"Couldn’t have been written any better" - Jets keep premiership destiny in their hands with late Victory draw
Somehow, the premiership is still in the Newcastle Jets’ hands. And as Mark Milligan grinned after their 2-2 draw with Melbourne Victory, it couldn’t be scripted any better for the season's final week
Somehow, it’s still in the Newcastle Jets’ hands. And as their coach Mark Milligan grinned after their 2-2 draw with Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park on Friday evening, it almost couldn’t have been scripted any better heading into the final week of the A-League Men season.
With 25 games on their season now gone, the Jets are just one week away from claiming their first-ever A-League Men premiership. All they will need to do in the last week of the campaign is defeat their bitter F3 Derby rivals Central Coast at McDonald Jones Stadium, and they will get the chance to claim the Premiers’ Plate.
Their moment could, in fact, come even sooner if the Mariners do them a favour and defeat Auckland FC on Sunday afternoon; Steve Corica’s side now sitting four points adrift of the Novocastrians heading into the weekend. But even if that’s the case — Milligan certainly didn’t want to countenance it post-game — the Jets will be able to lift that first piece of league silverware since 2007-08 for the first time at home.
“We complain about everything; about the scheduling, about what days we’re playing,” Milligan smiled post-game. “But in all honesty, it couldn’t have been written any better for these lads. We’re a very, very different team from what we were in round one, when we played Mariners at their ground [a 3-2 defeat delivered by a 98th-minute Nicholas Duarte goal].
“We’ve taken some fantastic learnings from tonight. And it wasn’t something that I did; it was something that I noticed – the group got together in the middle of the park after the game. And that tells me a lot. It reconfirms to me just how determined this group is.”
No doubt helping to fashion this sense of a crescendo is that it all could have been very different. Staring down the barrel of a 2-1 defeat, a result that would have seen control of their premiership hopes slip from their grasp and into the lap of Auckland, Victory defender Sebastian Esposito needlessly clattered into Lachie Bayliss in the 87th minute and brought the Kiwi international crashing down to the turf, instantly leading Alex King to point to the penalty spot. Up stepped Eli Adams, a former Victory representative, no less, who had scored a 19th-minute effort to put the Novocastrians ahead, to convert and celebrate in front of the North Terrace, his fingers in his ears.
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And as much relief as the Jets might have been feeling at that point, they also would perhaps be feeling unlucky not to be taking all three soon after. Just over five minutes on, with all the game’s momentum at their backs and Esposito falling over himself and coughing the ball up in his own half, second-half substitute Xavier Bertoncello was played clean through on goal by Ben Gibson with a chance to win it, only for the 20-year-old to send his attempt to chip keeper Jack Warshawsky into the crossbar.
“It shows who we are, the character of this team, and what this team represents,” said Milligan. “The fact that we never take our foot off the throttle. These players, they’re driving that. And we’re creating opportunities late in that game from our football.
“That last opportunity that we created, there was some fantastic lead-up play, and then the decision for Gibbo to roll in Xavier, that’s not just them doing as they’re told. That’s them representing who we are and what they are.
“That’s brave for me. Because once it goes to 2-2, I don’t think there are too many teams out there that would then go and try to win the game in extra time. And that wasn’t information coming from me, that was just the DNA of this team now.”
That’s not to say that the Jets had it all their own way on Friday. In fact, based on the volume of chances created, Victory will, fairly, feel bereft not just to take a point from a game that was begging for them to score a third and kill off. To not claim a win that now sees their slim hopes of a top-two finish slip through their fingers, as well as their push for a home elimination final suffer a blow, as a result.
Switching to a back-five for the contest, Josh Rawlins and Franco Lino flanking a trio of Esposito, Roderick Miranda, and Jason Davidson, Victory was able to reliably able to find pockets of space on either flank on which to deliver balls into the Jets’ area: Rawlins picked out by Jordi Valadon on the right and teeing up Nduka to equalise in the 31st minute and then, just three minutes later, Lino getting picked out in space on the left by Davidson and whipping a ball across for the Japanese striker to turn home.
“I didn’t expect it; I didn’t expect to come to AAMI Park and play against the back five,” Milligan said. “When the team sheet came out, we thought it was a possibility, just with the personnel that they had starting.
“That’s something that we try to prepare for, but these players need to get a feel for this and an understanding. It’s happened in the last three games. So we can talk about it all we want, and we can tell them about what we think they can do, or how they should go about it. But until they experience this and learn for themselves -- again, this is part of who we are as a team -- when they start feeling it and making decisions live, out there for themselves, that’s when we start to see real growth in this team.”
Nduka now has five goal involvements in eleven appearances and probably should have had a hat-trick in the 73rd minute when he was picked out from the flank once more, this time by substitute Matthew Grimaldi. This time, however, he was unable to drag his arriving attempt back and inside the near post.
And this was just one of a string of opportunities and looks at goal that Victory created throughout the contest. Jets skipper Kosta Grozos, for instance, was able to get back just in time and clear a Jordi Valadon effort off the line in the 63rd minute, five minutes after James Delianov produced one of the saves of the season to deny a header from Nishan Velupillay – who had a lot of joy finding pockets of space outside the Jets’ penalty area while playing as a ten – after he was picked out by Keegan Jelacic.
“In the end, you’ve got to hold on,” said coach Arthur Diles. “And when I say hold on, you got to see out the match, not hold on in terms of taking a backward step. But you need to do enough to see out a match and try and get another goal. And we didn’t. And in the end, we get bitten in the backside.”
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The point, regardless of the rather anticlimactic way it was sourced, does effectively seal Victory a place in the playoffs – now six points clear of seventh-placed Macarthur with a goal difference of +9, compared to the Bulls’ -9. It also ensures that Diles’ unit has faced off with the league’s top two over the past fortnight and come away without defeat – albeit having shipped equalisers after the 80th minute in both games.
“I think we deserved more out of these two games than we got,” said Diles. “But in the end, the performance is something I’ve got to focus on, and the performance was good [against the Jets] for a lot of that game. So that’s a pleasing sign. That’s something we want to do. We want to play well, as well, not just pick up points. But the points, in the end, should correlate with a good performance. And when you don’t get the three points, when you feel like you probably can, that’s disappointing, it’s hard to take, but we’ll go again.
“Qualifying for finals is actually not an achievement of this club. It’s an expectation. I’d like to sit here and say well done that we made finals, but that’s not enough. To back up against first and second in consecutive weeks and show that we’re just as good. That’s the part that’s pleasing, in a way, and disappointing, in a way, because they’re a little bit too far away from us [on the table]. And we’ve shown that we’re a quality team that should be up there, and we want to be up there.
“There have been moments where we’ve fallen short, and that stopped us from being there. But there’s one more game to go. We want to finish as high as we can. That’s all we can do; work hard this week, get ready for Western Sydney Wanderers. We know we’re a quality side. We know we can match it with the best. But we want to be the best and, at the moment, we’re just a little bit off that.”