Football Federation Australia revealed they had taken steps to ensure any anti-social behaviour from supporters is eradicated from the Hyundai A-League.

Key amongst them is the appointment of a specialist security firm to undertake a broader review of security arrangements for the League, and to recommend a series of initiatives to improve the current security arrangements.

Specifically, the appointed firm will address:

• Relevant legislation across states and territories
• Venue terms of entry policies
• Co-ordination and interface with policing services, across jurisdictions
• Gathering and sharing intelligence on perpetrators
• Sanctioning policy

This action was initiated some five weeks ago as a result of an issue involving fans in Sydney on October 6.

At that time FFA progressed the appointment of a specialist security consultant, to assist FFA and the Clubs to investigate the behaviour of a number of Sydney fans during a home match at Sydney Football Stadium.

That investigation, which is ongoing, has so far resulted in
• bans for two individuals
• adjustment of seating arrangements for visiting supporters at SFS
• updated protocols for managing access and egress of supporters before and after matches.

"A-League Clubs have met with the FFA and conferenced regularly themselves and with relevant authorities, venues and other stakeholders, with a view to ensuring that all parties are operating as proactively as possible to ensure appropriate standards of fan behaviour are maintained," said an FFA statement.

"The issue was an important agenda item when the Club CEOs met with the FFA on October 18, with all Clubs recognising its critical nature, and committing to the review process."

After the incidents at the Victory-Sydney match on Saturday, meetings took place in Melbourne today to identify why the events occurred, and what can be changed to prevent them occurring again in the future.

“From its inception, the FFA has worked very hard to provide a safe, family-friendly environment at our matches, and we therefore take crowd conduct and allegations of crowd misbehaviour very seriously,” said FFA CEO Ben Buckley.

“We are committed to continue to use all available resources to eradicate this from the game.

"The appointment of a specialist security firm will allow relevant legislation to be reviewed, together with policies governing access and egress to venues, the co-ordination of and interface with policing services, intelligence-gathering and sharing, and what sanctions will be most effective in preventing issues in future.”

Buckley added: “At the same time, it is important that this problem is recognised for what it really is – which is a small number of trouble-making individuals ruining things for the vast majority of genuine fans, who are true football-loving supporters, creating a wonderful positive unique atmosphere at our games.

"Our focus, with the clubs, will be to continue to weed out those individuals, so that their actions are not allowed to taint the remarkable resurgence of this game in Australia.”