Football teams are usually defined by their stars. Diego Maradona’s Argentina, Cristiano Ronaldo’s Real Madrid. Even those clubs that profess a non-galácticos ethos like Barcelona have become synonymous with a Lionel Messi or Andrés Iniesta. But the key ingredients to really good teams, genuinely successful teams, are often the players who pundits don’t talk about – those names which aren’t normally embroidered on replica jerseys.
And so, as impressive as the form of Newcastle Jets Andrew Nabbout and Dimi Petratos has been this season – form which earned the pair Socceroos call-ups – the performances of Steven Ugarkovic, Ben Kantarovski, Jason Hoffman and Johnny Koutroumbis have been of equal importance to the grand finalists.
Just over a year ago, when the Jets travelled to Wellington to take on a Phoenix side missing six international players, five of the same players that dazzled Melbourne City in last week’s semi-final were named on the team sheet. They were duly thrashed 5-0 by the depleted Nix, as the Jet’s season spiralled rapidly towards ignominy, finishing on a six-game losing streak in which they shipped 19 goals.
Ernie Merrick may have been overlooked for A-League coach of the year, but the job he has done with the players inherited from one the darkest chapters of this football club – one not short of awful memories over the last seven years – is truly remarkable.
Hoffman, a player once listed as a striker, then a utility, then a defender has just matched the goal return of his entire 10-year A-League career – in one season. Kantarovski, a defensive midfielder not noted for his flair or attacking potency has just outscored Roy Krishna, Alex Brosque, James Troisi and Brendon Santalab.
Gui Finkler, reflecting on the differences across a career played in Brazil, England, Belgium and Australasia, once explained how the squad-size limit and salary cap made the A-League a fundamentally different competition.
“In Brazil, it’s totally different,” the former Melbourne Victory and Phoenix player said. “A new coach comes into training and bang, 14 players leave. Everyone is always moving, you don’t make friendships in the locker room, you don’t make lasting connections to people or places. In the A-League, you can’t do that, the squads are capped. You work with what you have. So to win the A-League it’s not about tactics, it’s about how you manage the players.”
To turn a defensive midfielder told for years to just tackle and shuffle into a goalscorer again speaks to the remarkable way Merrick can instill belief. A player told all his career he was only good enough to be reactive, now playing proactively. And two of his goals were backheel flicks. Now that’s self-belief.
Another player who worked closely with Merrick was Vince Lia, both in the early years at Victory and then later in Wellington. In addition to the Scot’s exemplary man management skills, Lia attributed his success to an ability to judge character. “He is one of those coaches that signs men,” said Lia, in an interview from 2016. “He likes to sign characters, and see how they can fit into the team.”
In the context of sudden success, press panegyrics can often be prone to overstating the influence of an individual coach, but Newcastle Jets’ impressive off-season recruitment speaks to a wider team effort and if Merrick is the master of man-management, then Lawrie McKinna is the master of identity.
At the A-League’s foundation, the last team in – the little club on the Central Coast that many expected to be there merely making up the numbers – quickly established itself as the league’s gold-standard not just in terms of community involvement but also in terms of identity. This was a club of the Coast, by the Coast, for the Coast – and they revered the man, McKinna, who was so synonymous with this that they made him mayor.
Despite the seeming incongruity of it, now it’s the fans of the Mariners’ northern rivals in Newcastle that have taken McKinna to heart. Despite the gloom and doom surrounding crowd metrics A-League wide, the fans are flocking again to Jets games.
As Newcastle CEO, McKinna brought back Jets legend Joel Griffiths – the Johnny Warren medalist and A-League golden boot winner with Newcastle in 2007-08, the year they last won the championship.
Having people who “get” Newcastle, who share its history and love its foreshore is part and parcel of creating an identity, a football club that both inspires its region and reflects it. And while much of this has been well-documented in the lead up to the grand final, there’s one more figure in this fairytale that deserves tremendous credit – owner Martin Lee.
In Con Constantine and Nathan Tinkler the Jets have enjoyed two of the more colourful owners in the competition’s short and chequered history. In contrast to characters who enjoyed being in the centre of their club’s spotlight, an owner who knows how not to is an understated quality.
In a league where owners regularly lose vast sums of money, simply handing over the cheques without strings attached is a role too few have been prepared to play. But more than just refraining from interfering, Lee’s ownership demonstrates trust, and more importantly, a clear unity of purpose between the club’s key decision makers.
A coach who understands the crucial necessity of man-management in the A-League, a CEO who grasps the importance of community and identity, and an owner who’s smart enough to trust and back his staff. Amid the Jets’ fairytale revival there’s a readymade template right there for A-League success.
