Newcastle Jets manager Mark Milligan has told ESPN his side is fully focused ahead of Friday night’s crunch A-League Men clash against Melbourne Victory, in which a win will secure the club’s first-ever Premiers Plate.
A 94th-minute equaliser earned the Jets a crucial 1-1 draw with Adelaide United last week, securing a spot in next season’s AFC Champions League Elite.
Three points against Victory in the penultimate round of the season would seal a second piece of silverware, following their Australia Cup triumph in October last year.
“The message for us doesn’t change — it’s another opportunity for us to get better, and that’s what we have wanted to do from day one,” Milligan told ESPN. “We are very much singularly focused in terms of what’s directly ahead of us, which is Melbourne Victory.”
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Winning a Premiers Plate would cap a monumental campaign for Milligan, who, in his first season as a professional coach, has already ended a 17-year trophy drought for the Jets that stretched back to a Championship victory in the 2007-08 season.
With Newcastle now locked in to compete in the A-League finals for the first time since 2017-18, Milligan said he wanted more from his side, who are on course to win the domestic treble — a feat never achieved by an A-League Men team.
Asked about the possibility, Milligan said he was “not going to put any restriction on the group.”
“These fans have waited a long time for this club to make a finals series, and I think they should be excited by whatever comes next,” he said. “We want this group to be hungry. We want this group to always want more. The AFC Elite was a massive achievement for this group, but it’s not enough, because there’s still so much more that they can achieve.”
Tasked with overseeing an inexperienced squad, Newcastle’s manager has found a way to get the most out of his players, who have scored the most goals in the competition, and are the undisputed entertainers. Central to a fluid Jets outfit has been the resurgence of attacking midfielder Max Burgess, who Milligan has lately deployed as a deep-lying midfielder.
Milligan said his acting captain — who was frozen out at Sydney FC by manager Ufuk Talay last season — had been driving the standards.
“What I saw was a player that has a great wealth of ability and experience throughout the league. And the biggest thing for me was a hunger and determination to prove himself — to show not just the player he is, but the person he is,” Milligan said.
