You always had the feeling it would end like this.
Rugby Australia's (RA) decision Thursday not to extend the Melbourne Rebels' Super Rugby Pacific future beyond this season had been expected since the governing body reclaimed the franchise's license in January.
Given the club's dire financial position -- it has debts totalling more than $22m, half of which is owed to the Australian Taxation Office -- the appetite for the team to continue was low and shrunk even further once it was revealed the club had traded insolvent since the end of 2018.
That is no way to run a business, no matter how much you think your parent body might have contributed to the problem.
While a decision after five months of uncertainty is welcome, it is still another black eye for a game that has taken enough punches to leave it staring down a standing eight count.
Put simply, Thursday's decision not to hand over the license to a private consortium headed by former Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford, is a true contradiction. It is both the right and wrong call for Australian rugby.
From a financial perspective, RA is trying desperately to delicately navigate its way through the next 13 months before it starts to see some of the expected windfall that will come with the British & Irish Lions tour.
It has already churned through more than half of the $80m debt facility it obtained via Pacific Equity Partners, which holds an interest rate of 10.62%, just to help keep the game afloat at the professional level while also ensuring the grassroots too have support.
Following the Lions Tour, RA then has the Rugby World Cup to follow in Australia two years later. If last year's tournament in France is any guide, then the game should not only have wiped itself of debt, but also - with the right management this time around - have also set itself up for the future.
But it must be fiscally responsible in the meantime, a point RA chief executive Phil Waugh has made since he first took charge in the middle of last year.
Propping up the Rebels, albeit with the support of a consortium, would not have been such a fiscally responsible move, particularly when, as RA insists was the case, details on how exactly the consortium hoped to manage the club were scarce.
The trust levels between the two parties were already low, so when a lack of "documentary evidence" was provided around where $18m worth of funding would come from, they were surely near non-existent.
Rebels fans rightly point out that neither the NSW Waratahs nor the Brumbies are in solid financial positions either, but their respective black holes do not extend as deep as the Rebels and they have been entrenched in Super Rugby since its outset.
The Waratahs, meanwhile, have also entered into centralisation under RA while NSW as a state still provides the majority of players to the game in Australia. The Waratahs, as a result, are never going to be on the chopping block.
And if the Rebels had enjoyed success, better crowds and management at board level, then they too could have continued to exist in Super Rugby Pacific beyond 2024.
But the cold hard facts are that across those key metrics, to which each and every professional sports team are measured, they have not. And they are clearly intertwined, too.
Success on the field naturally draws a bigger crowd in the stands, which means more money through ticket sales and merchandise, more people watching at home on television - all of which makes the decisions at board level considerably easier.
RA's decision is not one that will be celebrated either however, at any level of the game.
For the clear pathway from grassroots to professional rugby in Victoria has now been slammed shut. Sure, in its release, RA detailed how it remained committed to rugby in Victoria, that it would continue to help fund the game, establish a Victorian Rugby Centre of Excellence and ensure participation for Under 16s and 18s at a "Super Rugby level", among other commitments, but there is no hiding from the fact that the Rebels exit from Super Rugby Pacific is a hammer blow to the game locally.
Will juniors really choose to play rugby when they know they will have to travel interstate to pursue their dreams of professional rugby?
Rugby is in a no-contest when it comes to the battle with Aussie rules in Victoria, but it is miles ahead of the NRL's Melbourne Storm in terms of its local player development. The Storm, however, have been perennial performers, winning four [legal] premierships since their inception in 1999.
But they are largely made up of players from Queensland or New Zealand, or at least they have been the individuals most responsible for their outstanding success under coach Craig Bellamy.
The Rebels, however, have provided Australia with a number of locally raised Wallabies and further national Under 20s representatives. In last year's World Cup squad, Melbourne-raised Rebels Jordan Uelese, Rob Leota, Pone Fa'amausili and Rob Valetini, who began his professional career instead with the Brumbies, were all key contributors. In the team that faced the Brumbies last Friday, meanwhile, 7 of the 23 players in the matchday squad had come through the Rebels pathways.
Would they have reached those heights had it not been for the existence of the Rebels during their junior days? It's certainly possible, as Valetini's move to the Brumbies demonstrates, though the comforts of home, particular for the Pasifika community, cannot be overstated.
The return of a third tier of Australian rugby, specifically the National Rugby Championship which was axed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, would be one way to keep a professional rugby presence in Victoria moving forward, yet RA's fraught financial position means the reality of that happening anytime soon is as likely as Eddie Jones returning to the Wallabies for a third stint.
And so Thursday's decision is a crushing blow for rugby in Victoria and the many good people involved with the game across the state who reside within it.
But from a wider perspective it is also the only one that could have been made amid the broader ecosystem in which the Rebels existed.
In that way it is a true contradiction, a decision that is both right and wrong.