Superb win by Newcastle Jets
Newcastle have narrowed the gap at the top of the A-League to eight points, but how they did it is just as important as the result. They played with heart and pride after going down to 10 men when Roy O’Donovan was sent off in the 14th minute, taking the lead from a penalty by Dimi Petratos just before half-time.
Seven minutes into the second half Sydney equalised with a header from Bobo and it looked like they would take command of the game. It was not to last though. Just four minutes later a brilliant goal from player of the match Andrew Nabbout restored the Jets’ lead.
There were no further goals, but there was plenty of great football. Newcastle could have been forgiven for playing 10 men behind the ball for the rest of the game but to their great credit they went for it, looking for a third goal. That didn’t come, and Sydney came close to pulling one back a couple of time, but that didn’t happen either.
A remarkable game of football and a deserved win for the Jets. They probably won’t catch Sydney to win the Premier’s Plate, but they are looking very good for the finals.
Thanks for your company. Until next time, farewell.
Newcastle 2-1 Sydney FC
Full-time, what a win for the Jets.
90+6 mins: Buijs skys a shot. The Jets fans love it.
90+4 mins: Ugarkovic had a clear shot but hit it straight at Redmayne.
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90+4 mins: Jets doing what they can to wind the clock down.
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90+3 mins: Yet another corner comes to nothing for Sydney.
90+1 mins: Matt Simon climbs over everyone from a corner kick, but heads over.
90 mins: Six minutes of added time, again. Not sure where that’s coming from.
89 mins: Jets defend in number and then counter attack, but a tired Georgievski fires over.
86 mins: Nabbout is off, replaced by Joseph Champness. Nabbout has had a fantastic game.
85 mins: Bobo moved too soon and gets caught offside.
84 mins: Phenomenal passage of play from the Jets, especially Nabbout and Petratos. They are dominating.
82 mins: Captain Boogaard off with an injury and Lachlan Jackson on.
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There are more than 18,000 at the game, and what a game for the locals. Still 10 minutes for Sydney to get a late equaliser and spoil the party a little though.
79 mins: Duncan is beaten but Georgievski clears off the line. Brilliant intervention.
78 mins: Corner to Sydney. Wasted.
I’ve always wanted to use the cliche “real end to end stuff”. This is read end to end stuff.
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75 mins: Straight up to the other end and Simon has a shot. Easily saved by Duncan though.
75 mins: Petratos hits the post. This is astonishing stuff from the Jets.
Why does a side with 10 men so often outplay a side with 11? There must be a PhD thesis on it somewhere.
70 mins: Matt Simon’s first contribution is to be caught offside. Jets fans counting down the minutes.
69 mins: Sydney substitution. O’Neill off, Matthew Simon on.
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68 mins: Topor-Stanley’s challenge on Brosque doesn’t lead to a penalty, much to Sydney’s chagrin.
66 mins: Duncan shows clear command of the box and short-circuits a Sydney cross.
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64 mins: Newcastle substitute Benjamin Kantarovski climbs all over Ninkovic and gives away a free.
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62 mins: Petratos has a shot from outside the box when trying to find one of his teammates would have been a better choice.
59 mins: Beautiful run from Carney down the left (his only side), good shot and good save from Duncan. This game is alive with possibility.
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GOAL! Newcastle 2-1 Sydney
56 mins: Well, that didn’t last long at 1-1. Brilliant goal from Nabbout, helped by a wild deflection. Redmayne had no chance. 2-1 to the Jets.
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I had just been about to say that though Sydney were dominating, they did not look like scoring. Glad I didn’t say that.
GOAL! Newcastle 1-1 Sydney
52 mins: Bobo heads in from the free kick. Sydney are back in the game.
51 mins: Riley McGree takes down Wilkshire. Free.
48 mins: Brosque should have scored there. And he knows it. He was clean through after a mistake from Topor-Stanley.
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Second half starts
Second half gets under way after Arnie, no doubt, had some strong advice for his players at half-time.
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10 men leading 11
When Newcastle’s Roy O’Donovan got sent off after 14 minutes it looked like Sydney could coast to victory. That did not happen. The Jets are 1-0 up after a penalty from Petratos. They will be enjoying their half-time cup of tea. And I’m going for one too. Back soon.
