Supporters of the four professional clubs that no longer exist will be forgiven for choking on Bill Sweeney's claims that English rugby is "on the cusp of something quite spectacular".
The RFU chief executive spoke publicly last night for the first time in 290 days. Much of his state-of-the-game address neatly underscored a crisis crossroads for a sport at risk of slipping to secondary status without decisive and shrewd leadership.
But that prediction of a "spectacular" future could come back to haunt England's most powerful rugby administrator.
Sweeney offered no compelling substance to support that claim.Rugby bosses have plenty of irons in the fire to try to offset the Covid fallout and revamp an ailing professional game. But Sweeney had little in the way of detail as to how rugby's financial blood-letting can suddenly be at an end.
Worcester, Wasps, London Irish and now Jersey Reds have all folded in little more than a year, and any chance of a "spectacular" future on Sweeney's watch would have to be realised without them and with swathes of people looking for work.
Sweeney has seen off the latest revolt against his leadership amid a continued RFU civil war. The former British Olympic Association boss believes his position is now secure.
His long-term response appears to be to neuter the very RFU council that launched what he termed the "cynical" plot against him.
Roughly half of the RFU's 65 council members put their names to a motion challenging Sweeney's leadership on the eve of England's World Cup campaign.
Sweeney crushed that rebellion on Friday, with the motion withdrawn at the latest RFU council meeting.
The challenge was based around projected RFU financial positions, but Sweeney insists the rebels' interpretation was incorrect.
His reasoning is that those numbers had previously been explained to the RFU council as a cautionary tale of what could happen were no action to be taken to secure the body's financial future.
Sweeney painted a picture of a group of frustrated council members who either could not or would not fathom the nuance of a hypothetical posited purely to emphasise the need to take action.
The subtext was subtle, but damning: the RFU board are surely now weighing up whether the council are fit for purpose.
Sweeney's plan for yet another reorganisation of the domestic game's governance only supports such interpretation.
The RFU chief wants to create a new entity to organise the entire professional game in England — subtracting the RFU council from the equation.
The current Professional Game Board would become the Professional Rugby Board; the RFU council would be left to administer the grassroots game.
On one level this is wholly sensible – they are very different remits and should be treated as such – but on another it is a restructuring that suits the current regime.
There can be no coincidence that the very moment Sweeney has seen off a direct challenge to his position from the RFU council, that body's future is put up for scrutiny.
All the talk of restructuring falls naturally off the back of the need to broker a new agreement between the RFU and the Premiership clubs.
The current deal expires next summer, and the current Professional Game Agreement will become the Professional Game Partnership from next season. The specific language is designed to champion greater-than-ever working relations between clubs and country.
New England head coach Steve Borthwick has already made a strong start to ironing out many of the kinks left by former boss Eddie Jones.
The RFU will move closer than ever to central contracts next season, with 25 hybrid deals to be granted to England's top Test stars.
Those hybrid deals, England's new coaching era, academy player development improvements and wider work to align rugby's global calendar are all reasons for Sweeney's optimism for English rugby.
But maybe part of any spectacle will be Sweeney's consolidation of absolute power.
