Mark Jones and Clayton Zane handed reins at Newcastle Jets

Newcastle Jets have placed their hopes of an A-League revival in the hands of a hometown duo.

Mark Jones will steer his hometown club Newcastle in the A-League this season.

Newcastle Jets have placed their hopes of an A-League revival in the hands of a hometown duo, with the appointment of Mark Jones as senior coach and Clayton Zane as his assistant.

After much speculation, the Jets finally confirmed Newcastle-born Jones, 50, will take charge of the team, replacing Scott Miller, who was controversially sacked earlier this month.

Jones will face a tough initiation, given he will have less than two weeks before the start of the season to work with a squad he had no saying in assembling.

But he remains bullish about the club’s prospects, going as far as suggesting a spot in the top six is not beyond the Jets, who finished eighth last season under Miller, bottom of the table the season ­before, and who haven’t made the finals since the 2009-10 season.

“I think we have a decent roster and hope to be competitive,” Jones said yesterday.

“As a coach you always want to aim high and I think a spot in the top six is not beyond us.”

The Jets are Jones’s first appointment as a senior coach. He had stints with at Newcastle as an assistant and was Gary van Egmond’s right-hand man when the club won the title in 2007-08.

He shifted to Malaysia in 2011 and spent some time there before returning as an assistant coach at the Jets in 2015.

A tough defender during the days of the National Soccer League with Adamstown Rosebud, Sydney Croatia, Marconi Stallions and the Newcastle Breakers, Jones found his way to Adelaide United earlier this year, taking charge of the youth team set-up as well as the W-League squad.

Jets chief executive Lawrie McKinna said the Jones-Zane combination was the best fit for the club.

“It is an exciting time to have two locals at the helm of the club,” McKinna said. “They will be great as a team. I am sure they will bounce off each other very well and they will put us in a great position to challenge for the top six.

“The fact that they are hometown boys is a big plus as well. They know the people, they know the culture, they know what is expected.”

Jones said he had always held ambitions of coaching at the highest level in Australia and never entertained the thought that a coaching position might have passed him by. “I have been close before but the trick is to stay in the game and move wherever you have to, even overseas, to do that,” he said.

“You just keep punching away, doing the best job you can and hope to be rewarded.

“To now get this chance, and for it to be in your home town, that is something special.”

The Jets will play Western Sydney Wanderers in a friendly today, but Jones will sit back and allow Zane, who has been interim coach since Miller’s departure, to take control.

“I’ll just watch and observe, then start cracking on Monday,” he said. “I think Scott did well with the structure, but I might make a couple of small tweaks.

“We will see how it goes.”