There may still be six weeks to go until the Welsh Rugby Union firmly decides on the future of the professional game in Wales, but already the two-headed monster idea looks as dead as a dodo.
In the words of John Cleese, it has ceased to be. It is bereft of life. It is . . . an ex-parrot.
We know this because Dave Reddin has told us so.
Not in so many words, of course, but deep in the foliage of a flowery thicket of verse put out by the WRU at the popular PR burial time of Friday at 5.30pm, was a statement that read a little like an obituary.
Speaking about the WRU’s so-called “optimal choice” of cutting the number of professional clubs from four to just two, Reddin, the Union’s director of rugby, said of the current consultation process, “I don’t want to get ahead of myself or take any shortcuts here, but I can confidently say that our thinking is changing in positive ways as we progress.”
It would be a poor leader who announces a wide-ranging consultation process and then states that he intends to stick to his guns, regardless.
But even so, it’s quite early in the game to be quite that frank - midway through the consultation process, to admit, already, that your own baby is about to be thrown out with the bathwater.
READ MORE: Dragons Set Fire To WRU Plans Which Already Look Doomed
So what are these “positive ways” in which the Union’s views are changing?
Burying the notion of just two teams would seem to sum it up.
The two-club model was not greeted with many hats flung high in the air and popped champagne corks when it was unveiled a month ago.
Since then, it has been excoriated by the Dragons after their meeting with the WRU and trampled underfoot by the Welsh Rugby Players Association.
Former players have also formed a longish queue to jump up and down on the document, just in case anyone might feel it was somehow still alive.
READ MORE: WRU Tells Fans: Let us Know What You Think of Our Plan
Even those fans who have engaged in the “public engagement survey” have pointed out how crudely slanted the questions are to giving the Union the information it thinks will justify its proposal.
Example: “I am in favour of making significant changes if this helps Welsh national and professional teams to return to winning ways.”
The only odd silence so far has come from the Scarlets and the Ospreys, who have yet to be as quick off the mark as the Dragons in publicly rejecting the plan.
This is more likely to be a tactical lip-sealing, brought on by feelings of vulnerability, than any conviction the plan has much merit.
The two west Wales regions – who just happen to have most of the best players and have been the most successful teams in the URC - are keeping their powder dry for the time being and letting their supporters get ready to ignite things with talk of protest marches that will attract local political backing.
All of which will leave the executive of the WRU with a dilemma that won’t take very long to resolve.
Do they press on with an idea opposed by three of the regions – as well as by the players of the now Union-owned Cardiff?
Forcing through changes that have little to no support would carry catastrophic risk. Imagine two shiny new teams, names and badges, with nowhere to play and no-one prepared to watch them.
Imagine, too, having to fund them entirely without benefactor support.
That kind of ballsy independence might appeal to some within the WRU, but the member clubs – who have so far mostly sat on the sidelines of this debate - would remind them it is they who would suffer the disastrous consequences.
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All of which suggests the life has already gone out of the two-team plan and the most likely outcome will be the proposal to stick with four clubs, but with unequal funding.
Interestingly, that was exactly the position the Union instantly adopted earlier this year when the Scarlets and Ospreys refused to sign the new Professional Rugby Agreement (PRA).
To be fair, they would not be the first authority figures to knowingly propose something completely and utterly unacceptable, in order to pull back to the position they were seeking all along.
It’s how Donald Trump tries to do his US trade deals.
Yell loudly to the crowd and the cameras and then compromise in a back office room.
READ MORE: The Man With "The Plan" . . . WRU Chief Dave Reddin Insists It's Two or Too Late
