Capital Football slam pitch invader with 10-year ban

The governing body's chief executive Phil Brown has condemned the actions of a masked pitch invader which marred a Canberra Premier League game on Saturday.

The man ran onto the field and brandished a red card at referee Alex McConachie - the chairman of Capital Football's referees standing advisory committee - in what is understood to have been a protest about mistreatment of match officials, at which point his mask was ripped off by a player.

It has earned the man, whom Brown was unable to name, a decade-long ban from playing, officiating and attending any matches in Canberra with Capital Football set to push for the ban to become nationwide.

"We reviewed those incident reports that came in, as well as the footage of the match, and we have issued the person we believe entered the field with a 10-year suspension from all football activities," Brown said.

"They can't go to watch a [local] game, they can't go to a Socceroos or Matildas match. We're going to escalate that up to FFA and request that become a national ban. As it currently sits now, anything that's on in the ACT, they can't attend.

"As you can imagine, it's not a nice experience having someone with a mask on run at you directly in a game. It left the referee feeling quite threatened and intimidated.

"It's quite scary. You've got to remember this is a referee doing their thing on a football field. If that happened in a service station, that's quite a serious thing, so it's quite a serious thing for football as well.

"It's not acceptable in any fashion, and it is consistent with another suspension we gave recently relating to actions that threatened and intimidated a referee.

"That was also a 10-year suspension, and it comes back to the work we did with the referee community around the referees review last year to try to improve the environment they do their job in."

Brown's stance is a welcome one after Capital Football delivered a referee review implementation plan designed to stamp out abuse of match officials.

"We've shown a commitment to those outcomes... Those 10-year sanctions are an example," Brown said.

"It's an absolute shame we need to and it is behaviour that is just not tolerated or acceptable in our game."

Meanwhile, the FFA will host a fan forum in Canberra on Wednesday with fans in the capital set to get the chance to ask about the governing body's plans for an A-League franchise in the region.

FFA officials overlooked Canberra for an expansion licence last year and former bid leader Michael Caggiano has urged fans to turn up in numbers to demand answers at the University of Canberra this week.