Melbourne Victory faces the prospect of a points deduction and playing games behind closed doors after Football Australia officially slapped the A-Leagues club with a show cause notice for its fans’ violent derby pitch invasion.

Saturday night’s A-League Men match was abandoned after fans from the Victory active area stormed the AAMI Park pitch.

Melbourne City goalkeeper Tom Glover was hit by a metal bucket wielded by a pitch invader and referee Alex King was also injured, while a Network 10 cameraman was earlier hit by a flare.

The game’s governing body confirmed on Monday that Victory would have until 9am AEDT on Wednesday to show why the club “should not face serious sanctions for bringing the game into disrepute through the conduct of its supporters”.

Duo surrenders to police over pitch invasion 10 News First – Disclaimer

FA confirmed repercussions could include “financial penalties, loss of competition points and/or playing matches behind closed doors, or on neutral territory”.

“As we made clear on Saturday evening following the abandonment of the match, we will move quickly to properly investigate this matter and where appropriate, issue the strongest possible sanctions to the club and individuals involved,” FA chief executive James Johnson said in a statement.

“The show cause notice following our initial investigations is the next step in the process and will allow us to gather more crucial information.”

The perpetrators appear likely to receive life bans. By late Sunday, two men had been identified after coming forward to police.

“This is a small group of perpetrators that don’t love football, that don’t love the A-League and that don’t love Melbourne Victory,” A-Leagues boss Danny Townsend told Seven Network’s Sunrise.

“We’ve got to weed them out and we’ve got to make sure that what happened on Saturday night never happens again

“It was disgraceful. It was a small group of individuals that used the Melbourne derby as a platform to demonstrate anti-social and illegal behaviour.

“It wasn’t just an assault on a player or an official or a cameraman, it was an assault on the football family.”

Elsewhere, Victoria Police acting superintendent Jason Goddard described Saturday’s incident as shocking and disgraceful.

“I was at the game and I’ve watched the vision of what happened a number of times and see the behaviour as disgusting,” he said.

“Detectives from our North West Metro Regional Crime Squad are working hard and I have no doubt we’ll be knocking on a few doors soon.”

Acting Superintendent Goddard said there were 134 police at AAMI Park for Saturday’s match. That’s more than would usually be at events at the MCG, which has a much bigger capacity.

“That should be enough for any game,” he said.

“We knew there were inherent risks due to some of the fan behaviour in previous weeks.”

Images of nine men sought by police were released on Sunday night.

– with AAP

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