The Newcastle Jets will look to field their strongest available line-up against the NBN State League Select tomorrow night.
Hunter Ports Newcastle Jets assistant coach Craig Deans said the Jets would once again be looking to field their strongest available line-up in Wednesday-s trial game against the NBN State League Select at Darling Street Oval.
Deans said the Jets coaching staff would reward the players who had impressed in training and earlier trial matches with the chance to start tomorrow-s fixture.
“We-ll do what we-ve done the last couple of games and pick the 11 to start the game that have put their hand up and have had the best performances in training and in the previous games,” Deans said.
“We-ll look to get as much time out of them as we can and then make some changes.
“It-s a process of building towards the first A-League game of the season and every time we play we will generally pick what the strongest team is.”
Deans said the Jets would look to build on the progress they made during their impressive 9-1 win over the Canberra Rockets in the nation-s capital last week.
“It was a good performance and we saw some things that we-ve been working on at training come to the fore,” he said.
“It was good to see the combinations that we-re looking to build in certain areas of the field with the fullbacks and the wide players, the rotation in the midfield, how we control the game, how we play when we don-t have the ball.”
Adam Taggart will return from a groin injury to play some part during the fixture, however Marko Jesic (hip flexor) and Jobe Wheelhouse (foot) are unlikely to take the field. The match will provide the first chance for Jets Members and supporters to see Swiss import Dominik Ritter play in Newcastle.
“Dominik played 20 minutes in Canberra and we-ll see whether we push him to half a game or half-an-hour,” Deans said.
“With it being a long way away from the start of the season, there-s no reason to rush people.
“He-s missed a good five or six weeks of training so we don-t want to push him to get up to the level (of fitness) of the rest of the group too quickly.
“He showed good signs in the 20 minutes he was on. He made good positive runs and he had a cross for the last goal and was generally quite good defensively as well.”
Despite the big win over the Rockets, Deans said there was no danger of complacency creeping into the Jets playing group ahead of tomorrow night-s fixture.
“The attitude of the group has been fantastic so far this year,” he said.
“We haven-t really had to push them to be motivated and show the right attitude.
“Obviously 9-1 isn-t going to happen every week. You could have the same level of effort and not have the luck.
“We expect to put in the same sort of effort and if we score nine goals we-ll be happy, but if not, the performance is just as important.”
Wednesday July 18 – Pre-season game 3
Newcastle Jets v NBN State League Select
Kick off: 7pm
Venue: Darling Street Oval, Hamilton
Cost: $5 adult, U16 free.
Note: Proceeds from the ‘Gate- at the pre-season fixtures are retained by NNSWF for the purpose of providing grants to cover the costs associated with undertaking elite coaching accreditation.
