Mulvey took charge of Roar from Rado Vidosic in 2012 after former coach Ange Postecoglou left for Melbourne Victory, and went on to lead the side to the double in 2013/14.

But a disastrous run of games at the start of the following season saw Mulvey axed in late November 2014, just seven months after clinching both the Premiership and Championship.

He launched legal action against the club the following year, claiming unpaid wages and damages worth $286,500, equal to 18 months wages.

He claims the previous Roar CEO Sean Dobson promised him an 18 month payout if fired and a payrise from his initial $191,000 a year to the equivalent of $275,000 for the season he was sacked in, increasing to $300k the following year and $350k in his third year, plus bonuses.

Roar told Brisbane District Court they could not currently confirm the alleged payrise – said to have been agreed in September 2014 – because they had changed email systems since 2015 and moved from their own server to a Telstra-based cloud system.

Current CEO David Pourre told the court it could take weeks or months for them to track down the relevant emails and documents.

Six months after Mulvey was sacked, the then-CEO Sean Dobson also left the club and later launched his own legal action against Roar which was settled out of court in 2018.

But Brisbane Roar told the court this made it unlikely they could call Dobson as a witness against Mulvey – and added that they had no idea where Dobson was now.

Although Mulvey launched his legal fight in 2015, he then let the case slide while working overseas and after he took up the head coach role at Central Coast Mariners.

His lawyers told Brisbane District Court he had been too busy working or seeking work to continue the case, and  Mulvey also said his lawyers had failed to notify him of the need to keep it alive within the two year timeframe.

Judge David Reid accepted Mulvey's ignorance of the law as the reason and blamed his lawyers for not telling him.

He allowed the case to proceed.