As a decimated Australia roll into Cardiff this week - an injury or two from having to call upon Harold Bishop, Scott and Charlene, and Bouncer the dog - there’s the distinct possibility we’ll see another depressing sight unfold on Westgate Street.
Defeat to a Wallabies side limping painfully towards the end of a long year would be a mere swift boot to the teeth in a time of slow and unrelenting gut punches.
Bar a workmanlike victory over Argentina, there’s been precious few enjoyable moments in the last month or so. Suffering a record home defeat to a ‘vulnerable’ All Blacks side set the mood for the autumn, while a first ever loss to Georgia plumbed new depths.
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The latter has piled the pressure on Wales coach Wayne Pivac, with it being hard to see how he feasibly survives this latest test.
The former Scarlets boss wouldn’t be moved on whether he needed to win to stay in a job, but the facts are that there’ll be a review at the end of this campaign - as there is for every one - and he’ll certainly be on the back foot when that rolls around.
Presiding over a first defeat to Georgia tends to do that to you.
But of all the depressing sights on Westgate Street in the last month, nothing quite came close to the one at the end of October, yards down the road from the Principality Stadium in the Parkgate Hotel. The inability for the governance structure of the Welsh Rugby Union to be in any way modernised at its AGM signalled, perhaps once and for all, that definitive, tangible change in Welsh rugby is seemingly futile.
Granted, the option for the board to appoint an independent chair would only have been the start of the changes needed, with the WRU's former chair Gareth Davies having previously tried to bring that change in 2018. That resulted in Davies being ousted by an emergency general meeting.
Everything else after that, and the most recent AGM, has simply been a self-fulfilling prophecy. The latest attempt to bring in an independent chair failed to meet the 75% voting share of the member clubs, with Davies' successor, Rob Butcher, resigning in the following days. Defeat to Georgia is just the result of where the game has been allowed to drift towards.
As he put the many issues of the Welsh game to rights in his Times column this week, Sam Warburton was right to say that little will change and “we will be in the same situation in 12 months”.
Or, more likely, even worse off still.
You can’t help but be reminded of a quote from Yes, Minister’s Sir Humphrey Appleby - still as relevant as it ever was.
“Minister, there are two basic rules of government: Never look into anything you don't have to. And never set up an inquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be.”
The latter might prove relevant whenever that review into this autumn campaign takes place. Regardless of the result against the Wallabies, there might already be a verdict in place on Pivac.
But in the grand scheme of things, as easy as it is to be drawn into the coaching situation, either getting rid of Pivac or keeping faith in him will matter little if it isn’t accompanied by widespread change across the game. Deckchairs on the Titanic and all that.
The archaic governance structure wherein the amateur game retains too much of a say in the pro game remains the biggest obstacle to any sort of reform. The last month showed that this particular hurdle is as high as it’s ever been.
Warburton bemoaned the make-up of the WRU's board, with eight of the 12 members from the community game. That was one of the things that Davies sought to reform during his time as chair.
What he wanted was a 12-person board comprising of; An independent chairperson, WRU CEO, WRU Finance Director, Chair of the Community Game Board, Chair of the Professional Rugby Board, Two non-executive directors and appointed area directors.
What he got was: WRU CEO, three independent directors (including Chair of the Professional Rugby Board), Chair of the Community Game Board (Butcher), two national council members (both elected by clubs) and five district council members (all elected by clubs).
The end result was a WRU board that weighted towards the amateur game, allowing the grassroots to maintain a stranglehold on the whole organisation. There are still experienced business people in the union, but their influence is stilted by the inability to enact real change. Any decision the PRB wants to make still has to be signed off by a board that has a majority of members elected into roles by the amateur game.
With that still leaving us, as Warburton noted, in the “Stone Ages”, the problems are piling up. Most notably, the current impasse between the WRU and the professional sides is reaching breaking point.
No financial agreement has been reached between the two parties, leaving the regions in the dark over their budgets for not only this season, but next year as well. Because of that, contracts can’t be signed and players are stuck in limbo, with some questioning when they have to put their family and future first.
It’s a stark contrast to when the regions were consistently competitive, being adequately financed and providing the backbone for the best part of Warren Gatland’s reign. However, once the focus turned to Team Wales, the regions have since been starved of what they need financially - even carrying the burden of a £20m debt during the Covid pandemic - leading to the slow decline of the game in this country. As a result, we’re simply reaping what we’ve sown at this point.
The current situation feels like a hand-to-mouth existence compounded by self-interest and it’s hard to see how long it can last. Whatever the reason though, it seems there’s often a lack of impetus to drive that change.
While the review will take place over the coaching ticket at some point, will a mirror be held back at those holding said review? Probably not, in all honesty.
There’s a smattering of scrutiny, but hardly a united front. This week has gone a little way towards that, but more still is needed.
As a former Wales captain and one-time member of the current coaching ticket, Warburton’s decision to speak out on the slow and painful decline of the Welsh game is much-needed. The fact that the former Lions skipper is as straight-laced and consummate as they come - he’s not a shock jock by any means - only adds credibility to his words.
Beyond him, we’ve seen Cardiff captain Josh Turnbull speak openly about the pressures of job insecurity currently weighing down upon players. WRU CEO Steve Phillips’ advice to ‘stick with us’ seems a little lightweight when you hear tales of some players considering jobs away from the game.
Dragons chairman David Buttress has long been vocal about his frustrations with the governing body in this country. This week, he tweeted that the WRU is “the worst governance I’ve ever seen in any business or company that I’ve ever been involved in”.
He also bemoaned the way that experienced business people like Andrew Williams and Amanda Blanc had been lost by Welsh rugby once they could “see change is very hard.”
Blanc, who quit her role as PRB chairwoman a year ago, herself posted on social media this week that, unsurprisingly, the “ship had sailed” on her returning to help Welsh rugby, adding it “wasn’t for the lack of trying”.
“Fundamental change still needed; national conversation alongside much better dialogue with all stakeholders,” she added.
As long as the usual hurdles of self-interest continue to pop up, you fear that soul-searching will never have to really be done.
Changing the coaching ticket will be easy in relative terms, but turning the tanker that is Welsh rugby away from oblivion is a much harder task.
Maybe a genuine united front could actually achieve the seismic change needed.
But, as has become abundantly clear, the hardest thing to achieve in Welsh rugby is change itself.
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