I've managed to experience both of those unlikely events. You'd think that that hints at a level of bad luck, as far as life time-lines go, but in fact the exact opposite is true. I consider myself to have been very, very lucky.

The reason: Because I, and those of my ilk, were fortunate enough - you'd perhaps go so far as to say blessed - to have been in our prime when we had proper football and proper music.

I once watched Roy Orbison perform in Maitland Leagues Club, and I saw the invincible St George side of the 50s-60s play at Maitland Sportsground. It doesn't get any better than that.

One thing I never thought I would see, had in fact never even considered the possibility of, is this current reality of the cessation of sport itself. Everything's off.

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Not even the Spanish Flu managed to stop the football in the past - and I understand that comparison is generally pointless and that for us to have continued in our current circumstance would have been lunacy. But one thing I think can be said is that, had they called off the season back in 1919 to deal with the crisis, you could safely assume that when they eventually resumed not a lot would have changed - football as usual. This is no longer the case.

Now the necessary cancellation of a season means 'the end of football as we know it!' It's an indication of how much has changed in our game, and not very much for the better.

It's all about the money. Many would have considered that, given the sums involved, surely the NRL and the clubs should be able to sit this thing out without too much harm done. It turns out that this isn't the case. The billion plus sums paid to the NRL for broadcasting rights have gone where?

Certainly not invested in any form of risk management. The clubs are, somehow, cash-strapped.

It's easy to blame it on the outrageous sums paid to the players. So I will. The average NRL first-grader these days is on something like $330,000 p.a. And that's only your average. There are players on a million and then some. What footballer is worth a million dollars?

It used to be your worth was fairly closely contingent on how many people you could entice through the gate to watch you play. I saw a story in the paper not all that long ago about Ray Price, who was driving a bus for a living on the Gold Coast. The great Ray Price (now there's somebody who people came to see...) is driving buses, and these robots that we're now watching are being paid millions?

Surely there's something wrong with that picture.

I tuned into the Knights playing the Tigers last weekend and the standard of play was such that those players should be embarrassed to be pocketing that sort of change.

And then there's the administration. Top-heavy and bloated is the general consensus, and this mess we're now in would seem to be the result of years of their incompetence.

The solutions they're proposing are no better. There's talk of resuming the season in September - an absurdity. Football in a warming Spring? And now Vlandys has asked the State Government to take the millions (500 of them) allocated to the stadiums program and to redirect them towards what amounts to a bailing out of the NRL and the clubs.

It seems to have escaped the NRL that if that money were to be redirected, then there are a whole bunch of more needing recipients than an ailing sports code.

It's hard to come up with too much sympathy. With so much of the general populace who were struggling to begin with having lost their jobs and now looking squarely down the barrel of hardship and uncertainty - the plight of overpaid footballers and a near-sighted profligate administration does little to stir the imagination.

It does, however, provide an opportunity of sorts. It's an opportunity for the League to stop and consider - where they've come from, where they're at and, importantly, where they might now go.

Who knows. This 're-set' may be exactly what was needed.