Cana­di­an Pre­mier League club, York9 FC last Wednes­day con­tin­ued its splashy off-sea­son over­haul, by re­sign­ing T&T in­ter­na­tion­al mid­field­er Ryan Telfer for this sea­son.

Fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful spell with York9 FC last year, the 26-year-old winger left Toron­to FC at the end of the sea­son af­ter they de­clined to pick up his op­tion for 2020 and the 'Nine Stripes' as York9 FC are known, moved swift­ly to se­cure the re­turn of their for­mer loa­nee, Telfer, from Nea Salam­i­na Fam­a­gus­ta in Cyprus.

Last year, he scored eight goals in 26 match­es in the in­au­gur­al sea­son of the Cana­di­an Pre­mier League (CPL) – in­clu­sive of the first goal in league his­to­ry three min­utes in­to the open­er against Forge FC – and helped the club to fin­ish third in the over­all league stand­ings, last sea­son.

Over­all, the ver­sa­tile at­tack­er made 32 ap­pear­ances across all com­pe­ti­tions for York9 last year and fin­ished sixth in the CPL in scor­ing with eight goals, and added an­oth­er two in the Cana­di­an Cham­pi­onship.

He al­so claimed the ho­n­our of be­ing the first per­son to score for a CPL team against Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) op­po­si­tion when he equalised against the Mon­tre­al Im­pact in the Cana­di­an Cham­pi­onship.

Fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of the cam­paign, he took up a short-term con­tract of­fer to play in the Cypri­ot First Di­vi­sion in Jan­u­ary af­ter hav­ing been re­leased in No­vem­ber by his MLS club, Toron­to FC, who did not ex­er­cise its con­tract op­tion on him af­ter play­ing in 16 MLS reg­u­lar-sea­son match­es, as well as 38 times for Toron­to FC II.

Telfer’s short-term con­tract with Nea Salamis ex­pired in May af­ter he on­ly made three ap­pear­ances for the Cypri­ot side, start­ing just once and be­cause the fi­nan­cial health of the club and the Cypri­ot league took a big hit due to the pan­dem­ic, the two sides mu­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to part ways, rather than sign an ex­ten­sion.

From there, talks be­tween Telfer’s agent and Yorke9 led to his re­turn to the CPL.

“The (Cypri­ot) league got hit pret­ty hard. COVID cre­at­ed a lot of un­cer­tain­ty with the league, and play­ers and clubs. I want­ed to head back home to be with my fam­i­ly while al­so play­ing so I talked to my agent about com­ing back to the CPL,” Telfer told Can­PL.ca.

“I knew things would be hard all over the foot­ball world, but if I came home dur­ing this time and I’d be play­ing foot­ball, I’d be do­ing it at home and be­ing with my fam­i­ly.”

Be­fore sign­ing with York9, there were oth­er op­tions on the ta­ble for Telfer in­clud­ing some teams over­seas that were ap­peal­ing but com­ing back to York9 made the most sense.

He has al­so been capped six times by T&T, with his first com­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2019 and scored in on­ly his sec­ond ap­pear­ance, against Mar­tinique in the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League, and in do­ing so, the Mis­sis­sauga, On­tario-born play­er al­so added the ac­co­lade of the first in­ter­na­tion­al goal scored by a CPL play­er to his re­sume.

Com­ment­ing on his re­turn to York9 Telfer told Can­PL.ca: “York has al­ways been a sec­ond home to me and it feels good to be back. To the fans and club, I’ve got un­fin­ished busi­ness here. "I kept in touch with York9 staff while I was in Cyprus, and I could see from the out­side the ad­di­tions they made were im­pres­sive.”

“What they ac­com­plished in bring­ing guys like (Michael) Pe­trasso, (Chris) Man­nel­la, and (Nicholas) Hamil­ton, I was sur­prised how quick­ly they brought in these guys.

“From that point on, when I saw this from the out­side, I thought York9 should be able to do a lot of good things for the up­com­ing sea­son. I was im­pressed by what they’ve done, and adding me to that mix, I don’t think it’s go­ing to be a fun ex­pe­ri­ence for oth­er teams to face us.”

Telfer was used in a va­ri­ety of po­si­tions by coach Jim­my Bren­nan last sea­son, play­ing both wings, in at­tack­ing mid­field, and oc­ca­sion­al­ly as a false nine or cen­tre-for­ward.