Thunder lacks lightning

By JARROD POTTER
THE Thunder escaped from their Friday night trip to Bentleigh with a 3-3 draw, despite entering injury time down a goal and desperately searching for the equaliser.
Nate Foster was a late withdrawal for Dandenong, leaving Luke Sherbon and Liam Kearney up front to do the heavy lifting.
Lysterfield gun Paulo Retre opened the scoring for the Greens in the second minute, but Bentleigh would go down to 10 men soon afterwards when Jack Webster brought down Thunder captain Veton Korcari, which surprisingly wasn’t given a penalty despite Webster being the last defender.
Bentleigh made it two-nil at half-time after Craig Elvin brought down Ryan De Vries within the box, leading Scott Bulloch to ram home the penalty.
Dandenong came out goal-hungry in the second half – Bryan Bran and Liam Kearney squared the match by the 69th minute with a pair of exceptional goals, but De Vries returned fire at the 88th minute with a beautiful escaping run away from Dandenong’s defence and slotted what many thought would be the match winner with two minutes left.
Kearney, with just about the last kick of match, put the corner to the spot and Matt Theodore capitalised on some sloppy Bentleigh clearing work in the box to finish the match at 3-3.
Dandenong sits four points clear at the top of the VPL and should get the job done against last place Heidelberg United on Saturday night at George Andrews Reserve.