The thing that gets me is this isn't an isolated incident. Victory fans have been badly behaved for years and the club hasn't done anything about it. It doesn't just happen in the A-League Men either, it happens in the A-League Women, it happens in the NPL, etc. Players have talked about having things thrown at them, there's been numerous fights, flares, etc. there was even talk about opposition fans having bottles of piss thrown on them.
It's a balance, the league is struggling so you don't want Victory to fold and you don't want to destroy active support, but there needs to be a change at Victory so this seems light.
I can think of two other sanctions and they seem more severe than what the Victory has been given for lesser crimes.
The first was us being fined $1 million for not meeting metrics (although Dome intimated that this was BS it was widely reported).
The second was Perth Glory being fined $300 odd k and being unable to finish higher than 7th for breaching the salary cap.
Seeing as Melbourne only has to pay $400k of the $550k "fine" and is having no points deduction, the Perth sanctions were higher than what Melbourne is facing. Which might be fair, it's the fans not the club in this case, except, as I said above, the club has known that this is how their fans have behaved for years and have just risked it.
I expected them to forefeit the game and to get points deductions over financial fines.