By Justin Chadwick
December 27th 2009 @ 1:11am
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Perth Glory thump hapless Newcastle Jets
Newcastle Jets‘ four-match winning streak came to a crashing end as a Jamie Harnwell-inspired Perth Glory romped to a 4-0 A-League triumph at ME Bank Stadium on Saturday.
Harnwell, making just his third start of the season following a horror run of injuries, bagged a double and Mile Sterjovski and Naum Sekulovski added the others to help lift the Glory back up to fifth place and ease the pressure on coach Dave Mitchell.
The Glory entered the match having won just one of their previous nine games but looked a supremely confident unit as they raced out to a 3-0 lead inside 36 minutes.
Such was Perth’s dominance, goalkeeper Tando Velaphi didn’t make his first save until the 51st minute, palming over Jets defender Adam D’Apuzzo’s long-range missile.
Newcastle, so dominant in the past month, simply lacked spark and were dreadfully exposed in defence as the Glory created chance after chance, with Sterjovski and Harnwell combining beautifully up front.
The Jets remain fourth on the table but are now five points adrift of third-placed Gold Coast, who recorded a resounding 5-1 victory over Brisbane earlier in the day.
Newcastle ‘keeper Neil Young pulled off an excellent save to deny Sterjovski in the 11th minute but he was powerless to stop the onslaught thereafter.
Sekulovski started the rout in the 19th minute, with his free kick from outside the box finding a way past the wall and into the bottom right-hand corner of the net.
Five minutes later, Harnwell doubled the lead when he beat former Glory defender Nikolai Topor-Stanley to Sterjovski’s square ball and rammed home the goal from point-blank range.
And things went from bad to worse for the Jets in the 35th minute when referee Ben Williams pointed to the spot after Ljubo Milicevic dragged down Sterjovski, who had surged into the box to latch on to Todd Howarth’s delicate through ball.
Sterjovski easily slotted home his fifth goal of the season and any hopes the Jets had of launching a comeback were dashed in the 69th minute when Harnwell headed home Scott Neville’s pinpoint cross to ice the game.
Harnwell, out of contract at season’s end, received a rousing reception from the 9,418 crowd upon his substitution in the 83rd minute.
The Jets launched several promising attacks late in the game but Velaphi pulled off a number of diving saves to deny even a consolation goal to the visitors.
“It was coming,” Newcastle coach Branko Culina said.
“You can’t go winning every game.
“We just weren’t up to it today.
“You have a hiccup, today was one of them.
“We just have to go back to the drawing board, recharge our batteries over the Christmas period and come back firing against Melbourne.”
Mitchell said the result was a much-needed confidence booster for the Glory.
“All the boys were hurting from some past results and the comments that had been made,” Mitchell said.
“They’re a good bunch and I’m happy for the players, the club and the supporters.”
Harnwell praised the team’s effort.
“I thought the whole team was superb,” Harnwell said.
“From the first minute we were in for the tackles, we were getting balls in the box and on those sort of days you just know something is going to break your way and I was lucky enough to get on the end of two of them, and probably could have had one or two more.”
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