So it's Warren Gatland who is riding to the rescue for Welsh rugby. And whilst I obviously wish him the very best for the Six Nations and then the World Cup over the coming 10 months, it's what happens after that which will have the most significant bearing upon the future of the game here in Wales.
Once events at France 2023 have unfolded, it may well be Gatland moves upstairs, so to speak, in an overarching Director of Rugby role, where he seeks to make significant changes to the structure of the Welsh game.
That will involve a root-and-branch look at the four Welsh regions, who continue to underperform, and the Welsh Premiership as well. These are the issues that need fixing in order to underpin Welsh rugby moving forward, just as the old club game was the foundation for our great Wales team of the 1970s, a XV made up largely of us grizzly Pontypool forwards, Llanelli's brilliant backs and with the odd Cardiff player also in the mix to provide stardust.
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When the WRU announced they were undertaking a review of the autumn campaign under Wayne Pivac, I afforded myself a little smile. There is nothing new in Welsh rugby reviews, it's what you do with the findings of any review that is key. Most of these reports end up being filed away somewhere in a drawer, gathering dust and rarely to be seen again.
I recall us losing 23-3 to New Zealand in a celebration game in the centenary season in 1980-81 at the Arms Park. Cue a Welsh rugby crisis, a review into what was supposedly going so badly wrong - this after that scoreline, mind, not successive 50-point autumn hammerings Pivac's team have just had.
What happened? Nothing, really.
There was another report produced after an embarrassing defeat to Romania. That's still lost in an old filing cabinet somewhere, probably.
If you don't learn the lessons from the past, it doesn't augur well for the future!
However, to prove that things can change for the better, and thus Gatland can indeed offer hope, I also cast my mind back to the 1960s when Wales did badly in South Africa, the customary review took place, and it was deemed Ray Williams would come on board as WRU Coaching Organiser. A kind of Director of Rugby role of its time, you might say.
Anyway, on this occasion the review did work. Williams was duly appointed and he subsequently put in place a coaching structure that made Wales the envy of the world. Ray even went to New Zealand to lecture on what we were doing here. He was a visionary - suddenly Wales produced a plethora of top players, who were being coached properly, and we had that golden era of the 1970s.
As soon as Wales lost to Australia, a defeat directly linked to poor substitutions of Taulupe Faletau, Alun Wyn Jones and Ken Owens made by Pivac, I'd come to the conclusion Welsh rugby badly needed a new visionary. A modern-day Ray Williams figure to conduct a root-and-branch reform of our game, look at what's going wrong from top to bottom, and implement much-needed change.
Whether Gatland is the visionary, I'm not entirely sure? Perhaps, in tandem with Ieuan Evans the newly appointed WRU chairman.
Time will tell on that one, I guess. Certainly in the short term I fully expect him to turn around results. His style, dubbed Warrenball, is very simple. Go forward before you earn the right to go wide. He is familiar with the players, they're certainly familiar with his style of play.
The new ones who aren't will find it very easy to adapt to what Gatland demands, because of its simplicity. We have certainly got a number of players, like Louis Rees-Zammit, Josh Adams, Jac Morgan, amongst others, who have shown that they know the way to the try line.
So expect Wales to be competitive in the Six Nations, to recover our credibility at the World Cup; expect a rugby-mad Welsh public who'd become demoralised by results and events under Pivac, to have renewed hope and optimism under Gatland.
What then, we need to be asking? What we can't afford, next time Gatland goes, is to be left with the kind of deep hole we've clearly had over the last three years and which Pivac certainly could not fill.
Gatland needs to be looking at everything in the Welsh game and making suggestions to implement change. The regional structure, how it's funded, how the academies are run, why youngsters aren't getting enough battle-hardened rugby, what role the Welsh Premiership needs to play in the future.
Gatland has experience of the Irish model, based upon his time in charge there, as well, of course, as the New Zealand provincial model. It makes me smile, and a little sad, when I think of the dominance teams like Leinster and Munster have had over the Welsh regions. Pontypool used to play the Munster province regularly, so too Llanelli versus Leinster - and we'd beat them home and away.
That shows the differing directions in which the two countries have gone in recent times. So what can we do to bridge the gap?
Well we can't go back to club rugby, that horse has bolted. So over to Gatland to use his influence upon the regions, who started well enough when first replacing the clubs, but who in recent times have continued to produce poor results.
It's too easy to say just give the regions more money. I'm not entirely convinced that would be the solution. I appreciate the Irish teams have a bit more funding from their union, but when I look at the decent line-ups of some of the Welsh sides in certain fixtures, and see them lose, sometimes heavily, something isn't matching up.
The benefactors, I personally feel, have wasted a lot of their own money trying to make it work - and indeed wasted an opportunity. Credit to them for their efforts, but where are we today?
In my view the time has come for a different, indeed I believe better, structure to be put in place. That, for me, means the WRU taking control and ownership of the regions, funding the playing contracts, working out what is affordable - and just as importantly what is not. That's a personal view.
Let's be brutally honest, the regions haven't really appealed to the Welsh public at large from day one when David Moffett announced that the system was going to change, with one of the new teams based in North Wales. When there was uproar at that plan, it was changed and a Bridgend/Pontypridd side was set up. Celtic Warriors started promisingly, finishing fourth in the Celtic League and winning four out of six Heineken Cup games - yet they were soon scrapped.
Is four the right number of teams? It's certainly easier to retain the status quo, rather than reduce to three or two, even though that has been mooted many times. But the regions certainly don't fill me with confidence at the moment, the attendance figures aren't great, results are often terrible. We have to find a way of helping them tap into the Welsh public, which probably means success.
Maybe Gatland will recommend the WRU take decisive action to change the structure and that they come in-house, under union control? That way the WRU are happy with the funding, they determine where the money is spent. And how much.
As I say, it's something I'd like to see, personally.
Hopefully then, we'd also see an end to situations like the current one where players aren't even able to sort out new contracts, and thus their futures, which isn't fair on anybody. It's the players who are copping it. We have already lost Will Rowlands to Racing 92 because of the uncertainty. Don't forget he was voted the Welsh Player of the Year last season.
In Rowlands' case, he is no doubt in a position where his income will be a darned sight more than it would be if his contract had been sorted out at the Dragons. His other major decision will have been whether the increase in money is worth losing his international career because of the 60-cap rule.
Maybe Gatland will be able to find a way around that one, too. He has huge influence here.
What do you think should happen with Welsh rugby? Have your say in our comments section below
What baffles me and I also find annoying is that there have been months of negotiations and playing hardball to the point of brinkmanship. The WRU have been protecting their bottom line, with the regions protecting their investment, cash flow and ability to be competitive.
Suddenly the WRU have found enough money to pay off Pivac, to pay Gatland a significant salary and pay off his contract with the Waikato Chiefs, also. Plus the costs associated with paying the salaries of the coaches he will want to assist him, as well as possibly paying off the coaches he will wish to dispense with.
Anyway, we are where we are. Hopefully Gatland will sort things, including the coaching situation in Wales - to ensure that when he does leave for a second time, there are a whole number of really good younger Welsh coaches capable of taking the helm of the national side.
And that the regions are in much better shape when it comes to producing good results.
