Mariners beat Victory at the death

Mariners 2 Melbourne Victory 1.

This was a great game...sort of.

The Victory lost Joe Keenan to rash tackle on Andrew Clark. Sent off with 20 minutes gone on a hot day.

His team mates must have feared the worst.

But the Mariners were woeful. Slow. Unable to keep the ball.

And with Victory always better as a team who play on the break, ten men or eleven makes little difference.

Archie Thompson was superb. He ran, tormented and produced numerous outlets and opportunities for the Victory.

The Mariners supposed to be the fittest side in the lead had no answer to Carlos Hernandez.

Hernandez controlled the game. Eventually scoring late on after great work from Danny Allsopp.

1-0 with The Mariners performance going form worse to worse it was game over.

On game the energetic Andre Gumprecht and Matt Simon.

Victory's energy was gone. And suddenly the Mariners lifted.

Simon's got a ball he never should have got to, Aloisi missed from six yards and Sasho Petrovski tapped home.

The winner came much like the Mariners goals of last week.

A Mariners player held the ball at the top of the box, Kaz Patafta like Ufuk Talay last week got sucked across and that gave the space last week for John Hutchison to score this time it was Tom Pondeljak.

For a team of duds who couldn't pass a ball afternoon, the Mariners were suddenly world beaters, or at least winners and moved to the top of the league.

Roddy Vargas lost his cool...again. And was sent off. And like Joe Keenan and a heap of other injured players will miss the game of the season against Sydney next week.

Sasho Petrovski. A goose in any other language. A match winner who lashed Kevin Muscat for nothing and then was booked again in the Vargas incident. He was off to.

The Mariners won ugly. Few inspired. Maybe Lawrie McKinna was the best for them.

And maybe the Victory scored too early. But they should have won by three.

Archie was a joy. It was one of the best individual performances of the season.

Carlos Hernandez wasn't far behind.

How did the Victory lose after such a dominant ten man performance?

They didn't score enough goals for all their dominance thus giving the Mariners a way back in.

And didn't they take it.