By Sean Ellicott (@SeanEllicott)

Bulleen Lions pulled off a dramatic victory over Kingston City on Monday night at the Grange Reserve, coming from behind to seal a late 3-2 triumph.

The visitors opened the scoring early in the first half, only to find themselves a goal down with just over 15 minutes to play, but late goals from Matthew Dimech and Joshua Sabidussi handed Bulleen an entertaining victory.

Paul Harvey opened the scoring after only six minutes for Bulleen amongs a midst of controversy.

Appearing to handball the ball inside the penalty area, Harvey finished his effort from close distance upon colliding with an opposing player and going down injured.

After a delayed whistle heightened the confusion, the goal was eventually awarded to Bulleen despite protests of handball from the surrounding Kingston players.

After taking the lead, the dominance swung in the Lions’ favour.

Harvey and Joseph Katebian were particularly lively in the final third for Bulleen, the pair combining well on a few occasions and Katebian coming the closest as his looping header struck the cross just after the half-hour mark.

The hosts began to wrestle their way back into the game as the contest became a fiery and fiercely contested affair.

George Stavridis almost grabbed an equaliser after his header was nodded onto Fraser Maclaren's upright, but the winger nevertheless found his goal minutes later.

A powerful strike from the edge of 18                                                                                                                                       yards off the right wing proved too hard to handle for Maclaren, George Stavridis levelling the scores on the stroke of halftime.

Kingston emerged out of the rooms as the side on top, conjuring multiple of opportunities yet failed to capitalise on its superiority in possession and momentum.

Velibor Mitrovic, Max Etheridge and Anthony Stavridis all had chances of their own but it was substitute Gino Defeo who provided the opening, brought down inside the penalty area after a fine turn and change of speed

Taking up the responsibilities from the spot, Mitrovic converted his spot kick to hand Kingston a 2-1 lead with 16 minutes to play.

A response from Bulleen came less than five minutes later.

Squeezing the ball in its attacking third, a poor Kingston clearance found the feet of Matthew Dimech directly in front of goal outside the penalty area, who punished Kingston with his deflected strike nestling into the back of the net.

With only a few minutes remaining, Takanori Nishimoto then thought he had headed Bulleen to victory as he converted his effort past Sermin Sadikovski, only for the referee to adjudicate the keeper had been fouled among the congestion inside the box.

Bulleen kept knocking on the door and eventually netted the winner in the 88th minute thanks to substitute Joshua Sabidussi.

On the break and released through on goal, Katebian squared his pass to Sabidussi, who slotted home.

Having deployed his substitutes to perfect effect, Bulleen coach Fab Soncin was impressed with his side’s resilience until the final whistle.

"We had to dig deep," Soncin said.

"Last three weeks we've played some good football and tonight we didn't play our best but we battled away, we believed we could and the boys played with that belief and it paid off."

Kingston City coach Nick Tolios described the result as "extremely disappointing”.

"We did extremely well to get back into it and again very similar deja vu to last week, our defensive mistakes gifted them a chance,” Tolios said.

"Make as much excuses as we want, in the end we gave them the opportunity to put us away and they did, we had enough chances to win three games."

MATCH DETAILS

Kingston City 2 (George Stavridis 44', Mitrovic pen. 73') defeated by FC Bulleen Lions 3 (Harvey 6', Dimech 79', Sabidussi 90') at the Grange Reserve [HT: 1-1]

Kingston City: Sermin SADIKOVSKI, George STAVRIDIS, Kemal CURAN, James KARVELIS, Stacy TSALKOS, Anthony STAVRIDIS,  Andrew DOIG, Nick STAMATIOU, Michael GERACE, Max ETHERIDGE, Velibor MITROVIC.

Substitutes: Gino DEFEO, Archie PAPADOPOULOS, John MACLEAN, Deniz SABANOVSKI, George MALLIARIS

FC Bulleen Lions: Fraser MACLAREN (GK), Dean ROMAS, Lewis WADDELL, Alex DAO, Matteo BALLAN, Bardhi HYSOLI (Samual BORGHESI 65') Takanori NISHIMOTO, Paul HARVEY (Joshua SABIDUSSI 57'), Matthew DIMECH, Davide CARDAMONE,  Joseph KATEBIAN.

Unused Substitutes: Dean LORENZI, Gian TAPIA.

Yellow Cards: Harvey (35').