Stripped of six key players from their triple winning 2023-2024 campaign, the competition’s great over-achievers will yet again look to defy the odds as they go in search of a third successive championship.

But chairman and owner Peil, a pragmatist and realist to the core, isn’t promising more miracles.

Peil expects the latest rebuild to yield a finals spot, but beyond that he isn’t going to speculate.

“When you lose players of the calibre of Danny Vukovic (retired), Jacob Farrell, Dan Hall, Josh Nisbet, Max Balard and Angel Torres (all but one offshore deals) it’s always going to be difficult to source ready-made replacements,” Peil told FTBL.

“We’ve recruited good players but one of the issues we’ve had is that when Matt Simon took over (the club’s venerated production pipeline) the youth academy wasn’t in great shape.

“It’s taken a little bit of time to get on top of that - and whilst there are some exciting players coming through they are 12 months to two years off being really good for us at A-League level.

“The other issue is that because we’ve been so successful over the last two years with stable lineups the next batch of youngsters haven’t been exposed to first team experience as much as in the past.

“What you’ll see this year is that we’ll be forced to blood more academy players and they’ll benefit from that.

“People have to acknowledge that will the smallest budget in the competition it would be unrealistic to expect us to be able to stay at the top of the tree every single year.

“Our goal this year is very clear: we believe we’ll play semifinals football and we want to try and get out of the group stage of the Asian Champions League.

“Do I think we’ll do a three-peat? I think it would be arrogant to make that statement.”

Having lost five key players and coach Nick Montgomery the previous season, the Mariners are past masters at successful rebuilds.

But, with the slashing of central distributions to just $550,000 hardly helping matters at the competition’s thriftiest club, the obstacles are mounting up in front of the Mariners.

“Everybody knows we still have the lowest budget in the league and we’ll be spending less than anybody else this season,” added Peil.

“But it doesn’t mean we’re going to lie down this year. I’m certainly not saying that.

"I think we have the two best coaches in the league in Mark Jackson and Danny Schofield, Vukovic joining the ranks and a great sporting director (Matt Simon) and our medical staff and high performance department are excellent.

“We just need a little bit of luck with injuries because we don’t have a very deep squad this year.”
Peil also waxes lyrical about the club’s three emerging keepers (Adam Pavlesic, Dylan Peraić-Cullen and Jack Warshawsky).

“I’m very happy with that battle going on there and they have unbelievable gloves to fill when you look at how immense Danny Vukovic has been for this club,” he said.

“I’m also very confident that Nathan Paull will emerge as a very good centre back for us, and whilst you can’t replace Jacob Farrell, we’ve got the next best thing in the league in Lucas Mauragis, who is a superstar in the making.

“Alfie McCalmont (former Leeds United) is a perfect replacement for Balard in midfield, and the early signs of (Brazilian capture) Vitor (Correia da Silva) are very promising.

“Then we have up and comers like Miguel Di Pizio and Bailey Brandtman. I also hope that Harry Steele has an injury free run because he’s a natural leader when you get him on the park.

“He’s a big voice loved by the players and fans. We hope he’ll have a big year as well.”