While the game in Australia turns itself inside out, spare a thought for this contradiction. Scotland, now fourth in the world and under the direct jurisdiction of the Rugby Football League, gets almost nothing from the British game's Red Hall offices.
The United Arab Emirates, where the sport remains illegal unless run by rugby union authorities, will benefit from hundreds of thousands of pounds of RFL spending for January's training camp for Wayne Bennett's England team.
Nigel Wood, chairman of the Rugby League Federation, is the man who hired Bennett in his other role as chief executive of the Rugby Football League, and has to sign the cheques for the Dubai camp.
Meanwhile, some NRL clubs believe they don't even need a governing body because they are "the game".
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Sometimes in rugby league you get a confluence of events that just make you feel hopeless, as if the game can't get integrity and unity unless hooked up to a drip full of the stuff. So many people have fought so hard to establish the sport over the past 121 years, only to be betrayed in the name of short-termism.
As argued in last week's Discord, rugby league administrators aren't "the game" anymore than the NSW government is "society". But if you extrapolate the metaphor, they'd be riots in the streets of Sydney if the government behaved like this. Rugby league is constantly doing the equivalent of shutting down the trains and buses or turning off the electricity to settle last year's deficit.
My criticism of Sydney Roosters going to Dubai before the World Club Series this year permanently damaged my relationship with their coach, Trent Robinson. But it was justified then and it is justified now.
Sol Mokdad, who left the country and his role as a league missionary following his release, went light on the Roosters, perhaps because he loves the NRL, but is less than impressed with Bennett's England.
He told loverugbyleague.com by email: "I read an article from the 7DAYS UAE newspaper back in June, and I just shook my head.
"My initial reaction was 'why now!?', then a whole stream of (excuse my french), 'WTF!?'
"From 2007 to 2015, the lifetime of UAE Rugby League, I was always trying to get an international rugby league tournament hosted in Dubai, but it never materialised."
He accused the Rugby Football League of entering into talks with UAE Rugby, thereby undermining the independence of rugby league.
Columns like this often get labelled naive. People are inherently selfish and short-sighted, rugby league is too entrenched in the working class to ever be altruistic and commentators like me should just get used to it.
I'll keep my idealism and naivety, thanks very much. The alternative just doesn't bear thinking about.
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