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When Newcastle Jets coach Robert Stanton entered the post-game press conference at McDonald Jones Stadium last Saturday, he was clearly a frustrated and emotional man.
What he ended up saying was probably not what he had planned, after his team had competed well but gone down by a lone goal against a still undefeated Adelaide United. No doubt he hoped to deal with the media questions classily, palm them off or allow them through to the keeper where possible and not go on something of a rant based on his frustration with his own players.
Instead, he did.
Newcastle held a slight advantage in possession come the end of the clash, created a number of opportunities that they were not good enough to convert and, once again, left their home fans frustrated with another performance that had potential but produced zero points for the club.
Narrow losses to the Reds, Central Coast and Melbourne City have the Novocastrians sitting eleventh on the A-League ladder with just one win and five disappointing losses to show for their work across the opening quarter of the season.
The frustration of such statistics is evident on the players’ faces as they trudge from the field at the end of matches they truly believe they can win. For the manager, that gap between aspiration and execution has eaten away at him since the opening day of the season. He is ever frustrated at the lack of productivity from his squad of players who are giving everything on a weekly basis.
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When asked about the performance and potential tensions between a few frustrated players in his group, Stanton took off the gloves and slipped into rant mode, as the journos in the room salivated with excitement over a coach who momentarily lost his cool.
Early in the conference, there were signs of a man likely to let fly, when Stanton said, “the players don’t realise that they are in the A-League and they get punished for it”, in reference to a few of his troops not tracking players back into defensive areas.
Soon after, the coach had the after-burners on.
“They’ve gotta learn, this is different, this will be a ruthless industry at some stage for them, for me, for everyone”, Stanton said.
Soon after speaking of the need for the players to take responsibility, earn the right to play for the club and accept when their efforts have not been up to scratch, Stanton went all in to end the press conference.
When probed about what looked to be a tense moment between Eli Adams and Brazilian import Wellissol in the later stages of the contest, Stanton raised a line of thought common on social media and one adhered to by many who feel the young people of today have become as soft as a well-manufactured marshmallow treat.
“You know what, I hope they have more altercations. I hope they start, you know, letting each other know. They’re too nice to each other… I might bring some boxing gloves in and let them punch on because you know what, they need it.
“They actually need it, they need to get some silver spoons out of their mouths and teach them… this is your opportunity. You need to fight for this club, you need to fight for the fans.”
Robert Stanton. (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)
As the journos sat back and soaked in the verbal frustrations of a coach who wants more from the young men he had clearly labelled as weak and soft, he added, “it’s a generational problem where we are right now in my opinion. They don’t have to work… you need to look at the history of the way this country was built. It was built with the hands of people that came here.”
“They will clap you when you fight,” Stanton continued with his tirade, “they will boo when you don’t fight. They were booing and rightly so, rightly so, let me tell you, boxing gloves is not a bad idea”.
If Stanton is true to his word, he will have arrived at Jets training with a bag of gloves and ordered his players to rip into each other.
Some will argue that the coach is harking back to the harder days of professional sport, where the so-called tough survived and those more keen to rely on skill alone were exposed as ‘soft’ and driven from competition. Others will suggest Stanton is spot on and that what ails modern western society the most is the snowflake or woke tendencies many have embraced at the expense of sheer hard work, discipline and effort.
Either way, the Jets have plenty to discuss as a group after seeing their coach draw something of a line in the sand after yet another disappointing loss. He appears to be blaming their age and generation for fade-out performances.
The players themselves might see other issues and suggest his tactics and method need improvement. Collectively, that spells a stressful short-term future for the Newcastle Jets.