North Melbourne's bombshell decision to forcibly retire Brent Harvey via press release presents one of the game's more clinical and cold-hearted manoeuvres of recent years even allowing for the timing, coach Brad Scott's "team first" mantra and the calibre of players who were delisted alongside him.
"Boomer", according to the Kangaroos, forced their public hand on the eve of the finals.
For most of his 30s – and Harvey is 38 – he has become used to one-year contracts and when July came and went and no offer was forthcoming, the player and his management began to wonder.
In the end, he demanded the club make a call before North Melbourne's last home-and-away game, which falls on Saturday night against Greater Western Sydney at Etihad Stadium and is potentially his last home-town performance. With North's first final looking headed for Sydney's Spotless Stadium, the retirement announcements would suggest a genuine belief that the club is unlikely to advance beyond week two of the finals.
Still it was not the call he was expecting. Harvey was shattered by the news when Scott delivered it late on Tuesday. He has accepted though vehemently disagrees with the decision, but has told friends and family he will push all of that to one side for the sake of the club's third successive finals campaign and in a bid to depart his club of more than two decades on a high.
In a week which has seen Dane Swan and Matthew Pavlich publicly farewell the game with big, affectionate public press conferences, Harvey has insisted he will not discuss the decision, his future nor deliver his goodbyes until North Melbourne's season is over. Not only does he have finals to think about but this was an axing he neither expected nor wanted. Drew Petrie, too, plans to wait until the end of the Kangaroos' September campaign before speaking publicly.
In all, Scott and his list management team have culled 1337 games of experience, with the club choosing one 33-year-old in Jarrad Waite for next season over another, its revered 314-gamer Petrie. Backing its well-regarded medical and high performance team to prepare the injury-prone Waite for 2017, Petrie's axing was expected while Nick Dal Santo's was less so. Like Harvey, one of North's best players in its narrow loss to Sydney last Saturday, Dal Santo has averaged close to 30 disposals over the last six weeks. He had previously expressed a desire to keep playing.
Petrie and Dal Santo, 32, had also pushed the club for an answer along with 32-year-old defender Michael Firrito whose career received a filip under Scott over the past three years. While Firrito's address to his teammates on Wednesday was highly emotional, he among the quartet was the most accepting of the decision.
While Harvey's management has said he would not seek to play for another club next season, those invitations could come for both him and Dal Santo. At present, Harvey is the No. 22-ranked player in the competition.
Coach Scott, who described Tuesday as "easily the hardest day of my coaching career", said he would probably have played all four veterans had they returned for 2017 but that would not be in the club's best interests.
This would suggest that Scott has begun the rebuild of the club's list that has been mooted all season even despite the club's top-four finishes over 2014 and 2015.
In one sense the coach has bought himself significant extra time. In another he has placed significant pressure upon his own legacy. At Arden Street on Wednesday one irate fan could be heard yelling towards the oval that it was Scott, not Harvey, who should be sacked.
Contracted to coach North until the end of 2018 he will at any rate reshape the club now with Jack Ziebell expected to replace Andrew Swallow as captain and youngsters such as Corey Wagner, Ryan Clarke, Declan Mountford and Ben McKay push for promotion.
The commentary around the Kangaroos has been rewritten. On Monday Majak Daw was seen to be seeking opportunities elsewhere, now he has a place should he choose to earn it in the Kangaroos' best line-up. And speculation will move inevitably to highly regarded free agents such as Fremantle's Chris Mayne and even the contracted likes of Swallow's brother and Gold Coast Sun David has been linked to the Kangaroos this season.
While North's decision has been publicly presented as making way for a new guard of youngsters not one young Kangaroo was nominated this week among a possible squad of 50 for the AFL Players' Association's under-22 competition – a virtual under-22 all-Australian side.
But North's true plans for the future and Scott's strategy to finally restructure his team will not unfold clearly until after "Boomer", Petrie, Dal Santo and Firrito have been chaired from the playing arena one last time.
On the eve of round 23 last year, Scott dropped a bombshell few predicted when he dumped 12 players before the club's final home-and-away clash with Richmond. That move enraged the AFL and several clubs and provoked questions of competition integrity. It saw Gillon McLachlan introduce an unpopular end-of-season bye in 2016 to prevent a repeat performance. North had the last laugh moving into the top four after finishing the home-and-away season in eighth position.
The coach denied the decision to axe the game's record-holder (430 and counting) on the eve of the finals had come as a shock internally and yet a bombshell it remained.
Unless North Melbourne can defy the odds and move even deeper in 2016 into the spring it will be some time before Scott can claim that last laugh again.
