Eighth plays ninth as Scott Miller’s Newcastle Jets play host to Wellington Phoenix, looking for an unprecedented three wins over the New Zealand side in one season.
Scott Miller has already masterminded two wins over Ernie Merrick and his men and in the recent rounds leading up to this encounter, it seemed as though Newcastle were going to coast to the clean sweep on their own patch, with the Phoenix struggling to win away games (or any games at all for that matter).
However, round 19’s whirlwind performance will have changed some perceptions that this Nix team was stuck in a tailspin. Their 5-2 victory over premiership-chasing Western Sydney at Pirtek was astonishing and tactically superb.
With Hamish Watson impressing on debut, Dylan Fox increasing his stocks further and Blake Powell scoring this season’s first hat-trick and doing it in perfect fashion, that result sent a clear message of defiance from the Phoenix camp. Clearly, they are not going down without a fight.
In another sub-plot, the chief tormentor of the Phoenix in the previous two encounters has now departed the club in his usual summer transfer wrangle. David Carney, now back at Sydney FC, tore the Nix apart both home and away, scoring and assisting both times in 2-1 and 3-1 wins for the Jets. Carney’s canny ability to hurt Wellington will be sorely missed by Newcastle, while the Phoenix will be glad to see the back of the 32-year-old playmaker.
With the Phoenix recovering their scoring touch in the week 19 blitz of the Wanderers, it will be hard to top that seven-goal thriller for entertainment value, but at least both sides are back to scoring ways. Last time out, Newcastle recorded a credible 2-2 draw with Brisbane Roar at Suncorp Stadium as Milos Trifunovic and Mitch Cooper both stepped up and found the back of the net to split the points in an impressive away performance. Hopefully this Hunter encounter will have plenty of attacking intent by both sides.
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As we are now fully ingrained in the most important period of the season, the pressure is on for young Newcastle coach Miller and the league’s most experienced coach in the Phoenix’s Merrick to somehow get their teams into the play-offs. With the league’s youngest manager now 2-0 up over his seasoned counterpart, the onus is on the Scotsman to get his tactics right this time and avoid three losses to the same opposition this season.
Miller has proven himself to be a worthy adversary, and he has overseen some quality results from last season’s wooden spooners. No doubt Miller and the Jets would love to send the Phoenix home without the points in this third and final encounter between the two this term.
Both of these teams will have to push hard from now to get further up the table, because with eight games remaining, time is running out to make up ground on the teams above them.
The winners here will give themselves a small sliver of a chance to make the play-offs and momentum leading into the final weeks. The loser will be all but waving goodbye to the finals with only seven games to play and too big a gap to make up.
In the Phoenix’s case, it might not just be the play-offs they miss out on with a loss – it might be the end of A-League football for them completely.
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