Rafael Durán

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.

Rafa Duran, he is Mexican, played for the Bulls.

He's 29.

Looks pretty handy.

because the one and only Afania Eze took us on a wild ride last season and he's no longer there what have you seen from Durant what do you reckon he's going to offer this Wellington Phoenix team and it still seems like they're putting Corbin Piper Adam Pompey into that uh striker position as well

yeah uh Piper and Pompey is there's definitely some parallels um that's well from the national league game didn't see a lot from rafa duran to be honest i mean he he got um welcome to the new zealand national league kind of moment first up where he jumped for a header and got pushed in the back it's gonna take a shoulder in the

back here you go oh i thought you're gonna say he stepped on some dog poo or something

if well uh where were they playing oh they were at fraser park so nah it is artificial grass there so you don't Not a great place for walking the dogs.

And then at the final whistle, just like a tsunami of children just run on the field from one of the sides to go and celebrate.

Those are great National League areas when that stuff is happening.

didn't get that for Birkenhead 1 Wellington Phoenix reserves nil at Fraser Park but did get 60 minutes of Rafa Duran who I think he's on a comeback like schedule from after injury so they're trying to build up his minutes which meant they didn't like otherwise he'd have just sat out the week when the rest of the team went to play a preseason game in Australia he stayed behind and But his schedule required him to play 60-odd minutes, so he went and just played for the reserves instead, which was cool because every now and then we do get some imports popping up for the Wellington Phoenix men's reserves.

It's never happened for the women's reserves.

Uh, visa players are not too, um, haven't played for the Phoenix before.

So Rafael Duran's come in from MacArthur on a two-year deal, Mexican player, 29 years old.

Uh, career with pretty much all in Mexico around various teams.

Doesn't seem to have really pinned down a full starting spot anywhere for, for a long time.

And so I'm hoping that now with, with a preseason behind him and having had, you know, a lot more time with Isaac Hughes, um, to build that partnership, that, that we could see him actually, you know, fulfill that promise that we sort of expected when he was first signed for us.

Yeah.

And then in terms of other things, yeah, I think, I think we are sort of very much reliant on, a, a lot of, I guess, my hopes of this season are reliant on Rafael Duran being great as a striker.

Like, as, as you say, he's, he was out wide for MacArthur last year, and so we haven't probably really seen him that much as a central striker in, in this league yet.

... yeah, that's pretty good.

Um, and then they've got that Rafael Duran, who was at MacArthur on loan last year, I think it was.

Apart from that, it's just a bunch of, uh, New Zealand Football Manager regens.

Uh, but yeah.