Over the last 12 to 18 months, Newcastle’s sporting public has endured a roller-coaster ride, with both sporting teams involved in the Nathan Tinkler circus.
Make no mistake though, the Tinkler takeover of both the Newcastle Jets and Newcastle Knights was the correct decisions, but the events ever since have left plenty of fans scratching their heads… and rightly so.
After around six weeks of the 2010-2011 Hyundai A-League season, the Jets were on their deathbed.
Former owner Con Constantine had massive cash flow problems which culminated in players not being paid their wages. The club which had won the championship some 18 months earlier was destined to follow its predecessors on the Newcastle scrapheap.
That was until Tinkler came along.
The mining magnate had little hesitation in turning the Jets fortunes around, both on and off the field, growing the membership base from a few thousand to in excess of 10,000 in just a few short months.
David Beckham and the LA Galaxy came to the Hunter, the Jets were winning games and everything seemed too good to be true. Perhaps it was.
On the field, the Jets’ performances started to nosedive and season seven of the A-League was another anti-climactic finish from the Novocastrians with a team promising so much, delivering very little.
It all started with the Jason Culina affair in the pre-season. Culina was signed from the now-defunct Gold Coast United with a well-documented knee injury which required surgery, yet the Jets didn’t ask too many questions about his availability for the upcoming season.
Did they do their due diligence? The answer to that remains very much a subjective one.
Not long after that Tinkler asked Football Federation Australia to have Culina’s contract set aside.
It remained a sticking point throughout the whole season and then on the eve of the A-League launch, Tinkler came up with another bombshell and sacked Jason’s father Branko.
This was despite Branko signing a four-year contract not even six months prior to him being sacked.
The Jets went along and made very little noise in the season before the biggest bombshell of all – Tinkler’s decision to try to hand back the A-League club’s license on April 10 this year citing “irreconcilable differences with FFA”.
Despite all of this, the FFA remained steadfast in their belief that a club couldn’t hand back a license and the matter appeared certain to be headed to the courts.
Thankfully, Tinkler and Frank Lowy came up with a plan to have the Jets in the competition, but the circus didn’t quite stop there.
The club then made decisions on not re-signing players for the 2012-2013 season and the last remaining original Jet Tarek Elrich was shown the door.
He was followed out by leading goalscorer from last year, Jeremy Brockie and exciting Iraqi Ali Abbas.
Softening the blow were the signings of Gold Coast trio James Brown, Josh Brillante and Mitch Cooper. Melbourne Heart defender Craig Goodwin and former Adelaide United goalkeeper Mark Birighitti joined Perth Glory duo Scott Neville and Adam Taggart in a Jets side heavy on youth but light on experience for season eight.
The re-signing of Ryan Griffiths and Michael Bridges gave the side an element of stability around their younger teammates and whether the circus is now over and the youth policy will provide dividends is anyone’s guess.
Maybe coach Gary van Egmond was right when he said the A-League was “becoming a younger man’s game.”
Time will tell.
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