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After rugby union endured as terrible a year as any Australian sport has ever had, it now finds itself adrift in a sea of crises.
Between the disastrous World Cup, the embarrassing Eddie Jones saga, the departure of high-profile chairman Hamish McLennan, the polarising signing of Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii and the loss of Mark Nawaqanitawase, rugby is dealing with the roughest of waters on a ship that is suffering from years of neglect.
It is taking on water at a frightening rate and staying afloat is far from guaranteed.
The game needs a boost, pure and simple. A jump start to reanimate itself, a system reset that allows everything – from the boardroom at the top to the grassroots development systems at the bottom – to begin anew.
The chance for that is on the horizon in next year's British and Irish Lions Tour and the home World Cup two years later. Through the darkest times, they have been the true north, the flower of light in a field of darkness that gives the believers strength to carry on.
The future of Australian rugby depends on those two events. It is difficult to imagine one of Australia's major sports dying but if the Lions Tour and the World Cup go poorly there is every chance rugby union shrinks into something unrecognisable from its glory days, which feel further and further away all the time.
The process will be complicated because there is much to be done but the outcome is simple – just win. They don't have to win it all, but they do have to win some and they have to do it soon.
Win, because it makes you handsome. Win, because it makes people care. Win, because it creates heroes. Win, because it really can fix everything. Win, because rugby union in Australia cannot afford to find out what happens if they don't.
That path towards salvation or oblivion commences in earnest when Super Rugby Pacific kicks off on Friday night. That might seem like an unlikely place for the battle for rugby's future to begin but the Lions Tour and the World Cup are journeys, not destinations.
On both occasions, Australian rugby will bare its soul to the world so they better have something to show.
Building whatever that is going to be, starts right now.
Here's a couple of questions to think about. Your average sports fan, your rank and file punter, the kind of person who exists between diehard and casual observer — how many current Wallabies could they name?
One or two? Maybe five to 10 if they were particularly well-informed? Who is the most well-known Australian rugby player? Is it still Michael Hooper? Quade Cooper? Kurtley Beale, maybe? Do we have to go all the way back to Israel Folau? Is it somehow Suaallii, even though he's yet to play a game?
Creating winning teams and creating individual stars goes hand in hand because through the former just about anyone can become the latter. It just hasn't happened that way in Australia for some time now, for the state franchises or the national side.
That lack of success has fostered a disinterest in Super Rugby which is beginning to permeate the Wallabies among the wider sporting consciousness. No other football code in Australia has more of a symbiotic relationship between its domestic competition and its national side than rugby union – what happens to one invariably affects the other, more so than any of their rivals.
Rugby league, with its robust club competition and State of Origin series, could lose the national side tomorrow and some clubs and administrators would be popping champagne.
Aussie Rules has no international game to speak of, while football offers a potential glimpse into the far future for Australian rugby – a national team primarily filled with overseas players and a domestic league with dwindling attendance and sporadic fan interest.
The path to salvation for rugby union ends with Wallabies victories but it does not begin there. New coach Joe Schmidt needs something to pick from first. It has to start with the states winning Super Rugby matches, reinvigorating fan interest and developing players.
Doing so is no easy task, but the three departments are linked – progress in one begets progress in the other.
The most essential Super Rugby has felt in recent years was, incredibly, during the second pandemic season when the Reds downed the Brumbies in the 2021 Super Rugby Australia final in front of 40,000 fans at Lang Park courtesy of an 85th-minute try to James O'Connor.
Before that, you have to go all the way back to the Waratahs legendary triumph in 2014, which is now long enough ago that some of the Tahs best young players, like Max Jorgensen and Teddy Wilson, are trying to recreate a legend they barely remember.
They think they can do it too, because they are young and fit and fearless. All they know from their younger days is winning, so that's what they're expecting to bring.
"I remember how well they were doing and going to the final but I was pretty young. The atmosphere at the games was awesome but I only remember flashes, it was a long time ago," Jorgensen said.
"It's the 150th year of the Tahs and the 10-year anniversary of the 2014 team and we're looking to do the same thing they did – achieve greatness.
