Cyber Punks Hit Fury

Two days before last Saturday’s game against the reigning A-League champions, Fury’s IT infrastructure was hijacked, leaving the club offline.

At a crucial time in the lead up to the big match, the attack shut down the club’s computer system which reportedly took 14 hours to be repaired.

The attack may have contributed to the modest crowd figure of just over 5000 fans for the club's first home game of the new season.

Fury’s football operations manager Robbie Middleby described the bedlam to au.foufourtwo.com.

“It was mental," he said. "It was a chaotic day leading up to the game. Not just with the ticketing issues but for the football operations. It was absolutely mental.

"I’m not sure exactly what went wrong but all day computers went down and emails were down. It was just chaotic and it was a shame because two days out it was a disaster.”

The club was expecting a much bigger crowd than the 5,177 who saw the club defeat Sydney FC 2-1.

Fury chief executive Rabieh Krayem was fuming and he pointed the finger squarely at those who want the club to fail. 

"The people who are looking at it are very confident it's not a virus thing, it was a deliberate act,” he told the Townsville Bulletin.

"Their objective was to disrupt our communications... we were off-line at what is a peak period for us. 

"With the short turnaround we've had, to be off-line for more than 10 hours is extremely significant."

Krayem vowed to show the sort of determination Fury players are putting in on the park as he seeks to get to the bottom of the incident.

"We haven't got police involved yet, at the moment our own IT people are looking after all the logs," he said. "If we can find proof, track it down as a deliberate act, obviously we'll hand it over to the police."

Middleby added: “If that was the case, it’s very, very disappointing and it is un-Australian. It’s a disgrace two days before a game.

“We’re leaving it with Rabieh to take care of but I know how much he wanted Saturday to be absolutely right.”