Jade believes Jets ready for Victory

THE NEWCASTLE HERALD

By Robert Dillon

JETS captain Jade North expects Melbourne to be fired up on Friday night to bury their Newcastle hoodoo.
The A-League champions have not lost to the Victory since October 8, 2006, and have racked up four wins and a draw from their past five clashes with Melbourne.

At Telstra Dome, venue for Friday night's showdown, Newcastle have a perfect record after winning last season's clashes 2-0 and 3-1.

North said yesterday that record would provide Melbourne, who are the early leaders after two rounds of the season, with a source of motivation on Friday night.

"I think they'll be out for revenge because we've been their bogy team for the last couple of years," he said.

"We've been able to knock them off a few times and hopefully we can keep that record going.

"But they've got some good players and they had a good win [4-2 against Wellington] last weekend, so we're going to have to be on our game."

North said Newcastle needed to improve defensively after their 3-all draw with Perth last Friday.

"We probably made it difficult for ourselves," he said.

"The first goal we conceded was from a penalty, which didn't help.

"The second goal Perth scored was a great header and a great goal, but we probably should have stopped them from getting the cross in.

"Their last goal was probably because we were pushing forward, looking for the win, and got caught out of position a bit.

"I suppose the good thing is we're not having any trouble scoring goals, but we need to tidy up our defence a bit this week."

North said Newcastle were eager to notch their first win of the season after having to salvage draws from the first two games of their title defence, against Central Coast (1-1) and the Glory last Friday night.

"We've shown good fighting spirit, but we could easily have taken all six points rather than just two," he said.

Meanwhile, the Socceroos defender said he had heard nothing more about a possible move overseas and had accepted that he would probably play out the season with Newcastle.

There had been rumours that clubs in Turkey and France were interested in recruiting the 26-year-old, but they are running out of time because the August transfer window closes in four days.

"At this stage I'm just concentrating on playing for Newcastle," North said. "There was a lot of talk but nothing much has come of it. That's life and that's football. I've moved on."

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