Stanton presses powerbrokers to match effort of Jets players, staff

After a 0-0 draw with City, Newcastle coach Rob Stanton has exhorted A-League powerbrokers to do their bit to keep the Jets alive, matching the grit and effort he's seen from his players and coaches.

After his young unit put the noise to one side, headed down to Victoria and held firm against Melbourne City, Newcastle Jets boss Rob Stanton maintains he can see the growth in his unit, the foundation that is being put in place. Indeed, despite all the existential questions that surround the club, he feels the players are knuckling down and still doing their bit at the same time he and the coaching staff are doing the same. Now, he wants others in the game to do theirs and help ensure the ongoing health of football in the Hunter. 

Though trailing when it came to possession, shots, shots on target, expected goals and all those other various statistics that attempt to tell the story of a game, the Jets were able to maintain parity on the only stat that ultimately matters at AAMI Park on Saturday, holding out for a 0-0 draw against a City outfit that had put seven past Western Sydney in their last game before in the international break. 

And while keeper Ryan Scott and his nine saves can make a convincing case for being tapped as man-of-the-match, it would be unfair to say that the Novocastrians were forced into a desperate rearguard for their point. 

Sure, they were helped by City being wasteful with some of the chances they created and lacking the final killer touch with a few others. Stand-in coach Ralph Napoli, filling in for an ill Aurelio Vidmar, reflected after the game that this has been something of his side’s season and that, ultimately, they need to get better here.

But the visitors also did their bit to close down and deny a torrent of quality chances. After some halftime adjustments and some tinkering with their patterns of play, they were even able to start to ask a few questions of their opponents going forward, with Apostolos Stamatelopoulos and Daniel Wilmering having the best of their side’s chances. 

“I thought it was a top performance,” said Stanton. “You could tell that in the two weeks, they’d done a lot of work on stepping up and applying pressure, instant pressure. They came out and sustained it for long periods. 

“We wanted to play. We weren’t going to change our game, we stuck with the principles of what we wanted to work on. There were a few [nervy] moments there but their bravery at times led to little half chances. We had to defend well as well on top of that. 

“I was really happy with the boys. [They showed] resilience and the way they applied themselves and stood up for themselves, it was a top performance and a top effort. It showed some great character and a good progression from a young team.”

Adding a degree of distinction to the Jets' performance was that they produced it against a backdrop of ongoing uncertainty surrounding the club and their own associated futures. 

APL Chairman Stephen Conroy having nailed the competition’s colours to the mast by stating that the A-League is no longer in a position to prop up struggling clubs, the presence of the Hunter-based club in the next A-League Men and A-League Women season is no sure thing. To avoid collapse, the four A-League owners currently in the custodianship of its licence will either need to sell it or commit to ongoing funding of their ward’s operations. But with this quartet’s rapidly decreasing appetite for the latter becoming more and more apparent, the importance of the former is increasing every day. 

The Jets have battled for years under the pauper’s existence their ownership situation has inflicted on them — former coach Arthur Papas was effectively coaching with one hand tied behind his back across the two seasons — but now things are getting decidedly more definitive. For the players, coaches, and everyone around McDonald Jones Stadium, the club collapsing means they’re out of a job; potentially leaving at a career crossroads and threatening mortgages, rent, bills, and all the other increasingly expensive necessities of modern life. 

“For a young group I think they’ve managed the situation very well,” said Stanton. “They’ve shown a mature approach to it. We’ve focused on the football. I’m really pleased with the way they’ve done it. The same with the staff, we’ve just focused on things we can control. 

“The noise outside, there’s a lot of noise, things being spoken, but there’s a lot of things happening in the background. I’m confident that a solution will be found and an identity for the club will be started again and we can move forward from there. We need new owners so we can start a new identity, and create a vision the club wants to have.

“We’ve been working on things now but we need new owners to come in. We need to get on things we can control. It’s a sign of the team taking in on board, parking it, and focusing on the things we can control.”

Amidst all this talk of the future from the Jets coach, of building a new identity and establishing a culture, it certainly feels like he hasn’t become disillusioned by the process. Not yet at least. And while the Jets are now winless in their last nine and set to miss finals for the twelfth time in thirteen seasons, he sees progress from their ability to stay in games and grind — losing by more than a goal just once during this recent stretch and taking points off finals bound Macarthur and Melbourne Victory.

What’s irking him more than his lot right now, it appears, is the state of the game as a whole, and how a situation such as the one unfolding in the Hunter has been allowed to happen in the first place. Stanton didn’t mention them specifically, but one imagines there are a few players at Canberra United who would agree with his sentiment. 

“I've got a few players signed,” he said. “We just need to sort out the part that settles everyone down. 

“The fans are anxious. It's a foundation club, if you look at the history of the game, Newcastle was prominent from all phases and stages of the game in its growth. I think it'd be quite careless and reckless of the people that run our game to allow [the Jets to fold]. 

“In my opinion, and I'm not having to go at anyone, but the game can be in a much better state and I think there's some people that need to stand up and set the direction of where the game should be going. Putting the game first; I think letting the foundation club go is probably not in the best interest of the game. So hopefully it'll get sorted. 

“I'm not pointing fingers but at the end of the day, I think I'm doing my bit and everyone needs to do their bit for the game and the game will flourish. We've been saying it for years and years and years and it needs to happen. 

“Because when it goes, it's gone, it ain't coming back. And a lot of the history is gone. We don't value the history of our game and we don't value the people that contributed to it. We don't do it. We haven't done it. It's embarrassing sometimes. 

“So I love the game and there are many others like me, we're happy to work really hard and pass on what we know. So the game can flourish.”