Mark Milligan has asked for a little time to get his new-look Newcastle Jets back to their “box office” best after starting their premiership defence with a 2–2 draw on the road against the Central Coast Mariners.
The Jets squad looks quite different from their two-trophy campaign, with breakout stars like Eli Adams, Lachie Bayliss, Kota Mizunuma, Mark Natta, Lachie Rose, and Clayton Taylor all having headed out the door. Several recruits came the other way, including veterans Joe Lolley and Nikos Vergos.
It’s shown early on in the new season, with Milligan’s men falling to two defeats in the AFC Champions League Elite against Kashima Antlers, 7–1, and Gamba Osaka, 3–1.
Things steadied a little in the A-League’s opening round, with a four-goal draw on the Central Coast. Newcastle found themselves trailing early after an 11th-minute penalty, and regained parity just after half-time. That lasted barely 10 minutes, with the Mariners awarded another penalty, which Oli Lavale converted.
Lavale was involved in the match’s last goal, too: the forward was back defending in the box against a Jets corner and accidentally turned it into the net when he tried to chest it across goal. It was enough to get Newcastle a point.
It was a scrappy draw, but no worries from Milligan, who sees this season as largely about building on 25/26’s incredible — and surprising — run after so many changes.
“Obviously, when we look at what we did last year, we were hoping just to sort of come back in and continue to build on that,” he explained.
“I had to hit the reset button; maybe a little bit naive on my part. But we’ve started from square one again… It’s been a good learning experience, for me as well.
“I ask probably a lot of different things of [the team] than what they’ve previously been asked, but it’s just about them understanding the game, and yeah, we want to play football, but it’s a very difficult way to play.
“I ask a lot of them on a daily basis, and it’s just them becoming accustomed to it and understanding how stubborn I am in terms of not changing and like I said, we see that happening now slowly.”
“[There were] some patches where I thought we were good,” he said. “We had trouble at times controlling that transition, and I thought we started a little bit sloppy, and we got punished for that. But look… for the majority of the game, we continue to try to play our football. Fair result in the end.”
The focus now, Milligan explained, will be “freshening things up in the front third” as the new attacking signings settle into their new digs. That includes teenage midfielder Julian Recchia, who started for the Jets on Saturday.
Another major signing, Alex Grant, is back in full training after nearly three months. Should he be ready, he is expected to replace Thomas Aquilina at centre-back.
The Jets now brace for a deluge of matches through to Saturday, 7 November, before they have a 17-day break. The run includes home games against Macarthur, Wellington, and Shanghai Port across the A-League and AFC Champions League, as well as road games against Perth and Kyoto Sanga.
Milligan agreed that the little flurry of fixtures before a near-three-week pause should help Newcastle hit their stride—especially as he works on “the final piece of the puzzle” in how he wants the team to be playing.
“You get four or five good games under your belt, and just that regular football atmosphere for them [the squad] to start to grow what we’re doing, and that’s when you start to see, not just with us, with everyone, that’s when you start to see the league start to settle and players become more comfortable.”
“I look at the performance [on Saturday], and for me the majority of the performance was promising. Yeah, there was good signs in patches. Yeah, definitely.”
– Isaac McIntyre
