On one side of the argument, there is the contention at you should not be able to be involved in a confirmed instance of domestic abuse and yet not miss more than a week on the way to a lap of honour on grand final day.

On the other is the legal minefield associated with handing down punishment over an issue that is still before the courts.

Certainly, the NRL was caught out in the instance of Brett Stewart. Yes, I know his ban was technically for putting himself "in the position" to be accused of a sexual assault but the fact is, he wasn't the only drunk person at the Manly function that day.

The courts found Stewart not guilty. He should not have been suspended.

The NRL has said it has drawn "a line in the sand" but chief executive Dave Smith seems to have drawn it with a twig – because none of us can see exactly where it is.

Here's where it should be: if a player pleads guilty to a serious crime then a legal requirement has been satisfied: an admission of guilt (Souths fined Auva'a $2000 and banned him for a week at this stage).

A suspension from the time the guilty plea is entered until a hearing is complete would seem a fair process. Obviously it would depend on the offence – and this is where the NRL has to stick its neck out.

If you are accused of taking a pee in public and your hearing is in six months' time, very few people would expect a suspension of all that time.

And we can't treat all illegal activity the same, just as we need to take action over behaviour that isn't even illegal - as was the case with Todd Carney.

You are never going to get complete consistency on this issue; just a greater degree of consistency.

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There seems to be an ideological shift happening in the most conservative elements of the rugby league family, those who argue it will never be more than a sport for NSW, Queensland, south Auckland and the M62 corridor.

Maybe it was losing Sonny Bill Williams, Jarryd Hayne and Sam Burgess in one fell swoop. Maybe it was the discovery of a genuine fourth international force in Samoa.

But even the most conservative rugby league commentators are now calling for a shorter club season and a permanent international window.

They are starting to realise that there will eventually be no "local" anything. Everything from motion pictures down to cartons of milk you buy at the corner store will one day be 100 per cent global. Maybe we'll all be dead by then – but rugby league need not die with us.

The United States-New Zealand rugby union Test in Chicago left me gobsmacked. But it also convinced me that myself and those like me have been right all along when it comes to our view on where rugby league needs to go.

The first step is to admit defeat straight away when it comes to being a top level international sport. Ain't gonna happen. Eventually, we probably won't even be top tier in the few places where we are now.

With that out of the way, it's time to focus on survival.

Think of global popular culture like a big area of parched ground. The NFL, Premier League and the NBA are each gigantic pools on this parched ground, separated by hard-dried mud.

The NRL - or even the Australian sports market - is a small pool. The internet, and globalisation, represent the sun.

The ground begins to crack and crevices form. The biggest pools push out liquid with the greatest force. For the purposes of this experiment, the water in each pool has a different colour.

The Australian sports market used to be pure green but as the crevices widen, it is turning a little brown. Being a small pool with limited reserves, we don't push out much liquid. We have trouble preventing our pool from being more and more diluted.

Eventually, there will be just one big lake, no pools and no crevices. The job of the NRL and the AFL is to make sure you can still see a little green when that happens.

You do that by digging a few new cracks right to the heart of the other, bigger, more influential markets. The All Blacks made the red, white and blue just a shade darker two weekends ago – the only way you avoid being completing flooded is by doing a bit of of surgical inundation of your own.

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