Nathan Phillips

Striker - Adelaide United U18
12 Feb 2027
Friday
Process

Marked for Nathan Phillips

13 Edition

The Adelaide United Chronicle

26 Oct 2026
From our football correspondent Triumph

Player ratings

Jonny Yull, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.11

A mark of 8.11 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.

Match

Adelaide United see off Central Coast Mariners

Three points for Adelaide United, 4‑3 the final word against Central Coast Mariners in a contest settled by the finer margins.

Match

Nobody could stop scoring

7 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Adelaide United and Central Coast Mariners in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.

Boardroom

1 academy players handed senior numbers at Adelaide United

The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.

The terraces

The crowd has taken to Jonny Yull

At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.

The dugout

No hiding place for Joshua Smits

“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Joshua Smits, and the manager let it.

Market

One of our own: Nathan Phillips joins the Adelaide United first team

Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Nathan Phillips is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.

Player ratings

Ben Folami was on a different afternoon to everybody else

8.58. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.

Squad

Ajak Riak falls out with a teammate over standards

The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.

In brief