An A-League soccer game has been abandoned in Melbourne after fans swarmed the pitch with flares and a goalkeeper apparently got a concussion.
Melbourne City and Melbourne Victory were facing off at AAMI Park on Saturday night, but fans from both sides had been throwing flares. According to the ABC, Melbourne City goalie Tom Glover picked up one of the flares and threw it back towards the stadium stands.
Fans then started swarming the pitch. In a video shared by The Guardian sport editor James Dart, Glover appeared to be hit in the head by some sort of metal bucket or bin which had been used to get rid of flares.
Melbourne derby chaos, City keeper Tom Glover attacked with a bin pic.twitter.com/vw0yy9yqhn
— James Dart (@James_Dart) December 17, 2022
Other footage shows the wild scenes of fans running on to the pitch.
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After Glover was hit and reportedly suffered a concussion, the game was suspended and then abandoned. I mean, it makes sense.
The Guardian reported that referee Alex King was also injured and covered in powder from the bucket lobbed at Glover, while a flare seemingly hit a camera person for Channel 10.
In short: messy as fuck.
Football Australia has now released a statement absolutely slamming the situation.
“Such behaviour has no place in Australian football, with a full Football Australia investigation to be commenced immediately, where strong sanctions to be handed down,” it said.
Soccer fans have been ticked off about the Australian Professional League’s (APL) recent deal with Destination NSW. The decision means the men’s and women’s A-League finals will be held in Sydney until 2025.
Both City and Victory fans were chanting “fuck the APL” immediately after the women’s game finished — which took directly place before the men’s.
They also had banners on display with slogans like “when money talks, fans will walk, APL out”.
