It came with a struggle as the Jets contained City maintaining of the ball almost snatching an equaliser towards the end.

City’s squad have only been together collectively for three days as returning National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) Seattle Reign team-mates Jess Fishlock and new signing Lauren Barnes returned last week.

Other players returning abroad were Aivi Luik (Notts Country) and Amy Jackson (Incheon Hyundai Steel Red Angels).

City coach Joe Montemurro guided the team to a record breaking perfect regular 2015/16 season believed the game was indicative of the W-League’s improvement.

“It’s great to see the whole league has stepped up its game, all the clubs have organised earlier and got in quality players so we expect it to be a very difficult league,” Montemurro said.

“It’s all credit to the other clubs and the league itself. We are looking for games that are going to be a lot more difficult, so I don’t think… well we’ll see if it’ll be a replica of last season.

“We knew we had to drop off a bit more and have a lot of the ball at the back, just purely because of our tightness and set-up, but fortunate? It’s hard to say, I’ll have to review the game look at it in a better way to see what chances they had.”

Montemurro also was not afraid of tinkering with his tactics after a number of players changed positions in the first half.

City is without seven key players from last season - Lisa De Vanna (unattached), Bri Davey (AFL switch), Alex Chidiac (Adelaide United), Beattie Goad (Stanford University), Monique Ianella (Texas Longhorns), Kim Little (Arsenal) and Jen Beattie (Manchester City).

New City captain Steph Catley managed 90 minutes before being taken off the ground by Montemurro who switched sides during the game.

Catley went into the 2016 Rio Olympics with a foot injury and added a hamstring in the game against Brazil which ended her NWSL season with Orlando Pride.

Montemurro wanted to build the depth in his team and said he had the ingredients to do it.

“The beauty of this team this year is we can mix and match, get what we want,” he said.

“We played Steph up top, she can get more rest, we were hoping to get 60 or 70 (minutes) out of her.

“She wanted to stay on and keep going. She did tire towards the end and all credit to her for persisting.”

It was Marianna Tabain’s goal at the eighth minute which guaranteed City the win as they travel to the nation's capital to lock horns with Canberra United.

The 24-year-old came from Perth Glory in season 2014/15 and scored seven goals in City’s 2016 triumph.

While Tabain was happy she scored, she believed the win was lucky.

“I’m pretty happy about the goal, from the team performance, it probably wasn’t the best. Newcastle set-up really well and we’re just fortunate we got the result,” Tabain said.

“We’ve had a lot of the younger girls step up, so that was good to have them around. The older players have to step up a bit.

“Joe did a really good job with the squad, they’ve assembled a good squad and I think we can just keep building week in and week out, I think we’ll do really well.

“I back our team every single week, we’ve got enough quality around the squad to get results and I think they set up really well, but we did really well to maintain possession and try and build from there.”