The AFL's decision this week to remove Nicky Winmar from the Australian Football Hall of Fame is difficult to dispute if the league really is serious about its role as a corporate citizen of good repute.
Winmar was two weeks ago found guilty of three counts of assault after smashing a woman's head against a door during a violent attack in country Victoria in May last year.
Violence against women is a scourge on this country. One in four Australian women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner since the age of 15. On average, one Australian woman is killed by an intimate partner every 11 days.
Those numbers are disgraceful, and yet change in attitudes seems to move at a glacial pace. Decisive actions like this at least set standards which, really, should always have been the bare minimum.
And yet for the AFL, which rewrote its policy on the Hall of Fame when official Legend Barry Cable was expelled after a 2023 civil court judgement of having abused a 12-year-old girl in the 1960s, this remains a messy outcome on several fronts.
In trying to establish one clear moral standard, has the AFL opened a host of much murkier questions about consistency, history and what a Hall of Fame is actually meant to honour?
While acting punitively in support of meaningful action on violence against women, seems a 'no-brainer', the person being removed from football's most exalted company represents far more than just a talented footballer.
Of course, Winmar was a champion player, with 251 games, two St Kilda best and fairests and two All-Australian gongs. But nor would anyone pretend a large of his legacy isn't his famous act at Victoria Park in 1993, when he raised his jumper, pointed to his chest and said: "I'm black and I'm proud to be black".
There's been far more of a pushback about the West Australian government removing the statue of Winmar outside Optus Stadium in Perth than about the Hall of Fame decision.
That's because some Indigenous community leaders, like Jill Gallagher, longtime chief executive of the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and a domestic violence survivor, are torn between in this case, competing causes.
"I need to make it clear that I do not condone any form of violence," Gallagher told "The Guardian" last week, adding: "The Nicky Winmar statue is more than a statue of a footballer, it's a statue against racism."
Can that same philosophy apply to a member of a Hall of Fame? Winmar the man lives and breathes, but when his CV plays on the big screen, photographer Wayne Ludbey's iconic image performs exactly the same function as the statue.
The obvious counter-argument, however, is this. Should the gestures, social, political, humanitarian or otherwise of an individual carry more significant weight than playing deeds in a space which is primarily about honouring football prowess?
The other big factor here, of course, is history, and consistency. Many football fans in the response to the Winmar news have raised the names Wayne Carey and Gary Ablett senior. Understandably.
In 1997, Carey pleaded guilty to indecent assault after grabbing a woman's breast in a Melbourne street. And following a 2007 incident in Miami, he was convicted of battery on a police officer after kicking a female officer in the mouth.
The AFL in May 2024 intervened to stop Carey being elevated to Legend status in the NSW Football Hall of Fame, specifically because of his history of assault convictions and domestic-violence allegations. But it did not remove him from the national Hall of Fame.
The obvious question is: how can his history be serious enough to prevent a new or elevated honour, but not serious enough to revoke an existing one?
The updated charter allows removal where an inductee has been charged with or found guilty of an indictable offence, and/or engages in conduct prejudicial to the AFL's interests or reputation. It isn't limited to recent conduct.
Ablett in 2000 supplied illegal drugs during an episode in which a young woman died, was convicted of drug offences, and was nevertheless admitted (albeit several years after he was eligible) after the AFL had considered those facts. Carey was admitted in the third year of his eligibility.
But does the fact Ablett's and Carey's conduct was already known when they were admitted effectively mean the statute of limitations has passed? Should it?
If the charter regarding Hall of Fame selection was updated in 2023, as an acknowledgement of changed community values, don't those changed values also mean an altered view of what is honourable enough character to be deemed worthy of a spot in a Hall of Fame, regardless of the time in which it was forged?
The Winmar decision may ultimately prove the easy part for the AFL. The difficult bit begins now.
The league has declared that Hall of Fame membership isn't a lifetime entitlement, but an honour that can be withdrawn when an individual's conduct falls sufficiently short of the game's values. That's a perfectly defensible position.
What won't be defensible is applying that principle only when it's politically or publicly convenient. Having redrawn the line, the Commission now has to explain who else it applies to, or why it doesn't.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.