Perception is everything, and it could be McKenzie's downfall

For a man who has made a career out of his ability to manipulate public perceptions in order to ensure favourable imagery as to how he is perceived, it was the tiniest of lapses.

It’s starting to look like it could be fatal all the same.

The Wallaby coach’s decision to skip training in Argentina may be the ‘magic bullet’ that brings him down.

There is nothing wrong with attending to the personal needs of a member of his staff.

The team session itself, given it was the first of the week, and after a taxing travel day, was relatively standard, in terms of a shake down. The Wallaby assistants and strength and conditioning coach were quite capable of running it.

Whether Ewen McKenzie thought this is how the action concerned would be perceived when he took his “stressed” and now departed team business manager Di Patston to the airport so she could leave the Wallaby tour early, only he knows.

I’ve got no idea what the nature of the relationship between McKenzie and the out-going Wallabies business manager Patston is.

Ultimately only the man himself, and Patston, really know. He has publicly denied any personal relationship.

But, as McKenzie knows better than almost anyone, perceptions are crucial, both from a public perspective, but just as importantly, within the team environment.

John Eales insisted on Rugby HQ last week that the spillage from the Kurtley Beale saga and – by association – Patston’s role in it; had to have had a negative influence on the Wallabies’ preparation prior to the Test defeat against Argentina.

Eales’ fellow panelist on the show, Rod Kafer, agreed.

So then. If we are to take these two former players at their word – and one is a current Australian Rugby Union board member – this can’t be allowed to continue.

The damage it is causing, both to the team but also the game in general, is too great.

The question now: is the Patston resignation enough?

I suspect the reaction to her departure is suggesting that no, it’s not. A recent reader’s poll in the Sydney Morning Herald, once a bastion of support for McKenzie, returned in excess of 75 per cent of respondents wanting him out.

While the state of rugby union in Australia is such that the Wallaby coaching position might not hold the public ‘status’ it has done previously; it is still a role that carries with it a great deal of profile.

The Wallaby coach is a flagship representative of the game. The position requires integrity, humility, honour and respect.

The Wallaby manager should boast those same qualities: the team manager McKenzie inherited, but whose contract he chose not to extend, his former Wallaby teammate Bob Egerton, most certainly exuded all of the required merits.

Removing the integrity and quiet dignity Egerton brought to the Wallaby leadership, and which had earned him the total respect of the players, might yet be seen to have been one of McKenzie’s biggest mistakes.

This is all not to say that the incumbent coach hasn’t exhibited all of these qualities either but, unfortunately, there are plenty now who are questioning that – both inside and outside of the ARU and the Wallabies.

ARU chief executive Bill Pulver, with his statements that contradict the timelines suggested by others, around the Beale text case, isn’t helping.

Just when McKenzie, and in effect the ARU, learned of the offensive text messages in question is just one of a number of contradictions associated with this whole sorry episode.

Then there is the release of a confidential internal email from ARU contracts manager Rich Hawkins, which appeared in the News Limited papers on Sunday and Monday, detailing both the content of the texts that were originally sent by Beale, but also his subsequent attempts to ‘repair the damage’ with Patston.

Could the purpose of its leaking have been to distract from other issues presently confronting the ARU?

Its appearance is certainly highly prejudicial of Beale’s defense.

One would hope that Pulver will also be holding an internal inquiry into how such privileged information – which would undoubtedly have had a small distribution list – could have turned up on the computers in the newsroom at News Limited?

Pulver and McKenzie say they only learned the detail of the Beale text messages recently.

Beale’s manager Isaac Moses, and sources presumedly spoken to by the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Georgina Robinson, dispute this.

I have heard something similar to Robinson.

On the face of it, given the working history of the professional relationship between McKenzie and Patston which was reinforced again yesterday when he spoke in detail of her current mental state, and given that she was the ‘target’ of the messages in question; it scarcely seems plausible that McKenzie, as head of the team, wouldn’t have been informed at the time of the alleged offense.

If he indeed wasn’t, what does that say about the discipline levels, communication and the culture within the team?

Pulver has hardly covered himself with glory through all of this.

