Brian Roe.
THAT it was harder to get out of the Australian cricket team than to get in it for way too long, is now impacting hard on its composition, harmony and performance in myriad ways.
And at least one or two misjudged strategic decisions are not helping.
Trying to create an effective and cohesive unit out of the stocks now available has proven to be a tough assignment but the task is made that much harder, first and foremost, by the expectation that the captain can be all things to all people.
In modern professional sport the commercial, performance and career interests of the players are way more likely to be in conflict with those charged with administering and managing the sport than in the past.
It is both unreasonable and impossible go demand that the captain, whoever he is, can be representative of both interests. As the leader of the team, he must do just that and inevitably that means advocating on behalf of those who are asked to follow him rather than potentially be determining their fate.
It hardly builds confidence if the leader is forced, even subconsciously, to temper his advice to, or support of, a teammate, knowing that such a fate is already sealed or is at risk - let alone the reality that the demise of one player leads to the elevation of another.
And returning to the original point, this is not a phenomenon with which Australian cricket has been all that familiar in dealing with for 10 years or more. Few players were ever at risk of being dropped.
Rightly or wrongly, there was an in-crowd and they were just that for a very long time.
Most decided themselves when they would depart and God help anyone who suggested they should go any sooner.
It meant there was no succession plan and when the time came for rejuvenation, panic set in. Rotation policies, a multitasking captain and a seasonal domestic fixture that saw four-day cricket put on hold for months were hardly conducive to getting things going again quickly.
How was any of that was going to build confidence in, or provide a performance base for a bunch of rookie test players?
But it's even harder to fathom how last week's suspension of four of the country's supposedly best players came about or was allowed to reach the stage that it did.
There can't be that much to do on training days during a tour of India that players could not find time to complete an exercise - one that was perfectly reasonable to ask of any professional unit these days. Even more amazing is that no one made sure they did, so that there was never a necessity for something like that to become so embarrassingly public.
Someone needs to stand up and sort it out.
And the problem is not that such a soul might be an outsider from South Africa or rugby union.
Rather, it's that a culture has been allowed to become ingrained and while it might have fitted what has recently passed, it's far from ideal for the new beginning that the Australian Test team must experience.