As Australian Football League chief executive Gillon McLachlan fronted the cameras and media scrum on July 14 to announce two of his most senior executives had resigned over inappropriate relationships with junior staff, his new chairman Richard Goyder was making calls and pulling strings behind the scenes.

McLachlan had been grappling with how to deal with the vexed issue of his close friend, football operations manager Simon Lethlean, and commercial boss Richard Simkiss, who had both revealed they were having relationships with women working at AFL headquarters, as the story began to play out in the media.