There are many ugly aspects to the Kurtley Beale misconduct affair, and yet another has been the backlash against Wallabies captain Michael Hooper and his deputy Adam Ashley-Cooper for public support of their teammate.

On Sunday, Hooper told reporters he backed his coach, Ewen McKenzie, did not believe a player on his team deserved to be sacked, and that he respected that the disciplinary process would operate independently of what he or anyone else thought about the matter.  One day later, part of the alleged offensive exchange between Beale and former business manager Di Patston was published in the public domain. Later that day, Ashley-Cooper said he also supported Beale. When he was asked why that was the case, in light of what was publicly known about the lewd messages, the Wallabies vice-captain said: "I don't condone what's gone on but I think at the end of the day he's a friend of mine and his welfare is important to me. I'm feeling for him at the moment and I want to make sure that a friend sticks by a friend through tough times."

On Tuesday, the players' boss, ARU chief executive Bill Pulver, made it known to office staff his disapproval of Hooper and Ashley-Cooper's comments, later clarifying his sentiments to Fairfax Media.  "My comment was actually that the comments made in the media by the players were not helpful," Pulver said. "While I think their intent was to show support for a teammate in distress, it could be interpreted by others as being forgiving of the incident and I don't think that's what they intended."

The clarification is important because to hang a Wallabies captain out to dry for comments he made, presumably before he knew the precise nature of the messages, would be another poor judgment call on behalf of the ARU in this sorry saga. The organisation is going to appropriate lengths to safeguard the welfare of Patston, who was an employee in its care when this was playing out behind closed doors. In the apparent absence of any corresponding efforts to monitor the welfare of Beale, the other employee in the ARU's care, who is rightly facing a disciplinary tribunal, that duty has been left to his teammates. If the execution of that duty was found wanting, you wonder where the guidance was for the Wallabies' 22-year-old captain and his teammates. The ARU and Wallabies have had a full-blown crisis on their hands for more than two weeks now and yet the team, until the middle of this week, have had the outward appearance of a divided entity.

McKenzie defended a loyal staff member, Christian Leali'ifano mourned the loss of a "mother figure", Hooper defended his teammate, Ashley-Cooper stood by his friend – but not his actions, Pulver made it known he thought both should shut their mouths, and rugby supporters watched it all play out, mouths agape. "At the end of the day, in the sport we play there's winners and losers, but then you look outside this environment and you hope that people's welfare is in a good place," said Quade Cooper, of "toxic" infamy.  "I hope Kurtley's OK, I hope Di's OK, and I hope we can continue on and play some good football."

PR big-hitter called in

Pulver has called in a trusted pair of hands to help him wade through the mess engulfing his organisation.  Brian Tyson, from public relations big-hitters Newgate, is on hand to offer advice on strategy to Pulver and the ARU's communications team. Tyson goes back some way with Pulver, having helped the then-software company executive and his family through the extraordinarily difficult period after the extortion attempt and collar-bomb hoax on Pulver's daughter Madeleine in 2011. Tyson was the managing director of the Australian and New Zealand arm of global communications firm Kreab Gavin Anderson at the time, and helped the Pulvers on a pro-bono basis. This time around Tyson is the managing partner of rival firm Newgate. It is understood the ARU has engaged Newgate in a formal capacity.

Suncorp crowd down

The Wallabies were out pressing the flesh in Brisbane on Thursday, doing their darndest to help boost an expected crowd of just 45,000 at Suncorp Stadium. In the scheme of recent Tests at that venue, it is well below the 52,499 – one short of capacity – who turned up to watch Beale slip and botch a shot at goal that would have won the first Test in the British and Irish Lions series last year. It is also well down on recent All Blacks crowds in Brisbane. Two years ago a capacity crowd watched "Aussie Mike" Harris and the Wallabies fight for their lives to draw 18-18 against New Zealand, while 51,858 will still remember the unbridled joy sparked by Australia's 25-20 victory there the year before.  The crowd expected on Saturday is much healthier than the 33,718 who watched the Wallabies run rings around France just four months ago, but in the context of poor crowds in Perth and the Gold Coast in recent months, it is not a healthy enough jump to claim a moral victory. Especially not when the Waratahs drew the highest Super Rugby crowd (61,800) to ANZ Stadium in August, but the Wallabies could not sell out the same stadium for the Bledisloe Cup opener two weeks later. Is Brisbane the problem? Hardly, when the Queensland Reds, despite a diabolical season, drew an average regular-season crowd of 28,900 –and regularly topped 30,000 – to make them the best home ground crowd-pullers in Super Rugby this year.