Has anyone who holds this belief ever interrogated it themselves?
The game isn't healthy, but specifically - in what way does the 'the code have it's head in the sand' over these issues that are seemingly faced and unresolved by every national union around the world, and that have been for the better part of 2 decades - again, globally.
It's like you believe that successive administrations have all been of the belief that Rugby is the countries premier sport (I'll give you McClennan...) where in reality they've just failed to grow the game on and off the field - like everyone else, everywhere.
We seem to look overseas with these incredibly dark rose tinted glasses - but outside of us also having to compete with the NRL for player talent, they face the same issues we do and are struggling the same to.
The game is supposedly healthy & growing at a Test level, but it appears that at the domestic level it is struggling in virtually every market it has a presence in, Except two countries that don't have a slave relationship with there Test team. could not part of that issue being the game domestically is collapsing under the weight of supporting that level (Test) of the game.
The code is suffering from trying to finance itself through a single entity, the Wallabies or each countries individual test team.
I do believe successive administrations have failed to address the issue of growing the game internally in this country, never once have they looked at the AFL/NRL and gone maybe we could learn a thing or two from them.
No because the RA have peddled in this belief that the game here is the Premier code or there equal, all it takes is a couple of Wallaby wins.
Why have they failed so dismally to grow the game here domestically, when it appears other codes have not had such problems doing so???
The Rebels are IMO a classic example of a sporting structure without any real grasp of reality or genuine idea of what is was supposed to be doing, or how to do it. Everyone got paid and we all hit the buffet as hard as we could, and now its the blame game.
But are we any closer to understanding why and how we got ourselves into this crap situation. NO, I agree we should all look and interrogate ourselves a bit more, but all I see is a bunch of people running around with brooms desperately looking for a carpet.