Cleared Raiders fullback Jack Wighton enjoys a laugh with teammates at training. Credit:Elesa Kurtz The biggest mistake we can make in summing up the myriad problems – they would prefer we call them "challenges", no doubt – faced by the denizens of Moore Park is to over-simplify them. They are incredibly complex. For instance, the NRL's Match Review Committee was not embarrassed by "its own judiciary" in the Jack Wighton case because the judiciary is independent. It is supposed to work that way. But a process that is supposed to unfold in a straight line meandered all around the place, with an early publicity blitz justifying the charge - and lack of charge against Michael Ennis - an incredibly naive rookie error. In public life, it would have resulted in a mistrial. In the days of Alan Sullivan and Jim Comans, the governing body promised to explain the machinations of charges only after the hearing had taken place so as not to be seen to be influencing proceedings.

Close contact: Jack Wighton goes in hard. That corporate and cultural memory is gone. The League needs to have the gumption to withstand a day or two of outrage in dignified silence, in the interests of propriety. Then Michael Buettner could have said "we believed Wighton's arm was tucked in, the judiciary found otherwise, that's justice at work". A war waged in public when you are supposed to sit above all the other squawking stakeholders is a war lost. You can't envy men trying to legislate against coaches, trying to neatly define a shoulder charge or get consistent decisions from match officials. All the forces are on the other side of the dam wall, trying to get a selfish competitive advantage. You are leaning against the dam as water cascades over the top, slowly drowning you. When the definitions are loose, they are criticised. When we are weighed down by KPIs and procedure, they are criticised again. These are not easy tasks. How many of us could perform them to the satisfaction of the majority sitting in judgement? Yet legislators in the past century have managed to stay ahead of the coaches and the players. When the game got too defensive, they opened it up. When it got too free-scoring, they closed it down a little. The product right now is pretty good.

So if generations of rugby league administrators could stay on top of the ebb and flow of the sport itself, it should not be too much to expect them to do so with disciplinary matters and with officiating. Controlling the actual cadence of the contest is surely a much harder proposition. Likewise with match fixing, Pandora does not so much have a box as, potentially, a cruise ship; an aircraft carrier; the Starship Enterprise. Young working class men suddenly thrust into the spotlight in a culture where betting is an inalienable right and yet full transparency considered un-Australian creates an environment with enough nooks and crannies for dishonesty to fester. If you won't entertain daily injury reports with fines for non-disclosure, published salaries and the like, yet do business with betting firms and allow complicated third-party agreements in order to scrape up every possible last cent, can you really expect to escape the stains of match fixing and salary cap cheating? Rugby league is too malleable, too accommodating, too rule-by-consensus. There are gaps everywhere for harmful characters and practices and precedents.

Perhaps its CEOs need a set term, like US presidents. After two or three or four years, you stand down, regardless of how well you've performed. Then we'll have people concerned with their legacy, not tomorrow's headlines. They'll feel more compelled to do what they think is right, regardless of the personal hit they take, because they have to move on anyway. But the game has become such an amorphous beast, perhaps we actually need to hire people who have experience running entire countries. League Nation is ripe for rebellion right now. Book here Loading