Half-time: Newcastle Jets 1-0 Sydney FC
Half-time finally arrives, and the team with 10 men are leading 1-0.
45+6 mins: Distance shot from Petratos, but Redmayne saves.
45+5 mins: Some choice language coming from Sydney’s technical zone.
45+4: Good shot from distance from Brillante, but it’s over.
45+2 mins: Corner to Sydney, header by Wilkinson, but Duncan saves easily.
45 mins: Six minutes of added time to come.
Jets take the lead
43 mins: GOAL! Newcastle 1-0 Sydney FC
Petratos puts the Jets one up.
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Buijs brought down Topor-Stanley.
42 mins: Penalty to the Jets!
Second Sydney player booked
40 mins: Ninkovic booked for hacking down Boogaard.
38 mins: Finally a decent shot from Ninkovic. Just wide of the left post.
37 mins: Graham Arnold is roaring at his players to “get up”. He is desperate to put the Jets to the sword and make Sydney’s one player advantage count.
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36 mins: Newcastle look like they’re hanging out for the half-time cup of tea. As am I.
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34 mins: Good play from Ugarkovic, but little support from his fellow Jets.
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33 mins: Jets tiring as an attack comes to nothing.
32 mins: Brosque’s deflected shot easily saved by Duncan.
30 mins: Sydney should have done better there, especially Wilkshire, but Jets are defending in numbers.
28 mins: Mierzejewski hits the post with a powerful free kick from the right.
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27 mins: Buijs being booed over and over.
Ninkovic has scored in all of the last five games between these sides. Has not looked like scoring today though. So far.
24 mins: Petratos runs out of room, but Jets are not playing like a team down a man.
23 mins: Georgievski shoots over. He might have done better there.
21 mins: O’Neill booked for obstruction of Georgievski.
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20 mins: Jets keeper Duncan has picked up a knock and is getting treatment on the pitch. Very stop/start game so far.
18 mins: Bobo caught offside after going too early.
That was Newcastle’s first red card of the season, by the way.
16 mins: Jets on the attack, but nothing comes of it. Home fans booing Buijs.
But, frankly, he deserved to go. The only question is why this process has taken so long.
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That’s a serious blow to the Jets.
Jets down to 10 men
14 mins: Straight red for O’Donovan.
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13 mins: VAR check on that.
11 mins: O’Donovan has taken down Buijs in crude fashion.
Newcastle are already guaranteed finals football for the first time in eight years.
9 mins: Carney is being booed every time he touches the ball. Of course he is.
Noreaster is a wind, btw, not some new Jets player.
6 mins: Corner caught by the noreaster and goes out the other side of the goal.
5 mins: Corner for Sydney.
My mate Jim Tosh has just texted and accused me of “shameless self-promotion”. Guilty, I suppose.
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It’s 27 degrees in the stadium, with 85% humidity.
1 min: Sydney immediately give away a free, but it comes to nothing.
And we are off.
RAAF jets flying over the ground just before kick off.
Interesting stat, Sydney are two points better off than they were this time last year, while Newcastle are 19 points up on 12 months ago.
Jets take to the field.
We’re close to kick off. The top two – by far – in the league are about to play each other. Sydney FC are 11 points ahead right now. A win and the resulting the 14 point lead would pretty much wrap the league up. And history says that’s likely what’s going to happen here today. (I’m not writing the Jets off, by the way...)
The stats matter
- Sydney FC are undefeated in their last 15 games against Newcastle (W12, D3), keeping 11 clean sheets in that time
- The Jets already have seven home wins this season, never before have they made it eight
- Newcastle and Sydney have each made a league-high 125 shots on target
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And here’s an appropriate tweet, given my previous post.
So here we are. The only two decent teams in the league.
