Melbourne Heart head coach John van 't Schip admits his team needs to grow and gel together before he can expect positive results.

The 11th A-League club made their historic debut last night at AAMI Park but unfortunately went down 1-0 to the Central Coast Mariners.

At times, the Heart looked very dangerous and created a number of half chances but for the majority of the contest they lacked cohesion which will only get better with time according to the Dutchman.

"I don't know if we are going to be able to fix it for Newcastle (next week)," he said. "You need a little bit of luck in a game like this and we worked very hard for that luck but we didn't achieve it.

"We started very well this evening but after the goal there was 10 or 15 minutes where we played less than the first part of the game because the confidence was a little bit gone but at the end of the first half we got it up again and in total it was a game where you could see that the team still has to grow.

"We still have a few weeks to really gel and to get physical 100% and you could see this evening that we didn't have all the players totally fit."

van 't Schip did point out one positive and that was the performance of 22-year old midfielder Nick Kalmar who made his A-League debut coming straight up from the Victorian Premier League with the Oakleigh Cannons.

"Nick Kalmar I think played very well. He is a player from the VPL (Victorian Premier League) so he is not used to playing, it was his first A-League game, but he did very well so that was a very positive point," he added.