Newcastle United Jets

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Newcastle United Jets

Full name

Newcastle United Jets Football Club

Nickname(s)

Jets

Founded

2000

Ground

EnergyAustralia Stadium,
Newcastle

Capacity

26,000

Chairman

Con Constantine

Manager

Gary van Egmond

League

A-League

A-League 2006-07

3rd (League)
3rd (Finals)





Home colours





Away colours

Newcastle United Jets are an Australian professional football (soccer) team based in Newcastle, a city on the coast of New South Wales. The team first entered the National Soccer League in 2000 as Newcastle United, after the withdrawal of the Newcastle Breakers from the NSL competition. The team plays its home games at Energy Australia Stadium.

1 History
2 Colours and badge
3 Stadium
4 Supporters
5 Current squad
6 Noted players
7 Managers
8 Honours
9 References
10 External links

[edit] History

The club was originally known as Newcastle United, but added the nickname "Jets" to prevent confusion with the English Premier League club Newcastle United F.C. The name "Jets" is a reference to RAAF Base Williamtown, located just 20 kilometres north of Newcastle. The club's logo depicts three F/A-18 Hornets, which the Royal Australian Air Force has based at Williamtown.

Former England and Australia manager Terry Venables was reported as favourite to become the team's technical director, including reports from the Jets, but this was confirmed by Venables' agent as a no-go.^[1] Instead, the club signed Richard Money for the 2005-2006 season. In 2006 Money was replaced with Nick Theodorakopoulos after Money returned to England to take the manager's job at Walsall. In October 2006 after recording no wins during the Pre-Season Cup and during the first seven rounds of A-League matches, Theodorakopoulos became the first coach to be dismissed in the club's A-League's history. His assistant Gary Van Egmond was the caretaker coach for the remainder of the 2006-7 season, but has recently signed a contract establishing him as the coach of the Jets for the next three years.

A Newcastle Jets pre-season game against Sydney FC at Canberra Stadium.

The club surprised many observers in the Australian game by signing Ned Zelic, a player who was seen to have severed connections with Australia after being dropped from the national team.

Newcastle United was formed in 2000 from the remnants of the Newcastle Breakers club. The Breakers was dissolved when Soccer Australia revoked its NSL license at the conclusion of the 1999/2000 season.

The Breakers was formed as Newcastle Austral in 1952 by members of Gretna Austral. The club’s initial colours were violet and white. Austral joined the NSW state league in 1988. In 1991 Newcastle Austral joined the NSL and reformed as the Newcastle Breakers.

Reports suggested the Jets were attempting to bring ex Liverpool and England striker Stan Collymore out of retirement.^[2] Director of Football Remo Nogarotto confirmed the club had made a bid to lure Collymore to the A-League for a four-match guest stint; however, the move had broken down within 24 hours of it being made public.^[3]

On the 19th January the Jets booked their place in the A-league finals for a second year running with a crushing 4-0 victory over minor premiers, Melbourne.

Under the leadership of Gary Van Egmond Newcastle has achieved the highest amount of points out of all clubs in their last fourteen games and have also scored the most goals. As a result of their good form under Van Egmond, crowds in Newcastle have reached all time highs for football - culminating in a crowd of over 24,000 for their home final against Sydney FC on February 2nd, 2007.

Newcastle were eventually eliminated in the preliminary final by Adelaide, the game going to penalties after finishing at 1 all. Vaughan Coveny and Stuart Musialik missed their attempts in a shoot-out that ended up at 4-3 in favour of Adelaide, costing Newcastle their place in the grand final and a berth in the Asian Champions League.

[edit] Colours and badge

Jets logo

Newcastle Jets plays in a gold top with navy and red trim and navy blue shorts and socks.

The away top - like all A-League teams with the exception of Melbourne Victory - is white. The top has gold sleeves (a common A-League trait is to have the home colours on the sleeves of the away kit), with gold shorts and white socks to complete the change kit.

[edit] Stadium

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Main article: EnergyAustralia Stadium

Energy Australia Stadium is the homeground of the Newcastle United Jets and the Newcastle Knights. It has a capacity of 26,100.

The record crowd for a football match in Newcastle was set at EnergyAustralia Stadium on February 2, 2007 in the second leg of the A-League 2006-07 minor semi final against Sydney FC, in front of 24000+ people.^[specify]^{[citation needed]} This broke a 52 year old record for a match in Newcastle, set when Australia played Rapid Vienna. It also broke the record set against the same club earlier in the season on New Years Day, where a regular-season record crowd for the A-League outside of Sydney, Melbourne or Queensland of 20000+ turned up to see a 2-0 loss.^{[citation needed]}^[specify]

[edit] Supporters

The club's supporters group is known as The Squadron. They sit in bay two of the eastern grandstand at EnergyAustralia Stadium. The Squadron are the fastest growing of all the vocal supporter groups in New South Wales, although "the Cove" of Sydney FC is larger.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Current squad

As of 2 February 2007

No.	Position	Player
2	DF	Steve Eagleton
3	DF	Jade North
4	DF	Craig Deans
6	DF	Andrew Durante
8	MF	Matt Thompson
9	FW	Vaughan Coveny
10	MF	Nick Carle
11	MF	Tarek Elrich
12	DF	Paul Okon (captain)
13	MF	Adam D'Apuzzo
14	MF	Jobe Wheelhouse
15	MF	Stuart Musialik

No.	Position	Player
16	DF	Labinot Haliti
18	FW	Joel Griffiths
19	FW	Mark Bridge
20	GK	Ben Kennedy
22	DF	Steven Old
21	MF	Troy Hearfield
24	DF	Paul Kohler
25	MF	Tim Brown
40	GK	Ante Covic
--	FW	Marko Jesic