Paul Thomas: Foul stench rising from squalid Wallabies

Ewen McKenzie. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Former Wallaby captain and current Australian Rugby Union board member John Eales described Ewen McKenzie's lonely "exit stage left" after announcing his resignation as Wallaby coach as "one of the saddest sights I've seen in sport".

What had taken place a few minutes earlier was equally sad. McKenzie and Wallaby captain Michael Hooper had held a joint press conference notable for the absence of eye contact, interaction or warmth. When they'd done discussing the one-point loss to the All Blacks and it was time for McKenzie to drop his bombshell, Hooper snatched up his water bottle and left without a backward glance, let alone a quiet word or a handshake.

Hooper, it seemed, couldn't muster a flicker of compassion for the coach who'd elevated him to the captaincy and whose reputation and career he'd undermined to devastating effect.

Just as a single spark can ignite a forest fire, this fight to the finish began in banal circumstances: a mid-air clash over dress code. On a flight from South Africa to South America, a Wallaby management staffer told Kurtley Beale his T-shirt wasn't the appropriate attire. When Beale was unreceptive, team business manager Di Patston reinforced the message. Beale gave her an abusive mouthful and the die - pardon the pun - was cast.

A disciplinary procedure was initiated. Patston was too upset to stay on, her distress compounded by the fact that in June she'd forgiven an apparently remorseful Beale for circulating crudely abusive texts about her. Presumably feeling Beale had shown he no longer deserved to be protected from the results of his actions, she told McKenzie about the texting incident. He passed it on to the ARU, which ramped up the disciplinary process, signalling serial offender Beale's future in Australian rugby was on the line.

Senior Wallabies, led by Hooper, decided the real issue was mateship rather than misogyny and they would stand by their mate, unlike the coach who'd sided with a member of his management team. From that point, things got really nasty.

The media were encouraged to focus on the McKenzie-Patston relationship. It was a two-pronged campaign, the first being to portray Patston as a flake who didn't belong anywhere near an elite rugby team's management group.

Thus it was reported she'd embellished her CV, sued a previous employer over a spider bite, pried into players' private lives and upbraided Beale over an unpaid hotel bill as he sat on the reserves' bench during a test against the Springboks.

If this sheila was so unqualified for her role, then you don't have to be a behavioural scientist to figure out why McKenzie really brought her on board, right? Cue nod-and-wink revelations: the pair had a very close relationship going back to McKenzie's time at the Queensland Reds; McKenzie had twice skipped training to take Patston to the airport; the players were confused about what she actually did; McKenzie's family home was on the market.

Very little of this was substantiated or shown to be pertinent.

Herewith examples of how the press, in this case the Sydney Morning Herald, went about its business: The Reds "knew about the close relationship between McKenzie and Patston during his tenure and were grateful to see them go". And: "Whatever they've got going on has been a constant source of speculation among the very highest echelons of Australian rugby for 18 months at least."

There was nothing to support either of these assertions masquerading as statements of fact, not even a quote from an anonymous source. In the media's "guilty until proven otherwise or we lose interest" universe, alleged speculation is accorded the status of damning proof.

Only one scenario would get close to justifying this character assassination: that McKenzie has lied about his relationship with Patston and when he found out about Beale's texts. (The Beale camp claims he knew from the word go.) If that's the case, his resignation was simply an exercise in damage limitation because at some point, perhaps as soon as today's Beale hearing, he would've been shown to be too compromised to continue as team coach.

If that's not the case, if McKenzie has been telling the truth and doing his duty all along and his two-and-a-half decades of achievement and service to Australian rugby as a player and coach have been repaid in this fashion, then you'd have to conclude that, like fish, Wallabies rot from the head down.