The coaching doyen from Kilmore's Assumption College last week grudgingly signed a settlement that will make the 2011 football season his last. After overseeing the annual game against Adelaide's Sacred Heart College in August, he will vacate the small flat on the college grounds that has been his home for 30 years, and leave Assumption with a heavy heart.

One mystified parent likens it to Donald Duffy, Melbourne's infamous 1960s president, sacking Norm Smith. "It's the shredding of an icon." Another is staggered that such a venerated figure's retirement could effectively come down to "QCs at 10 paces" (Carroll was represented in mediation with the Marist Brothers' college by Josh Bornstein, of the late-'90s waterfront dispute fame). All agree the episode has been badly handled.

Carroll is bound by a confidentiality agreement and could not comment on what has led to this unseemly impasse, while Assumption principal Michael Kenny did not return The Sunday Age's calls. Close observers say it comes down to no more than a personality clash between the college's first lay principal, and the old-fashioned, at-times prickly, yet much-loved fixture whose name adorns the school's oval.

"Ray's crime is that he's been there a long time, he's very well known, the teams he has coached have been acknowledged Australia-wide, and the principal can't handle that," says one parent, requesting anonymity to protect his offspring.

High-profile and powerful old boys have rallied around. Simon Costa, managing director of fruit and vegetable giant Costa Group, has written to the Marist brothers' Victorian Provincial, Brother Julian Casey. Former Geelong star Billy Brownless, one of 148 Assumption boys to play VFL/AFL football, recently shared a meal with Carroll, and found him shattered. Former Test cricketer and racing identity Simon O'Donnell, also a parent and Kilmore local, is understood to be considering a response.

"Of course you like to keep tabs on your old school, but the only reason you'd drop in for a cup of tea — and the same goes for Shane Crawford, Simon O'Donnell, all of us — would be to see Ray Carroll," Brownless said last week. "He's been a teacher, a mentor, virtually a second dad for a lot of the boys who played cricket and footy."

Mark Branagan, an employment lawyer and former college captain, said Carroll's influence has extended well beyond the sporting arena, and he is fondly remembered by every child who struggled with their first tentative steps away from home. "Ray made kids connect with their strength," Branagan said.

"There's a lot of blokes Ray developed into people who ended up making big contributions to country communities. A lot of that came through the sense of responsibility that we had instilled in us, which was, 'Get out there and carry the load, step up."'

Bill West, long-time editor of the Kilmore Free Press, for whom Carroll has for several decades written a regular column under the byline "Rover", said people would not realise the behind-the-scenes work he has done at Assumption, never in pursuit of self-promotion. "The amount of favourable publicity he's given the college, the worth of it could not be expressed in monetary terms," West said of his columns.

Tensions between Carroll and Kenny are understood to have been escalating for more than a year, and their relationship has clearly deteriorated since the principal's vow at the 2007 christening of "The Carroll Oval" that there would always be a place for him in football and cricket at the school.

His supporters laugh that they can't remember a principal the 74-year-old has hit it off with. Yet Brian Harding, another parent who has helped him with college sport for many years, said Carroll had intended to finish up at the end of the 2012 football season anyway, rendering the bad taste this episode will leave all the more lamentable.

"Certainly nobody at 74 is as good as they were at 34, but it's not where he's going, it's where he's been," Harding said. "The bloke should be allowed to go when he wants to go. Particularly when the thing is working — we've just come off arguably the most successful [sporting] decade in the college's history."

Carroll's eyesight is not what it was, but in former Footscray ruckman Scott Wynd he has had a decent assistant coach for the last three seasons. "Long-term, they've got the succession plan in place," Branagan said. "You couldn't ask for better than to have a Brownlow medallist there!"

Wynd supports Carroll without getting involved in the politics; as a father of four daughters, he would not be giving his time to schoolboys' football unless he enjoyed it. "Ray's realised coaching isn't a one-man band now, and he's allowed me to have an input, but the main thing is he's still the coach," Wynd said.

Carroll stepped away from full-time teaching in 2002, unable to adjust to technology's demands. West said he still files his unpaid Free Press columns in long-hand, poking them under the office door. Several old boys noted that his coaching methods haven't changed, but they still work.

Harding warned Kenny some time ago that getting rid of Carroll would be "very deeply political"; he noted the recent appointment of former North Melbourne and Sydney star Wayne Schwass as director of football (Assumption has also installed directors of netball and soccer) as another blow that the veteran had felt deeply.

The settlement is understood to have included a six-figure payout, and an offer for Carroll to move from what Harding calls "his little cave" into the Marist Brothers' residence, which he declined. His supporters point out that he has no family to go to; Assumption has been his life.

Now the clock is ticking, which Branagan thinks is ludicrous. "What do you do after the deadline expires? Are you going to kick Ray Carroll out? For God's sake, they'd be burning down the school!"

Finding his sense of humour for a moment, Carroll recently told one former student that he was at least maintaining a grand coaching tradition. "You never get to go out on your terms."

Ray Carroll at Assumption College

1967 started coaching Assumption's first-XI cricket team

1976 started coaching Assumption's starting first-XVIII football team

A few handy types

Francis Bourke

Peter Crimmins,

Peter Keenan,

Neale Daniher,

Laurie Serafini

Simon O'Donnell

David King

Bill Brownless,

Jason Johnson

Shane Crawford

Michael Barlow