Matt Thompson still clearly recalls the buzz, the crowd and the atmosphere surrounding the first A-League game but he can’t believe it was a decade ago.
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Wednesday marked 10 years to the day since Newcastle hosted Adelaide for the competition opener and Thompson, now with the Maitland Magpies, was part of the Jets’ starting XI on August 26, 2005.
“I can’t believe it was 10 years ago,” Thompson said.
“I remember the hype and the build up around it ... it was like a final and we certainly felt part of something.”
More than 13,000 fans piled into Hunter Stadium, then known as Energy Australia Stadium, for the historic fixture.
The result wasn’t exactly what the home crowd, or Thompson, had ordered with Newcastle going down 1-0 to their South Australian opponents.
“It was quite disappointing actually,” Thompson said.
“The pre-season had gone for so long and we got knocked out first round of the club challenge back in June so we had been training for quite a while by then.
“We were all up for it but in the end I don’t think we played all that well and it was a scrappy kind of game.
“I remember being on the edge of the box when the goal went in, a Carl Verdt header, and it was a loss you never really forget.”
The former Australian representative said the step up from the old National Soccer League (NSL) to the new eight-team format was a significant one, which he noticed moving from Parramatta to Newcastle.
“It was a much more professional outlook, and the NSL wasn’t,” he said.
“I was at Parramatta when I was 17 so I didn’t really understand it all, but five years later when the A-League came along everyone was on board.
“I was a bit older and the way it was structured meant you were representing a bigger range of people, rather than having another club across the road.”
Thompson, the most capped A-League player with 221 appearances, said the biggest change during the last decade has been the quality of players.
“The quality of players here is now second to none,” he said.
“In the first year to have someone like Dwight Yorke really got the ball rolling and now we have players from overseas wanting to come here.
“Not only that but younger players can hang around a bit longer and older players can come back earlier because of the standard of competition.
“We’ve had three World Cup appearances in that time and this time round A-League players were represented which shows how far its come.”
Thompson said he was enjoying the off-season after the Magpies finished eighth in their first year back in the Northern NSW Football National Premier League.
“I haven’t had a proper off-season in 15 years so it is a bit different for me,” he said.
“But I will probably look to keep the legs ticking over a bit with some 7-a-side in the summer.”
Thompson said the Magpies would be stronger in 2016 after improving in the second half of the season, which included three wins and two draws, to avoid relegation.
Thompson will take on an assistant coach role next year alongside this year’s mentor Reece Thompson, who has stepped back for Steve Piggott to take over.