Saturday night was the first time we have ever left a Melbourne Victory game early. It was the second derby of the 2022-23 season and the first home game since early October, the competition having taken a five-week break for what turned out to be a momentous and history-making World Cup. The newly crowned World Cup goalscorer, Mat Leckie, would be on City’s starting XI.
But here I was with my 13-year-old son, at 8.50pm on Saturday night, having watched only 20 minutes of football in the hour since the 7.45pm kick-off, trudging out of AAMI Park alongside thousands of other bewildered, mostly silent and despondent families.
Fans show their disappointment with the APL’s decision to move the next three grand finals to Sydney.Credit:Getty Images
This was not a routine Victory-City derby, invariably a fiercely contested game and a highlight of the A-League competition. Victory’s sizeable and boisterous cheer squad as well as their less-numerous City counterparts had promised they would walk out at the 20th minute of match-time in protest against a decision to stage the next three grand finals in Sydney, breaking the tradition of the top-placed team having the right to host the final.
There was from the outset a sense of foreboding at AAMI. It started near the entry, where as many as 30 riot police were lined up. When City scored a goal around the 10th minute, flares from the City cheer squad made it all the way to the field, at least one landing right on the goal net. Victory goalkeeper Paul Izzo gingerly picked it up and placed it off the field where it was extinguished by officials. And not for the first time this season, multiple flares had gone off in the northern terrace, home of the Victory cheer squad.
As expected, there was movement in the ranks at the 20-minute mark. The rows taken up by City’s squad had emptied and people were slowly filing out of the north terrace.
But even as the referee ran towards City goalkeeper Tom Glover, who appeared to have thrown a flare back into the crowd, there was no sense of what would come next as a handful, then a wave, of cheer-squad members, jumped the fence, knocked over the long row of electronic signage and swarmed around Glover, now surrounded by the referee and a few hapless game officials and teammates who had come to his rescue.
A bloodied Tom Glover is escorted from the pitch by teammates.Credit:Getty Images
Players and officials huddled on the field, then made their way off the pitch. Security guards moved people off the pitch. By the time the dark-clothed riot police entered, there was little left for them to do.
From high in the stands, far from the danger unfolding on the pitch, it was hard to know exactly what was happening. Only later would the gravity of the situation come to light. With a sinking feeling, we would learn that Glover’s face had been hit with a steel pail, resulting in stitches and concussion. That players on the field feared for their safety. That the referee and a cameraman had also been injured. That condemnation for what had happened would descend from every corner of the football world. That this ugly event with cries of “football’s darkest moment”, “thugs” and “shame” would be tomorrow’s front page.
With no announcement on AAMI’s public address system and patchy internet reception, we numbly sat in the stands wondering what next. It was obvious the game would not continue, though the official match clock continued to tick, until it reached 45 minutes, which should have been half-time.
The answer came when a handful of City players came out of the tunnel, some still in their game kits, some in their everyday clothes, some in barefeet. Like at the end of every game, they had come to thank the fans. This time their clapping was muted, symbolic rather than joyous, but it was also a show of strength. The players and the supporters will persevere long after the mess of this calamity has been cleaned up.
On Saturday night, at least, as the stands decamped to Olympic Boulevard there were no cheers, nor commiserations, nor banter of fans-turned-pundits explaining how the game could have gone differently. Just numbness and a growing sense of outrage over how a small group of men could so comprehensively betray the game, a club, its players and supporters.
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