— Rob Toddler (@robtoddler) March 3, 2018
Bags being Celtic!#NEWvSYD #SydneyIsSkyBlue
Sydney’s Brandon O’Neill is reportedly a target for Glasgow side Rangers. It will be interesting to see if this has any effect on how he plays today. Not to mention that it’s still odd to hear of Rangers being interested in a man who holds an Irish passport, has Irish parents and spent part of his childhood in Dublin. Not to mention his odd Dublin/Perth hybrid accent.
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Newcastle line up: Duncan, Hoffman, Boogaard, Ugarkovic, Petratos, O’Donovan, Brown, Nabbout, Georgievski, McGree, Topor-Stanley.
Sydney line up: Redmayne, Wilkinson, Buijs, Brillante, Bobo, Ninkovic, Adrian, O’Neil, Brosque, Carney, Wilkshire.
Newcastle defender Nikolai Topor-Stanley has declared Sydney FC beatable and laughed off Graham Arnold’s grandiose predictions as “a little bit of theatre”.
Topor-Stanley also said the reigning champions and 11-point leaders would be anxious about facing Ernie Merrick’s goal-happy challengers in the Hunter.
“We’ve more than matched them,” he told AAP, specifically citing January’s 2-2 draw at Allianz Stadium.
“We were a whisker away from beating them on their turf last game and I’m sure, in the backs of their minds, they’ll be remembering that game.
“They’ve clearly got great players, but so do we. We’ve scored some great team goals as well, not just individuals, so I think they’ll be worried about us too.”
Topor-Stanley said of Arnold’s big game big talk: “He’s known for that and I laugh it off these days. In my younger years, it would have got me riled up, but it’s all good.
“They’re not unbeatable. They’re a great side, no doubt about it, and they deserve to be on top of the table.
“But we’re right there following them and we’ve got it in us to beat anyone.”
Topor-Stanley described the game as a grand-final rehearsal and committed to bringing the intensity to match in front of an expected crowd of more than 15,000.
The Jets have scored 41 goals this season – at least one in all 21 games – but will host a Sydney side who’ve buried a league-high 53 courtesy of their prolific front four.
Topor-Stanley was under no allusions the back four were up for an onerous test.
“The stats don’t lie,” he said.
“They’re ahead in goals scored so there’s a reason why they’re top of the league, because they’ve got that attacking potential.”
Graham Arnold told AAP yesterday he had no intention of rotating his squad to cater for Wednesday’s home ACL meeting with group leaders Kashima Antlers, who the Sky Blues – currently last – must essentially beat twice in two weeks to remain in round-of-16 calculations.
“Of course after the game tomorrow night we’re going to focus on the two Asian Champions League games,” Arnold said.
“But it’s one game at a time and our whole focus is tomorrow night and being 14 points clear with 15 left to play for.
“Our focus is getting 70 points and breaking A-League history again, and I do believe I’ve got the depth in the squad no matter what to do that.
“The last three or four weeks we’ve gotten even greater and I believe that’s down to Champions League football.
“It’s made the boys switch on even more and has taken the team to another level.”
No humble brags for Arnie, just straight up brags.
The line ups
The teams:
TEAM SHEET | Here's a look at how our opposition line up this afternoon! What's your predictions? #SydneyIsSkyBlue #NEWvSYD pic.twitter.com/XXlnvRP0r2
— Sydney FC (@SydneyFC) March 3, 2018
I’m sure you’ve already seen it, but just in case, David Squires is on the money again with his latest A-League cartoon.
I’m guessing there is a large crossover between fans of the A-League and fans of Melbourne/Hobart band Augie March, right? My review of their great new album Bootikins is here, and the the video for When I Am Old from it is below.
Preamble
Hello, it’s me, Pádraig, whom you may recall from such previous live blogs as Hurricane Irma, Winter Olympics day one and, a classic, Winter Olympics day eight. And that’s it. This is my fourth ever live blog, so be kind, dear reader.
I had no nerves before the hurricane blog because the time between knowing I was going to do it and actually doing it was about 90 seconds. Hurricanes are funny that way, creeping up on you.
Before Winter Olympics day one, I had terrible dreams about missing the start time. Day eight, brought no such dreams, I was an old hand at this game. Or so I thought. Alas, the dreams of missing the start of the live blog returned overnight. But I haven’t missed it, huzzah!
