Nobody at Adelaide 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.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Wellington Phoenix in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
In brief
The dugoutMitchell Gray asks for a word with the manager
Dylan Pierias 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.
Adelaide United ran out of time with Western Sydney Wanderers. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Lachlan Edwards and Adelaide United agree another 3 years.
A goalkeeper’s error has no defender behind it to tidy it away. He knew before the ball crossed the line, the crowd knew a second later, and there is nothing anybody can say tonight.
The dugout20 Feb 2034
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Izei Serrano to a room that had heard them before.
The dugout20 Feb 2034
Noah James is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Nobody at Adelaide 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.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Ajak Riak provided it, and the 8.69 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Dylan Pierias 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.
He is 17 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 3‑0, Izei Serrano could afford to be generous.
0‑3 to Central Coast Mariners, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Adelaide United have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
A new deal for the man in the dugout, and the clearest thing a board can say without calling a press conference about it. Stability is cheap to promise and expensive to deliver.
7 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Bryce Richards 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Jarrod Lawrence is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Anthony Cummings 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.
Dylan Pierias 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.
Squad25 Apr 2033
Ajak Riak 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 had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Adelaide United, and both men came out saying it was fine.
“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 dugout25 Apr 2033
Damien Palmer is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Dylan Pierias 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 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 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.
Position 4, 40 points, and a run-in that decides whether next season has Thursday nights in it. Nobody is calling it a race yet, which is what people say during one.