His previous staunch support of McKenzie, to the extent that he allowed the almost total overhaul of the Wallaby staff, including the centralising of so much power in Patston’s hands; should mean he is as liable as McKenzie if any ill-chosen behaviour from any Wallaby management personnel is uncovered.

There is no easy way out.

The subsequent reaction to McKenzie’s attempts to squash the speculation shows that.

While there are those who are prepared to believe the man, it seems there are just as many, if not more, out there who remain to be convinced, based on the volume and tone of social media posts and website blogs I’ve seen, alongside a media reaction which would have to be considered skeptical at best.

I doubt Patston’s resignation, if the motivation behind it was to try and contain the damage, will be enough to change the way many now feel about the Wallaby coach.

It made for gripping television last Friday, the usually calm and super smooth media performer struggling to contain his agitation in response to a question he had undoubtedly prepared for at a meeting that morning.

If I were McKenzie, my worry would not so much be about my media ‘performance’, but more with whom sources tell me the ARU chief executive had met with, immediately before my audience: board member/television pundit, Eales.

Oh to have been a fly on the wall during that particular conversation!

As much as the ARU tries – or at least gives the public impression of trying – to draw a line under the issue; it doesn’t seem like this is going to go away any time soon.

That is unless McKenzie follows Patston out the door.

Pulver has said that McKenzie would be on the plane with the team when it departs for what is now shaping as a potentially tortuous journey through Europe on Friday week.

Yet we are now learning that Michael Cheika may have been approached (and turned down) the Wallaby job. It appears that Jake White, who missed out to McKenzie last time – almost immediately jumped ship from the Brumbies in a huff, and then got sacked by the Sharks players – is also back on the radar for the only job he ever really wanted in this country.

White has known his ups and downs. So too has Beale.

Easily the game’s most high profile indigenous player in the modern era, Beale was told just over a year ago by Pulver that the chief executive wanted to make him ‘the face’ of the game.

I’m not sure that Beale’s current circumstance is what he meant!

Despite the continued strong support of his teammates, it seems that ‘face’ is no longer wanted!

Beale’s behaviour around the text messages can’t be condoned. Sanction is required, but it should also be considered as part of the bigger picture, of a team environment seriously gone wrong.

While the public way in which his teammates have expressed their support is undoubtedly an irritant for both CEO and coach, the game will be the poorer for it if the punishment ultimately leads to Beale’s departure from either the game, or from Australia, as seems almost certain.

My bet is that McKenzie could yet beat Beale out the door.

With White returning to the playing ‘field’, and Cheika still only a phone call away (albeit, he has to actually be convinced to answer!), a significant defeat against the All Blacks this week may provide the ARU with a push and the public justification to remove its suddenly controversial coach.

After all of the noise pre-appointment, that the wannabe Wallaby coach “knew” how to beat New Zealand teams, it hasn’t happened.

He’s no wins from five against the All Blacks; only one win from 10 (five v NZ, 4 v SA & 1 v England) against teams ranked above the Wallabies at the time of the meeting, and now he’s lost to Argentina.

Underrated for sure, but the fact is that the Argentines are the first opponent to be ranked outside of the IRB’s top 10 at the time of their date with the Wallabies, that Australia has lost to.

To lose in Mendoza, after leading 14-0 in just 13 minutes, made the outcome all the more calamitous, especially as the Pumas had to be vulnerable mentally given they had lost their previous eight Tests in succession, and had only won twice (against Georgia and Italy) in their last 18 Tests going back to June 2013.

Make no mistake, it doesn’t matter if you are playing well, as the Pumas clearly had been, losing is a hard habit to break.

This is especially so if things feel like they are going against you, as certainly was the case for the Argentines during the early moments last weekend.

Panic sets in. Players rush things, and more mistakes are made.

Obviously I’m not privy to the detail in the Wallaby coach’s contract but it is likely there is a performance clause in there, most have them.

Activating that clause might not only provide justification for dismissal so it is not being ‘hung’ on anything else, it also might save the ARU some money, in terms of the size of any possible pay out, thereby ‘limiting’ the all-round damage so-to-speak.

Failure by the ARU to act from here might only serve to spread the contamination of this saga further.

The game, on its knees already, simply can’t afford that.