Melbourne Victory CEO Ian Robson says delaying fans’ entrances to games is a small price to pay if they are to crack down on thugs who smuggle flares and detonators into the stadium.
Robson, chairman Anthony Di Pietro, coach Kevin Muscat and stand-in captain Leigh Broxham addressed the media today, all of whom reiterated foolish behaviour will not be tolerated.
“We have to all collectively heighten our vigilance, if that creates additional delays or additional time for fans to access the stadium, that’ll be a small price to pay,” Robson said.
“This is a significant penalty and sanction, even though we’re not appealing, we’re not taking lightly the consequences and what this means for the club in the next 12 months.”
READ MORE: Anthony Di Pietro scoffs at pro-flare arguments
Plenty of criticism has been directed at authorities, including stadium security. Many believe security have not done enough to prevent anti-social incidents from occurring.
Robson however, had empathy for the authorities and said common sense needed to take its part in clamping down on any hostile actions.
“It would be unfair to focus on any one particular stakeholder, everyone has to be involved in the solution and that’s where our energy and focus has been on,” he said.
“There’s been much bravado in social media circles and more broadly how young people are taking on the challenge to smuggle any of number of different types of items in the stadium that aren’t approved, whether that’s banners or flares.”
Robson also confirmed today Victory did not take the full 48 hours they had to respond because various members of the cohort wanted to resolve the matter quickly and efficiently.
There was also a sense of anger and disappointment in accepting the sanction, saying the money could have gone to better things for the club.
“$50,000 for this football club isn’t an insignificant amount of money, it could have been spent on community programs, underpinning further growth in our academy, so we don’t and will not write that cheque lightly,” he said.
“To be candid there was nothing in the letter we were surprised by or weren’t aware, we felt it was important with a home game on Friday night, a very important game that we move quickly to resolve this matter.
“We’re very disappointed with the outcome, but we have some satisfaction that the matters been dealt with and resolved.”
Anthony Di Pietro was adamant it was only a small minority of hooligans who were ruining it for everybody else and acknowledged the great fan base and their need to step in and act when necessary.
“We have 27000 passionate members, and I don’t want to be drawn upon numbers, there is only a marginal element that are behaving in this way,” Di Pietro said.
“So it’s about all of us uniting saying we need to rid ourselves of this marginal element, if that’s through education, security, tapping a young fellow or a leader on the shoulder saying ‘enough is enough.
“We can put in all the security measures we like, that’s not really where we want to go, the Victorian police are doing an amazing job supporting us, they work with us, they’ve also got better things to be doing.
“We’d love the day to come where they’re not necessary at our games, let’s aim for that.”
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