Foran had his contract registered with the New Zealand Warriors this week and will play in round three should he pass a psychological assessment.

Lumby said the NRL had made the wrong call in allowing Foran back.

“Rebecca Wilson was one of the most fearless and most intelligent women who reported on sport,” she told NewsCorp.

“She deserves the highest respect.

“That she was abused and harassed in this manner by a football player is disgraceful. I am appalled that harsher sanctions have not been applied given that there is evidence of this behaviour.

“If the NRL wants to genuinely show leadership, which it has, in relation to the treatment of women and respect to people generally, than it needs to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.”

IMAGE CREDIT: The Australian. 

Wilson’s husband and former News Corp Australia chief executive and chairman John Hartigan said Foran abused Wilson through text and phone calls just days before her death.  

 “That abuse caused greater hurt and pain to my wife in the last days of her life,” Hartigan told Fairfax Media.

“He sent her a text first and it was just horrible,” Hartigan told Fairfax Media. “She didn’t get unsettled too often but this left her really distraught.

“Then he rang and started abusing her again, that’s when I pulled the phone off her and I said, ‘if you want to threaten someone, threaten me but don’t threaten my wife’.

“She felt so distraught that she rang a contact at the police. We wanted him told that under no circumstances can he contact her with that disgusting nature of his threats.

“Bec didn’t want to press charges, she just wanted him to be warned off.

“If they (NRL) really have standards, for the sake of having a supposed star in the mix, they’ve dropped the flag.”

Wilson was posthumously awarded the lifetime achievement award by the Australian Sports Commission.