Central Coast Mariners head coach Mark Jackson speaks to aleagues.com.au about how the Mariners plan to take down the might of Asia ahead of their AFC Champions League Elite campaign kicking off on September 17.
“Bring it on.” That is the message from Mark Jackson as the Central Coast Mariners prepare to embark on an AFC Champions League campaign that will see the club go up against some juggernauts of Asian football.
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For Jackson and the Mariners, there is no sugar-coating the gulf in budgets and differences in travel. Central Coast, as the title-winning boss says, may not able to fly business class, but they are constantly thinking “outside of the box”.
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“You see it all the time in football,” Jackson told aleagues.com.au when asked if he takes heart from Western Sydney Wanderers’ memorable 2014 AFC Champions League triumph.
“That’s why we people love the game because anything can happen on a matchday.
“You go on a pitch and it’s 11 v 11. If you go into a game with the mindset thinking ‘we’re not going to win’, we’re never going to win.
“We know if we perform and we carry out our game plan and play our way, we know we can compete. We’ve shown that. Whether we can compete consistently on that front, again with the size of squads these teams have, how they can travel because I’m sure these teams travel in a different way to how we travel.
“What we have to do is think differently. Yes, we might not be able to go in business class or go in these lounges, but the way we think outside of the box, how we prepare the players, how we recover, how we think about re-fuelling players is really important.
“We know if we can perform, we can compete. If we can do that consistently, we proved last season where it can take you. Whether this squad can get to that level – we truly believe we can and will push for that. That’s our aim – to stay in this competition for as long as we can.
“We want to show what we can do and represent the A-Leagues, because that’s what we’re doing as well, and our supporters in the best way we can. If we do that, who knows what can happen.
“It’s going to be a bit of a roller-coaster. We’re going to have to learn quickly. It’s exciting. We’re not just there for the ride, we want to show what we can do.”
The Mariners are Australia’s sole representative in the AFC Champions League Elite as Isuzu UTE A-League premiers.
After winning the Premiership-Championship double, as well as the AFC Cup in 2023-24, they will begin their AFC Elite campaign away to Shandong Taishan in Jinan on Tuesday, September 17.
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That in itself represents a challenge for Jackson’s Mariners.
Central Coast’s last competitive match was a 3-1 extra-time loss to Heidelberg United in the Australia Cup on August 7, with the 2024-25 Isuzu UTE A-League season not scheduled to begin until a Grand Final rematch against Melbourne Victory on October 18.
Whereas Shandong Taishan are 24 rounds into the CSL campaign and sitting fifth in the standings.
“We can do all the preparation we want but the fact of the matter is we’re still in pre-season and they’re well into their season,” Jackson highlighted. “So straight away there is advantage.
“But again and thinking about the mindset and how we work – we want to look at this as ‘okay, that’s a given they’re in their season, how are we going to combat that?’. We have to go there, prepared and ready.
“Because our season hasn’t even started yet, we are going to rely on people coming off the bench too. We have to make sure, not just our starting XI have clarity on how we want to play but the entire squad. That’s a big factor in what we had last season, particularly towards the end of the season. Our substitutions, players coming in and non-starting players really came on and impacted games.
“In the early stages of the Champions League because they have the advantage of being in season already, we are going to have to utilise that and our non-starting players are going to have to be ready to impact the game. Having that clear plan, that clear understanding of how we want to play, what the opponent is going to bring and how we combat that is going to be vital because lets be honest, we’re playing against some top, top teams with big, big budgets.
“But that’s where we want to be. That’s where I want to be as a head coach, that’s where my staff want to be and that’s where the players want to be. They want to be challenging against top-end teams against top-end players in big stadiums against big crowds. We say bring it on.”
Mindset is a big theme in this interview.
The Mariners defied the odds last season, both domestically and on the continent to go back-to-back in the Isuzu UTE A-League, while they became just the second Australian club to win an AFC competition when they got their hands on the AFC Cup.
All of that was achieved in the midst of some gruelling travel and challenges across Asia.
The Mariners will be leaning on that mindset yet again.
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“(It) is a big thing for us. We talk about it all the time,” said Jackson. “How to overcome adversity. How to look at a negative situation and turn it into a positive.
“We had that in Kyrgyzstan last season when we got stuck and stranded there – how to turn it into a positive. That’s driven a lot by the culture of the club and dressing room. An obstacle comes our way, we quickly look at how we can overcome it. Okay there’s a problem, what’s the solution?
“That’s not going to change for us. We’re going to have bigger challenges this season but we will find solutions to overcome it.
