It is easy to kick a sport when it is down, but you don't have to put on the steel-capped boots when considering Australian rugby.

Those running the game sport a pair of size 32 clown shoes with which they constantly kick themselves in the shins. That is when they're not throwing pies in their own faces.

There is usually a degree of separation between administrative bungling and on-field results — once hired/recruited coaches and players win or lose games, associations and club managers merely pay the bills and provide the sponsored jerseys.

Accordingly, you might blame the Wallabies' embarrassing 24-19 defeat to Scotland — who were without two British Lions — on astonishingly poor support play in the closing stages, some unusual Will Genia howlers or even a couple of borderline late penalties.

Scotland's Hamish Watson scores the visitors' third try against the Wallabies. ( AAP: David Moir )

But it has become impossible to separate the plight of the Wallabies from the serially catastrophic management of the ARU, an organisation that could no longer be entrusted with running a local T-ball team.

As good a coach as Michael Cheika proved himself to be at the last World Cup, and as high as the exceptional Israel Folau leaps, the drip, drip, drip from more than a decade of calamitous administration has worn a hole in the heart of the Wallabies.

Buying yet more players from rugby league? Allowing veterans now who play in Europe to wear a gold jersey? Not even those measures can stop the decline of and, with it, the erosion of the game's appeal in a fiercely competitive football market.

Typically it is commercial, not competitive ructions that will lead to change — the recent loss of sponsorship dollars have the jungle drums beating.

In the meantime, perhaps the one thing the ARU has got right is to stage Wallabies games on Saturday afternoons, including next Saturday's encounter with Italy.

Not because that has attracted big crowds to watch the Wallabies, but because in prime-time there was a real danger more people would have seen them.

Netball sets the pace for televised women's sport

The Lightning's Karla Mostert works in defence against the Giants in the grand final. ( AAP: Glenn Hunt )

Saturday night's Super Netball grand final was played by some brilliant local and imported athletes before a packed house and shown in prime-time on a major commercial TV network.

The only thing the Sunshine Coast Lightning's 65-48 victory over the Giants lacked was a dramatic finish — and the excitement and emotion of the inaugural champions compensated somewhat for the lopsided result.

It was a memorable night for a sport that has endured its share of internal strife this season, with disempowered state associations pushing back against a national executive that had modernised the competition by welcoming investment from AFL and NRL clubs.

Regardless of the politics, that netball can now stage a grand final that has the same sense of occasion as the major football codes says something for the big strides the sport has taken over the past decade.

The Lightning celebrate their win over the Giants in the Super Netball grand final. ( AAP: Glenn Hunt )

Football is lauded for its vast female participation rate — upon which a Women's World Cup bid has been launched. Some reporters quite literally wept upon proclaiming the AFL Women's had smashed Aussie Rules' grass ceiling.

But in the way the Super Netball grand final was played, and particularly the way it was presented, netball — yes, once daggy old netball — is setting the pace for Australian women's team sports as a live and televised spectacle.

Uncertain fate for Buddy Franklin

Swans players Lance Franklin (left) and Zak Jones (right) and Tigers' Alex Rance (second from left) and Kane Lambert wrestle during a Round 13 AFL match. ( AAP: Julian Smith )

Lance "Buddy" Franklin will come under the scrutiny of the AFL's Match Review Panel for a bump on Richmond's Connor Menadue during the Swans' comeback victory on Saturday.

Whether Franklin is penalised will depend on the now traditional AFL MRP's version of rock, paper, scissors.

But if the AFL sanctions remain one of life's great uncertainties, something far more reassuring has returned — the competitive instinct of the always admirable Sydney Swans.

Having lost their first six games, and with several stars nursing injuries, it seemed battle fatigue and the mental scars of last year's disappointing grand final loss had afflicted the AFL's most consistent outfit.

But with or without Franklin, the Swans have a chance to get the win-loss ledger to a relatively healthy 6-7 against Essendon at the SCG next Friday night and continue an unlikely climb to the top eight where they would be the dangerous floater in the finals draw.

In a season where close results have disguised some ordinary football, Friday night's Swans-Bombers clash could be one to remember.

Two out of three ain't bad

I wrote here recently that, as usual, State of Origin would dominate headlines and overshadow both the political machinations of the Australian Rugby League Commission (ARLC) and the NRL competition.

To quote that great prop forward Meatloaf, two out of three ain't bad.

The Origin headlines are typically bold and brassy, the Machiavellian ARLC politics are on the backburner, but the NRL has continued to shine without the game's brightest stars.

Croft or Cronk? ... Nineteen-year-old Brodie Croft stepped up in the absence of his star team-mates. ( AAP: Joe Castro )

With the Melbourne Storm and North Queensland Cowboys missing a host of superstars on Saturday night, there was understandable criticism that such a blockbuster game had been scheduled during Origin.

Yet Melbourne and North Queensland produced a wonderfully dramatic game in which the Cowboys overturned an eight-point deficit with three minutes to play, only for Melbourne's 19 year-old Brodie ''I can believe it's not Cooper Cronk'' Croft to kick the winning field goal.

No one was more delighted than NRL chief executive officer Todd Greenberg, who tweeted: ''A lot of debate about the Origin players missing tonight … but new opportunities for the next generation of stars to shine. Cracking game!''

Soon after, Cronulla staged a now typically barnstorming comeback against West Tigers in a game deprived, but not diminished, by the loss of Origin talent.

Good luck or good planning, with a highly anticipated State of Origin game to come on Wednesday night it was a double win for rugby league.