Although we finished just outside the top six in 2018/19, it was a tight-run affair and just a few results falling the right way could have seen consecutive seasons of finals football for the Jets.
With a points tally among the best in Jets history and a goal-scoring tally second only to last season, there were plenty of positives reflected in our end-of-season statistics.
YOUTH: Comeback win over Valentine
ACADEMY: Goals galore on the lake
Thanks to our resident stats guru, Dave Keating, we’ve been able to put together some pretty cool numbers around our 2018/19 campaign.
The season
While the disappointment of missing out on finals football remains fresh, there were a plethora of positives to take out of this season from a historical perspective.
There have only been two seasons in the Hyundai A-League where we’ve finished with more points than this season’s tally of 35 – in 2011/12 (36 points) and 2017/18 (50 points).
The side’s goal tally of 40 goals is the second highest in a single season in history, beaten only by last year’s haul of 57.
Our positive goal difference +4 was another big plus in historical terms – it’s just the fourth time in 14 attempts that the Jets have finished the season in the goal difference black.
Three victories over the Wanderers marks the first time we’ve taken all three points on all three occasion in a single season, with the 5-1 win in Round 17 our largest winning margin over Western Sydney to date.
The players
Nikolai Topor-Stanley is a big feature in these numbers, with the tall timber playing every single minute of every single match this season.
When you factor in our two FFA Cup fixtures and both AFC Champions League matches, that’s 31 games (and 2,790 minutes) without missing a minute.
He’s set a new consecutive appearance record too, playing 69 games in a row in the Hyundai A-League. Topor surpassed former Jet, Tarek Elrich, who had played 68.
Nine players made debuts for the Club this year – Jair, Kaine Sheppard, Lewis Italiano, Jake Adelson, Kwabena Appiah, Jack Simmons, Pat Langlois, and Mitch Austin.
There were also seven players who scored for the first time in Jets colours, with Ronny Vargas and Nick Cowburn among those scoring maiden goals for Newcastle.
Did you know?
- The FFA Cup Round of 32 victory over Gold Coast Knights (1-0) was our first win in the competition
- Ronny Vargas became the first player to score for the Jets in consecutive AFC Champions League matches
- The Jets won the ‘fair play’ award for the first time this season, with fewer yellow cards (42) than any other team in the competition!
- Steven Ugarkovic has featured in 65 consecutive Hyundai ALeague matches for the Jets, and is third on the all-time consecutive appearances list for the Club
- Jack Simmons’ debut for the Club at 17 years and 17 days old made him the third youngest EVER debutant for the Newcastle Jets in the Hyundai ALeague, behind only James Virgili (16y 180d) and Ben Kantarovski (16y 208d).
