KEY POINTS:
A rugby union devoid of strategies and with a dwindling war chest believes a nation will gasp with delight if they hang on to Dan Carter.
Instead, that same nation should howl in horror at the duplicity and temerity of an organisation which, having bungled their all-or-nothing bid for glory and salvation last year, now clings to life with sweetheart deals for a favoured few.
Attempts at a special deal for Carter have yet to be confirmed, of course. That goes without saying. As with everything in rugby, matters are conducted behind the Kremlin walls where the oligarchs treat the paying public like irrelevant peasants.
If the drumbeats are correct, the NZRU is stitching together a deal for Carter that will have Captain Underpants bulging in all the right financial places. But it's a road to disaster because it will unravel the All Blacks at the seams.
Reports quote the NZRU's professional rugby manager Neil Sorenson as "conceding" that the union has the right to waive the All Black residency requirement under "extraordinary circumstances".
Why waive for Carter, though, when they waved big Carl Hayman goodbye?
Unlike every other player, Carter would be allowed to head for riches overseas and not be required to play in the Super 14 immediately before test selection.
This is a radical u-turn, and in no way comparable to the case of Tana Umaga, who had retired from tests when allowed to take a short summer sojourn for Toulon while still on contract.
A Carter deal strikes at the very heart of the residency rule, whose sole aim is to keep stars in New Zealand Super 14 teams by making it mandatory for All Black selection. It is laughable, no insulting, to suggest that exemptions were envisaged.
A Carter deal isn't a dispensation - it's the disintegration of the domestic rule.
Here are a few questions for Sorenson and the NZRU chief executive, Steve Tew, who is presumably in charge of this blatant rule bending.
* Where were the usual grand announcements and press conferences to signal this crucial change of policy?
* What exactly is the rule about test selections and overseas-based players, and what exemptions does it contain?
* What do these exemptions stipulate, when were these clauses inserted, and who exactly makes the decisions?
* Having revealed your own powers to make exemptions, can a retrospective case be made for a player such as Hayman? Or is it too late under the terms of his Newcastle contract?
* Should we also take it that the three wise men, who thought Aaron Mauger wasn't central to the All Black schemes and left the only in-form winger out of the World Cup quarter-final, are involved in deciding who receives favoured status, when an entirely different coaching and selection panel might be in place within two years?
* Or is the administration alone making these decisions based on whom they can spot on billboards visible from their Wellington offices?
* And would you be good enough to let the public in on your little secrets in future, so we might have a chance to properly judge these matters for ourselves?
This Carter deal is indeed a concession, an admission that the domestic rule is an outright failure that will tear the image and performance of the All Blacks down because leading players continue to flood out of the country and at younger ages.
This sudden discovery of an exemption clause that deals with the Carter situation should further erode any trust the public has left in an NZRU that refused to take responsibility for its disastrous 2007 World Cup strategies, and hid behind a waffling report that left so many things open to acrimonious interpretation.
Any Carter deal will also be a blow to the morale of the All Blacks who must rely on an all for one, one for all desperation when they are sent into the test match trenches.
What the NZRU is saying is that Carter has an automatic ride into the test side without the same examination that will be applied to every other player.
What is so mind boggling is that any Carter deal would open the escape hatch for the very players the NZRU are trying to keep. Richie McCaw would be a sitter for a dispensation, as should Ali Williams and a few others.
If all the best players are on special deals overseas, what is the point of the rule in the first place?
The ground will also be ripe for resentment and rebellion among those who are denied the favoured status on the whim of men such as Tew and Graham Henry, whose competence to judge these matters must be in severe doubt anyway, given their rotten performance in running the World Cup campaign last year.
Those who stayed, at financial cost, because of the rule, might not only question the Carter deal but also make a visit to their lawyers.
This is a road to disaster, a dismantling of what is left of the overstated All Black ideals and an invitation to let perceived star status create cliques in the test side.
Disregard best intentions, because the resolve of the All Blacks will be tested when Carter swans back from Europe where he enjoys the combination of riches and test glory they are denied.
The players will say all the right things and declare undying loyalty to the cause, but it's what lies deep in the heart that counts in the heat of battle and this is a betrayal that will suck the life out of the test team.
Arrogant to a fault, the NZRU is unable to bring itself to admit to defeat, that its policies are rank failures, that they simply do not have the wherewithal to get New Zealand rugby out of a rotten mess that includes falling crowds and departing attractions.
Opening up the All Black selection to players both here and abroad, then relying on private investment and commercial skill to prop up the game here as best as possible, is surely the only hope now.
The NZRU can't possibly be serious in introducing the marquee player concept into test match rugby. The only way to operate a test side is to force all the players to scratch and claw their way to the top over exactly the same rules.
The moment this code of unity is broken is the moment that players abandon the last vestiges of common good that are vital for the test match battle and instead rediscover their instincts of self-interest.
Yet now we are about to witness players who can wave their dispensation cards around, the way the elite in the Soviet Union used to flaunt their foreign currency in Berioska shops.
Obsessed with their own power and powers, the NZRU is sneaking around the dark palace corridors doing deals while any wisdom and light which exist outside the walls are left to waste.
There are people in this country with the savvy, experience, strength and wisdom to find ways of countering and working with the mighty, competitive financial forces overseas.
Those people don't exist in the media, and they certainly aren't Sorenson or Tew, men who are unable to envisage a big picture and compensate for that by desperately joining little dots together. But they are out there, somewhere, and won't be found until the NZRU releases its disastrous grip on the game.
The NZRU's standard answer to any problem is to schedule another test match, and even if it's staged in Hong Kong, never mind that the rest of us are increasingly bored with them, especially when they usually involve a battle between second-rate teams.
It is time for a palace coup, but we won't get one in New Zealand rugby, a place full of obsequious branch office characters all slurping from the same dwindling trough. Those who might have the nous to contribute are quickly sucked in or forced into the NZRU ways.
The NZRU faces massive hurdles not of its own making, but it foolishly believes the way to fight back is by constantly fiddling with the rule book.
Now, with the crumbling ruins piling up around it, the NZRU is preparing to tear away the remaining bonds which can still make the All Blacks great. They are separating players into categories, creating division that is likely to rip them apart.
The game is over. Rather than heralding the great new dawn, sneaky Carter-type deals signal the beginning of the end.
