Horrible mishandle certain to give Victory goalkeeper Lawrence Thomas many sleepless nights

How Victory keeper Lawrence Thomas’s shining season in front of goal went belly up early doors in his A-League semi-final and the most damning aspect was it was of the self-inflicted variety.

Milos Ninkovic celebrates scoring a goal against Melbourne Victory.

Last year Lawrence Thomas was almost decapitated. This year he lost his head ­completely.

Unlike the last grand final, there was no Roy O’Donovan eager to relieve him of his bandaged bonce, nor his own Joe Marston Medal heroics to help Melbourne Victory to a championship trophy in Newcastle.

At Jubilee Stadium on Sunday night the usually superb goalkeeper bore only internal wounds, and of the utterly self-inflicted variety.

Thomas had enjoyed a shining, consistent season befitting a goalkeeper who has the league’s highest save percentage away from home at 80 per cent. How he would have wished that his leap to collect an early Sydney FC corner did not fall firmly in the other 20 per cent category.

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Victory goalkeeper Lawrence Thomas is unable to stop the opening goal by Aaron Calver.

For if there was an analogy about a domino effect it would have slotted well into this horror show, in which Sydney cranked the volume up so slowly Kevin Muscat’s men barely noticed until they were suddenly deafened by a Big Blue defeat not seen before.

That third-minute moment of mayhem, when Thomas ­effectively fumbled the ball into his own net, started the chain reaction.

Until then Victory had been the only side not to concede off a corner all campaign, having successfully rebuffed 149.

That tally ticked over to 150 and 151 after Ola Toivonen and Georg Niedermeier cleared the first two of Brandon O’Neill’s three quick-­succession set pieces.

Lawrence Thomas watches as a shot on goal by Adam Le Fondre sails past.

But that rotten tangle of bodies got in the way of No. 152, and then that horrible mishandle that allowed Aaron Calver the slightest of touches and rendered Rhyan Grant’s air swing redundant en route to goal.

Thomas was not really at fault for Sydney’s other five goals, but by then the rot had already begun.

Exactly 40 minutes later all he could do was dive despairingly as Alex Brosque’s swish-bang of a volley beat him at his near post. Then, in first-half stoppage-time, he could muster only forlornly flickering eyes as Leigh Broxham’s own-goal header flew past.

Adam Le Fondre after taking his successful penalty. Picture: Getty Images

Niedermeier’s penalty-prompting lunge on Adam Le Fondre may have been the encore had the Sydney striker, who converted the subsequent spot-kick, not netted another goal for good measure and Milos Ninkovic iced the cake.

And as Thomas endured his torture session, his counterpart Andrew Redmayne very nearly basked in the glory of a first finals clean sheet, until Toivonen’s late strike.