A predictable reaction by some ageing commentators and surviving chauvinists to the Patston-Kurtley Beale affair was to question the role of a woman in the Australian rugby union team's management set-up.

Alan Jones, admittedly, didn't go so far as to enunciate on this, but in defending his friend Beale, Jones did ask, "And when you've had instructions barked at you by a business manager whose role has never been defined and you don't know how that person got the job…"

Columnist Peter FitzSimons responded that, "Jones has relentlessly put the antediluvian view that … Beale is the victim in all this! With nary a word of sympathy for Patston, we are told by Jones that the Beale outburst at Patston was "not the problem, it was the symptom" of the malaise in the team."

In The Canberra Times, Chris Dutton wrote that, "Australian halfback Nick Phipps has hit back at claims the Wallabies don't respect women in sport … Phipps vehemently defended the Wallabies' culture and said players had no issue working with women …  Phipps was forced to answer questions on sexism and the role of women in sport …"

The Guardian said, "Whether or not Di Patston was qualified for her job, the attacks based on her gender are a problem for sport … There are legitimate questions [about] whether Patston had the credentials to fulfil her role,  but that is a separate issue – the texts attacked her gender, not her qualifications."

Such was the media scrutiny of these sorry events, coach Ewen McKenzie, who had employed Patston, was forced to deny there was more to their relationship than a purely professional arrangement, before joining Patston in the Australian Rugby Union's rapid departure lounge.

Calling it a "weird dynamic between the pair", Andrew Webster responded in The Sydney Morning Herald, "The Queensland Reds knew about the close relationship between McKenzie and Patston … and were grateful to see them go … whatever they've got going on has been a constant source of speculation among the very highest echelons of Australian rugby …

"Since coming into the Wallabies set-up, players say she has assumed the role of  'amateur psychologist', questioning their body language and asking about their personal lives. The prying has annoyed them greatly."

In the absence of such close media scrutiny almost 90 years ago, the role of a Queensland woman in rugby's "Tour That Died of Shame" has never been properly explained. What we do know is that this early example of "player power" did not work as effectively as it might today.

English-born Mildred Readshaw Mair accompanied her husband, Toowoomba publican Ernest Hartley Mair, in a "semi-official" capacity on the 1926 New Zealand rugby league team's tour of Great Britain.  Quite why the New Zealand Rugby Football League chose to appoint an Australian as its team manager-coach remains one of the many mysterious which surround this disastrous undertaking, but it was a decision the league came to deeply regret.

As a result of player in-fighting, and disputes with Ernie Mair over his approach to player management, selection and coaching, seven of the team of 26 twice went on strike and were eventually sent home in disgrace, to be banned for life by the NZRFL. The bans were not lifted until September 1962. Christchurch journalist and historian John Coffey later dubbed this venture "The Tour That Died of Shame".

During my days of covering rugby league for The New Zealand Herald in Auckland, the former Kiwi Test player and long-serving administrator Te Keepa Pouwhiuwhiu (Pākehā name Ernie Asher) fought long and hard to have these life bans lifted. I also knew one of the seven personally, the team's vice-captain Thomas Neil Mouat, a Punakaiki, West Coast farmer, and was present when Mouat was eventually allowed to step foot back on a rugby league field, at Wingham Park outside Greymouth.

The New Zealand press representative on the 1926 tour was an official of the Marist club in Christchurch, Joseph Russell Patrick O'Shaughnessy. He was embedded with the team and unable to work independently of it, so it was not until after the tour ended that O'Shaughnessy was in a position to reveal details regarding the Mairs that led to the life bans.

These included Mouat and Arthur Singe refusing Ernie Mair's instruction to perform a haka on a railway station platform in Vancouver, following the team's arrival in Canada on its way to Britain. Mouat had told O'Shaughnessy at the time that he believed he would have been "cheapening the haka" and that he was not part of a "theatrical troupe" but a travelling rugby player.

Still, some of the more sordid tour events, such as the ugly brawl between two players, Singe and Craddock Dufty, outside the team's Harrogate hotel after their first match, against Dewsbury, have still never been fully explained. The team was threatened with eviction and the [England] Rugby Football League took the unprecedented move of twice suspending Ernie Mair from selection and coaching duties. These were desperate but vain attempts to save the tour, which ended as a financial catastrophe.

The allegation made many years later was that Mrs Mair had been sharing her favours among the players. In a chapter titled "A Winter of Discontent" in his 2003 book Great Sporting Scandals, Geoff Tibballs wrote that Mrs Mair's presence on tour had "exacerbated the situation".

What we do know is that the Mairs were both pretty shady characters. After the tour, Ernie Mair was constantly before the Queensland courts, the least reason for which was bankruptcy. In one case, evidence was offered of a threat to murder a business partner, and he was also charged with plans to burn down one of his hotels and claim the insurance. The Mairs moved to Brisbane but parted company, and Mrs Mair ran pubs herself for a few years. She was regularly fined for serving alcohol outside licensing hours.

New Zealand's rugby league team was not invited back to Britain for 13 years and the seven banned players had to endure tarnished reputations for the rest of their lives. It's to be hoped that, despite having been under a far more intense medial spotlight, the Wallabies, Patston, McKenzie and Beale do not have to suffer the same fate.

Robert Messenger is a retired Canberra journalist and historian.