Tiffany Salmond finally reveals the truth about the phone call that blew up Grace Fitzgibbon's relationship with Jake Duke: 'He was the back up option'

For months, it was the phone call at the centre of one of Australian sports media's most whispered-about scandals.

Now, the woman whose name became synonymous with the drama is finally telling her side of the story.

Former Fox Sports presenter Tiffany Salmond has broken her silence over the infamous 2024 early-hours call to fellow broadcaster Jake Duke, insisting the incident that helped unravel his relationship with Channel Seven reporter Grace Fitzgibbon was nowhere near as scandalous as many believed.

The Debrief with Savanna Young is now available on Daily Mail's YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts, with new episodes dropping weekly 

In an exclusive interview with Daily Mail's The Debrief with Savanna Young, Salmond revealed what really happened that night and claimed the call that made headlines across the industry was, in reality, little more than a spur-of-the-moment attempt to pass time during an Uber ride home.

Even more surprisingly, she says Duke wasn't even the first person she tried to call.

'The funniest thing is he wasn't actually the first person I called,' Salmond told the Debrief. 

'The first person I called that I wanted to talk to just didn't pick up. He was the backup guy. He was the backup option!'

The bombshell revelation comes after Daily Mail exclusively reported that Fitzgibbon ended her three-year relationship with Duke amid the fallout surrounding the call.

At the time, sources close to the couple alleged Fitzgibbon was left devastated after becoming aware of an unexpected phone call from Salmond during the early hours of the morning.

The relationship subsequently ended, with Fitzgibbon moving out of the couple's Freshwater apartment on Sydney's Northern Beaches.

Speaking publicly about the incident in detail for the first time, Salmond said she remained shocked by the scale of the fallout and maintained she had no idea Fitzgibbon was in the picture.

According to Salmond, the call occurred roughly a year before the circumstances that eventually led to her departure from Fox Sports.

She dismissed suggestions the incident was directly connected to what later unfolded professionally, when Fox Sports declined to renew her contract to cover the 2025 NRL season. 

'It was a full year before everything happened at work,' she said.

While conceding the controversy may have later been used by others as a convenient explanation, Salmond maintained she was blindsided by the reaction when the story eventually surfaced.

At the time, she said, she believed Duke was simply a colleague and friend within an industry she was eager to establish herself in.

'I thought this person was my new friend. My new work friend,' she explained.

'We worked together briefly, we built a good rapport and I wanted to be a part of that world.

'I wanted to talk to people who were in this new world of mine that I was so excited and passionate about.

'And I was told explicitly that he was single.'

The reality of the late-night call, she insists, was far more mundane than the version that has entered media folklore.

Salmond was living in Auckland at the time and had been out with friends before heading home in an Uber.

It was during that journey, she said, that she decided to pick up the phone.

'I was on a night out having some fun and I was in an Uber home back to the suburbs where I live in Auckland,' she recalled.

'It was probably about 4am.'

Given the two-hour time difference, that would have been approximately 2am in Sydney, where Duke was based.

But rather than making what many interpreted as a deliberate late-night call, Salmond said she simply assumed he may also have been out socialising.

The journey home was around 30 minutes long and, by her account, she was simply looking for someone to chat to.

In fact, she claims the conversation never happened at all.

'It just rang a couple of times and I went, "Oh, he's not [answering]. He's obviously asleep," and then I went home,' she said.

According to Salmond, the seriousness of the situation only became apparent after she woke up the following morning.

'The next morning, I got some messages and I was like, "Oh my God,"' she recalled.

'That's when I realised, "Okay ... what the hell's happened?"'

While declining to identify who contacted her, Salmond said those messages were the moment she first discovered Duke was not single, as she believed him to be. 

'I did not know that he was at home with his girlfriend. I didn't know the girlfriend existed,' she said.

'I was completely oblivious.

'I just thought this was my friend who was single, who there was no harm in chatting to.'

The former presenter was equally emphatic that she had never knowingly involved herself in another woman's relationship.

'This definitely wasn't me being the other woman or anything of the kind,' she said.

'You can only deal with the facts that you have.

'You can't be held responsible for something you are completely unaware of.'

Looking back now, Salmond says what continues to surprise her most is how a phone call she considers meaningless became a defining moment in one of Australian media's most talked-about relationship breakdowns.

From her perspective, she insists, there was never any hidden motive or romantic undertone.

'There was no situation or deep anything,' she said.

Want to know why Tiffany Salmond was dropped from her plum Fox Sports gig? Tune in to Thursday's episode of The Debrief with Savanna Young, available on Daily Mail's YouTube channel, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.