No surprise as Kurtley Beale walks away but Dave Rennie should be thankful

Was there a single Australian rugby follower in the least surprised when they read that Kurtley Beale had walked away from the Waratahs?

Kurtley Beale takes on the Lions’ Wandisile Simelane during their Super Rugby match at Bankwest Stadium in February. Picture: AFP

Was there a single Australian rugby follower in the least surprised when they read that Kurtley Beale had walked away from his contract with the Waratahs and Rugby Australia?

Did they gaze at Tom Decent’s story in the Nine newspapers and shake their heads despairingly, wondering how on earth it had come to this? Were they devastated to learn that the 31-year-old’s management had put in a release request that allowed him to quit the NSW side and bypass next month’s Super Rugby AU competition so that he might “freshen up” before joining French club Racing 92?

Chances are they just shrugged. Kurtley looking after Kurtley, they would have surmised.

Beale certainly cannot be held responsible for the global pandemic. Had it not been for the COVID-19 crisis, the final of Super Rugby would have been played on Saturday and with, just a little bit of luck, we might now be celebrating a Brumbies title while gearing up for the Irish Test series and The Rugby Championship.

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Sadly, we’ll never know for certain but in that opening phase of the season, the Brumbies did win all their matches, save for the one they lost after the full-time siren to the Highlanders.

Instead we are here in this no-man’s land and Beale didn’t particularly fancy how things were shaping. Seemingly, with the departure of Michael Cheika, he has despaired of ever getting the eight Tests he needed to bring up his century for Australia. He apparently based this opinion on his inability to make it into Wallabies coach Dave Rennie’s PONI (Players of National Interest) group yet, based on his performances for the Waratahs in February and March, it would have been a stunning and appalling selection had he been chosen. Frankly, his form didn’t put him anywhere near a Wallabies jersey.

Whether he took that omission as an insult, only Beale would know, although Rennie is understood to have spoken with him and reassured him that ultimately everything comes down to form and that if he started putting performances together on the field then it could happen for him all over again. Beale decided not to bother.

It was announced last month he had signed with Racing 92. Now he wants to reinvigorate himself by taking time off to prepare for France. No matter that he has played no football for the past 14 weeks or that the rebooted Super Rugby AU competition is now just 12 days away, or that the Waratahs desperately need his experience to help get the next phase of the 2020 season back on the rails again.

No matter that he is the most-capped player in Waratahs’ history and this is the way he has chosen to close his career with them. He has made his call.

It could be said that the Waratahs are saving a lot of money because he has cancelled his contract and walked out. In fact, like everyone else — well, except for the Picone Three — he had agreed to an average 60 per cent pay cut through until the end of September, so whatever saving there might be for the franchise in his departure will tend to be pretty minimal. But at least he isn’t cluttering up the backline that Rob Penney is attempting to put in place for next season.

So now, in the likely expectation that Beale has played his last game in this country — though he does still qualify for Wallabies selection from overseas because of the Giteau Law — how should Australian rugby remember him? As the Waratah defender hobbling alongside Brumbies halfback Joe Powell as he ran in for a try in the final match on March 15 before the shutdown hit? Or as the 16-year-old who signed with NSW; or the 17-year-old who attended his first Wallabies training session at the invitation of the then coach, John Connolly?

Will it be the long-range penalty goal he kicked in the 79th minute in Bloemfontein in 2010 to break a three decade-plus run of defeats to the Springboks on the Highveld that people recall, or the fact that he slipped over attempting to kick the Wallabies to victory at Suncorp Stadium in the opening match of the British and Irish Lions series. Had he stayed on his feet and kicked the goal, nothing else needed to change and Australia would have won the series.

Will he be recalled as the super sub of the 2015 World Cup campaign, or as the man who chip-kicked inside his own 22 against England in the 2019 quarter-final, before throwing the outrageous pass that Anthony Watson intercepted to seal the heaviest defeat Australia had ever suffered at a World Cup, the 40-16 loss to England in what will prove to be Beale’s last Test.

Inevitably, though, it will be the Test he didn’t play that stands out in people’s memories, the one that brought the curtain down on Ewen McKenzie’s coaching career, against the All Blacks in Brisbane on October 18, 2014 — the one Australia lost after the bell, 29-28. Beale had missed that international, and the one before it against Argentina, because of the incident with Di Patston. A good many lies were told and a good man was sacrificed so that Beale could continue to play for the Wallabies and Waratahs. Was it worth it, one wonders?

So now he is leaving. It should be clear by now that I have a jaundiced view of Kurtley Beale but I accept that some people view him as wonderful and mercurial.

In many ways he has been the common denominator that has bound together the last three Wallabies coaches — Robbie Deans, McKenzie and Michael Cheika — and it would be fascinating to have an honest word with all three to see how they each view him. Only Cheika, I suspect, would sing his praises, but then again Cheika always did have blind faith in his ability.

Rennie, it seems, will be spared the full Beale experience. He has enough on his plate as he sets about rebuilding the Wallabies and their international reputation.

He deserves every bit of good fortune that comes his way.