Football Australia plans to use the full force of its powers to sanction people involved in the A-League Men Melbourne derby pitch invasion that delivered one of Australian sport's darkest moments.
Saturday night's match was abandoned after fans from the Melbourne Victory active area stormed the field at AAMI Park, with Melbourne City goalkeeper Tom Glover and referee Alex King injured when hit by a metal bucket wielded by a pitch invader.
The league is run by the Australian Professional Leagues (APL) but Football Australia (FA) manages judiciary matters and has begun an investigation, with the intruders the central focus.
Victory have been issued with a show cause notice and FA is also considering the outcome of the match, which City led 1-0 at the time it was abandoned.
Victoria Police have launched Operation Astute to investigate the pitch invasion and while no arrests have been made, police said they already had a number of active enquiries.
FA chief executive James Johnson expects the investigation will move "swiftly" as the governing body works with the APL and police.
"We will be taking the strongest sanctions that are available," Johnson told reporters on Sunday.
"This is an element that goes beyond football.
"It's an element that infiltrates our game and that really try to ruin it for the two million people that love our sport.
"It's those people that we will be targeting in this investigation and that we will weed out of the sport."
Victory managing director Caroline Carnegie said the club was devastated by the behaviour of a section of the crowd.
"I'm disgraced and appalled at what happened last night," Carnegie told reporters on Sunday.
"We've tried to work with our fans in a number of different ways to make sure that they can be here to support the club and do it in the right way.
"I think last night shows us that we've come to a point in time where what we've been doing probably hasn't been as successful as we'd like and we just can't condone what went on.
"There's only so many ways I can say it but the behaviour was appalling and we'll stand up and be part of that investigation and see what happens as a result."
Victory could face a financial penalty or points deduction - or possibly have fans locked out of stadiums - but Johnson refused to comment on what sanctions FA would hand down.
"Financially it's devastating for us if we don't get our fans into a stadium or we don't have our fans doing what they do best," Carnegie said.
"But the people we don't want around aren't true Melbourne Victory fans because if they were, they wouldn't have hurt the club the way they did last night.
"They wouldn't have hurt the league and the sport."
Two games at AAMI Park on Sunday went ahead without incident, as Western United hosted Western Sydney and Victory's A-League Women team played Newcastle.
On Saturday night, both sets of fans had planned to walk out at the 20-minute mark as part of a protest towards the APL's decision to sell the next three grand finals to Sydney. Fans of both clubs had been throwing flares.
But the situation escalated when a flare hit and injured a television cameraman, then exploded when Glover picked up another flare off the ground and threw it back into the stands.
Fans then rushed the pitch including the intruder carrying the metal bucket, which hit Glover, who was concussed and required stitches, and King, who also had a head gash.
The game was suspended for about 45 minutes then abandoned.
The APL released a statement saying the events "demonstrated that a small minority of people with criminal intent hide within our game".
"This is a watershed moment for our game that demands a zero tolerance for the incidents that we witnessed last night and the kind of people that perpetrated them," the statement said.
"Our clubs will work deliberately and exhaustively, hand-in hand with law enforcement agencies, and with Football Australia - as the game's regulator - to ensure that our game can never again be used as camouflage for criminals."
Glover will also be under the microscope for his role in the incident.
City said the goalkeeper was taken to hospital on Saturday night with "severe lacerations" to the face and suffered concussion.
Glover was cleared of further trauma and returned home on Sunday morning.
His return to action will be dictated by concussion protocols.
