Four games? Four? Why stop there? Maybe the deal between the Wallabies and All Blacks should be that we'll just keep on playing until we win one. It's got to happen eventually. Game nine of the 2012 Bledisloe Cup series, the new-look Wallabies win with five field goals, jubilation reigns in the streets and coach Alan Jones declares the dawning of a new era....

Dream on. The present challenge for Australian rugby is to enumerate how many ways it's going wrong. The product - and in rugby it's entirely appropriate to refer to it that way - is based almost exclusively on the Wallabies. If the Wallabies are devoid of personality, if they can't win, the whole shop goes down. A Robbie Deans-Rocky Elsom press conference is a great advertisement for Valium. You too could feel this numb! When the only way the team can score tries is through charge-downs and intercepts, what are the kiddies then going to re-enact in the back yard?

Super 14 generates some early-season interest, and club, subdistrict and schools rugby is a better spectacle than ever for its tiny audiences. In fact, most of the rugby lovers I know have switched off from the professional game but follow the amateur competitions devoutly. Rugby still has a beating heart out there. It's a small heart, but it beats.

A structural problem: the lynchpin, the Wallaby brand, is the weakest link. The international game has benefited from some more relaxed rule interpretations this season, but still falls a long way short of the entertainment its players could provide.

I don't think there's any lack of talent or personality among the Wallabies. It's more that the game doesn't allow much expression of either. No wonder Quade Cooper, the most exciting playmaker since Steve Larkham, is reportedly talking about switching to league. In union, he's akin to Brando in silent films. How much better would he be, and how much more would he enjoy it, if he could speak and act in full colour?

Referees continue to strive valiantly to kill the game, and the outrage of continuing to let the clock run during non-injury stoppages persists. Those are rugby's perennial problems. This year, the seasonal problem seems to be that the Wallabies can't beat New Zealand. So instead of one or two cracks, they get four.

I just wonder if anybody in SANZAR has thought about supply and demand. They can probably make some cash from an interminable season, but have they thought about the value of the matches? In my day (here we go...) Australia played New Zealand in rugby every second year, there were about ten Tests a decade, and every one meant life and death. The haka was truly terrifying. Now it's on as often as Australia's Funniest Home Videos. Hello, another haka? They have to invent new ones to break up the boredom.

Groundhog day. The Wallabies lost again on Saturday? Who cares? They're progressing. They'll get there. The All Blacks have got to lose interest at some point, don't they? Problem is, by the time they've forgotten why they're playing, so will we.