"The fans would get back on, we'd have a big support group around us, it'd be amazing."
Jorgensen, all 19 years and 88 kilograms of him, is the great hope of Australian rugby and after his rookie season last year why wouldn't he be?
After scoring a double in his Super Rugby debut, Jorgensen was a breath of fresh air for the Waratahs and a shock selection for Australia's World Cup squad before a fractured fibula prevented him from making his Test debut.
The Tahs have been patient with him in his recovery – he made his return from injury in a trial last weekend and will come off the bench against the Reds on Saturday – but his future in the sport seems limitless.
With that comes talk – especially of a potential move to rugby league – and pressure, which has crippled many a rugby prodigy in the past.
But Jorgensen believes he can handle whatever comes his way. He has big plans for this season, as big as the plans Australian rugby has for him.
"The main thing is I always I back myself. I have the ability to live up to the pressure. Backing myself, knowing I can do it, not letting it get into my head," Jorgensen said.
"I know I have the ability and if something goes wrong you have to move past it because you're here for a reason.
"I want to back myself more, go out of my comfort zone. I want to look for the ball more, control the boys more, be more loud out there.
"I have a year of experience, so I'm feeling more confident. After my debut I knew I could do what I do at that level, I knew I was comfortable where I was."
Gradual progress for Jorgensen and his ilk could pay off in the long run. It's not easy to be patient with a talent on your hands, a desperation to win and a ticking clock that grows louder and louder all the time, but it's often the right way.
That's how it could work out for Wilson, who is beginning his third season with the Tahs. He is a halfback of the future, who captained Australia at the under-20s World Cup last year and looks as good a scrum base prospect as the country has had in years.
This season he's still a back-up behind Tahs skipper Jake Gordon. But for those big days down the road, Wilson might be there. He's still learning, still finding his way, but he might be one of the good ones.
"I have to narrow my focus, lock in on each game, each week and have an impact no matter what my role in the team might be," Wilson said.
"You have to be confident in yourself and not always listen to the outside noise. Focus on what you can do, because you can't control what happens on the outside.
"Do that well, to the best of your ability, and prepare as best you can for when the time comes. Even if it doesn't work, you know you've done everything you can."
Jorgensen and Wilson, like Melbourne's Carter Gordon and the ACT's Billy Pollard, are at the forefront of a generation of up and comers the game is depending on like never before.
Over the past decade there have been many potential saviours for Australian rugby. Some of them, like Jordan Petaia and Taniela Tupou, have gone on to become Wallabies regulars, if not the transcendent stars they were once promised to be. That's what happens when the boys play well but the team doesn't win.
Others, like Noah Lolesio, struggled with the weight of the world on their shoulders, which is fair enough, because it's a hell of a thing to carry.
But there is no hiding away from the pressure for the current crop because of what's on the edge of the map.
Australian rugby needs, for it's own sanity and survival, a team that can compete with the Lions and go deep into the next World Cup. It needs stars. It needs heroes. It needs winners, now more than any other time in its history.
It won't be easy. Acting like Australia rugby just has to decide to start winning to right the ship is like saying you can climb Mt Everest by simply deciding it will be done.
Even as Super Rugby faces its own existential crisis in New Zealand, the Kiwi teams are still the power in these waters. The four title favourites according to the bookies are all across the Tasman.
The Melbourne Rebels will be lucky to play another game beyond this year, the Reds and the Tahs were competitive without shining last year, the Force struggle badly on the road, and the Brumbies are perennially consistent but have found it hard to hit the next level.
None of them need to win a lot but at least a few of them have to start winning a little more.
If Australian rugby is ever going to get it back, it has to start now. The time will come when the Wallabies take on the Lions, and later the world, but the soldiers for that fight will be fought long before that, on forgotten Friday nights that feel a world away from the glamorous stages to come.
The battle for the soul and the future of Australian rugby is beginning right now, with a low profile and high stakes, with everything to lose and a world to gain.
In 18 months, the bell will sound and rugby needs someone to answer it and the heroes for that time must be forged in Super Rugby.