The words a physio says slowly. 35 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 clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Ba is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Ba will quote 15 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Connor Reid 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Ba they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Jai De Vries has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Ba, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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.
64 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Ba lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
A 4‑0 win over Nasinu, and the draw for the next round can be watched with some interest for once.
Player ratings18 Jun 2035
A brace, and Daniel Umar takes the afternoon — 8.90
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Daniel Umar provided it, and the 8.90 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Two goals and a mark of 8.62 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Two goals and a mark of 8.43 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Lautoka had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
Riley Foxe 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.
120 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Ba lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Riley Foxe 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 embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 11 combined actions and a mark of 7.03, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Ba told Believe Maapia Peter something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
127 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Ba lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Ba is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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 this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nadi next, and the two sides the division is watching meet each other. Whoever wins will be told nothing is decided in the same breath as being congratulated.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout16 Apr 2035
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Interim Coach was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Ba dressing room was either.
The words a physio says slowly. 25 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.
Riley Foxe 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.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Ba and Suva in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
The manager may talk to whoever he likes and may pay nobody. A squad survives a window like this by borrowing, by promoting, and by hoping the injuries land somewhere else.
In brief
Player ratingsNinety minutes of Hope Linus at his very best
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Ba will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Riley Foxe 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.
The one award on the pitch nobody else can win. 7 games in a season in which nobody scored past him, and a career that will be measured against this one.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
Owen O'Neill is 20, and Ba have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.