Inside story: How Melbourne Victory took action after damaging pitch invasion to win back fans and return to top of the league

Spectators had just invaded AAMI Park and Bourandanis walked forlornly with fellow diehard fans, mates for life through their support of Victory, toward Swan St in Richmond.

It was the darkest moment in the league’s history.

Doomsday felt imminent.

“There was a feeling we’re cooked,” Bourandanis tells CODE Sports.

“The league is about to go down tonight. This might be the end of Melbourne Victory.”

Three weeks later, on January 9, 2023, the club was handed a set of mammoth sanctions from Football Australia.

Six figure fines. Crippling restrictions on ticket sales. The club survived, but hope largely vanished. Results hit rock bottom and thousands of members threatened to leave.

Fast forward to today and the contrast could hardly be more stark.

Not only has Victory survived, but it sits atop the A League Men’s ladder.

More remarkable, the soul of the place has returned.

North Terrace is once more in full voice, idiots have been filtered out, eardrum rattling order has been restored. That’s important for Victory and vital for the A League as it searches to cut through in a crowded Australian sporting market.

Line in the sand

After the moronic pitch invasion, Caroline Carnegie, Victory’s managing director, had a lot to protect. Football Australia stopped just short of a points deduction, but imposed strict measures on the area behind the north end goal of AAMI Park, the ‘active’ area, which fell silent.

Carnegie and the Victory membership team knew they had a huge job to stop some, or many, of the 24,000 members from walking away.

“I think it was …” Carnegie pauses and draws breath. “A process.”

“Perception is the key, and there are still a lot of people who think (the club) locked them out of games last year. We move forward from that, but need them to know we have their back.

“We needed to win back some trust from our members and fans.”

Since taking the helm in 2021, Carnegie has driven regular member forums and a member’s working group, linking the administration with those spending money and emotion on the club. Trust and openness have always been key.

The derby incident rocked that relationship.

The club and fan groups knew the central figures behind the pitch invasion were not week-to-week fans, but rather loosely linked to the club and intent on causing mayhem for the sake of it.

To purge the club of this fringe, crisis management on two fronts was enacted: Carnegie dealt with the fallout with Football Australia, police and stadium security while the active fan groups became more vigilant with self-policing.

Both measures have proven effective. Of note, a noticeable change can be detected on social media. Far less prevalent are posts laced with threatening language; behaviours which to date have been reflected at the stadium.

Carnegie remains in constant dialogue with active fan groups.

“It was never a case of, ‘Do we want active support or don’t we?’. It’s how you try to cultivate that,” she says.

During the dark winter months off the off-season, Carnegie had one-to-one chats with all 65 members of Victory’s staff. Grievances were aired and ideas furnished. Among those was the need to provide better facilities for the women’s team, who have now gone from training at a public space with inadequate changing facilities to the state-of-the-art $100 million Home of the Matildas.

The women’s World Cup also provided a perfect reset for Victory admin, who were kicked out of their offices at AAMI Park while the venue hosted international games.

“It was a line in a sand moment, to leave what happened behind,” Carnegie says.

Like Carnegie, Tony Popovic had much to fix, too.

The Victory coach’s ‘line in the sand’ moment came earlier than Carnegie’s.

Popovic’s Victory finished second last, confirmed by a morbid 1-0 loss to Brisbane in April.

“We were all responsible for what happened last year, including myself,” Popovic tells CODE Sports. “After that last game, we gave the players three days off, then came back for three week training. Hard training, and treated it as day one of the new season.

“We needed to get back the mentality.”

Victory’s on-field sharp edge was blunted by numerous factors, such as Nani, the Portuguese marquee, blowing his knee out, plus retirements and player sales.

Critically, though, the noise had gone.

Victory’s home ground spark had been extinguished.

Crowds dipped to 5,000, down from an average of 18,000 to start the season, akin to AC/DC playing acoustic.

“When you train Monday to Friday you don’t comprehend what impact no fans will have on the team. Once you go out on Saturday and you hear no noise, no fans behind the goals,” Popovic says, leaving a pause.

“The results will show we didn’t handle it well.”

Noise, goals, wins

Yet, despite just five wins from 19 games after the pitch invasion, there was still a pulse.

“I never felt we fell apart or I fell apart as a leader,” Popovic says. “We kept together as a collective. But you take five per cent off every player, that adds up.”

Fixing the on-field issues revolved around rectifying a horrible attacking return (29 goals in 26 games). Popovic sought more adventure going forward.

The result?

Eleven games played.

Twenty four 24 goals scored.

Top spot on the ladder suggests he’s found it.

Bruno Fornaroli, with 13 of those goals, is a big reason. Former phenom Daniel Arzani is starting regularly, and contributing. The best find, though, is Zinedine Machach, a marauding, power-packed French attacking midfielder, plucked from four years of loan-spell-wilderness in Europe, earmarked by Popovic on a hunch.

“Luciano Spalletti signed him for Napoli at age 23,” Popovic says, casting aside Macach’s recent history. “As soon as I saw that, I thought, ‘OK, signed by Napoli, one of the best clubs in Italy.’ He has talent.

“ (Zinedine) is a winner, tell you what he thinks. He’s French-Moroccan! But he’s enjoying his football and we want to help him continue.

“So far we’re on the right track.”

But he can feel a difference. When Popovic walks toward the light at the end of the AAMI Park tunnel at home games this season, it breaks through his resolute exterior. The fans, their noise. A big club acting like one.

“I think, ‘OK, these people love this club,’” Popovic says of those noisy moments before kick-off. “We have to give them more to come back and see more.”

A diehard Victory fan for nearly 20 years, Dimi Bourandanis and his mates remain wedded to the club.

Every home game starts in a Swan St pub. A few beers, then a ten minute walk to their regular position, in the back two rows behind the northern goal, far behind where fans were once banned from.

“When you’ve been following Victory since inception, it’s hard to say I’m done with this,” Bourandanis says. “We just want to watch the football, have a sing, have a drink, have a laugh.”

This season has brought all three back. Bourandanis goes into a five minute tactical dissertation regarding who and why Victory are winning. It’s scratching the surface. He could talk for days about the team he’s attached to for life.

Carnegie, in the front office, is now getting thanks, not thunder, from random members, like the seriously ill fan whose spirits were lifted by a recent home game experience, meeting legends and current players.

“It’s easy to make a difference that to us feels relatively small. It’s a privileged position to be in,” Carnegie smiles.

The aim is to hit 30,000 members by next season.

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Every one of them counts.

“During the off-season I spoke to a member who wasn’t going to renew, but eventually did,” Carnegie says.

“Last week he sent me a text that said, ‘So glad you convinced me to stay part of the Victory family. I have faith in what you guys are doing.’”