We’ve already faced our rivals once before this season, and it didn’t end well for our Jets.
This time around, we travel to Central Coast and although we’ve lost 11 of the 27 games played there, we’ve also had some great memories in front of the sauce bottles.
In preparation for another big away trip, here our five of our favourite derby moments when playing at Central Coast Stadium.
Young guns run riot
We’ll start with our most recent appearance at the Coast when our Jets ran out 2-nil victors thanks to some heroics from our promising young stars.
The game was settled after a six minute goal flurry in the first half. The first saw Roy O’Donovan hit the back of the net after being set up perfectly by teenager Archie Goodwin, then not long later, Angus Thurgate tucked Lucas Mauragis in behind the defence to score his first A-Leagues goal.
It capped off a great night down the M1 for our Jets, and kickstarted a three-game unbeaten run to end the season.
8-2
Has there been a better night on the Coast than this? Perhaps not.
In the final game of the regular season back in 2018, our team were looking to find some momentum before finals and they got it in spades.
O’Donovan, Joey Champness and Riley McGree all got on the scoresheet in the first half, before McGree then secured a hat-trick, O’Donovan got a second, and Dimi Petratos and Lachlan Jackson scored to equal the highest goal tally in A-League history and finish off a memorable night.
O’Donovan rules
Speaking of the 2017/18 season, we started it in excellent fashion too on the Coast, largely thanks to then-new signing, Roy O’Donovan.
After spending a couple of seasons with the Mariners, the Irish striker stunned his former team in a big way, firing home a first-half hat-trick.
He firstly earned and scored a penalty, then jumped on the end of two Andrew Nabbout assists to claim the three goals in the first 34 minutes.
We went onto win that bout 5-1 in the second biggest margin of the fixture’s history.
Morten in 37 seconds
In the final match of the 2015/16 season, Danish striker Morten Nordstrand looked to end the competition with a bang, and right from the word ‘go’.
It took him just 37 seconds to nab the first goal of the game as Paul Izzo came venturing a long, long way outside of his box leaving Nordstrand to head a Ryan Kitto cross into an empty net.
Our team used that momentum to take all three points from that day with Nordstrand securing another goal in addition to efforts from Croatian, Mateo Poljak and Serbian, Enver Alivodic.
(Two) Nights Before Christmas
A special Christmas Derby took place in 2018 and our side took home all the presents after a terrific late fightback silenced thousands of home fans who initially enjoyed telling us it had been 303 days since our last derby win.
A tense and fiery first half ended in the favour of the hosts, but midway through the second stanza, a rocketing Jason Hoffman header equalled things up.
Then, in the last ten minutes of the match, a perfect pass from Kaine Sheppard fell for international midfielder Ronnie Vargas, who pounded the ball into the back of the net on the volley, turning the game in our favour to let us celebrate Christmas with three derby points.
