Belatedly, North Melbourne and Tarryn Thomas reached the point they should have started with and had him step away from the club.

Had North insisted earlier, the message would have been clearer to Thomas, to any male or female player at the club, and then to broader community of the seriousness with which they took the allegations. Beyond that, it would have said that behaviour comes first, football ability comes second.

If this is encouraging grandstanding, fine. Grandstand away, for it is in the grandstands, on the TV screens and to the players on the ground that the message needs to be hammered home: behaviour the like of which Thomas is accused of, whether it is sufficient to be criminal or not, is unacceptable.

The final straw for North to change their mind in agreeing that Thomas should step away from the club was that the complaints kept coming.

On Wednesday yet another woman came forward. She outlined a similar complaint about behaviour which, as alleged, was abusive and menacing and fitted the picture painted by other women before her.

The women said they spoke to the media because they were fearful and were frustrated that nothing had happened to the man they alleged treated them so badly – with claims of abusive text messages, threats, throwing a lamp at one of them in a hotel room.

In the first instance North passed the matter to the AFL to investigate while they tried to ensure Thomas was educated about changing his behaviour. The AFL had, correctly, referred the matter to the police for possible charges.

If the allegations were substantiated, the plan seems to have been for the AFL to punish Thomas and North to throw their arms around him and give him the support he needed to change, borrowing from the aphorism ascribed to St Augustine: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”