Today the situation in Australian rugby is hopeful. If the Waratahs lose to the Blues, however, the situation will suddenly be hopeless. Properly, truly, pack up and go home hopeless.
Australian rugby will become the sort of thing to keep an eye out for in car boot sales: its onlyvalue being nostalgic, it's only interested buyers the old time tragics who can remember the days when the Reds and Brumbies used to scare other teams with the talent at their disposal.
It really will be that bad. The thread to which Australian rugby is clinging will snap and their place in the Super Rugby universe should be seen as tenuous.
No one should assume that Australia should be granted their wish of keeping four teams in a revamped tournament from 2021.
The Waratahs are Australia's best Super Rugby team, the Blues are New Zealand's worst and have headed to Sydney with essentially a rag-tag bunch of rookies and provincial journeymen with no idea - none, zip, zero - how to stay united in the face of sustained pressure.
The Blues are in such a state that it is likely they don't always score when they are unopposed at training and once the Waratahs have located the ground and are safely out of the bus, that will be 80 per cent of the battle won right there.
The Blues are a broken, bumbling mess and if the Waratahs don't win, can't win, then when will this 37-match losing streak for Australian teams against New Zealand opposition end?
It was fun at first, back in 2016 when the streak began. A bit of Aussie-bashing always warms the soul.
It started to feel a bit awkward at the end of last year when a whole season passed without an Australian win and if the sequence isn't broken this weekend then it will be time for New Zealand Rugby to genuinely question whether they want any attachment to a vessel that is clearly sinking without a trace.
Israel Folau of the Waratahs watches on during the round two Super Rugby match between the Waratahs and the Stormers. Photo / Getty.
NZR will no doubt brush off a Waratahs defeat, should it come, as nothing more than an extension of a bad patch for Australia, one that the old foe will work through soon enough.
But three wins in three years is not a bad run so much as confirmation that rugby in Australia has set course for oblivion and intends to be in a thousand pieces by the time it arrives.
The question won't be why give them four Super Rugby teams but why give them any at all?
A solitary Bledisloe victory over a half-strength All Blacks side last year can't paper over the cracks of a sport in freefall across the Tasman.
The Wallabies were thumped by England and twice destroyed by Scotland last year and their coach, Michael Cheika, fluctuates between tactical mastermind and over tired small child blaming anyone and everyone but himself and players for the Wallabies' mounting losses.
They aren't a bad team the Wallabies, it's just they only prove that about one game in every five.
Which is maybe not surprising given the chaos around them. The Australian Rugby Union is permanently rummaging down the back of the couch for cash and have no rainy day fund to bail them out.
This week one of their most senior and best educated Wallabies dressed up as a cow and disgraced himself and captain Michael Hooper failed to make any reassuring noises about being interested in the five-year, one million dollars a season deal he has reportedly been offered.
The there is the whole Israel Folau business where he has managed to alienate vast tracts of the population, drag rugby back to the dark ages and still avoid any official reprimand, solving the mystery of whether player or executive holds the power across the Tasman.
NZR chief executive Steve Tew said in early 2016, before the losing streak began: "If we want to play professional rugby, we can't just play ourselves - we will go out of business very quickly. We can't just play Australia, because the same will apply, it will just take a little bit longer to get there."
But with a strategic paper in front of them about the future of Super Rugby, NZR can't ignore what is staring them in the face - which is, that allowing Australia to retain four teams in Super Rugby is maybe not wise.
NZR's generosity might have to end. They have, after all, killed their own provincial competition in the last 20 years to allow Australia to build theirs.
They have fairly shared the millions in Super Rugby TV revenue even though the Kiwi teams are the ones which have the vast majority of the audience and they indulged the ARU when they wanted to put a team in Melbourne and then in Perth.
To go suddenly cold on Australia may seem like a radical departure from the current thinking, but maybe not so much as NZR appear hell bent on making Super Rugby a procession of games between New Zealand teams and they have played a significant role in marketing the competition to perpetuate the growing sense that the only thing that matters are local derbies.
This idea that New Zealand needs Australia is missing one detail...which is the words like a hole in the head.
