The Southern United Herald
Match10 Sep 2029
Southern United are in real trouble now
Position 5, 13 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Market10 Sep 2029
Aslak Opi is on his way
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Southern United is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Market10 Sep 2029
Ben Cacace steps up from the Southern United academy
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Ben Cacace has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Market10 Sep 2029
One of our own: Francis Rufer joins the Southern United first team
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Francis Rufer is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Market10 Sep 2029
Southern United promote Dane Singh from within
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Dane Singh has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
The dugout10 Sep 2029
Jakub Kruszynski gets it from the manager
“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.
Squad10 Sep 2029
Liberato Kirwan: “I am not a substitute”
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Southern United will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
The dugout10 Sep 2029
Cameron Fenton knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Cameron Fenton trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Boardroom10 Sep 2029
The Southern United academy earns its keep
23 graduates, from a department now rated 9 out of 20. Nothing about the academy appears in a result, and nothing about the club’s future exists without it.
In brief
- Squad The training reports on Tommy Lewis are not good
- The dugout The manager plants his flag on Will Smith
- Squad Ben Bell is fit again