One week they're on top of the world, the next they're down in the dumps. Welcome to life at the A-League's most successful club.

After beating Perth Glory last week, the Big V had an opportunity to cement themselves as big-time favourites heading into the finals and grasp at crucial second spot, clasping the one-week break that entails.

Despite Kosta Barbarouses' quick-fire equaliser to Brandon O'Neill's opener and a pile of offensive pressure, Terry Antonis' freak injury and Milos Ninkovic's injury time winner left a far more deflated outfit than perhaps the performance deserved.

"We didn't take our chances, it's been a theme at times this year," Barbarouses said.

"We got the ultimate punishment for it, we came here to win but a draw is the minimum we needed and we didn't get it here.

"We talked about positioning to nullify Sydney (at half time) and it worked quite well. We earned chances out of stopping them from playing.

"To get our minds off this, a big challenge in the ACL. We lost our first two matches in the group so we've got to win this to have a chance of progressing out of the group. We've got a mountain to climb in the league and Champions League."

While Victory now face an uphill struggle across two competitions, assuming they're unable to recover four points on the Sky Blues before season's end, Sydney have a little more room for optimism.

After two losses against their Big Blue rivals throughout the year, Corica's enacted some sweet revenge and Rhyan Grant says it's no less than they deserve.

"It's always good to come away with the win, especially against one of our biggest rivals. I think that second goal got us the win," Grant said.

"We expect a tight match for the whole 90, Ninko does what he does best, pops up and grabs us the winner and we're stoked.

"No message (for Perth), at the end of the day it's in our hands how we go for the rest of the season."

As for the state of the Sydney Cricket Ground pitch...well, at least you can rely on Grant to see the lighter side.

"I was throwing a few wrong-uns before the game and they were turning pretty good, so hopefully we've got a better pitch for the next one."