Alex Rufer

James McGary, Matt Sheridan, Walter Scott, Juan Loke, and Jayden Smith.

With our midfield being Captain Alex Rufer, Kazuki Nagasawa, Bryce Duke, Max Anderson, Finn Royal-Conchi, Arnar Freyr Cassidy.

And up top we've got Rafa Duran, Corbin Piper, Riley Bidois, and Nathan Walker.

The new faces out of that list.

Where the goals come from, once again, McGary.

We've got young guys like Honoru Cassidy who have got to come back.

His f- his games that he played for us, I thought he was an, an ample replacement for Alex Rufer.

And when you consider where our seasons go wrong, it's normally when Alex Rufer disappears, gets injured, um, gets ill.

Uh, also scored against him when he moved, um, to San Diego.

Uh, and is somebody that is necessary to link that really industrial base of the midfield, which is anchored by the likes of Captain Alex Rufer and the attacking threat that the Phoenix do have.

So Raphael Duran, another one in this, Stefy, you do your best with that, mate.

Um, Duran Duran has already been thrown around plenty at our end.

Yeah.

And, um, after the likes of Ufi and Chiefy, I, I think what the club is doing is they're just settling down, um, giving Greeny the opportunity to survey the landscape.

Uh, uh, it was huge that they retained Alex Rufer in the off-season.

If you wanna talk about new signings and who's coming in, let's include Alex Rufer in that.

Chris, before we let you go, um, give us three names, uh, for those who, who might not watch a lot of Phoenix football, three names to look out for in your squad this year.

Uh, Corbin Piper, uh, Bryce Duke, uh, Alex Rufer.

Beautiful.

Chris-

You could easily make a starting 11 out of w- out of those players I just read out, and, and there probably w- were occasions last year when the starting 11s were made up of all of those players.

Um, crucially, they've retained Alex Rufer in amongst all of that, and he was almost gone as well.

He had a very, very good offer to move up to Asia and play there, and he went up there, visited, was all but ready to sign.

And then something happened, I'm not saying anything sinister or just a change of heart, whether it was around his family situation with his young family or, or whatever it was, something stopped that from happening.

Because if you add Alex Rufer to that list I just read out and he's not there, then you really are looking at a, at a, you know, a big, big dilution of the experience and the, and the spine.

But, you know, he's only one player I know, but he's such an important player to the team, Alex Rufer.

Captain, um, he'll probably end up being, uh, you know, amongst the top two or three appearance makers of all time at the club by the time he finishes playing.

Um, I think it was pretty crucial to keep him.

Well, yeah, it was a [laughs], it was a, uh, an interesting line-up.

I mean, Alex Rufer doesn't get many starts.

Uh, Lachlan Bayliss I think is a player with real, uh, potential, and one that's, uh, on the up.

So maybe he was the s- the standout for me.

Uh, 101 sort of stuff.

Rather than sideline or long clearances over and over again, they chipped it straight back to the edge of the box in the middle of the field! Perpetuating the pressure and attack after, uh, attack after attack!" Again, exclamation mark.

"Rufus passing percentage was very poor in midfield, not for the first time either.

Nice goal on the counter for Ole.

So Ryan Thomas, Joseph Bell, Matthew Garbett.

attacking midfielder Sarpreet Singh and Alex Rufer.

We do put those in order of preference, although there's not a lot of difference between them.

Let's see if the partner for Marko Staminic takes on any clarity in the June games.

We think he is a definite starter over here.

Moving to defensive midfield, we're going to do defensive and central midfielders together.

So for defensive midfielders, we have definite candidate Alex Rufer, although he's not as much as a starter as that would seem to indicate, but he is always called up.

That's why he's at the definite level.