The words a physio says slowly. 24 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.
Adelaide United will want this one forgotten quickly: 4‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Brisbane Roar were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.11 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Brisbane Roar is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The shirt still fits. Harrison Williams is back at Brisbane Roar, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Brisbane Roar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Interim Coach has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Juninho 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.
Squad6 Oct 2042
Words at Brisbane Roar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nathan Paull 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.
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Interim Coach has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Brisbane Roar can pretend not to have heard.
Add another name to the list: Newcastle Jets have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Gavin Hughes. The answer from Brisbane Roar has not changed — yet.
Squad2 Jun 2042
Nathan Paull 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Brisbane Roar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every squad has men who were signed by a particular manager and men who were merely inherited. Juninho is in the first group, and the man who wanted him here is no longer in the building.