Let's start with Dave Rennie.
Amid the clamour to anoint Eddie Jones the Wallabies instant saviour, Rennie's shabby treatment has been glossed over.
Jones, Australian rugby's long lost Randwick son, is the shiny new headline-grabbing toy everyone wants to grasp as the game-changer.
Maybe Jones will, indeed, transform Australian rugby. Yet he must first confront systemic issues. And so with the Wallabies, there are no guarantees.
Never mind the scapegoat, though.
Three years ago Rennie assumed the daunting task of a major cultural rebuild with the Wallabies. Having done the hard yards through COVID's widespread challenges, through this year's horrific 40-odd player injury toll, on the verge of his defining shot at the World Cup Rennie suddenly becomes yesterday's man.
Axing a coach is never easy. Yet Rugby Australia's approach could hardly have been worse. Rennie was sacked via Zoom at 6am after staging a Wallabies camp on the Gold Coast. Such a shambolic situation speaks to the swift deterioration of the relationship between bolshy chairman Hamish McLennan and the head coach.
As if announcing Rennie's replacement in the same press release wasn't cold blooded enough, the Wallabies' social media team then immediately trumpeted Jones' return by posting vision of the 2003 World Cup final defeat to England, some 20 years ago in his first stint as Wallabies coach, set against the backdrop of the 'coming home' soundtrack.
Two days later a carefully agreed statement from Rennie, via Rugby Australia, finally emerged. The most telling line of which was this: "I'm disappointed I won't be able to see out my contract in the way I agreed to back in 2019 but leave knowing I had the full support of the playing group and the staff."
Rennie, in short, deserved better. Sure, his 38 per cent win record and the maiden loss to Italy deserves scrutiny, but closer inspection reveals narrow away defeats against the world's two form nations, France and Ireland, on last year's northern tour and a Bledisloe victory in Melbourne snatched from the Wallabies grasp by a never-seen-before refereeing decision at the death.
In the wake of such a brutal, cutthroat decision any leading Kiwi, or foreign coach for that matter, would be mad to risk their hard-grafted reputation by working for Rugby Australia again, particularly under this administration.
As an aside, after months of threatening to walk away from Super Rugby - a powerplay to gain more broadcast revenue from their New Zealand counterparts - Rugby Australia has now shelled out a fair chunk of their future uplift on Rennie's payout and a bold five-year contract for Jones.
For an organisation in a dire financial state, you could hardly call that good business. Was waiting eight months really that difficult? McLennan clearly doesn't subscribe to the patience is a virtue mantra.
Rugby Australia has instead gone all in on Jones. In doing so, they will ride the prevailing positive sentiment. That wave is, however, certain to rise and crash sharply at times over the next five years.
Such is his exuberance Jones brings experience, entertainment and eyeballs - the latter two commodities highly desirable for a code constantly scrapping for back pages in a congested sporting market.
Jones should extract an instant lift from the Wallabies, starting with the Rugby Championship, but the depth at his disposal will be a challenge compared to that he enjoyed with England.
While Jones boasts a proven track record of making an immediate impact on Test teams, longer term the litany of assistant coaches he churned through with England, and their underwhelming results since 2019, underlines the trend of his intense, demanding personality increasingly wearing thin.
With a British & Irish Lions tour (2025) and home World Cup (2027) headline acts to following his homecoming season, this is where the risk rests on Jones' five-year contract.
As far as local coaching candidates are concerned, the likes of Dan McKellar, Brad Thorn and Darren Coleman may well be forced abroad, too.
Jones' task is far from straightforward, either. His first assignment is an unforgiving trip to South Africa, and he will then be thrust into attempting to regain the coveted Bledisloe the All Blacks have held for 20 straight years.
Predicting results is impossible. All Blacks coach Ian Foster will, however, know all too well mind games will ratchet up several notches when the Bledisloe is contested in Melbourne and Dunedin from late July.
Remember the 2019 World Cup semifinal, when Jones claimed his England training was filmed from a nearby apartment? Such antics are par for the course with Eddie at the helm.
Strap yourself in for further mischievous shenanigans.
Outside the World Cup the Bledisloe is the most treasured prize for the All Blacks and Wallabies this year. Inserting Jones over Rennie surely comes with the expectation Rugby Australia will, sooner than later, demand a return on their investment.
On the other side of the ditch New Zealand Rugby has, to this point at least, largely retained a watching brief on appointing the next All Blacks coach.
In the last comments on the matter chief executive Mark Robinson indicated in December the national body is leaning towards breaking tradition to make a pre-World Cup appointment, but no definitive decisions have yet emerged.
With Australia, England and Wales locking in long term mentors in the past five weeks, pressure will soon mount on NZ Rugby to determine their appointment process.
Crusaders supremo Scott Robertson and Japan coach Jamie Joseph, among others, will soon grow restless otherwise.
A matter of months ago Robertson was linked to the England, Wales and Wallabies test posts. Scotland and Japan are now his only realistic international alternatives after seeking a seventh straight Super Rugby title this season.
With a World Cup campaign to plan, Foster also needs certainty over his future prospects.
All of which dictates NZ Rugby cannot let this issue that has dominated the Test rugby landscape drag on.