New Rugby Australia CEO Raelene Castle faced her first major hurdle in the Israel Folau saga and has sadly failed miserably.

Folau is the highest profile and most popular player in the country, not to mention one of the best, who drew controversy in Australia and around the world with an Instagram post on April 14.

With numerous sponsors and stake-holders threatening to walk-away from rugby, Castle was forced to act.

She called in Folau for a meeting on April 10, along with his provincial CEO from the NSW Waratahs, Andrew Hore, afterwards holding a press conference where she said Folau understood “he’s caused some grief in this”.

“Israel acknowledged he could have put a more positive spin on the message,” said Castle, “but RA (Rugby Australia) has got a policy of inclusion and using social media with respect.

“Israel’s gone away to think about that. He doesn’t want to be disrespectful.”

Case closed. Not quite.

Raelene Castle fronts the media

On Monday night Folau hit back with a long, carefully worded statement on playersvoice.com, a website which he is a founder of, saying that Castle had “mis-represented him”, that he did not back down from his comments and saying he “offered to walk away from the game” if the situation became “untenable”.

Cue panic stations from RA and on Tuesday morning a hastily put-together statement was sent out saying that Folau would not be sanctioned and that his comments were acceptable because “he provided context behind his social media comment”.

In other words – say what you like – just explain it afterwards.

All this of course makes Castle’s position, which she took up just four months ago, untenable.

Faced with the prospect of losing the nation’s best player a year out from the Rugby World Cup or facing scorn from the community and possible withdrawal of sponsors, such as Qantas, Castle chose the former.

It showed incredible weakness and is perhaps the final nail in Australian rugby’s coffin.

In backing down to Folau, Castle has instead shown that one player is bigger than the game – and that Israel Folau, not her, runs rugby in the country.

Whatever Castle believes, this is far from over and the likely ending is a lose-lose: Folau playing his rugby in another country and Castle out of a job.