FitzSimons said the game needed to return to being a game of 'evasion rather than collision' and praised the recent six-again changes in the NRL.

Both Rugby Australia and the fans of the game would seem to agree, as can be seen in their vociferous suggestions for various cure-all remedies for the sluggishness of their sport:

They all acknowledge that the scrums are a debacle and need to be fixed. There is less consensus on the line-out, but mutterings that it is redundant are being considered far more seriously than ever before. There's talk (particularly in light of the ongoing success of the sevens) of reducing the number of players on the field. They're realising that the excessive kicking is boring and they are finally looking into sin-binning rather than red-carding ...

In short, the Union are seeing the need for the game to more closely resemble Rugby League. As Malcolm Knox put it (also writing in the Herald), such changes would mean that it pretty much would be Rugby League, 'just played by people with better grammar.'

Knox goes even further and describes what he perceives as an inevitability whereby Rugby Union will simply be 'eaten' by League. Given the reality that Union's only real advantage over League is its internationality, and that, currently, that advantage is pretty much completely neutralised by the fact that we are being consistently flogged by the rest of the world, Knox's position is not easily dismissed.

The interesting part, really, is the historical circularity.

Rugby League's very beginnings lie in its changing of the Union's rules. A bunch of late 1800s era Union players decided that, in a time of growing sporting professionalism, they should be paid. The Union, on the other hand, was wholeheartedly dedicated to remaining amateur (basically because they knew that not being able to be compensated for time off work in the case of injury was one of the few things keeping the working class out of the game, and that if the working class were able to play in any real quantity then they would beat the 'gentlemen' to a pulp ...).

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The 'breakaway' occurred in 1895, and Rugby League began.

Having decided that the players should be paid it then became a matter for the newly formed League to generate the income with which to pay them. The primary source of income was, of course, the gate. They needed more paying punters.

So, Rugby League became, out of necessity, a spectator sport, and it achieved this by fixing the rules.

The changes included ditching the line-out, reducing team sizes to thirteen, removing any benefit to kicking into touch on the full, introducing various scoring adjustments and instigating play-the-ball instead of scrums (the scrums had been deemed to be overly time-consuming and visually dull). They realised the way forward was to make the game entertaining to watch.

Sound familiar?

And it's only taken the Union 125 years ...

Grammar may not be everything ...

In a time when they are tearing down ethically dodgy historic statues everywhere there are two constructions with no cause for concern. They would be the recreation of Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the 1968 Olympic dais which stands in the centre of San Jose State University, and the associated, newly erected, monument to Australian runner Peter Norman in Albert Park, Melbourne.

It has been a belated tribute to Norman, for whom the maxim 'no good deed shall go unpunished' may as well have been coined. Norman ran second in the 1968 two hundred - with an astonishing time of 20.06 seconds - placing him between 1st placed Smith and Carlos who took the bronze.

Upon being told by Smith and Carlos that they planned a symbolic protest against the treatment of their race - to take the winners' dias shoeless (as a demonstration of poverty) and to perform a gloved 'black power' raised fist pose during the playing of their anthem - Norman informed the pair that he was a staunch believer in equality, that he endorsed their cause and could he be supplied with a Human Rights Badge to pin to his top as a demonstration of his solidarity? One was produced. He also suggested that, given Carlos had left his gloves at home, the pair wear one each and just hold up opposing fists.

It has become one of the most iconic images in sport.

Norman was subsequently not selected for the '72 Olympics (despite qualifying) and was not funded to attend the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, where, really, his involvement in such an important moment should have been feted.

The Olympics Committee have no shortage of excuses for either omission but none of them really ring true. Norman's treatment hints at an unpleasant undercurrent that we, generally, tend to hope does not exist.

Who knows?

Peter Norman died in 2006. Smith and Carlos flew here to be his pallbearers ...

For my part I'm proud to be a part of a town where my mate Merv Wright's funeral was the biggest thing since the passing of Les Darcy.