KEY POINTS:
A Nathan Burns hat-trick was timely for Adelaide United in the last round-robin A-League match on Sunday night.
Needing a win over Central Coast Mariners to ensure second place and with it a second life in the play-offs, Adelaide prospered on their trip to Gosford with Burns opening the scoring after 10 minutes.
He added two in the second spell for 3-0 before Tom Pondeljak got one back for the home side who were already out of contention.
The other result of significance came at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night.
Needing at least a point to hold fourth after Newcastle Jets had moved into third place with a 4-0 home win over minor premiers Melbourne Victory, Sydney FC began strongly with Alex Brosque giving the visitors the lead after 13 minutes.
Queensland Roar, needing to win to dash Sydney's top-four hopes, got back to 1-1 seven minutes later as Damian Mori netted his eighth goal of the season.
Sydney held the upper hand but could not breach a resolute Roar defence. The point each side won took them to 29 with Sydney holding fourth on goal difference.
Newcastle outplayed Melbourne. Mark Bridge scored either side of halftime for 2-0. Vaughan Coveny added the third and Joel Griffiths completed the rout in the 74th minute.
Bridge too took his goal tally to eight to join Mori in equal third place in the golden boot race behind Melbourne's Danny Allsopp (11) and Archie Thompson (8).
It was a lack of an outstanding goalscorer which, in the end, cost the New Zealand Knights dearly.
Malik Buari, Noah Hickey, Neil Emblen and Alen Marcina scored two each. There were also two own goals in their season's tally of 13 with John Tambouras, Che Bunce and Leilei Gao adding the rest. Buari scored the first and last goals of the Knights' season.
At the other end of the pitch, goalkeepers Clint Bolton (Sydney) and Michael Theoklitos (Melbourne) each had eight clean sheets from their 21 and 18 matches respectively.
Knights' custodian Mark Paston did well with four from 10 outings.
A crowd of 4936 turned up for the Knights' last match of the season, the 2-0 win over Perth at North Harbour Stadium on Sunday night.
Attention now switches to this week's play-offs. Sydney have home advantage for Friday's first leg of their battle with Newcastle while Melbourne face a difficult away first leg in Adelaide on Sunday.
The return legs will be played the following week with the winner of the Melbourne-Adelaide battle taking the short route to the grand final. The loser will play the winner of the Newcastle v Sydney series.
