Melville stumbled to a rare 3-4 home defeat to Tauranga City in what may well be their final northern league pre-season match.

Melville once again managed to net some superb goals, with substitute Jakob England (pictured above) also doing his best to salvage a late win for The Unicorns and putting up his hand for a starting role.

But in other respects Melville were off the pace and also uncharacteristically leaked goals at the other end, with few of the many new faces able to make an impression.

Melville were without skipper Aaron Scott, and started tentatively, being extremely lucky not to go behind several times before central defender Sean Liddicoat opened the scoring with an exceptional near-post flick header from a free kick.

Sean Liddicoat showed his goalscoring chops.

However Tauranga soon struck back with Liam Molloy beating Max Tommy at his near post with a free kick from just outside the area. Then Morqan Wellsbury was credited with a goal which was bundled home through a forest of legs from close range for a 2-1 lead, following a corner.

Nobody wants to be conceding goals like this at this stage of preseason.

Lewis Reid extended the Tauranga lead to 3-1 with a header from a corner.

Jerson Lagos put Melville back in contention with another of his worldies, smacking one first time from outside the box to make it 3-2. However this may have been Lagos’ final goal for Melville, given he has decided to move to Brisbane shortly.

And then England entered the fray in the dying minutes and finished a superb striker’s goal, cutting in from the left at pace and burying the ball in the corner.

At 3-3 in stoppage time England appeared to have won it for Melville when he again pounced and expertly slammed into the net.

Jakob England looked to have made it two in two minutes but a team mate flagged it for offside.

But after a long delay the goal was ruled out for an offside, signalled by one of his substitute team mates with the flag.

From the restart Tauranga went up the other end and scored the winner.

Melville coach Jarrod Young was unimpressed.

“It was a much-needed wake up call for us in the first half, easily the worst first half we have had and having it this late into pre season isn’t great,” he said. “But after addressing this at half time we came out and had a much better half intensity and quality wise.

“You need games like this in pre season to help understand how high our standards need to be all the time in the highest level.”

Plans for a midweek match with Wanderers are in doubt because of pitch access issues, while next weekend the squad is having an internal session and team bonding.