The 27-year-old defensive midfielder was one of the club's many employees who feared for their jobs earlier in the off-season but now can see the brighter side.

The Jets have enjoyed a positive off-season after owner Nathan Tinkler and the FFA resolved their differences, with several youth internationals joining, while coach Gary van Egmond recently signed a new deal followed by the Emerging Jets Program announcement.

Wheelhouse said the cutting-edge youth development program, confirmed last week in partnership with Northern NSW Football and the FFA, was a great sign for the region which has a proud tradition of producing football talent.

“It's probably the best thing which has come out of Newcastle for a long time,” Wheelhouse told au.fourfourtwo.com.

“They've done a great thing in putting the steps in place to build this program up.

“From all reports they're trying to spend a lot of money through the councils to put a complex in place with synthetic pitches etc, at Speers Point. There's a lot of things which are very positive for the future of Newcastle soccer.”

He added: “As a player you don't want to go through what happened with the whole takeover thing. It was a pretty hard time for all the players and the fans.

“Since then we've had some positive signs. Going on the past week, with the Emerging Jets Program, that's a huge step in the right direction to building and finding young talent and developing better players from this region.”

As for the actual program, former AIS product Wheelhouse cited the example of his 18-year-old brother Abe who he felt hadn't reached his full potential due to deficiencies in the region's previous youth development systems and hoped the new academy could prevent such situations from occurring in the future.

“He had a fair bit of potential when he was younger in the Under-17s team,” he said. “It's been hard for him to make the step from junior teams into a first grade environment.

“There hasn't been any stepping stones put in place in this region for him to reach his full potential.

“That's an example, but there's been heaps of them in recent years.”

Wheelhouse said he felt Newcastle's programs had fallen behind other regions in the past four or five years.

“There's been that many good players come out of Newcastle in the past and probably in the last four or five years the flow has stemmed a bit,” he said.

“We want as many young kids coming through Newcastle as any other state or city. We've fallen in the last couple of years but this is something which will help.”

Meanwhile, Wheelhouse said he had been enthused by the club's pre-season where they are currently unbeaten and, as he says, building something.

“The team is coming along quite well. I know the pre-season doesn't mean a lot in terms of results, but we're building a better culture and a winning mentality,” he said.

The Newcastle veteran also pointed to returning local product Josh Mitchell, pre-season bolter Craig Goodwin and teenage defender Connor Chapman as players to look out for this season.

However, Wheelhouse refused to talk about challenging for the title just yet, preferring to focus on ending the club's run of failing to make the finals.

“It's probably a bit early to talk (about titles),” he said. “We've set some goals, we want to make the finals which we haven't done in the past two years.

“There's a lot of young boys, but our older boys will need to lead, but hopefully if not this year but in the next couple of years we can build a team which can challenge for the title year in, year out.”