It is a sport that is perfectly suited to the physiology, psychology and philosophically of the most disadvantaged parts of Scotland and the profile of the national team has never been higher than it is right now with involvement alongside the global game’s big three in the Four Nations tournament.

Yet, if one of the champions of internationalising the sport beyond its traditional heartlands of the English Pennines and Australia’s eastern seaboard is to be believed, rugby league is on the cusp of being killed off in Scotland, just as its best opportunity is upon it.

In a well-reasoned critique Zack Wilson, who writes the loverugbyleague blog, has suggested that having earned its place in this on-going Four Nations which got underway when they faced world champions Australia in Hull last Friday night as a result of winning the sport’s European Championship two years ago, Scotland is set to lose its full member status of the Rugby League European Federation because of the lack of meaningful domestic activity.

In doing so he makes it clear that lack of strategic thinking by administrators is not confined to British rugby’s other code in identifying where the principal blame lies.

“The decision to drop the funding that the SRL received – on the very day that they were about to play a World Cup quarter final against New Zealand – was idiocy, and idiocy done in that special rugby league way of seemingly being wilfully stupid, myopic and self-destructive,” he observes.

“But the 2013 World Cup was meant to have made good profits and it was meant to be about ‘legacy’. That word has become irritating in the extreme, as meaningless as the plethora of other buzzwords which swarm around our politics and entertainment currently.

“There has been little real delivery on the ‘legacy’ that World Cup and, indeed, in Scotland, it can be argued that it has gone backwards. But we have known as a game that Scotland would be in the Four Nations for two years now, and yet nothing was done.”

In saying why this matters it is perhaps important to explain the opening paragraph of this piece by noting that rugby league is a sport that is more akin to football than to rugby union in terms of the physical frames of the participants and its easiness to learn, as demonstrated by the fact that Matty Smith, a key member of the Wigan Warriors team that won Super League’s Grand Slam last month, had never played the game until late in his teens when his professional football career ended when he was released by Everton. Such are rugby union’s technical requirements that a similar switch is almost unimaginable, but demonstrates the scale of the opportunity that exists for footballing Scottish youngsters who are not quite good enough to make the grade as soccer players.

By way of demonstrating that Wilson, in this latest blog, cites the example of one of rugby league’s few Scottish success stories that has been allowed to wither.

“Time and time again, the work done on the ground in Scotland just gets ignored,” he observes.

“It is almost like the powers that be don’t really want the Scots involved anymore.

Easterhouse Panthers are a case in point.

“This is a club who isn’t taking the game to well-heeled suburban southern kids, but some of the most deprived people in the UK. Easterhouse is infamous in Scotland. Along with Possil and Paisley’s Ferguslie Park, it is a by-word for deprivation, violence and crime.

“That a rugby league club has formed, functioned and excelled in such an area should make us all proud of our sport.

“To take troubled kids and turn them into respectable young men is something that governments spend millions on, social workers ponder, and academics study. Rugby league just gets on with doing it, in places like the Cranhill Flats, in Glasgow.

“A young man was murdered there in January of this year. Named Jamie Johnstone, he was a former Panthers youth player. The club was at the front and centre of the community’s tributes to him.

“This is in the West of Scotland, where football is, literally, more important than religion to the majority of the population. But a rugby league club has managed to place itself at the heart of the community. Surely something that is worth praise, publicity and meaningful support, from not just the RFL but government, whether Scottish or UK.”

That he goes on to draw unfavourable comparison with what has happened in Irish rugby league since Scotland beat their national team on the way to that 2014 European title is all the more galling for those of us who have seen Ireland turn what was previously Scottish domination in the 15-a-side game on its head in the last 20 years.

His overall message is meanwhile a powerful one in a week that has seen Scottish politicians once again wrestling with the damage repeatedly done to the country’s image by matters that surround a sport which could benefit hugely by close association with rugby league.