All have failed to deliver an outcome and quite amazingly it has turned what should have been a relatively straightforward project into a modern version of the Labours of Hercules.
They have had 25 years of professionalism to fix the problem – quadruple the time in which Elon Musk and Richard Branson have created commercial space travel – and still all the international game has is a convoluted, underwhelming, meaningless July and November test programme that is worked out years in advance, kept a giant secret and absolutely not fit for purpose.
The season starts, but seemingly never ends, and has become one continuous wave of rugby that is battering players, diluting the value of tests and failing to grow interest.
Given the history and the many failed attempts, it is probably against all better judgement to be even just a touch optimistic that a solution may be in sight.
World Rugby is supposedly closing in on an agreement with its member unions and key stakeholders to create some kind of meaningful competition through the July and November tests.
A number of specific ideas are on the table – all of which will begin in 2024 and all of which are different versions of the same thing: which is a biennial competition that will see the leading teams from the North play the leading teams from the South, culminating in a final.
Goodness knows it's foolish to believe that something marketable and appropriate could finally be agreed, but perhaps what's different this time is the arrival of a new voice around the table – one which has power and, critically, a vested interest in rising above petty politics, self-preservation and all the other factors that have stymied progress in the past.
That new interest is private equity firm CVC which bought a stake in the commercial revenue of the Six Nations earlier this year.
They are in the business of making money and hence are not shackled by a sense of tradition, or motivated to vote against something just to avenge some perceived historic wrong by an old foe.
CVC has a single, uncomplicated mandate to put the fans first and ask what they want.
It is appalling that this has never been able to happen before but small-minded, self-interested decision-making by a largely entitled group of administrators, blinded by their own sense of importance, has been the core reason the game has never managed to build a global season.
It is a little shameful that it has taken a private equity group – an investment sector portrayed as cold, shark-like and with an unashamed capacity to exploit human capital – to cut through the nonsense and remember precisely whose wallets are being emptied to fund the sport.
Shameful but ultimately welcome, as most fans arguably won't care who is responsible for giving them what they want as long as they do indeed get what they want.
There is an unease about the Six Nations having jumped into bed with CVC, a sense their alliance is destined, much like Othello's daughter, to end up making the beast with two backs and ultimately the investment firm will leave the international game in a worse state than when it entered.
But for now, whatever longer term problems may arise - from mixing sport with capitalism in its most ruthless form - can be left to worry about another day.
CVC has only been in the game for a veritable five minutes and may have fixed something that rugby's supposed brightest have ineffectively danced around for a quarter of a century.
That's enough, for now, to make CVC a welcome disruptor.
