“The easiest signature of my career.” Marco Van Hattum and Canterbury United agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Canterbury United will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Two goals and a mark of 8.38 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Canterbury United will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
7 goals in one match, Ben Cacace on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Canterbury United and Auckland City.
Marked 8.08 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
The words a physio says slowly. 88 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.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Michael Kirwan reports back to Canterbury United with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
The board have answered with money instead of encouragement, which is the only answer a manager ever wants. Spending it well is now entirely his problem.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 99 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Marco Van Hattum will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Canterbury United the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Nobody at Canterbury United 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.