Newcastle has bounced defending champions Sydney FC out of the A-League title race after one of the most spiteful, incident-packed and enthralling matches in the competition's short history.

In a game which had virtually everything, second half goals from Joel Griffiths and Vaughan Coveny sealed the Jets a dramatic 2-0 win against 10-man Sydney in the second leg of the elimination semi-final.

The result, in front of a record 24, 338-crowd at a highly-charged EnergyAustralia Stadium, secured Newcastle a 3-2 win on aggregate and a berth in the preliminary final against either Melbourne or Adelaide.

It also signalled the death knell for Sydney this season, with Melbourne, Adelaide and Newcastle now left to fight out for the A-League crown.

Having gone winless their first seven games of the season under dumped coach Nick Theodorakopoulos, the Jets are now amazingly just one game away from the grand final under miracle worker Gary van Egmond.

Terry Butcher's men, though, didn't go down without a fight - almost literally as three all-in confrontations on the cusp of halftime highlighted the most ill-tempered of rivalries.

Blues striker Alex Brosque - already sitting on a yellow card - was sent off in the 45th minute for elbowing Jets skipper Paul Okon.

It was a flashpoint which sparked the second of the three all-in shoving matches, with Okon perhaps fortunately avoiding sanction after retaliating, and Sydney skipper Mark Rudan sent flying to the ground as players from both sides charged in.

That wasn't the end of it though, with players again clashing as they made their way off at halftime, and hot-headed Sydney substitute Sasho Petrovski even receiving a yellow card for his part in the fracas.

The most remarkable stat of the night was that only six yellow cards were shown in addition to Brosque's two bookings.

The Jets had the best of the first half with two penalty shouts turned down - correctly by referee Matthew Breeze - and Colombian import Milton Rodriguez missing an absolute sitter in the 13th minute.

Sydney were holding on valiantly, but down to 10 men for the second half, they were soon put to the sword by a relentless Jets.

Griffiths scored in the 57th minute after some superb lead-up work from Mark Bridge.

Coveny, who had replaced Rodriguez in the 62nd minute, then sent the sell-out home crowd into a frenzy when he hammered home a superb Matthew Thompson cross-ball in the 71st.

Down 2-0 and staring at an early exit from the final series, Sydney's season of controversy added one final chapter when Butcher and Rudan engaged in a sideline spat after the Blues skipper started to head down the tunnel after being substituted in the 75th.

Not that the home crowd, or Jets, cared.

In a tense aftermath, Sydney veteran Steve Corica said he believed some Newcastle players could find themselves in hot water when the A-League operations team review the match on Monday.

Newcastle coach van Egmond, however, was confident his team had nothing to worry about.

"The referee's in control of the game and the referee never saw anything untoward, and for me that's it, fullstop ... otherwise we're going to start to open a can of worms," said van Egmond, who dismissed the game's argy-bargy as "handbags at 10 yards".

"For me, what goes on the pitch, stays on the pitch, and doesn't come off."

Blues boss Butcher, who expects the intense speculation around his job to continue, admitted his players lost their heads.

"You have a player sent off and there's two or three ... melees. We didn't want to get sucked into that," he said.

"We wanted to keep our heads and frustrate Newcastle so that they lost theirs, but unfortunately that was not the case. So yeah, it was self-inflicted."

While elated with the win, van Egmond made sure to keep a tight rein on celebrations in the Jets dressing sheds.

"I want them to enjoy the victory, because it's important that you do enjoy the victories ... but we've got another game next week and the games just get bigger and bigger," van Egmond said.

"It's going to be tougher again, we won't have this parochial Novacastrian crowd to spur us on and we have to do all the little things right again."

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