A few rounds  into this season, with Brisbane yet to win a game, Mulvey's confidence remained resolute. Standing outside of a stand at Ballymore, with the team training in the background, he projected the demeanour a man without a professional care in the world.

The Roar had been down before, he said, and not only surged back to life but taken all before them. Mulvey knew the competition had edged closer, as happens in a salary capped environment, but had complete faith a form bounce was around the corner.

Not that Mulvey wasn't due the occasional 'I told you so'. This was the man appointed as a caretaker after the short reign of Ange Postecoglou's valued assistant, Rado Vidosic, then given a contract extension that left many Roar fans bewildered. MULVEY OUT!, screamed the famous sign.

They felt the club needed a big hitter (read:  a foreign coach) and Mulvey just wouldn't cut the mustard. He responded by guiding the Roar to the league championship and a grand final victory. Double zing.

But such is sport. Triumph belonged to the players but misery belongs to the gaffer. One win from six games was enough for the board and the club's Indonesian owners, the Bakrie Group, to end Mulvey's tenure just six months after he celebrated another Roar title at Suncorp Stadium.

It was a ruthless move surpassed only by the club's ham-fisted, Benny Hill-inspired execution, which made Jamie Young's clearances and Shane Stefanutto's positional play look like vintage Barcelona.

News Ltd had the leak hours before Mulvey or the players had even heard the news. The scoop was a good one but the Roar should be ashamed that a thoroughly decent man was being informed of his coaching mortality by a gaggle of competing media organisations.

That's the kind of laughable scenario the Roar always liked to preach they were above and beyond. A vague statement late on Sunday afternoon, two ice ages after the fact, was resplendent with the usual 'thanks for coming' and little else aside from a promise that nobody would be adding to the impersonal script.

Mulvey, they said, had decided to 'step down', which happened to coincide with my sighting of a unicorn happily picking at my freshly-mowed lawn. He declined my request for an interview, saying he would prefer to keep to himself at this point (Mulvey, not the unicorn).

The club's Facebook page went into meltdown. The coach many fans didn't want to adopt when he was signed had suddenly become the messiah. 'Disgusted by the faceless cowards on the board,' wrote Tenna Lucas. 'What the hell is wrong with this club?'

The sentiment was echoed by the hundreds. As of Monday, the Roar have some explaining to do, while the players must address suggestions that Mulvey had 'lost the dressing room', a dreaded and increasingly cliched scenario for the modern manager that is as good as a death sentence.

Coaching is a thankless and intrinsically temporary gig for everyone but the giants of their respective sports. And the Roar powerbrokers may well make a decent enough case for their decision to part ways with Mulvey.

But facts are facts. He helped them become champs and when his time came, was treated like a chump. That's not good enough.