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A government agency waved its magic $450,000 wand at league this week, but unfortunately it failed to produce a magician.
Then again, even Merlin would have his work cut out with New Zealand league.
A merlin they should try to find of course, a charismatic and driven character who will probably have to take a wage cut for the privilege of trying to get our league out of a mess. Good luck to those trying to find this miracle man. And good luck to the man himself.
But I fear that a bunch of grey-suited men will end up in charge of this grey world.
It will take much more than good intentions, a 133-page report, a couple of hundred grand and a state-appointed board to lift the sport above where it is now.
Anyway, someone had to step in to stop the league rot and it turned out to be Sparc and its special investigation unit headed by Sir John Anderson.
Cutting out the bad bits is going to be a lot easier than the next bit however. The die has been cast for league.
Stated intentions, such as sweeping the game through the school system, are much easier said than done. High participation in the traditional codes is being tested in a changing society anyway, and league is already on the back foot.
Good luck fellas, but I wouldn't be counting any chickens just yet.
A few of league's problems have been its own fault. But some important ones are largely beyond the control of the sport and its administrators.
Still, someone should have torn through the NZRL offices a lot sooner than this, because this writing has been on the wall ever since Graham Carden, later a convicted fraudster, got hold of the game in the mid-1990s.
At a lunch that will live in the memory for anyone who was there, Carden - the boss of the ill-fated national competition - was adorned by grateful sponsors in a Hawaiian shirt that was supposed to represent the holiday he deserved for having got the Lion Red Cup off the ground. He got a holiday all right, a few years later, courtesy of the justice system after playing jiggery-pokery with poker machines.
Carden, who coached Glenora to Auckland and national club runner-up positions in 1988, had the gift of the gab. He worked himself into a position of firstly becoming the NZRL's sponsorship manager through his private company and then became the NZRL chairman on a shonky election involving a switched Auckland vote.
After a blitzkrieg operation in which Carden led the NZRL into Super League's cash-stuffed bed in 1995, cutting ties with the Australian Rugby League in the process, he charged a hefty fee. That was when the national administration turned bad. Carden clipped the ticket - to use a phrase of Sir John's - and according to this report, has not been the only one.
Carden's league crimes also included foistering unrealistic champagne dreams on a beer-budget sport, with nary a nod to economic good sense. He was a trailblazer in this and the trail has hopefully ended at Sir John's door.
Normally, this column would feel inclined to rage against such a weighty report that will create its own too-hard basket. Reports are like elections, when anticipation runs into a brief euphoria, followed by a long and large dose of reality.
There isn't actually a lot to manage in New Zealand league, which makes the scale of its mismanagement even more grotesque. There is no national club competition and never will be again, nor things such as Olympic qualification to deal with, and few opportunities to arrange test matches and virtually none for international tours.
The NZRL job description has become increasingly light. An old league mate likes to tell me that there's an old bloke operating out of a cupboard at Parramatta with more to do than the NZRL.
The national administration used to be a bit busier, when league ran a decent international schedule and New Zealand still had big-name players based here.
Not since the days that the old nurseryman George Rainey ran league in this land has it been done with the necessary order, integrity and dignity. There were some grand old men around in those days, like Rainey's Glenora comrade Gus Malam. They had their critics but they were straight and true.
There have been honest and well-intentioned men nestled among the scallywags since, and - I have to say - a couple of the craziest sports administrators you could ever meet.
And yet, would anyone have made a huge difference? League never had a major hold on the country anyway.
What Rainey knew, and what has come to pass, is that league would inevitably slide once the country's best players flooded into the English and Australian professional ranks. Rainey made a vain and futile attempt to stem the tide. What we are left with now is a development game.
There were honest mistakes made, for sure, including the mid-1990 amalgamation of Auckland clubs for the Lion Red Cup. Many clubs were extremely sceptical about the concept, and with good reason. The spirit went out of the game as manufactured teams like the Vulcans came into being, and the Otahuhus and Mt Alberts of this world were relegated to second place.
And yet, once again, you have to ask whether this failed course of action has had much of an effect in the long run. Club crowds were dropping before Carden and his national club mess arrived, along with signs of problems in the international arena.
There is an irony to what is being portrayed as a league disaster, however.
For most of us, the game seems in decent shape, because we can watch the Warriors and turn on the NRL every weekend. For most New Zealand league fans, it doesn't matter whether 17,000 or 40,000 play league here. There is still a high-class competition to watch, including a very competitive New Zealand side and Aussie clubs with Kiwi players. More New Zealanders would have watched league during what have been troubled domestic times than ever before.
Scouts will still find the raw talent, and the raw talent will be keen to join the Warriors or Australian clubs.
In this regard, league is in a better position than every other New Zealand sport bar rugby.
The new regime should at least give people confidence in the game's integrity, but I doubt whether they will achieve much that the general public will notice beyond what we have already been left with. In all honesty, the NZRL is largely a bystander.
Onwards and upwards, and the NRL season is almost upon us. Stacey Jones is back, and the Warriors look well capable of mounting a title challenge. The Warriors are embedded in the national sporting culture and a fascinating season awaits.
Can tennis or golf or soccer or cricket or athletics or hockey or any other sport offer up anything to compare? Not even close.
The Anderson report found plenty of gloom, as it had to, but in many ways the present and the future for league is fairly bright.
