Archie beats Bozzo at the death, Adelaide were death warmed up.

Matt Simon scored two stunning goals for the Mariners last night, and with Victory's erratic keeper Michael Theoklitos given his marching orders for stomping on Sasho " I'm never innocent" Petrovski in the second half, at 2-1 in 93+40 seconds everyone must have thought the game was won.

And then the ball broke to Archie Thompson.

A good entertaining game. Always is at BlueTongue between these two. Partly because Mariners attack in good numbers these days and also because they defend so poorly against Melbourne every year that the Victory resort to booting it over the top to Archie and Danny Allsopp and we all hold our breadth as one-on-one after one-on-one takes place.

Mark Bosnich played well.

But great to see Matt Simon outfox and outjump the overrated former Socceroo Michael Thwaites. In this form he'll remain that.

Brad Porter continues to develop and created both goals for Matt Simon with great crosses, although Simon had a bit to do.

Simon a gangly, aggressive forward with an improving touch and good pace is leading the line well for the Mariners and now is the leagues top scorer. Great to see a young local lad improving so rapidly.

But Lawrie McKinna must have forgot previous Victory games. Very open with a ball over the top or played through to Archie Thompson and Victory are in time and time again.

Can't be that hard to plan for, especially if you've seen it all before.

Archie scored at the death, cue Mark Bosnich outrage.

Mariners are improving and could well, with Dylan MacAllister looking lively make the final four comfortably.

In Sydney, the 12,000 who rocked up saw sensational goals from Terry McFlynn, Brendan Santalab and Alex Brosque.

Sydney are the luckiest team in the league so far.

Beat Perth when Perth self-destructed, beat the Mariners when they were missing key players and got a result against Melbourne when in the first half they were run ragged.

Last night they beat our Asian Champions flag bearers Adelaide who were Wellington-esque in the first half.

Sydney hardly broke sweat, were never tested and didn't really play that well. They didn't have to.

John Aloisi started but he seems to be slowing the Sydney attack rather than enabling the skills of Mark Bridge and Alex Brosque to flourish.

Adelaide had eight players who didn't play in Japan on Wednesday, although you wouldn't have guessed it.

Let's hope they perform better in their ACL quarter final on Sunday. I'm sure they will.