Rugby Australia remains comfortable with the posturing of Wallabies coach Eddie Jones and his pursuit of NRL players, despite it ruffling the feathers of the wider Australian playing cohort which itself is also attracting increased overseas interest from other international Unions.
The governing body on Thursday unveiled a new four-year Collective Bargaining Agreement that is being heralded as a win for both Rugby Australia and the game's players, with increases in funding for both the women's and men's games, as well as an uptick in Wallabies match payments, among the positives.
However, Jones' repeated media hits around his desire to sign NRL players in the run to the 2027 World Cup - just as he did ahead of the 2003 tournament - have not gone unnoticed by the game's existing talent base, many of whom agreed to take pay cuts in 2020 after the onset of the COVID pandemic.
While Jones and RA are yet to strike a blow on the NRL front - Joseph Suaali'i last week opted to stay in rugby league for at least the 2024 season - chief executive Andy Marinos said he was satisfied with the current contracting environment.
While he rejected suggestions of reported offers north of $700,000 a season, Marinos indicated the board would make no apologies for any future pursuit of rugby league talent.
"I don't know which players have been getting $700,000/800,000 in rugby at this stage, but we're in a competitive sporting market and landscape and obviously we're wanting to grow the performance of our teams and the performance of our players over time," Marinos said.
"And again, I just think market forces will determine that, but we'll be operating within the confines of what we've got at the moment."
RA has done well to retain multiple members of last year's Wallabies squad, with Fraser McReight on Thursday joining Allan Alaalatoa, Angus Bell, Jed Holloway, Taniela Tupou and Matt Gibbon as players to have re-signed at least until the end of the 2025 season.
However, David Rawlings, the manager of Wallabies and Brumbies star Tom Wright, last week took aim at both Jones and RA, saying Australia's rugby players were growing weary of the code's repeated links to rugby league.
Other senior figures in Australian rugby have also indicated to ESPN a collective growing unrest among the current playing cohort.
"The rugby players in general are sick of hearing about it," Wright's player agent David Rawlings told News Corp.
"A lot of the boys are thinking, if they want NRL players, we'll have to look elsewhere. It's become a debacle.
"They've just lost Pete Samu to Bordeaux, who's been in the rugby system for a long time.
"They'll lose others as well if this keeps up and they only want to talk about NRL players."
While satisfied with the new CBA, Rugby Union Players Association chief executive Justin Harrison played a straight bat when asked his thoughts on the merits of approaching NRL players. Harrison did however agree that any player who could improve the overall health of the game, both on and off the field, was worth speaking to.
"I don't think this is necessarily the forum for me to offer my opinion, I'm here to represent the player membership," Harrison said. "One thing we're interested in in the professional environment is having competitive rosters, so five provincial teams across all of our men's and women's [Super Rugby] programs and sevens programs, who are competitive in taking the stage and the arena with the capacity to have a squad that's going to be in a winning environment.
"We know that winning teams generate commercial return, we know that that creates heroes and captures hearts and minds of boys and girls and we start to see the waterfall effect at community level because they start to see, aspirationally, where they would like to be and how they would like to end up... whether or not it's targeting the right person; people take themselves to market and if they can create market tension then that's not something we'll have an influence on.
"What we're interested in is the fair and equitable distribution of a resource that is limited at the moment, but has the capacity to grow. Now if part of that is targeting certain players who are going to change the performance dynamic of the entirety [rugby ecosystem], not only on the field but also off the field in terms of commercial viability, then that's something that needs to be welcomed."
While Jones and RA are likely to continue speaking with NRL players interested in a code switch, they are increasingly finding themselves on the other end of the fight to sign and retain top playing talent.
World Rugby's change to its international eligibility laws in 2021 have resulted in multiple Australian players winding up in the colours of other international Unions, with the weekend's Scotland-Ireland Six Nations clash featuring three former Australian Super Rugby players.
With former Wallabies back-rower Jack Dempsey and former Rebels centre Sione Tuipulotu playing for Scotland, and man-of-the-match Mack Hansen starring for Ireland, last weekend's Test was a painful reminder of how easily talent could slip through Australia's grasp.
And it now appears Scotland are preparing an attractive offer to bring Tuipulotu's brother, Mosese, over to Glasgow, as the 22-year-old centre prepares to make his Super Rugby debut off the bench for the Waratahs in Wellington on Friday.
Marinos, however, said there was no cause for alarm, the situation more a reality everyone had to accept given World Rugby's eligibility shift.
"I don't see it as being entirely a bad thing, to be quite honest," Marinos said. "A lot of the time, and there's been many examples of it over the last decade, where a player is probably just a journeyman in their own country and they go into a new environment and they get a new lease of life and that's positive for the world game.
"The big thing that's got to come back into our system in terms of that early identification is making sure we're getting the right talent into the right pathways early and nurturing and looking after that talent.
"The movement of players is going to continue. With changes to regulations and eligibility after the stand-down period, that certainly has opened up that chasm a lot wider for us.
"But I'm of the view that you don't necessarily frown upon it all the time. Sometimes it can be a positive and a benefit for the global game.
"Just we've got to sort our own backyard and make sure that we keep our best talent and not let those ones slip out.
"But the reality is you can't keep everyone. I mean, Mack Hansen has been used many, many times as an example and I'm not saying that if Mac had been given an opportunity or played more at a Super level that he couldn't become a great Wallaby. I'm sure he probably would have.
"He had an opportunity to go abroad and he's made the best of that and I think you've got to wish him well and celebrate that."