John Hutchinson put the visitors in front just past the half hour but former Mariner Tom Pondeljak fired the home team level less than five minutes later.

McKinna said: "Melbourne put us under a bit of pressure early but we weathered the storm and went 1-0 up and felt quite comfortable.

"But after scoring, just five minutes later we gave them a chance to get back in the match - a slack pass and the goal came from our mistake.

"Going in at half-time at 1-1, we felt we deserved to be in the lead but then in the second half they pressured us a bit better and we didn’t keep possession as well as we did in the first half and when they scored again we were always chasing the game after that.

"We came down here and had a go, the effort was there, the fight was there and we always believed – even in the last couple of seconds we thought we could put away a crumb on the edge of the penalty box.

"It’s always hard to come here, they are open games with chances at both ends, it would have been nice to get a draw down here but credit to Melbourne, they caused us problems and forced us to change our shape a wee bit.

"We’ll be back up for Perth next week, we need to get a win to get back in the mix."