Central Coast coach Lawrie McKinna said he isn’t concerned with how his team played in Friday night’s 2-1 Hyundai A-League win over the Newcastle Jets at EnergyAustralia Stadium.
The Mariners were outplayed by the Jets in the first hour of the match and trailed 1-0 via a Joel Griffiths penalty in the ninth minute. But the visitors hung in the match and managed to mount a comeback win with goals to Sasho Petrovski in the 66th minute and Matt Simon (79th minute).
“I don’t really care how we played – it was a derby match,” McKinna said after the win. “I’m sure the Mariners supporters don’t care how we played.”
“It wasn’t great football from us for the first 65 minutes. The first half we hardly kept a pass but we came back and we won.”
“Newcastle had us beaten all over the park in the first half. They were first to every ball, challenging every ball. We weren’t. They were picking up every second ball and we didn’t play well. But the second half we slowly came into it.”
“Matty (Simon) came on and he was lively and Adrian (Caceras) came on and when the game opened up he a lot of room to move and he did well and we could have scored another couple of goals, but it was tight to the end.”
McKinna said although the Mariners have developed a reputation for engineering great comebacks, he would rather the team score first.
“Everyone goes on about ‘come back’ but I would much rather get a goal and hold on,” he said. “That is bad for your heart out there.”
“We gave away a soft penalty, probably by the rules it was a penalty, but soft. And after losing a goal we had a bit of the wind taken out of us.”
“But to come back in the second half was a good performance and unlucky not to go further ahead – it was fantastic.”
McKinna also warned other teams that although the Jets were in last place, they would be difficult opponents in the finals rounds.
“Credit to the Jets, they had a great win last week and sometimes you only play as well as the other team allows you and credit goes to the Jets – they had a go at us,” McKinna said.
“Their movement was great and they put us under a bit of trouble but defensively we gave away the penalty but other than that Danny’s (Vukovic) only saves were from an error making a bad clearance again.”
“Newcastle are going to be a pain in a lot of clubs’ sides as they have nothing to play for except pride and they are going to take a lot of goals off teams and they will do us a favour in knocking other teams off.”
“They are a good team and they have to get ready now for the Asian Championship. I don’t know mathematically if they still have a chance for the top four but I am sure they will want to do what Melbourne did last year and come in with a good sail and come in for the Asian Champions League, so I sure they will do us a few favours.”
