, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Owen Reid falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Waitakere United, and 0 appearances in 17 say he has earned the hearing.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 16 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
15 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
In brief
SquadDeklan Reid has become a man the manager trusts
Player ratingsA defender's afternoon for Sanele Radebe
The terracesThe press have found their man in Stefan Smith
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Waitakere United can pretend not to have heard.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sanele Radebe 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.
Ben Lewis 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Josh Lawrence and Waitakere United agree another 3 years.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 26 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 Waitakere United, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Waitakere United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sanele Radebe 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 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.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Waitakere United, and 0 appearances in 13 say he has earned the hearing.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 54 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 Waitakere United, and it is not being withdrawn.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.76 for the rest of it.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Sanele Radebe has improved at 25, 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. 4 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
15 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Waitakere United lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 61 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
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. 4 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Noah Singh is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Liberato Reid is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Matt Just is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 89 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Michael Boxall is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Deklan Reid 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.