The incident, that involved a challenge from Melbourne defender Surat Sukha, became a turning point in the match as Melbourne equalised just moments later. A prognosis on Leckie's injury will not be known until the coming days.

In his views after the game, United Head Coach Rini Coolen admitted Melbourne had been the better side at the end of the 90 minutes, but he conceded it could have been a different outlook, if the key moment with Leckie had been different.

"We're not happy of course, you lose a game. I think they (Melbourne) deserved the win if you see the whole game," Coolen said.

"But I think it wasn't necessary. In those kind of games the details are making the difference, and there were a few details that were real important, especially when they scored their first goal.

"The moment with Leckie, I don't want to say that someone did it on purpose, but he went out of the game so that's a big loss...it cost us a goal, and at that moment we had some problems.

"We came back into the game, we did everything to change the game but it wasn't enough today.

"It was a problem but we continued with the way we prefer to play, but a couple of minutes after that with the throw in, that kills us."

Having been around football for a long time, Coolen refused to be drawn into speculation of whether the Victory had specifically focused on shutting Leckie out of the game, but the Reds boss admitted it was a loss when he went down.

 "That's football. They are fifty-fifty moments, there were a few tackles on him in that period but he's a dangerous player, he's quick, sometimes too quick for somebody and that's a reason that sometimes they kick him. Maybe not on purpose but they kicked him out of the game, we couldn't use him anymore and he's a real important player for us, so that was a big loss."