Setting aside the individual cases mentioned here, which are both now subject to a legal process, the overall direction of travel as far as top sporting administrators have been concerned in recent years will have maximised the temptation for the average sporting follower to embrace the defensive default of cynicism: “They’re all at it. You can’t trust any of them…”

Such an attitude chimes in with the sentiment so memorably expressed by Lord Acton in his celebrated letter of 1887: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

It is 17 years since the IOC, which now takes upon itself a judicial role in the business to be resolved at the IAAF, was itself embroiled in an unpleasant public mess in the form of the scandal regarding the bid process for the 2002 Winter Olympics, which resulted in six IOC members being expelled for taking bribes from representatives of the successful bidders, Salt Lake City.

Since then, however, the organisation has succeeded to a significant, if not overwhelming, extent in changing the culture around the bidding process, and in becoming more, if not completely, transparent over its processes.

This cultural shift was solidified under the leadership of Jacques Rogge, the Belgian who was President of the IOC from 2001 to 2013, and has been maintained by the present incumbent, Thomas Bach.

Rogge was not a universally popular figure – and not much love was lavished on him within the world of athletics given his overseeing of an effective demotion of the sport from its position as the perceived Olympic number one. But it is fair to say he is widely regarded as an honourable man. And the same goes for his successor, whose feelings for athletics are more positive, and will doubtless continue to be so given the fact that he and the man who has just taken over the Presidency of the IAAF, Sebastian Coe, have long been in accord.

As FIFA casts about for a new President to replace the disgraced Sepp Blatter, the IAAF already has its successor, a figure of international standing. Apparently, when the French police arrived for their rendezvous at the IAAF office in Monaco on Tuesday (November 2), Coe was at the door to greet them. How significant an image could this become?

All organisations need to refurbish, refresh and redefine themselves periodically. Such an impulse lies behind the recent startling accession to power of Labour’s new leader Jeremy Corbyn. Whether this natural back-bencher and espouser of single-issue causes will be able to parley his way to a significant long-term influence remains to be seen.

But no-one can question the access of sincerity and idealism which has enabled him to rise to his current position. This desire for honesty, manifested by long suffering voters, and freshly minted voters, is a truly wonderful impulse, and it obtains as much in sporting as in any other organisations.

Is it simply a case of “cometh the hour, cometh the man”? Or does the widespread wish for significant change effectively ensure that the right person bobs up, like a happy cork?

Whichever is the case, it is undeniable that, in the wake of murk, organisations thrive on figureheads embodying - or at the very least appearing to embody - nobler virtues. You could call them role models if you wanted to – although Lord Acton, were he in a position to animadvert on such matters, would deny the validity of the whole process. 

It is less well remembered that Acton, having voiced his timeless line, went on to say in that letter: “Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.”

He justifies his position by citing two Royal examples – Elizabeth I and William III: “If what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greatest names coupled with the greatest crimes…”

The great cycles of corruption and cleansing have turned for millennia. Ten years down the line, the malaise within FIFA, and the troubling allegations which have surfaced with the IAAF, will quite likely be remembered as shadows, defining areas of necessary transit.

But that isn’t going to make the next few months any less painful or awkward for anyone concerned…