Not entirely unspoken, if Beale’s written statement to the Code of Conduct tribunal last Friday is accurate. As things flared, he claims she said: “Do you want me to bring up the text?” McKenzie’s ears pricked up but it would be some while yet before he got the answer to his mental question: “What text?” Eventually, however, the truth came out — that Beale had inadvertently texted her on June 9 a grotesque photo of a nude, obese female crossbow hunter accompanied by the caption “Di??”
When confronted by Patston, he had begged for forgiveness, reassuring her he hadn’t sent the image to anyone else. But he lied. Six days earlier, as he revealed in his own statement, he had sent the same sexist image and text to an unspecified number of fellow Waratahs, not one of whom thought to report Beale’s reprehensible behaviour.
There could scarcely be a more clear-cut case of villain and victim, but in one of the most extraordinary pieces of spin-doctoring in Australian sporting history, those roles were turned on their head.
Beale somehow became the put-upon victim, complaining in his statement that he began to feel during the team’s Sanctuary Cove camp that his relationship with McKenzie “had become a whole lot worse than what it had been during previous times in camp”.
It was a curious assertion, not least because that was the first time he was ever in camp with the Wallabies under McKenzie. Even when the independent tribunal found Beale guilty of a serious Code of Conduct breach and fined him $45,000, he claimed a victory. Sunday newspapers perversely displayed cosy pictures on their front pages of the smiling workplace bully being hugged by his girlfriend.
Patston, meanwhile, was left to hug herself in her pyjamas. Beale’s supporters realised that in order to save him, they needed to destroy her and McKenzie. And so the rumours started that the two were having an affair.
