North Melbourne great Wayne Carey is adamant that coach Brad Scott's departure from the AFL club was in the making from early this year.
The two-time Kangaroos premiership captain and prominent commentator said there had been rumblings and eventually the decision was moved forward suddenly.
Scott also said on Monday night that he was prepared to keep coaching until the end of the season if that is what the club wanted.
He has stressed again that as of now, there are no plans for him to coach next year.
A newspaper story on Friday afternoon brought the matter to a head, in the wake of a club board meeting earlier in the day.
Scott and North officially parted ways on Sunday.
The club has characterised it as an orderly process, where the coach fronted the board a few weeks earlier and gave the option of his departure.
Carey strongly doubts the buildup was so straightforward.
"It's been in the making since the start of the year. There have been rumblings," Carey told Channel Seven's Talking Footy.
"It's been bubbling along for a while and I get the feeling this clearly wasn't meant to happen right now.
"It was pushed forward for a number of reasons.
"Those rumblings became louder and louder and it got to a situation where obviously, the Kangaroos thought 'we have to do it now'."
Carey praised Scott for the way he has handled his departure, saying he has acted with class, but added there were fears within the club that the ongoing speculation about him would hurt North.
"People were starting to talk about it and it was just getting louder and louder," Carey said.
"It was going to destabilise the club, I think, over the next four ... seven weeks, whenever it happened invariably anyway."
Also on Monday night, Scott told AFL360 that when he presented to the board about future strategies, there were several options.
"While I offered to step down if the board felt that was the right strategic direction, I also offered to see the journey through," he said.
"To be clear, my suggestion about 'if a different direction was required', that I would step down at the end of the year.
"It was at the board's discretion ... the board decided it was this week."
Scott again repeated that his only short-term plan is to spend more time with family.
"I don't know what the future holds, but one thing I do know - there has to be an alignment and there has to be a fit," he said.
"It's not just simply you're filling a position."
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