The beginning and end of Mark Jackson’s first season as Central Coast Mariners’ head coach were the starkest of contrasts; from four consecutive league defeats to a treble of the AFC Cup, A-League Premiership and A-League Championship, the turnaround was considerable.
In less than a year the Englishman had delivered the most notable single-season trophy haul in Australian club football history, a feat made all the more notable by the rigours of crisscrossing Asia and the January departure of Marco Tulio, the club’s best player.
For all the challenges faced, Jackson celebrates the first anniversary of his arrival in Australia on September 24 as a serial winner who is leading Central Coast into their first foray in Asia’s premier club competition in a decade.
Tuesday marks Central Coast’s opening AFC Champions League Elite fixture of the new campaign, when the Mariners travel to Ji’nan to take on Chinese Super League side Shandong Taishan, and Jackson is relishing the task ahead.
“It’s more than one step up but that’s good,” Jackson says as he compares the tests that lie ahead in the new campaign to those experienced last season. “That’s something we’re really looking forward to as a men’s elite team and the senior squad staff as well.
“We’re really looking forward to pitting our wits against the best in Asia. That’s what we want to do. It’s a very prestigious competition and we know we’re going to be up against it, but there’s nothing but excitement from everybody in the camp at the minute.”
A meticulous approach to all aspects of the game has already paid off for Central Coast as Jackson’s small but talented squad defied the odds last season despite a demanding match schedule and thousands of kilometres travelled across both Asia and Australia.
Journeys to most places from Gosford, a city of fewer than 200,000 people situated a 90-minute train ride north of Sydney, require considerable planning, testing to the limit Jackson, his assistant Danny Schofield and the club’s dedicated support staff.
“We don’t have a massive squad, so we can’t rest players,” says the former Leeds United defender. “Our squad was our squad, and our team was our team. Every player played their part within that. We put trust in our medical team, in our operations team manager, the fantastic Darren Dobson on logistics and organisation.”
“What goes into the planning on something like that is really detailed. The members of staff responsible for that excelled. We managed that well, so that was a contributing factor to our success.
“We didn’t travel in business class or anything like that, it was economy and that can have its challenges as well, for recovering the boys and making sure they have the sleep and things like that.
“But we didn’t have one player within our squad moan once about flights being delayed, not one player. The mindset of the players was paramount to what we wanted to do. And when you’ve got a group of players as strong as that, you’re very hard to knock off.”
That resilience paid dividends for Central Coast and, after the slow start to their A-League campaign, Jackson’s side were soon unstoppable and would go on to lose only two of their remaining 35 matches in all competitions.
The run of results eventually saw the Mariners claim the A-League Premiership for the first time since 2012 by topping the regular season standings on May 1, a feat followed four days later by a 1-0 victory over Al Ahed of Lebanon in Muscat in the AFC Cup final.
By May 25 Central Coast had defeated Melbourne Victory 3-1 in the Grand Final to claim the A-League Championship at their home stadium in Gosford, fittingly putting the seal on an historic season in front of their own fans.
It was an astonishing record, in particular for a new head coach who had no previous experience of working in Australia.
“You have to grasp these opportunities, and we certainly did that,” says Jackson, who replaced 2023 A-League Championship-winning coach Nick Montgomery after he left to work in Scotland. “We wanted to test ourselves, myself and Danny when we came over.
“We knew we were going to a fantastic club, who had success the previous year, but we knew it was a transitional period because we lost so many players.
“It was an opportunity for us to come in and continue the good work, but also input our style and our methodology on things as well. It was a big ask, but we believed in what we wanted to do.
“More importantly, we aligned with what the club wanted as well and we had a fantastic group of players who really bought into how we wanted to play.”
That has all led to Jackson and his Central Coast team being granted a new set of challenges in the AFC Champions League Elite, which begin with Shandong on Tuesday before the club’s first home match against Thai League 1 champions Buriram United on October 1.
Further games see the Mariners play Chinese duo Shanghai Port and Shanghai Shenhua as well as meetings with J1 League champions Vissel Kobe, last year’s AFC Champions League runners-up Yokohama F Marinos, Malaysia’s Johor Darul Ta’zim and Kawasaki Frontale.
“It’s our first game of the season, and these other teams are well into their season, so we’re up against it in that respect,” says Jackson, whose side will not start their A-League campaign until October 18 against Melbourne Victory.
“But we’ve a process in how we prepare the squad from a physical point of view to understand what we want. We’re under no illusions, it will be very, very tough, but we want to try and be organised, and represent Australian football in a positive way.”
