North Queensland Fury kept their finals hopes alive by upsetting A-League heavyweights Melbourne Victory 1-0 at Dairy Farmers Stadium on Sunday.

Melbourne slipped down to second after previous co-leaders Sydney FC beat Adelaide United 1-0 in Sydney.

North Queensland climbed off the bottom of the table to now sit above Wellington and Adelaide.

Melbourne were put under pressure in the ninth minute when Jeremy Brockie got a ball to Robbie Middleby whose low powerful shot was saved by Victory goalkeeper Mitchell Langerak.

In the 14th minute the Victory responded with Kevin Muscat making a break and getting a brilliant through ball to Robbie Kruse who got a shot way that was desperately saved by Fury goal keeper Justin Pasfield.

North Queensland got the goal they were searching for after 30 minutes when a cross from Robbie Fowler found Dyron Daal who chested it and got a powerful shot past Langerak.

Melbourne looked for the equaliser in the 34th minute with a shot from Kruse being frantically pushed away in a diving save from Pasfield.

Early in the second half Melbourne took advantage of a defensive lapse from the Fury for Archie Thompson to get a low shot away that was saved by Pasfield.

The tables turned and the Fury started to dominate attack beginning with Daal looking for his second in the 60th minute with another cross from Fowler finding his head and sliding past the right post.

“The biggest problem has been we’ve been inconsistent but tonight I thought the performance and effort showed great character and was fantastic,” Fury coach Ian Ferguson said.

Ferguson was optimistic that his team could have a shot at making the finals.

“We are competitive. I think we’ve made games tough for teams,” he said.

“There’s six games left, we’ve got three at home. We’ve got to keep plodding away.”

Victory coach Ernie Merrick didn’t want to talk about injuries or the humid conditions as factors in his team’s defeat.

“I’m not going to make any excuses. The better team won,” he said.

“They played well, created a good chance, scored a good goal, created a couple of other chances and they were the better team.

“We didn’t deserve to win tonight. We deserved to be knocked off the top of the ladder.”

But he warned: “We’re a strong side. We’ll come back from this.”

© AAP 2012

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