Trust the process: Mark Jackson hails Mariners' togetherness after shaky start | Football Australia

Seven months on since the Englishman took over the Mariners, it feels like the bombshells haven’t really stopped coming.

The title-winning team that lost most of its players, its coach and even its CEO was meant to struggle this season, but nobody told Jackson and his revamped squad. On Wednesday they won the A-League Men’s Premier’s Plate, and can add the AFC Cup to the club’s honours roll in the early hours of Monday morning (AEST).

But that topline summary doesn’t even hint at the dramas along the way that the Central Coast have segued past like a team on Strictly Come Dancing. The first four games of their A-League Men title defence ended in defeat, as did their first group game in the AFC Cup, putting Jackson under immediate pressure after he had succeeded Nick Montgomery.

Striker Marco Tulio became another departure in January, despite having scored so many goals in the AFC Cup that he remains the competition’s top scorer. Another player, Angel Torres, was arrested and suspended. The team was stranded in Kyrgyzstan by the implausible force majeure of flooding in the Middle East.

It got to the point where a plague of locusts travelling to eat the grass at Central Coast Stadium seemed only a matter of time. And yet, on Thursday night, Jackson and his squad were boarding a flight to Oman, just 90 minutes away from becoming only the second Australian team to conquer Asia and with that Premier’s Plate still gleaming from the silver polish applied 24 hours before.

Combine that with the Club Championship won through the combined results of the Mariners’ men’s and women’s teams, and the vindication of how the club managed the turnover from last season is enormous.

From the outside, it’s fair to say, that process had seemed