Newcastle Jets Head Coach Mark Jones has vowed to repeat his players’ preparations for Saturday’s test in the west against Perth Glory given the routine the squad followed in round 10 helped guide the side to their first win across the Nullarbor since 2005.
On Saturday 10 December 2016 the Jets stunned the purple-whites on their home patch, producing a fluent and fierce attacking display to win 2-1 at nib Stadium for the first time since the very first season of the Hyundai A-League.
In fact, the scoreline would have been bigger in the west hadn’t it been for Glory gloveman Liam Reddy who produced a number of world class saves to keep Perth in the contest.
Unfortunately for Kenny Lowe’s charges Reddy received a red card against Central Coast Mariners last weekend, meaning he will be sidelined for the third and final regular season meeting between the two teams this campaign.
Jones believes the loss of Reddy could affect the hosts.
“We’ll be doing everything exactly the same (in terms of preparation),” Jones told local media following his side’s final training session in Newcastle on Thursday. “We’ll follow the same path that worked so well last time.”
“We’ll go there and try and play. We back ourselves to play football and play out through the lines.”
“(Perth are) a little bit different to Melbourne City who bomb forward. Perth will give us a bit more respect so we will try to duplicate what we did there last time.”
“(The loss of Reddy) slightly weakens them. He has been a sensational ‘keeper all year and he is a big reason why they have done so well in certain games. For him to be out is perhaps a little bonus for us,” he said.
Three Jets players – Lachlan Jackson, Devante Clut and Nicholas Cowburn – spent the first three days of this week in camp with an Australian U23 selection on the Central Coast.
Jones confirmed that despite their absence at Jets training this week the trio would be heading west.
“The three of them will come back into the squad and obviously Lachy (Lachlan Jackson) did a magnificent job against Melbourne City last week, so he will come straight back into the starting line up.”
“We gave them today (Thursday) off because they have trained three days straight (with Australia U23) so we didn’t want them to train four or five days straight going into a game.”
“They will train with us in Perth on Friday and they will be right to go,” he said.
And Jones believes if the Jets can punish Perth on their home patch again, a stellar show of support awaits the Club next Saturday when Newcastle host Melbourne Victory at McDonald Jones Stadium.
“If we can get a result against Perth than I’d expect big numbers to turn up next weekend,” he explained. “It would be exciting times for us to play Victory here.”
“We want to do well for the town and we want to make the town proud. We have put ourselves in a great position, and it would be nice to consolidate that against Perth and have a massive crowd against Victory.”
