Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bidvest Wits will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Nkosikhona Ndaba 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.
A season average of 7.01 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Bidvest Wits know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
Squad1 May 2028
Words at Bidvest Wits training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Cemran Dansin 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Bidvest Wits, another week without a signature from Reyaad Pieterse.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 78 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Teboho Billiat 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.
Squad17 Apr 2028
Cemran Dansin 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 Bidvest Wits, and both men came out saying it was fine.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Zeke May has written the date down.
Teboho Billiat 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.
Squad28 Feb 2028
Cemran Dansin 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.
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Siyethemba Sithebe has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Bidvest Wits.
The dugout28 Feb 2028
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Lebogang Williams, on a 2‑1 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
The words a physio says slowly. 43 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bidvest Wits have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Gomolemo Kekana is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Successful dribbles: 16. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
In brief
The dugoutS'fiso Hlanti dropped after a run of poor form
73 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Bidvest Wits lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Teboho Billiat 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.
Squad15 Nov 2027
Cemran Dansin 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.
Squad15 Nov 2027
A muscle injury sidelines Pentjie Zulu for 19 days
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Bidvest Wits will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.