The 2015/16 Golden Boot winner was forced to wait until the fourth round of the A-League to open his account but when he did it was a beauty.

After some clever interplay with Riley McGree he picked out the top right corner before racing to the sideline to savour the moment with teammates and fans - the relief visible on his face after ending his second longest goal drought.

It was a huge weight off the striker’s shoulders after City’s insipid display against Sydney FC the week before at home.

“I say before it’s important to work hard for the team - of course I didn’t score and I’m a striker so I pray for this," he told Fox Sports post-match.

“Tonight it’s a great feeling again to score. I just work and keep going and I know the goals are coming.

“Always you have pressure because you are the striker…I put pressure on myself because I want to stay there, I want to score, I want to fight for my team.

“Of course I have this passion inside and this is why it came out today.”

Ritchie De Laet opened the scoring at AAMI Park on nine minutes with a laser-like grass cutter from distance before Fornaroli completed the job just on the hour.

The 31-year-old Uruguayan added: “I think it most important tonight that we win the three points. I think we play well too, so we get the confidence back again."

The Nix had a decent penalty shout for handball when City’s Scott Jamieson charged down the ball in the area, but had to content themselves with a drop ball contest on the edge of the box.

After one of their best starts to a campaign ever, Friday's result hands the Kiwi outfit back-to-back defeats. Steven Taylor, defended the team’s tactics.

“The longer we stayed in the game at one-nil we thought we’d get back into the game,” he said.

“We had some chances. I said the lads up front we may get one or two chances and we have to take them. Unfortunately tonight it wasn’t to be.

“We set the game plan up to frustrate them and you see the first half we tried to get into little pockets and restrict them. I think it was one shot first half."