It wasn’t easy at first to understand the numbers that were potentially involved. It still isn’t, to be honest, when the latest police figures are so mind-boggling – on average, five new victims coming forward every two days – but particularly so at the start, when Andy Woodward was preparing to go public and telling me he was certain there would be many others, hundreds even, who had experienced the same kind of childhood horrors.

What has happened since started as a trickle but quickly turned into what the Football Association chairman, Greg Clarke, has described as a tidal wave. At the time, however, I can remember going to Andy, on the day before publication, to make absolutely sure he was happy to put the numbers so high. His response was that it might even be higher. The story went out. “Difficult knowing how to introduce this one,” I wrote on Twitter. “He’s a brave man and, as of today, he is free of his secret.” And then we waited.

The first six came forward inside five days. By the end of the week it was 11. And on and on. This week brings up a year since Andy became the first former footballer to speak about the sexual abuse he had suffered and the latest police figures, 748 victims, make it easy to understand why at least one force has advertised for retired detectives to help the process of taking statements.

To put it in some kind of context, more football coaches and people connected with the sport, 285, have now been accused of molesting boys than the number of priests and brothers from the Boston archdiocese, 249, who were identified as part of the scandal unearthed by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team.

The victims come from all levels of football and, at the last count, 331 clubs had been “impacted”, meaning they had been named without necessarily being under investigation. Of the victims, 96% are male, the youngest being four years old, and the vast majority of cases happened in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, though some as far back as 1950. Operation Hydrant has had 2,028 referrals and all but 27 relate to football – the others involving basketball, rugby, gymnastics, martial arts, tennis, wrestling, golf, sailing, athletics, cricket and swimming.

It is a lot to take in and, as if all that was not shocking enough, the real number of victims will actually be significantly higher when the figures have not been updated since 28 September and there are so many others who have suffered the same kind of ordeals but chosen not to report what happened.

Many do not think it is worthwhile now their abusers – paedophiles such as Frank Roper, a coach in Blackpool’s junior system, and Eddie Heath, formerly the chief scout at Chelsea – are dead. Others have now reached an age where they have their own children and have elderly parents and, understandably, want to protect their families. Many don’t feel they have the strength to deal with the tortuous, often torturous, process of going through the courts when it can feel sometimes as if there are glaciers that move quicker than the British judicial system.

After a year on this story, I have spoken to almost as many victims who have chosen not to go to the police as those who have. The numbers, again, are frightening and some of the stories that are waiting to be told leave huge questions about what the clubs knew, and what they did about it.

A lot of those stories will have to be held back for now because of the cases being sub judice but suffice to say there is startling evidence of cover-ups, and warnings being ignored, at a number of clubs.

The negligence also appears to be related to money in some cases. One recurring theme is that the people in charge were often reluctant to rock the boat if the person under suspicion was good at his job, potentially making those clubs money. Of everything we have heard over the last year, that perhaps is the most galling part when you stop to think about the number of children it put at risk. Some big football clubs and well-known individuals are going to find it a hard stain to wash out.

Aston Villa certainly need to explain what precisely happened after they were notified about the crimes of Ted Langford, a part-time scout for the club, during the late 1980s and maybe we will also hear from Dario Gradi at some point about his own judgment over the years. Gradi was suspended from all football activities by the FA last November after claims that in his coaching days at Chelsea he visited the house of a 15-year-old youth-team player to “smooth over” a complaint of sexual assault against Heath. Gradi has always denied any wrongdoing but the suspension remains in place, almost a year on, and it is clear the FA wants to distance itself from a man who was once revered for his work in junior football. Gradi was given a lifetime contribution award in 2014 and inducted into the FA Licensed Coaches’ Club Hall of Fame. His photograph has been taken down from the walls of St George’s Park and his name has been removed from the relevant wall display.

Hopefully we will get some more answers when the FA’s independent inquiry, led by Clive Sheldon QC, is published and perhaps, in time, there will also be an explanation from Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, about why his organisation did not do more after the 1997 Dispatches documentary Soccer’s Foul Play made it clear there was a serious problem inside the sport.

Everybody within the game, the media included, needs to look at how this scandal was ignored for so long. Yet the PFA, in particular, has much to answer for when, unlike the FA, it has had very little regime change at the highest level. Taylor has been there since 1981.

Sheldon’s report should be delivered at Easter and you might have seen the story recently about him seeing a counsellor, paid for by the FA, to look after his own mental health when he is being exposed to so many harrowing stories. Fair enough, but it is just a pity, perhaps, that the FA has not been so generous when it comes to the players whose lives have been shaped by the abuse. Many have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and still suffer from anxiety, depression, insomnia and panic attacks. They do at least have support groups such as the Offside Trust and SAVE but many have experienced what a hard-faced organisation the FA can be.

Equally, it might have been an idea if the FA had gone to any real effort to help the victims, or anyone else who might have vital information, to understand how to go about the process of speaking to the inquiry. That, after all, is surely the first starting point of any such investigation: to hear from as many people as possible. Yet if you were to click on the FA’s website – the place, you might imagine, where the process might be explained – there is nothing about it all.

Instead, the FA, acting independently of the barrister, has set up a convoluted and hard-to-locate system whereby the only way anyone can submit evidence is by clicking on the website for Sport Resolutions and going through a link named “Football Review”. Even then, it still doesn’t make it absolutely clear what it is. There isn’t even a helpline, just an email address for “written submissions” and no clues whatsoever why the FA should presume anyone would know this was how it worked.

It all feels so dreadfully typical of the FA and helps to explain why, by mid-October, Sheldon had interviewed no more than 15 victims. Clarke, who has described it as the biggest crisis in the history of the FA, claimed during his calamitous appearance before the House of Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee recently that he had spent 22 hours a day working on the case when the story broke. Perhaps he needed a rest if this was the best he could come up with.

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

It looks illegitimate to strip ref of game

Congratulations to the Football League for a return to form when it comes to its contender for the most absurd story of the week, featuring a referee by the name of Ben Toner and, plainly, a mild panic in the corridors of power when the relevant people realised that he was officiating a Blackpool match.

If you are not aware of this story by now, it is fair to say Toner’s name had caused some mild humour on social media in the week after Blackpool’s majority owner, the Oystons, were found by a high court judge to have operated an “illegitimate stripping” of the club.

Yet it was hardly a big deal and, in terms of bringing it to everyone’s attention, it certainly hadn’t warranted the kind of publicity that attached itself to the league’s decision to remove Toner from Blackpool’s game against Portsmouth because of the “increased attention” surrounding the match.

You have to feel sorry for the referee in question and wonder whether this will be the last time he encounters this problem. Will the league actually have to monitor his games in case of any more outbreaks of passing humour at clubs with questionable owners? And thank goodness Twitter didn’t exist in the years when Segar Bastard, referee of the 1878 FA Cup final, was on the circuit.

Southgate’s nose for absenteeism

Gareth Southgate has made it absolutely clear he does not believe any of his injured players have been winging it over the last week and, in fairness to the England manager, I would be willing to take him at his word.

After all, Southgate knows a thing or two about players who might – let’s put this delicately – not have been entirely committed to their profession, judging by one of the stories he tells about being a team-mate of Sasa Curcic at Aston Villa.

According to Southgate, Curcic once disappeared for a few days, mid-season, without the other players knowing why until he returned to training and explained he had been in hospital for a nose operation.

“But you didn’t break your nose,” someone said.

“No, it was something to improve the shape.”

That’s right: Curcic missed the following match because of plastic surgery on his nose. “I would love to have had improvements on my nose,” Southgate recalls. “I probably needed them more than Sasa, but in mid-season?”