“Every team we play against, respectfully they will have standout and high-earning players. Top-quality players. We have to respectful of that but not fearful. We have to understand our structure, how we want to play and our diligence into looking into opposition will help us compete on that front.”
That mindset also helped overcome a forgettable start in the Isuzu UTE A-League season.
Central Coast lost their first four matches before becoming the first team in the competition’s history to do so and go on to win the Premiership/Championship.
Jackson, though, insisted he never lost hope and a change in training played a big part.
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“We had a lot of conversations after games where I tried to be really positive with the press because I truly believed what we were seeing, there were a lot of positives to it. It wasn’t just me as a coach putting a spin on things or trying to look after the players. That’s what I truly believed,” Jackson reflected.
“We saw a lot of positive things but we were just getting done on certain little things. One of those areas was putting the ball in the back of the net, but another area which we identified at that time was getting done on the counter-attack and the other was making decisions when we were in the heat of battle. So when you’re fatigued and tired, how do you make good decisions?
“As a coaching staff, we kind of flipped and pushed our training a bit more. We fatigued the players a lot more. We replicated that decision making within the game. Every training game should replicate the game, and it should even exceed the physical factors that come in a game.
“If you don’t do that, you’re never going to train for the game.”
There is no standing still for the two-time reigning champions in Gosford.
It has been another off-season of change; Jackson and the Mariners are continuing to evolve as they look to stay “ahead of the curve”.
“Our mindset as a club moving forward – we want sustained success. We don’t want it to be a one-off. That’s a hard thing to do. Getting to the top, it’s not easy of course, but staying there is a hard thing,” Jackson said.
Part of that mindset is evolution and tweaks – whether that is changes to coaching staff or how the club operate.
A significant change made in the pre-season has been to Central Coast’s physical program and the arrival of highly-experienced strength and conditioning coach Dean Benton as Head of Performance.
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“We had a fantastic season last season and we want to always move forward and not stand still,” Jackson said.
“You can review things and tweak things to be better. We’ve tried to do that this pre-season. We’ve brought Dean Benton in and Cade Mapu who has stepped into the lead role of strength and conditioning.
“But having the expertise of Dean Benton on board as someone to advise and guide us has bee phenomenal. We’ve changed our whole physical program in how we work. That’s not to say it wasn’t right last season but for us to evolve, get better and stay ahead of the curve so to speak, the physical development of our players is massively, massively important.
“In the modern game now at the elite level, obviously top-class footballers of course but world-class athletes too. The program we have now and how we’re adapting to it, it’s really going to benefit us.
“Having that longevity of that period has been quite good in respect to implementing new ideas from a physical point of view. That long pre-season has been a benefit in that capacity.”
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This is Jackson’s first full pre-season in Gosford after the Englishman was appointed to replace Nick Montgomery weeks out from the 2023-24 Isuzu UTE A-League campaign.
The length of the pre-season has given Jackson a chance to reflect on the season that was in 2023-24. It has also provided new players with a chance to embed themselves into a new environment.
Johnny Warren Medallist Josh Nisbet (Ross County) Max Balard (NAC Breda), Jacob Farrell (Portsmouth) and Dan Hall (Auckland FC) headline the departures, while Danny Vukovic retired.
It is all part of the Central Coast strategy; providing a pathway abroad for the team’s best players.
The Mariners, though, have brought in Lucas Mauragis, Alfie McCalmont, Adam Pavlesic, Diesel Herrington, Vitor Feijao, Socceroo Trent Sainsbury and Sabit Ngor.
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“You have to adapt to change. We’ve changed a bit with staffing and how we work,” Jackson added. “Then it’s a continuous cycle at our club where top, top players or first-team players move on. It happened when I first arrived and it’s been the same this year. Players have moved on and we have to replace them.
“A lot of work went on behind the scenes with recruitment, to get the players ready to come in. The good thing for us we have process in place now that when these new players come in, we can teach them how we want to play. There’s that adaptability because we’ve changed our physical program a little bit and evolved that.
“That process of embedding new players in has become a lot easier. But dealing with change at this football club is a very important process, which we have to respect and get right. We’ve worked hard towards that.
“We still have a lot of growing to do because it’s still early doors but we feel like we’re in a good place at the minute.”
He continued: “It’s exciting to see what we can do again. Our challenge is to stay challenging at the top.
“We’re never going to be a team who expects to do this, or we have a God-given right to be at the top end of the table.
“No, we understand we have to earn the right in every game we play. That’s our mindset and nothing is going to change this season. We have to be at the top of our game in every game to have a performance.”
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