When Sydney Swans chairman Andrew Pridham and CEO Matthew Pavlich fronted the media this week to stand down five of their best players they weren’t managing a football problem.

They were making a decision much bigger than that.

They were, most importantly, talking about the unequivocal priority and wellbeing of a woman who was allegedly assaulted, as well as asking themselves a fundamental and crucial question: What Do We Stand For?

In asking that, they had to ascertain what they as a club were prepared to lose to be true to the thing that makes them the Sydney Swans.

For Sydney, in this instance, it will potentially be a premiership, their fans, their sponsors, their heartbeat.

Ask anyone who is, or has been, involved with the Swans and they will tell you the same thing. The Bloods culture isn’t a marketing slogan, it’s real and is one of the genuinely legendary cultures in Australian sport built over decades on selflessness, accountability and the idea that no individual is bigger than the jumper.

It is the club’s single most valuable asset, worth more than any list, any coach, any one season.

Swans great Kieren Jack spoke this week of how that culture is like a fortress and the pain he currently feels of seeing it breached.

“’Bloods culture’ is spoken about. This was built and maintained through a core pillar of respect,” he said. “Respect for each other, respect for the club, your family, the opponents, supporters and importantly, community.

“Right now this feels broken. A lack of respect for women cannot be tolerated. Being a bystander is not an option. If you love the Swans, if you love footy, it is time to stand up.”

Sustained cultures like ‘The Bloods’ are rare and only ever as real as what they stand for and what they are willing to sacrifice to uphold it.

‘What Do We Stand For’, is the only question that matters in a crisis, and it’s the one almost nobody asks in the calm. When the pressure comes on, every decision-maker faces the same fork.

You can protect the outcome, the win, the flag, the share price, the reputation. Or, you can protect the values and let the outcome fall where it lands.

Most people tell themselves those two things are the same. In a real crisis they almost never are, and the gap between them is where leaders are made and unmade.

To some, the Swans response from Pridham and Pavlich was clinical, honest, strong and correct. Others will debate that. That’s life. There will be great emotion.

Rumours, gossip and speculation are flying around like autumn leaves in a storm.

The Swans’ decision to endure the short-term pain for long-term gain is not a consolation, it’s the whole strategy of strong organisations.

There would have been pain, stress and strain for those in the boardroom who had to make the call. That is leadership in a nutshell. The best leaders make clear decisions under pressure.

Those that try and please everyone tend to come unstuck. The adage “try and please everyone and you please no one” comes to mind in these instances.

I’ve watched crisis and high-pressure situations from a few too many rooms to be romantic about it.

Take Sandpapergate.

Poor decisions in Cape Town brought Australian cricket to its knees. A piece of sandpaper, a leadership group who knew, a young opener stuffing the evidence down the front of his trousers on live television.

That poor decision, the reflex moment, the concealment, the brain fade of many, is what turned a scuffed ball into a national reckoning.

Like the Swans players, we all ask — on so many levels — what on earth were you thinking?

Cricket Australia, under enormous pressure, took the same road as the Swans seem to be doing.

They could have spun the scandal down to a match-day fine or suspension in line with the ICC (International Cricket Council) code of conduct penalties.

Instead, it went the other way entirely. It handed down bans that cost us our captain, our vice-captain and a young rookie for a year. In the wash-up, the leadership of the side — on and off the field — was gutted.

People still object to the harshness of the penalty, but at the time, Australian cricket got to say something that no amount of winning can buy. Simply said, Australian cricket doesn’t cheat.

Simple. Not, “doesn’t cheat much”. Not, “got caught this once”. But “doesn’t cheat”. Full stop.

While we paid for that commitment with a summer of pain and a hammer-blow to collective and individual reputations, it was worth every cent because a reputation like that is the asset the whole game is built on.

More than that, we told the rest of the world that cheating is finished.

Taking this one step further, notice that the cricket ball hasn’t genuinely reverse-swung anywhere on earth since?

You don’t get reverse swing without someone working on it. Call that a coincidence if you like. I don’t. Cape Town didn’t just clean up our own house; it put every other attack in the world on notice.

Short-term pain, long-term gain, and a standard exported to the whole sport.

That’s not a board pricing the crime. That’s a board pricing the values and deciding they were worth more than the summer.

The organisations that come through a crisis with their authority intact are usually the ones that were willing to pay in the currency that hurts them most: points, players, a season, a share price, a favourite son.

Having sat in boardrooms that are under enormous pressure, this week’s saga shows there is no perfect science to handling a crisis.

What you can control is the sequence — get the facts, breathe, be honest. And most important is the question you put at the centre of the room while the noise is at its worst.

It’s not “how do we get through this?”. That question protects the outcome and it’s how good organisations talk themselves into bad decisions.

The better one — the one the Swans eventually asked — is simpler and much harder: What are we prepared to lose to be the kind of club — the kind of organisation — we say we are? What do we stand for?

Sydney’s first move wasn’t clean. The early messaging, the club’s “disappointment” that its players had “found themselves in this situation”, landed badly, and deserved to.

It put the players’ misfortune ahead of the alleged victim and read as an organisation still hoping to manage its way to a soft landing.

There is always the reflex to protect your own, but what changed over the following days is just as strong a lesson.

The Swans got the facts, they took a breath, were honest with themselves first, and then in public. Pridham and Pavlich came out with language that left no daylight in it. They talked about a “serious breach”, “standards,” “sanctions”.

By doing this they surrendered the potential negative outcomes to protect The Bloods culture.

Some will argue it shouldn’t take a few days and a wave of justified criticism to get there, but it’s easy running a commentary and having an opinion when you are not the one in the hot seat trying to satisfy all the stakeholders involved in these messes.

In times like where the Swans are now I have learned a couple of valuable lessons.

Get the facts, breathe, tell the truth, name the value, accept the price, and stop negotiating with yourself in public. Truth works.

If you try hiding something you think you can get away with, or spend years in denial, you are likely to buy yourself a world of hurt that always remains a stain.

The short-term pain isn’t just the price of protecting a culture, sometimes it’s the thing that moves the culture forward.

We often hear the words, don’t waste a crisis. Sandpapergate’s response didn’t only save Australian cricket’s name, it told the whole sport that cheating was over.

The hard hope out of this Swans mess is the same. Five careers take a hit, a club wears a lost season, but if the lasting message that lands in every changeroom and every hotel corridor in the country is that what happens to women on a night out is everyone’s business and standards are not negotiable, then the pain bought something far bigger than a premiership.

That’s the long game.

Protect the values, wear the cost, tell the truth, and every so often you don’t just save the club, you nudge the whole of society a little further in the right direction.