New Zealand would turn its disadvantages to advantage. Rugby enthusiasts from places where their game hardly registers, would find themselves in a lovely land far from anywhere where rugby was a conversation wherever they went.
They would be able to see the country by campervan, following their team to matches in small towns on a schedule that would give them time to take the long way round, to see the beauty of the landscape and the rough charm of the backblocks.
I don't know how appealing this idea has been to prospective visitors but it excited me. I could see weaker teams based outside the main centres forming bonds with small town rugby clubs, absorbing the way the game is played here, training under helpful eyes and becoming the town's adopted team.
Meanwhile, their travelling supporters would enjoy the country hospitality and go home enchanted forever by the New Zealand experience.
I envisaged this with hope, not confidence. I haven't lived in rural or small town New Zealand since I was a child. Much will have changed in 50 years.
Television hadn't reached the country when my family moved to a city. Motorways and jet aircraft hadn't arrived, rugby was an amateur game.
Some of my hope was soon dashed. When Martin Snedden's organisation tried to interest all regions in bidding to host teams, the response was not overwhelming.
And when it offered visiting teams the folksy rugby experience, it quickly found that even the weaker of them were coming with serious intent. Their coaches, former All Blacks in several cases, didn't want distractions.
Their supporters, though, having paid so much and travelled so far, will want to see the country. I just hope they find the country I knew.
I'm going to go in search of it myself. With the Herald's forbearance I'll spend most of September on the road much like a cup visitor.
Like them, I'm heading off this morning with no preconceptions. It would be easy to assume the worst. The country has changed.
A farm where I used to ride a horse is now a boutique cheese producer with a small factory, showroom and shop in the front paddock.
The nearest town, a metropolis with milk bars, a freezing works, a paper mill, a swimming pool and a picture theatre when I was a kid, was a ghost town the last time I drove through.
All over the world, cities are growing and country populations are dwindling. The trend is no less inexorable in economies based on farm exports. We and Australia are among the most urbanised of nations.
To find the Rugby World Cup outside Auckland I will have to go to small cities now but nevertheless, it is a quest to find something of the country I knew.
The World Cup has always been at risk of becoming an Auckland event. The national investments in Eden Park and Queens Wharf, and the transfer of games from Christchurch after the earthquakes, could easily leave the rest of the country looking on.
In the knock-out phase now, all but one match will be played in Auckland. But it is the pool phase that will make or break the World Cup in New Zealand.
If this is the country I remember, the event will succeed for visitors and residents alike. If it is a different country, one that watches Auckland television, never goes near a school hall or a rugby club and lives a vicarious urban life, I'm going to be disappointed.
But I really don't know. Over the next few weeks I hope to find out.
John Roughan will write in our World Cup pages on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from next week.
