Operation Hydrant, the specialist police unit investigating the sexual abuse of children in football, has received a number of reports about incidents within the current sport, the Observer can reveal. Of the alleged attacks reported to the police since Andy Woodward’s interview with the Guardian in November began what the Football Association chairman, Greg Clarke, has described as the biggest crisis he can remember in the sport, 46 occurred from 2005 to 2016.

The new figures – 187 reported incidents from 1996 onwards and 23 relating to 2011 or later – demonstrate that football’s sexual-abuse scandal is not, as widely presumed, purely a matter relating to another time and raises questions about why the FA’s inquiry has a cut-off point “up until around 2005”.

Every year from 2005 to 2016 has been named in the police reports and one of the leading child-abuse lawyers involved in the process has warned that the number relating to those years is likely to be considerably higher.

Dino Nocivelli, who is representing a number of football child-abuse survivors, said: “The figures are very likely the tip of the iceberg for the number of children who have been sexually assaulted. Most survivors of childhood abuse are unable to disclose their abuse until they are in their late 30s or early 40s and a number of survivors will never disclose their abuse and will instead take it to their grave.”

According to the last figures from the National Police Chiefs’ Council on 13 January, there had been 1,016 referrals on the back of Woodward’s interview, with 526 potential victims coming forward and 184 suspects being named.

Those numbers are expected to be considerably higher when they are updated later this month and, in the meantime, it has also emerged that 23% of the referrals relate to professional clubs from England’s top four divisions, going as far back as 1950.

Nocivelli believes the FA has put children at risk by pulling its funding from a major review of child-protection policies in 2003. What was supposed to be a five-year project was curtailed three years early because of cuts and the lawyer said: “Questions remain as to why the FA decided to drop the review into safeguarding and whether or not children were subjected to abuse as a result of this decision.”

New details have also emerged about the lack of cooperation from many FA officials when the team of academics, led by Celia Brackenridge of Brunel University, began the study. Ten of the 14 FA staff who were asked for interviews did not reply and one report by the researchers claims others were “prevented/bullied” from talking.