The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Lautoka people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Some transfers need a press campaign. This one needed a shirt with the old number on it. Leisari Qalica is a Lautoka player again, and the town has its story of the summer.
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Lautoka will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Junior Anand 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.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Lautoka are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
20 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Lautoka lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 14 arrived, 2 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Everything agreed with another club, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lautoka this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The phone has started ringing about Atunaisa Naucukidi again, and this time the name on the line is Tailevu Naitasiri. Lautoka are listening politely and promising nothing.
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Mohammed Alam is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
Rewa arrived with $100.0K and left with the best player in the building. The board will call it business; the queue at the ticket office will use other words.
The words a physio says slowly. 27 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.
Saula Waqa has gone, the accounts have $100.0K in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
Sairusi Nalaubu 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.
$21.0K was the most the club would pay and WaiBOP United were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
The training ground goes quiet for a fortnight. 5 men have gone off to be somebody else’s players, and the manager is left with the ones nobody has called.
Squad31 Aug 2026
8 new faces, and Lautoka are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
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.
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.
34 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Lautoka lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Out, 3‑4 to Tailevu Naitasiri, and the long argument about which of the small moments decided it. The league is all there is now, and everybody knows it.
Two goals and a mark of 8.25 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Lautoka have gone to WaiBOP United with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Sairusi Nalaubu 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.
7 goals in one match, Sairusi Nalaubu on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Lautoka and Tailevu Naitasiri.
41 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Lautoka lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
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 has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Sairusi Nalaubu signs something — a contract at Lautoka or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Sairusi Nalaubu 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Dave Tiko 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. Tito Kaumaitotoya 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 academy exists for exactly this morning. Alipate Baledrokadroka 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Isikeli Krishna is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Lautoka can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lautoka this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Squad3 Aug 2026
8 new faces, and Lautoka are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
49 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.