Against the advice of my friends, therapists and spiritual adviser, I am prepared to give you another chance. You camped in the spare room during the World Cup last year, and as a trial reconciliation it went well. My counsellors tell me that I should not forgive you for the years of pain, but winter is coming, Eddie Jones and the White Walkers are battering at the door, it's the living versus the dead, and we have no hope unless we unite. You can stay over on Saturday night.

We did have such good times, and the gold jersey still conveys powerful memories. You gave us great Saturday afternoons at the SCG: the all-in-brawl with the '75 Poms, Steve Finnane belting Wales' Graham Price and Peter Grigg roaring down the wing into the shadow of the old Brewongle and putting the All Blacks away. You gave us John Hipwell's dive pass and Greg Cornelsen's four tries at Eden Park, the two heroes of Up-the-Jumper come down from the bush. You gave us Ken Wright's sidestep. You gave us Ella, Ella, Ella, and a stage-lit back line that also featured Hawker, O'Connor and Gould. You gave us the '84 Grand Slam, the '86 Bledisloe, the '91 and '99 World Cups. Yes, I'm living in the past, but what other hope do we have for the future?

You gave us Campese. You gave us back lines with Farr-Jones, Noddy, Horan and Little, Micky Martin, Marty Roebuck, Paddy Batch and Brendan Moon. And more Campese. Then Larkham. Happy days. If only you had given us Mark Ella and Campese, there would be hope for forgiveness.

You used to give us characters, even among those whose heads were buried in places that turned their ears into cauliflowers. Stan Pilecki, Mark Loane and scary Tony Shaw. Topo Rodriguez driving New Zealanders backwards. Skylab. Tommy Lawton, Willie O, Ilie Tabua and Simon Poidevin, then McKenzie-Kearns-Daly and big John Eales. Your trenches used to spin off characters and stories like a war movie.

It wasn't just you, it was your opponents. The great Welsh: JPR and JJ Williams, Phil Bennett and Gareth Edwards, and the Baa-Baas. The France of Jean-Pierre Rives, Serge Blanco, Phillippe Sella (and Fitzy throwing haymakers when his French didn't suffice). Ireland's Ollie Campbell and Moss Keane. Hugo Porta, who walked on water. From Fiji, Laulau and Serevi. Wave upon wave of brilliant All Blacks.

There is so much history between us, but admit it, those days are distant. If you're going to move back in, you have to acknowledge the hurt you have caused. All that you gave, you took away when you became a corporation, when Steve Merrick went off to load coal at Singleton because it was a better life than becoming George Gregan for the next decade.

When you went professional – not immediately but when that lifestyle became your new normal – you changed. You became bloodless and anonymous. You used to have 15 players for a game, but now you had 22. Nobody got tired and everybody got a cap. Soon you were trying to kid us into buying 50-Test and 100-Test veterans who earned their caps 15 minutes at a time, as 'finishers'. You gave us hard-toiling extras whose professionalism consisted in following the game plan. Where you used to give us characters, now you gave us the Three Amigos.

When you took the contest out of possession, instead of opening up the game, you built defensive lines across the field as far as the rabbit-proof fence. You stopped talking of running and passing and began talking of structures and systems. You brought in rugby league coaches who taught players how to rugby-league tackle, and with it all the bad of rugby league and none of the good. Intending to improve the spectacle, you gave us unlimited-tackle league.

Impenetrable defences, impenetrable rules. You wanted to be better, but you bowed to your masters from the north. Their rules choked the game and their referees thought they were the stars. The clock kept running while the ball was out of play and scrums were being re-set, and you sat by and watched while old-world popinjays delivered lectures and games withered down to 35 minutes' play. The clock kept running on you, dear Wallabies.

You were unfaithful. You sold your soul to rugby tourists, who bought golden scarves and tickets to a big occasion and sat in the stands taking selfies. They made noise at the start of, before a draining diminuendo of confusion and disinterest. You gained rugby tourists, but you lost rugby people.

But what you always had going for you was those rugby people who kept playing, coaching, refereeing and watching, in schools, in subbies, in clubs. They held the faith, they kept putting on Super Rugby week after week even when the corporation turned its back on them. It's from the ranks of the rugby people that Michael Cheika emerged, to transfuse blood into that soulless corporate shell. Perhaps we're kidding ourselves, but there is a promise of adventure and a whisper of freedom in the way the Wallabies have played under Cheika that opens our heart again. And what better place to start than a series against England? If Cheika wants to inspire his young men, he might be able to dig out a recording of the 1975 Test in Sydney, where Finnane and Wright made their debuts in front of 31,000 spectators including one frightened and fascinated boy who came to believe that a white jersey looked best when spattered with red, and a gold jersey looked best when raising its arms in victory.

So let's see how it goes, dear Wallabies. Go well, and you might be able to move back in. There seems to be a lot at stake.