“We've just got to knuckle down and not be one of those teams that wins the championship one season then falls by the wayside. It is going to be a critical first few months in the lead up to the season,” the Jets keeper told au.fourfourtwo.com today.

“The league is young but already there is a trend setting there about the champions struggling to go back to back. Obviously we don't want to make the trend continue but it's obviously not going to be easy.

“Both Melbourne and Sydney lost critical players after they won their championships but hopefully we can recruit well and maybe not let it get to us and have a normal season rather than having the stigma of being champions.

“We have the youngest squad in the league they just want to get in and battle hard,” he added.

This next phase of the Jets' development will once again be a test for the league's best coach Gary Van Egmond. He is already on record as saying the club needs to do better in its foreign recruiting.

And next season he and his players will have to deal with the tag champions – a notoriously onerous tag.

When the Jets return this May for pre-season,there will be a new A-League season around the corner and an Asian Champions League campaign in early 2009.

Following that, the expanded A-League competition will likely kick off in July 2009. It will be a busy time for the Jets over the next two years hence the importance of getting it right in this pre-season.

“It's been well acknowledged that we've lost quite a few key players since the grand final and still there are more question marks about who's coming in,” said Covic of the losses of Stuart Musialik, Mark Bridge and Andrew Durante.

“We've got the Asian Champions League coming up next year in-between the A-League next season and the following season. We've got a good core base and hopefully we can recreate some of the form of last season.

“Obviously we regrouped at the beginning of last season and did fantastically well and we've got a good coaching staff while the boys in the squad are a good bunch of guys.”

Covic and four other Jets stars – Jade North, James Holland, Adam Griffiths and Tarek Elrich – have been called up to the Socceroos for the March 22 clash with Singapore – a warm up to the main event, the China World Cup qualifier in Kunming four days later.

“Once this [China] qualifier is out of the way, we go on holiday then we come back, hopefully then we'll have more idea of who's come into the Jets squad,” said Covic.

The 32-year-old glovesman adds that the hype over Newcastle winning their first ever national championship is slowly receding.

“Like anything, it's obviously died down after the first week but we still get accolades in the street and people coming up to you and want to let you know.

“But there's a time when things come back to reality.”