Newcastle Jets coach Gary van Egmond is refusing to talk about finals football despite his side cruising into fifth place on the Hyundai A-League ladder after Saturday night’s 3-0 win over the Melbourne Heart at Hunter Stadium.
Newcastle Jets coach Gary van Egmond is refusing to talk about finals football despite his side cruising into fifth place on the Hyundai A-League ladder after Saturday night’s 3-0 win over the Melbourne Heart at Hunter Stadium.
The Jets overcame a determined Heart outfit in the opening 20 minutes to grab the lead midway through the first half courtesy of a glancing header from in-form striker Jeremy Brockie, his ninth goal of the campaign.
From that point on the game belonged to the Jets as they piled up the chances, eventually doubling their lead just after the half-time break through Ryan Griffiths, before a Michael Bridges tap-in in the 76th minute sealed all three points for the Newcastle club.
It was the third win on the trot for the Jets and moved them above the Heart into fifth spot on the ladder on 28 points, but with six rounds remaining and a log-jam of teams from fifth down to ninth the Newcastle coach was unwilling to discuss finals football just yet.
“We will talk about one game at a time, that is what we will talk about,” van Egmond said when asked about his team’s finals prospects.
“For us it is about the performance. We believe it should be of a certain standard; where we are controlling the mainstay of the match we are creating chances and recognising decisions. How we keep on getting better that is what this season is about. That is what it will always be about.”
“The fact that we are now showing more consistency and more confidence that has come from results.”
“We just have to keep working and keep our feet on the ground and we have been trying at training to rectify those areas and that is what it is all about – us getting better and better performance each week.”
What van Egmond was willing to discuss after Saturday night’s clinical display was the fight his side showed in the first half after the Heart had the better of the game in the opening stages.
“The first half was not so comfortable. They really put some pressure and we really didn’t control the game as much as we’d of liked,” he said.
“What was good from that first half performance although we didn’t control the game we really fought for it and that is something that we haven’t done as well as we could have done previously.”
“I thought second balls, and fifty-fiftys we were coming out with the ball and I was really pleased with that. There were patches in the first half where we did well but there were times where I thought they controlled larger parts of the game.”
“The second half we found some more rhythm and we stared to move the ball from side to side and change the point of attack utilising Ben Kennedy or utilising the centre-backs to do that and then creating opportunities and I thought the second half was fairly comprehensive.”
“There were times when they had the ball but we got back in that defensive shape nice and quickly and everyone knew what their job was.”
The Jets coach also had plenty of praise for the Heart’s display despite the scoreline and warned that the Melbourne team should not be written off this season.
“In the first half they gave us some real problems,” van Egmond said of the Heart.
“They played a 4-4-2 which was surprising with a diamond in the midfield and we actually changed to a 3-4-3 at one stage and they quickly changed to three up front and we quickly changed back again so we danced there a little bit for a while.”
“I think they are not too dissimilar to us six or seven weeks ago when we just lacked some confidence and you were just waiting for that spark or something to go your way.
“To pick up points on the road was the real confidence builder for us, the one thing that we have now is more consistency. There are plenty of things we still need to keep working on but I think the Heart is a good team, well coached and they are going to be a major player during the rest of the season.”
