The Socceroo frontman today revealed that he was substituted on Sunday against Wellington Phoenix because he was suffering a knee strain. Results on an MRI scan will determine his availability for Victory’s first home match of the season.

The striker left the field on 78 minutes when Victory were up 2-0 and appeared in control. With midfielder Adrian Caceres his replacement, the substitution was initially thought to be a defensive tactic.

With star defender Ljubo Milicevic also out, Melbourne will be forced to look to their bench should Thompson be ruled unfit, with new signing Leandro Love possibly getting his first run of the season.

“I tried to hide it as much as possible but I’ve been struggling a lot since the Sydney game in the pre-season,” he said. “It was actually since the Asian Cup when I got a knock on the same knee. Against Sydney it was a lot worse.

“I haven’t trained much. I was getting treatment leading up to the Wellington game. I tell you what, I felt that I should’ve come off in that first 15, 20 minutes because it was just killing me.”

Despite his set-back Thompson has vowed to do everything he can to be fit for the weekend saying: “I want to get myself right because this is the first home game and the crowd hopefully will be massive. It’s going to be huge so hopefully my knee is okay.”

Wellington played some inspired football in the final quarter of their first competitive A-League game and Thompson admits he still can't work out how they didn't win the game.

“I thought we were cruisin’. I didn’t see any way Wellington could get in at all and I came off and was getting my knee all done up and then I heard the crowd and I thought, ‘what’s going on?’ Then they scored.

“Two-nil is always risky and I thought we’d done enough, we just sort of lost our shape. I wanted to get back on because when I was out there it felt like we were dominating so much. As soon as they started to get the momentum the crowd just really got behind them and the atmosphere was amazing. But we just can’t do that.”