"I thought we at times played some really attractive football," he said after the game.

"I thought it would open up and Joel Griffiths, playing as a shadow striker off Bridge, would have the opportunity to run Mile Jedinak around.

"We wanted to play out the back and that was very important to us. Hutchinson didn't know whether to push on or stay with Musialik. That was a fairly important part of the game for us in terms of keeping possession.

We practised that early during the week. It was important the Tarek and Adam D'Appuzo went high so as not to invite Kwasnik and Greg Owens on."

The Jets refused to take a step backwards in the face of the Mariners onslaught - and wouldn't bow down before any alleged bullyboy tactics after the last game.

"A couple of times, they intimidated out boys [in their last meeting], not illegally, but we weren't going to let that happen tonight" insisted Van Egmond.

"If anything untoward happened on the pitch, everyone ran in - not that we wanted to create a ruckus, just that we want everyone supporting each other.

"It's very important in these kind of games. It's a one-off. You need to win these types of games.

"You obviously have to not only play with your head, but with your heart as well..and I believe that our boys did that tonight."

Van Egmond believed the Jets' two gruelling matches on the way to the Grand Final played in their favour.

"I thought the mariners had the worst preparation in that they had only played two games in the last four weeks," he said.

"You don't know what the best thing to do is under those circumstances. Do the players need more rest or do you need to push them during that period of time?

"It's a real difficult one and I'm sure Lawrie had a feel things go through his head in that period."

He added: "For us, we were battle-hardened and we had a lot of momentum, euphoria and jubilation from the win [over Queensland Roar] and that really carried on to this game."

The Jets wrote off the handball claim that could have given the Mariners a vital late equaliser as simply the run of luck.

"There was an allegation of a handball in the box, but that's football,"said Van Egmond. "Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't.

"We had the same thing last week. We were in the 90th minute and we had a penalty against us, but you have to get on with it.

"Obviously they were pretty disappointed because it was pretty close to the last throw of the dice for them and emotions spill out.

"On occasions like this, there's going tobe a winner and a loser and luckily for us, we were on the right side of the ledger."