Ross Lyon had created for himself a neat exit strategy. Carefully tended and maintained. Understandable in every respect. The course had been run.

For extra effect he claimed the high moral ground and slapped down anyone with the temerity to raise speculation and innuendo.

Instead of using it and leaving with gratitude and dignity, the coach spectacularly pulled the emergency chute and jettisoned out of the Saints in a cloud of duplicity and deceit.

He jilted the club that trusted him and undermined his own representation to such an extent it felt compelled to sack him.

He left without a word to his players - a group he had driven, maniacally at times, into a bubble that might’ve been entirely unhealthy in the quest for the ultimate.

Whatever honour Lyon had collected through an industrious and earnest coaching career was shed before he boarded the plane across the country.

Ross Lyon’s defection from St Kilda to the helm of Fremantle will stand as the low point on a football landscape riddled with dishonesty and treachery.

There are moments when the values within the game seem entirely removed from those who support it.

Hours before the Lyon manoeuvre the AFL Players Association rejected riches the likes of which common folk could barely imagine.

Greed has overrun the pay dispute. The game should pay the players whatever it can afford. That allocation was offered and, rather than staking their victory, the players tossed it back.

It came in the same week a 20-year-old penned the richest deal in the game’s history at the conclusion of a season-long pantomime that took people for fools.

A year ago Essendon headed down a twisted path convincing itself the end would justify the means. It displaced a willing Mark Thompson from Geelong. It callously undermined then ditched Matthew Knights.

What should have been a triumphant return for James Hird was tainted with a bitter aftertaste.

In football these things tend to dissipate. It creates the wrong impression that they are ultimately condoned or at least tolerated.

This though is intolerable. More than that it is needless. Lyon had set himself for departure under the “end of an era” mantra. He had the chance to be upfront with his players and St Kilda on Monday.

He would have been whole-heartedly thanked. Instead he leaves a villain.

From my understanding Lyon’s management not only continued to negotiate with the Saints in good faith but also reached agreement. Unbeknownst to both parties the coach himself was double-dealing with Fremantle reaching a deal he knew would lead to the sacking of an unsuspecting Mark Harvey.

Former St Kilda captain Luke Ball must’ve felt a rich sense of justification as he noted how incessantly Lyon chased a Premiership. Nothing it would seem will stand in his way.

In time Lyon will surely come to regret his actions. His reputation should be permanently dented. How he remains in the fraternity of senior coaches and within the Coaches Association is a little beyond me.

Fremantle will live and die by the success he delivers. Some hailed the coup, one scribe even moved to declare Lyon the best coach in the competition. What rot.

The Dockers will be driven to such uncompromising and relentless footy as has been the Saints trademark. But those who are honest and don’t curry favour will declare it borderline unwatchable. The antithesis of much of what makes the indigenous game great.

Lyon left St Kilda at the right time in the wrong way. And he took casualties the greatest of which was truth.

Gerard Whateley leads the Grandstand AFL Team on ABC Radio