Jets fire back into top six

The Newcastle Jets moved back into the top six with a convincing, albeit nail biting, 1-0 win over North Queensland Fury in their rescheduled match at EnergyAustralia Stadium on Tuesday night.

Branko Culina will be relieved with the result from his injury ravaged side, a lone goal from Marko Jesic in the 12th minute enough to see off the challenge of a disappointing Fury.

The Jets were in cruise control for much of the match with the Fury struggling to keep the ball, their lack of continuity and concentration perhaps a product of Franz Straka’s controversial rotation policy and, understandably, the devastating floods closer to home.

The match started off slowly and never hit any real heights with both sidess sluggish and very stationary going forward, the short turnaround of matches clearly having an effect on the sides.

The Jets took everyone by surprise and brought the match to life when they took a one nil lead after a sudden slick, quick, and devastating counter attack.

Ryan Griffiths did well to head on a long ball into the path of Labinot Haliti, who drove into the box to square it to Jesic, who provided a cool finish in the right hand corner.

The Jets controlled much of the early play with the outstanding midfield workhorse and hard man, Kasey Wehrman, dictating the Jets’ attacking forays with some crisp passing and superb vision.

Ruben Zadkovich put his hand up for miss of the season when he astonishingly managed to lift the ball over the crossbar, facing an open net, after rounding Fury goalkeeper, Sebastian Usai.

The Fury was lucky to go into half time still in the contest, only a lack of clinical finishing from the Jets, who looked like they were in a training match, kept the score at 1-0.

Usai reversed his previous poor form to produce a solid performance in goal, making a string of outstanding saves, the first a good save to his right, one on one with Griffiths.

It was a nervous wait for Jets’ fans as Culina brought on prodigious goal machine, Sash Petrovski, in search of the side's second goal to kill off the match.

Petrovski would have brought the house down with a header destined for the net in the 75th minute but was denied by a second outstanding save from Usai, who managed to change direction and palm the ball off the line with his outstretched right hand.

The Fury made a real fist of it for the final 10 minutes of the match as they pushed men forward and continued to get balls into the box, though the rock solid partnership of Taylor Regan and Nikolai Topor-Stanley allowed nothing to come of it.

The performance from the Jets was convincing, though Culina must be weary of his side’s inability to score goals coming into finals time, a problem they have carried, and failed to rectify, all season.