Covering Munster is exhausting, emotionally draining, but never boring.

The last three weeks have felt like three months. Redundancies were announced the week before a crucial game in South Africa, the CEO having to fly back for it — planned or unplanned, it doesn’t matter — and then the news and significant backlash to the hiring of Roger Randle yesterday.

I have a rugby-specific article on Randle ready to go, but the backlash to Randle’s hiring has nothing to do with rugby, and it is important to address.

It’s to do with historic allegations from 1997, based almost exclusively on this article by an unnamed writer in the Mail & Guardian, a South African newspaper. The proposed trial collapsed with no judgment applied. No subsequent charges were filed on either side.

You can, and should, read the article in full. I did, a few weeks ago, when Randle’s name sprang as a possible name for the attack coach role. The full article leaves far more questions than answers, as most articles of that kind will tend to do.

It was a significant scandal at the time in South Africa and New Zealand, as allegations like these almost always are, with a named alleged perpetrator (or perpetrators, in this instance), but with no conviction, no trial and no established facts, the story passed from the public eye as time moved on.

In August 1997, a complaint was filed in New Zealand about the coverage of the case by TVNZ 1’s current affairs programme 60 Minutes. You can read that complaint, and some of the items found in the broadcast here.

What is the right answer here?

The frustrating one is that there isn’t one.

It comes down to facts vs optics.

If we deal with facts and facts alone, there was a serious allegation made against Roger Randle and two other Hurricanes players that did not make it to trial. There is no credible legal statement I can make that says Roger Randle or the other players involved did anything wrong. The only thing we know for sure is that there was an allegation that they did, which ultimately was not prosecuted, with no outside settlement made of any kind.

Any formal background check to this effect would show no wrongdoing and a clean record. Nor can you say, based on the available facts, that Munster should not hire Randle based on these allegations, because to do so would be defamatory. I would be stunned if you see any media outlet make any suggestions to that effect, because Randle would, quite rightly, point out as he always has that he did nothing wrong or illegal, that there is no legal basis to accuse him of it, and that he should not be denied opportunities on the back of that. That’s how it would work in Ireland, anyway, which is the only place where this case is now relevant.

It’s why, in the absence of any new information, the coverage will focus on the social media reaction to the historic allegations, rather than the validity of the historic allegations themselves.

If we deal with optics, however, we get into a different conversation. Optics are about how something like this looks and feels to the general public, stakeholders and sponsors, regardless of the facts, or lack of them.

If we focus purely on optics and not facts, Randle probably should not have been hired, whatever the outcome that might have had on Clayton McMillan, who, we can infer, clearly wanted Randle in his coaching staff, having worked with him extensively for four or five years previously. The social media backlash, such as it has been so far, was entirely predictable but is unpredictable in its scope. There is no proof that Randle or the other men involved did anything wrong, but the allegations themselves become the relevant topic when we look at optics alone. What will someone think when they see the headline allegations in that article, regardless of it being 30 years ago, or the complexity built into the case?

It entirely depends on the person. Should it be that way? It doesn’t matter. It’s the way it is.

To further complicate the situation, three independent nominees resigned from the Professional Game Board this week. The timing strongly implies a connection to this hiring, though I haven’t been able to confirm that directly.

Yet, even with those resignations, nothing of substance has changed with the core problem here, which is the available facts vs optics.

For me, facts and optics are too entangled to call one way or another. That’s the world we live in.

Randle is a good coach — a very good coach — who was in the running for the All Blacks attack coach job a few weeks ago. Had he been hired for that role or continued with the Chiefs, would these allegations, completely unproven as they are and as I must consistently point out, be relevant?

No. Probably not. They plainly haven’t been so far in his playing and later coaching career at the Chiefs, France, Italy and the NZRU over the past twenty years or more.

But now it’s here. It is a Gordian knot for Munster to untangle. Now, you have to take a “side”, either directly or within yourself, especially in the heat of it, as we are this week.

What is needed now, clearly, is strong and unified leadership from key figures within Munster at an executive and organisational level. The redundancies announced three weeks ago, the PGB resignations this week, and now this — whatever way you look at each individual situation — collectively paint a picture of an organisation that is making significant decisions without a coherent public narrative around them. Whether that reflects the reality internally is a separate question, but perception matters, and the perception is of an organisation where the left hand doesn’t always know what the right hand is doing.

In this specific case, that means someone in a position of authority at Munster needs to say something. Not about the allegations — they cannot and should not speak to those — but about the process. How was this hiring made? What due diligence was carried out? The public and the fanbase deserve to understand that, regardless of where they land on the facts versus optics question.

My job is to report what I can stand over. What I can stand over here is this: a serious allegation was made, it was not prosecuted, and there is no legal basis to say Roger Randle did anything wrong. That is the factual record, and it is the only record that exists.

What I cannot do — what nobody can do — is tell you how to feel about it. The facts and the optics pull in different directions, and they will continue to do so long after this week’s noise has faded. Munster made a decision. Whether it was the right one probably depends on which of those two things matters more to you.

I don’t have a clean answer. I’m not sure one exists.