DUDDED. It is the only way to put it.
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A night that should have showcased the round-ball code was instead remembered for all the wrong reasons.
A night that started with unbridled hype and hope in the Hunter ended in heartache.
The Jets, playing their first grand final in a decade, crashed to 1-0 loss to Melbourne Victory at a heaving McDonald Jones Stadium.
The feel-good story of the A-League was unable to pen the final chapter, much to the disappointment of a parochial crowd of 29,410, the biggest to attend a football match in Newcastle.
The script couldn't have been better written.
The big budget Victory, boasting million dollar players everywhere you looked, against the surprise packet Jets.
Two coaches with a long history and distinct dislike for each other.
Two teams whose game was based on attack.
Yet in the biggest game of the season, the only goal was a scrappy, scrambling effort, scored by Melbourne's Kosta Barbauroses in the ninth minute, which should never have counted.
Replays indicated as many as three Melbourne players were offside including James Donachie when the stopper headed the ball across goal for Barbarouses. Yet the linesman kept his flag down, in the confidence that any infringement would be ruled on by the eye in the sky, the VAR
If ever there was a time and a place for video technology, this was it.
Nothing. A technical failure in the VAR system.
For 30 seconds, VAR Craig Zetter had no access to the necessary camera angles.
Jets defenders knew the Victory players were offside. Fans at the northern end of the ground knew Victory players were offside.
FOX Sports footage confirmed their instincts.
Yet the goal stood.
It took several minutes to rectify the "malfunction of software", by which time play had resumed.
What a debacle.
Yes, the Jets still had 81 minutes to find a way back. They did exactly that the week before in the semi-final when conceding the opening goal to Melbourne City only to storm to a 2-1 triumph on the back of Riley McGree's scorpion kick goal.
But nobody wants to be playing catch-up in a grand final.
From the moment Victory struck, the onus was all on Jets.
Rather than strive to stretch their lead, Victory were content to merely defend it, employing whatever tactics were necessary.
Keeper Lawrence Thomas was the hero.
Time and time again he thwarted the Jets attack.
Roy O'Donovan crashed a volley from eight metres and had started celebrating when the keeper dived full-stretch to his left, and with the ball almost past him, got a strong hand up to turn it around the post.
Ronny Vargas was on another planet for the Jets, twisting and turning past defenders and threading passes. But no matter what tricks Vargas and Dimi Petratos conjured, they couldn't find a way past Thomas.
The keeper produced a brilliant double save on the half hour, dropping to his left to block a McGree rocket and then somehow rose off the ground to get his body in front of Jason Hoffman's follow up.
The Jets had 64 per cent of possession and delivered 17 balls in to the area.
Each passing minute exacerbated the scoreboard pressure, and eventually desperation got the better of O'Donovan, who lunged at a high ball over the top and caught Thomas flush in the face.
The Irishman was given a straight red card.
Thomas was bandaged up and left to collect the Joe Marston Medal.
Full-time sounded soon after, and rather than the worst-to-first fairytale the Novocastrian faithful had been eagerly anticipating, they were left disappointed and disillusioned.
Getting beaten fair and square would have been acceptable to most, but losing like that was a bitter pill to stomach.
"We are extremely disappointed at this failure of the VAR technology," FFA's head of A-League Greg O'Rourke said.
"And we understand the disappointment and frustration of the Newcastle Jets, their fans and indeed all football fans.
"VAR was introduced here and in other parts of the world as a technology-based solution to correct the human errors that inevitably are made from time to time when officials are making judgements in split seconds.
"On this occasion the technology itself failed and the broadcast angles required were unavailable. We are working with [vision technology company] Hawkeye to thoroughly understand why it did and what can be done to prevent this happening again.
"Whilst we understand that this happened only once this season it was at a most critical time. All parties desire the technology to be failure proof and that is what we will be striving for."
Jets coach Ernie Merrick had been a supporter of the VAR system, but he said: "I don't want to be a sore loser, but if that goal was offside, I just wonder what the point of the VAR is.
"I'm still a fan of the VAR, but ... if you looked at that, in replay, when the ball was kicked it looked like there were three players offside."
A candid Barbarouses admitted the grand final "probably would have played out a bit differently" had the VAR overturned his goal.
"The onus would have been on us to attack a little bit more but that's what happens in a final when you score early, you tend to subconsciously weather the storm a bit," he said.
The drama and the controversy didn't end at full-time for the Jets.
O'Donovan's challenge was sent to FFA independent Disciplinary and Ethics Committee, who handed him a 10-match ban - the second biggest in the history of the league.
O'Donovan claimed he'd originally intended to go for a header before the ball skewed slightly left. "I had to make a split-second decision to go with my foot in the hope that if I got a touch the reward was massive - we had a chance to win the grand final," O'Donovan said. "As soon as I left the ground there was no way to stop."
"As a striker you have a responsibility to attack the ball ... unfortunately this time I hit the goalkeeper in the face which I'm devastated about. I have never set out to hurt anybody in my career, nor will I."
The Jets' appeal against the severity of the sentence was dismissed.
"I feel like the process around the suspension and the appeal - having to speak to judges who have never kicked a football in their life - that is where the frustration lies," O'Donovan fumed. "You feel powerless. This is my livelihood. I have been a professional footballer going on 17 years. Every time I step on a football pitch means something. Winning games means something. I have come from a system in England where if you don't win games, you don't play. If you don't win games, you get relegated. If you get relegated people lose jobs. Players, staff, kit men, cleaning ladies. That is the background I come from. If the ball is in the air and we need to score a goal to win a football game, damn right I am going to try and score a goal."
