The economic cost of continuing with Super Rugby, a competition long dead in the hearts and minds of Australian fans, to honour an historic southern-hemisphere alliance is irresponsible.

Peter FitzSimons has claimed that besieged Rugby Australia CEO Raelene Castle is falling victim to entrenched sexism.

Trying to keep pace with the overseas player markets of England, France and Japan was sending the game broke well before the Ruby Princess docked in Sydney Harbour.

Similar to the follies exposed at the heart of the NRL's business model, rugby has been spending too much money on footballers and sports administrators. In rugby's case, the extra crime is that good money has been thrown after bad, in support of a competition that can no longer deliver the revenue needed to keep the cycle going.

But Rugby Australia chief executive Raelene Castle was only the latest administrator who lacked the courage to tackle this most fundamental of problems head-on.

She and her board had agreed to stick with Super Rugby for another five years.

Her predecessor, Bill Pulver, signed Australia up to an 18-team, two conference model that will go down as the single worst two years of Super Rugby in history. Pulver and then-chairman Cameron Clyne believed a history-making 148 per cent increase in broadcast cash would paper over the competition's structural failings. They were wrong. Haemorrhaging cash, Australia surrendered a Super Rugby team, the Western Force, two years into the deal.

Raelene Castle addresses media during the Israel Folau saga. AAP

Castle has not been a great administrator in her two years in rugby. It was her call to re-sign Israel Folau on a multi-million dollar four-year deal, after he'd shown himself to be a high-risk proposition on social media. And allowed him to be re-signed with no extra controls on his social media activity.

It was Castle's call and the board's to grin and bear the final two years of Michael Cheika's Wallabies tenure because, while it was clear he needed checks and balances, she didn't want to alienate him. When the results worsened further, a year out from the 2019 World Cup, and the board baulked at sacking him, Castle did the best she could, building out a high performance team with a director of rugby above Cheika and a panel of selectors.

She appears to have alienated important stakeholders, including current broadcast partner Foxtel and, recently, Australia's top professional players, when she spent two weeks holding out on financial information she didn't believe the players union had the right to see. This was a colossal error of judgement.

At the very time Castle needed every friend she could find, she failed to understand the unique history between Australia's professional players and the governing body. She has treated them as she might any other small member union, not as key stakeholders.

The Rugby Union Players Association is steeped in the militant roots of the game's conversion to professionalism in 1995, when RUPA took the then-Australian Rugby Union to court over much less than a pay dispute. Castle picked a battle with them this week and lost, and in coaching parlance, she lost the dressing room.

These are the lowlights. But before the revolutionaries yell "and what about the broadcast deal!", a note on that.

Castle has been criticised for walking away from Foxtel's rights offer in a period of exclusive negotiations eight months ago. No matter how many times this is painted as an unequivocal blunder, the reality is there was genuine interest from a rival in the form of telco Optus.

She should have been sacked if she'd taken the Foxtel deal, which was roughly the same money from a broadcaster with a severely challenged balance sheet and too many sports.

Instead, Castle and her board chose to take the game to tender, a process that was likely to change the course of the game for the better until the wet markets of Wuhan came to wreak havoc on the world.

Perversely, the coronavirus shutdown may have suddenly given RA a blank slate on which to draw a sustainable, engaging and affordable competition, without the constraints of a signed broadcast agreement for the old product.

In her favour, Castle recruited the highly-regarded and successful Dave Rennie to replace Cheika as Wallabies coach, but it remains to be seen whether he will coach a Test match this year given the pandemic's relentless march. This is another disaster not of Castle's making but, in more coaching parlance, it is what it is.

There it stands. A $120 million revenue hole, an unnecessary stand-off with the players, a recent poor Wallabies record and no broadcast deal. Is it any wonder Alan Jones, Rod Kafer and Nick Farr-Jones found an opening and bolted through it?

Their sentiments are correct. The game needs change. With its frailties laid bare, someone must be accountable. Castle is unlikely to be renewed beyond the end of the year.

But few working inside the game currently believe the way out of rugby's hole is to spear Castle right this minute.

The overwhelming preference of the Super Rugby boards and their executives is to work with Castle and the board to trade out of the current crisis.

So no change, for now. There is no credible alternative, internally or externally, ready to take her place.

Despite the influential and bloodthirsty forces massing in the shadows, rugby is not divorced from the ecosystem in which it exists.

For all sports, all Australians, and nations around the world, right now survival is key. And unity is key to survival.