“There was some push and shove with the girls, it was pretty brutal,” Mr Labbad said. “It [was actually] more brutal than some of our senior men’s games." Mr Labbad said language from both sides was “really poor” and he commended the umpires for calling off the game, saying there was nothing to be gained by letting them continue. He also said parents were not involved in the brawl, despite another witness saying he saw spectators run onto the ground and joining the brawl.

“[It was] nothing to do with parents, just a whole heap of girls in," he said. Mr Labbad said umpires were forced to call off the match because they did not know how to deal with the girls “slapping each other” in the fight which lasted about two minutes. “You’re talking about girls slapping each other, what are you meant to do?” Mr Labbad said. “The umpires I think didn’t know what to do at that stage so they called the game off. “There’s a whole range of different things with girls than there are with men.”

Mr Labbad said that when the brawl erupted the score was 20 goals to zero in favour of the Doutta Stars, "so there was nothing to achieve in the game". When contacted by The Age, both clubs declined to comment on the brawl and referred all questions to the Essendon District Football League. In a statement, the league said it was gathering information on the incident to determine if a formal investigation was required. An EDFL spokesman confirmed it was first time umpires had been forced to call off a suburban girls' football game in the north-west league. He added it was unclear if there would be any disciplinary action taken after the brawl.

If an investigation was launched into the incident, any disciplinary action would be determined by an independent league tribunal and investigations panel, he said. In another incident on Sunday, a teenage girl was taken to hospital with head injuries after a senior women's game in the same Essendon league between Burnside Heights and the Sunbury Lions. The game was called off five minutes before the end after the Sunbury Lions coach Kerry Saunders walked onto the field and asked the umpire to end the match. "A few weeks prior, Kerry was made aware this team can be a bit sort of rough," Sunbury Lions Football Netball Club president Hedley Duhau told The Age. "She was well aware there were a few players being tackled at head height which she let go but the last one was concerning, where they needed an ambulance for a player and therefore with five minutes to go, she decided to call the game off."

"It was about the duty of care for her players, not about the result of the game," he said, adding Ms Saunders was not planning on lodging any formal complaints. The president of the Burnside Heights Football Club Bears, Justin Peagram, said he had been confused by the decision to end the game. "The Sunbury coach went storming onto the ground with five minutes to call. One of the players had been tackled and been given a free kick because it was high. It was a case of a David versus Goliath situation here, we had a smaller player tackling a bigger player and of course with players coming from opposite directions there was momentum there. He said the Sunbury Lions player was "not in good shape" after she landed on her head and shoulders, and had to be checked by paramedics. "Their coach said, 'This is what they are like, this is what they always do', which was a bit offensive," he said. "She stormed onto the field and said, 'I warned you about this, we told you what they were like'. And we were quite offended by that.