In recent days various platforms have filled the sports programming black hole with a full day-by-day replay of the third Test of the 2019 Ashes series.

Eight months after Ben Stokes delivered the most incredible Test victory, sadistic English acquaintances have suggested this serves the dual purpose of entertaining local audiences and torturing those Australians brave enough to tune in.

But rather than cringe at the outcome of Stokes' epic 135 not out at Headingley, I found I was able to appreciate his power and passion, chuckle at the quirky cameo of his bespectacled sidekick Jack Leach and endure the understandable triumphalism of the English commentators and the crowd with a measure of stoicism.

The difference between Stokes' once-in-a-lifetime innings and England's miraculous, series-altering victory at the same venue in 1981, inspired by Ian Botham's audacious century, is what comes next.

Australia's Ashes-clinching performance in the fourth Test at Old Trafford last year is even more meritorious because of the psychological battering they endured in the Headingley defeat.

Stokes won an epic battle, Botham changed the course of the war.

Astonishing rhetoric while winging it

In our current suspended state of being, we are deprived of any such comforting certainties. We don't know what comes next.

Further, our governments and health experts are wisely avoiding dropping even the slightest hint about when restrictions will be lifted and life normalised despite understandable concern about the economic and social impact of our continued isolation.

This sensible policy is guiding the public statements of most sports organisations as they balance the financial costs of the coronavirus pandemic against the need to play a socially responsible role in minimising the human toll.

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This is why the NRL's bullish public proclamations about a recommencement date — currently set at May 28 — have jarred, because the league appears to put the game's financial concerns ahead of the need for caution.

Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V'landys is a big-statement guy.

But his most astonishing piece of rhetoric was a matter-of-fact aside in a report by The Australian newspaper justifying the May 28 start-up.

"It [the recommencement] is seven weeks away," V'landys said.

"In that seven weeks there will be some relaxation of the social-distancing measures."

The statement is jaw dropping in the current climate because it is not supported by any public government or expert statements.

Perhaps V'landys was given this advice in a private briefing.

Although the fact politicians formed a conga line to contradict the NRL's projection suggests he was winging it.

Premature recommencement date could cost lives

Other sports codes seem able to plan for their return without the hype the NRL has set out to create. ( AAP: Bianca De Marchi, file photo )

No-one begrudges the NRL's right to privately pursue whatever legitimate means it can to get back on the field at a time and in a way that protects the greater good.

Even if you question the value of sport in a time of crisis, the jobs of NRL and club employees are no less valuable to those deprived of an income than those of the restaurateurs who have closed their doors or factory workers who have been laid off.

But in the NRL's aggressive messaging there is a strong sense the league is not merely looking after the interests of a game that has squandered its media rights fortune.

It is exploiting the insecurity of fans deprived of the usual certainty contained in the annual fixture about "what's next" to push the agendas of cash-strapped clubs and commercial partners.

This includes most prominently Fox Sports, which was imperilled by competition from streaming services before the advent of COVID-19 and is now on life support due to the loss of sport programming.

Meanwhile, the NRL is now in public conflict with free-to-air partner Nine, which seems satisfied to see the season postponed, recoup its rights money and prop up a media business endangered by enormous losses in advertising revenue.

Thus the NRL is caught between the competing interests of its media rights holders, beholden to the same short-sighted club warlords who wasted so much of the game's vast income, battling to save the livelihoods of employees, negotiating with players hoping to minimise their contractual sacrifices and trying to give fans their game back as soon as possible.

So you might forgive V'landys his belligerence if the cost of careless statements and premature recommencement dates could not now literally be measured in human lives.

Those defending the NRL's optimistic public timeline argue the health and safety of the players will be protected and naming a date will "give fans something to look forward to".

Some go as far to say it is an insult to the intelligence of the rugby league's working-class fans to suggest they will be lulled to abandon distancing protocols by the sight of players wrestling each other to the ground, and that alpine skiers have contributed more to the spread of the virus than manual labourers.

Yet most other sports seem able to plan for their return privately without creating grandiose project names intended to create headlines or by trumpeting start-up dates to boost confidence in the manner of Donald Trump and his fanciful Easter timeline.

Watching Stokes destroy Australia, there is great comfort knowing Nathan Lyon's fumble would not cost Australia the Ashes.

We have no such consoling certainty now and attempts to create false hopes could contribute to defeat in a game of life and death.