This week's minefield of Super Rugby misinformation proves there's an Indian Ocean's worth of distance between Sanzaar and a logical long-term strategy.
The NRL's key pillar is to get more people playing the game, a simple but noble concept.
"If we don't attract more young players, then our game dies," commission chairman Peter Beattie said.
Upon this bedrock the NRL have identified a women's competition (which will kick off this year), and new stadia to improve the fan experience as achievable goals.
They are also looking at expansion, with clearly identified markets in Perth, country New South Wales, Brisbane's Western Corridor and New Zealand targeted.
Sanzaar's generalissimos meanwhile leave the world map unfurled on their boardroom table while shuffling troops hither in tither in South Africa and Australia, opening up new fronts on the east (Japan) and South America (Argentina), while pondering new theatres in the Pacific.
Working hand-in-glove with the NRL's vision is a new digital business, which will provide a platform for fans to "consume" league into the future.
This is where they're so far ahead of rugby it is not funny. As Elliott Smith detailed this week, Sanzaar are inept when it comes to digital promotion. He's right, but I'd go further: Sanzaar and its constituent parts are inept at promotion full stop.
They've never bought into it, they resent it. They expect people to love rugby for rugby's sake. They offer nothing except a slick promotional ad at the beginning of the season and, no doubt, the release of new ranges of adidas products.
There is no human interest, no behind-the-scenes insight and just a whole lot of top-down suspicion and cynicism towards any media outside of the host broadcaster. It wouldn't surprise me if nobody within that rugby bubble had stopped to ponder why we don't cover Super Rugby with the depth and deference we once did.
Sanzaar's problems are manifold. Their responsibilities cross multiple continents and time zones. Too many matches just do not register.
Yet for all that, there's a great product in there. I watched the last half of the Blues-Waratahs match on Saturday night and came away thinking if that's New Zealand's basket-case franchise up against the best of a bunch of Australian basket cases, then rugby down this end of the world is doing alright.
If only someone could sell that.
Fixing the broken competition will not be easy but the first step they need to take is realising they have a problem – and understanding they need to do more than play pretty rugby to fix it.
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Sometime during the anxious autumnal days of 2015, the Hurricanes passed the Blues overall win-loss record in Super Rugby.
Since then they have put some distance on this weekend's rivals. If my abacus is correct, the Hurricanes regular season record reads 167 wins, 121 losses and six draws, compared to the Blues 152 wins, 137 losses and six draws.
(You'd think this sort of information would be a mouseclick away on sanzarrugby.com but no.)
Yet the Blues have won three titles and have enjoyed 13 winning seasons while the Canes have won a single title and will match the Blues winning-season total only at the end of this campaign (presuming the Blues don't come home with a wet sail).
This is mentioned only because the Blues are widely regarded as New Zealand's perennial underachievers.
I'm not preparing myself to man the barricades to defend the honour of the Blues, but sometimes it is worth remembering that between the Hurricanes, Chiefs and Highlanders, they've mustered just one more title than the Blues alone.
THE WEEK IN MEDIA ...
This is a fascinating and satisfyingly subversive look into the world of algorithmic gambling. It has a local angle, too. From Bloomberg.
Staying on the horse racing theme, here's a story detailing the shockingly similar family trees of this year's Kentucky Derby field, from fivethirtyeight.com.
