It wasn’t all that long ago that the Newcastle Jets were on the precipice of collapse. And while this, admittedly, hardly makes them unique when it comes to A-Leagues clubs, there did exist a decided air of foreboding as the Jets were kept alive by the benevolence of rival clubs amid an increasingly drawn-out search for new owners. The concerns became rather morbid when Australian Professional Leagues chair, Stephen Conroy, declared that the league could not “prop up” the ailing entity.

So, as you might expect, with the Jets’ men just days away from potentially securing a first premiership in the club’s history, the second trophy of what could become a historic treble, the Hunter is a much happier place these days.

“From the very first moment I got here, you’ve felt it kind of bubbling below the surface,” first-year head coach and former Socceroos captain, Mark Milligan, says. “People always wanted to have a conversation with me about the Jets or about football. What these players have been able to do and unlock is [bring a sense of excitement], it’s not under the surface any more.”

As well as sitting atop the A-League Men ladder, the Jets are arguably the best side in the competition to watch. With new ownership secured in June 2024 in Sydney and Melbourne-based consortium Maverick Sports Partners, the “Box Office Jets” moniker has been taken out of mothballs and trumpeted far and wide. The entertainers of the league now enter the penultimate week of the men’s regular season with their destiny firmly in their own hands.

After claiming the Australia Cup last October, a win against Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park on Friday, combined with any kind of slip-up by second-placed Auckland against Central Coast two days later, would secure them an insurmountable buffer and a breakthrough premiership. Failing that, avoiding defeat against Victory will ensure that the plate can be secured the following week at home, when they host their F3 Derby foes, the Mariners.

You would forgive rusted-on fans if they could scarcely believe what they have witnessed this season. Not just because of the Jets’ ownership struggles – the period spent in custodianship just the most recent in a string of farces, collapses, licence revocations and shenanigans. But because for nearly two decades the club has been the poster children for on-field mediocrity, if not outright mismanagement. A 17-year trophy drought began after the Jets won the 2007-08 title and was only snapped with that Cup triumph last year. They played finals football just twice during that intervening period – with their most recent trip to the playoffs in 2017–18 ending in heartbreak when they fell to Victory in the grand final.

Now, though, crowds at McDonald Jones Stadium are up 32% to an average 8,543 – the Jets being one of only four clubs this season to record an increase in their attendance – which is their highest figure since pre-Covid and a near-50% increase on the 5,704 attenders they averaged in 2023-24. Under the tutelage of Milligan, the Jets’ success has been delivered by the youngest side in the league, with the loss of early-season standout Alex Badolato simply allowing the likes of Clayton Taylor, Ben Gibson, Will Dobson, and Xavier Bertoncello a greater share of the spotlight. It is not just success that has been unearthed this season, but perhaps at least a few future Socceroos.

This youth is supplemented by leaders such as Kota Mizunuma, Joe Shaughnessy, and Max Burgess – the latter generating deserved national team buzz – as the side sits among the competition’s pacesetters in most meaningful attacking categories: leading the league in goals, expected goals, big chances, and touches in their opponent’s penalty area.

An 80-cap Socceroo, Milligan served a coaching apprenticeship as an assistant at Adelaide United and with the Malaysian national team, but his coaching education began long before that. He recalls his World Cup coaches Ange Postecoglou, Bert van Marwijk, and Mark van Bommel – whose approaches to football, he acknowledges, differ significantly – imparting on him the importance of authenticity, of being committed to your ideas and making sure that everyone around you knows and can trust in who you are and what you believe.

This, in turn, has seen Milligan develop a style of play he wants to commit to, informed by both his own preferences, the squad at his disposal, the league’s transitional nature (“love it or hate it”) and trends around the world. At the core of his successful implementation in year one hasn’t been to simply buy players – the Jets owners appear relatively stable but don’t exist at the same level financially as those at Melbourne City, Auckland, or Western Sydney – but to empower and develop those on hand.

“We had to make sure that we were giving them the tools to play the football that we wanted,” he says. “Especially in the first month, we worked extremely hard, had nothing to do with tactics or the style, but it was a lot of hidden learning and the opportunity and giving them the platform to get better, to become better individually, to teach them and help them achieve – give them the tools that they were going to need to play the football that we wanted.”

Now, the vibes are good in the Hunter. The football is fun, and the kids are alright. It’s Box Office.