James Donachie 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Corey Hollman was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is a squad player’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Team Wellington needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Team Wellington, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Position 3, 10 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Ruon Tongyik 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.
A 2‑1 win over Waitakere United, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
There is a particular helplessness in conceding 2 times before the twentieth minute. Waitakere United tried to reorganise, Team Wellington did not allow it, and the result was written long before it was confirmed.
Two sides from the top of the table, one afternoon, and a month of talk decided in ninety minutes. Team Wellington will not use the word title this week and will not stop thinking it.
Half the programme played, position 3, 10 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
Dan Edwards had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and WaiBOP United were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
7.92, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Team Wellington this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Corey Hollman 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.
Ruon Tongyik 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Corey Hollman 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.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Canterbury United in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Joe Fenton trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
A mark of 7.80 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
James Donachie 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 19 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Willem Ebbinge. 2‑0 against Southern United, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Ryan Van Hattum 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.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Dan Edwards was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.02. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Noah Barbarouses kept it short after the 2‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
14 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Team Wellington lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Ruon Tongyik 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.
17 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
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 Noah Barbarouses to a room that had heard them before.
It is the quietest way a club tells you what its ambitions are. The money was asked for, the money was refused, and the people who work there every day now know exactly where they stand.
Ninety specific minutes wanted a different sort of player, and the manager picked one. He is not out of form and he is not in the side, and both are true.
21 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Team Wellington lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Team Wellington this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Team Wellington know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Waitakere United in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Dan Edwards signs something — a contract at Team Wellington or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Alex Sutton and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Corey Hollman 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Oliver Waine is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Chris Bell 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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Alex Nelson 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.