Already secured of fourth spot, the Mariners were deservedly beaten by Adelaide United in their final match of the regular season.

They will now face Queensland Roar over two legs in the minor semi-final.

McKinna said: "We’ve lost the last three against the three teams above us, so hopefully we’ve learnt a wee bit from that, but we have to get better.

"If we’re not any better than what we were tonight, we’ll play two games and we’ll be out, if we get better than that, we can go through to the next round.

"Put simply, we have to improve, we defended well against a team that had to win the game, but when we’ve got the ball, we have to do better with it.

"Credit to Adelaide, they had to go for the win and they put us on the back foot and there were no surprises there.

"We absorbed a lot of pressure but when we did break and go forward, we had to do better with the ball.

"In the first half and probably more in the second half, we created great chances and opportunities going forward, but gave the ball away and didn’t find the man."