The announcement of the 2011 World Cup quarterfinal venues emphasised how much professional rugby has hurt Dunedin and Otago.
A decade or 15 years ago, the Otago administration and fans would have been spitting tacks had Dunedin been omitted as a venue for the business end of the tournament.
Otago did not even bother applying to host a quarterfinal for 2011. One of the criteria was to have a capacity of at least 35,000 and only 29,000 squeezed into Carisbrook for the test against the Springboks in July.
The requirement for covered seating has hit Carisbrook hard. The heart and soul of the ground used to be the terraces.
Back in the 1990s I can recall at least five matches - three tests, a Super 12 final and a national championship final - when Carisbrook bulged with crowds of more than 40,000.
Now the capacity of the terraces has been reduced - not that it is often extended.
It's looking through rose-tinted glasses to suggest Otago has always been a rugby stronghold.
When the inaugural World Cup was held in 1987, Otago did not have a single player in the All Blacks and the team did not play south of Christchurch.
Otago's lot was to host matches between Ireland and Canada, Italy and Fiji and Scotland and Romania, all in the space of four days.
That was about the time that Otago rugby, on and off the field, began to muscle up and show it was not prepared to live quietly in the slipstream of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
The New Zealand Rugby Union in those days was less inclined to count the success of a test match purely in dollars and cents and it simply could not ignore the passion with which the Otago public embraced its provincial team, and the All Blacks. Carisbrook was the ground on which everyone wanted to play.
Now, the embers of that passion are burning low. They stirred, briefly, for the test against South Africa this year but the crowds for Otago and the Highlanders have been embarrassingly poor.
Otago seems in some kind of rugby torpor, waiting for something to happen but not quite sure exactly what that is.
For many it's the new stadium. I'm excited about the prospect but I worry about the future of Otago rugby. This is the professional era and the province is not producing enough quality players to attract decent-sized crowds.
We know it's more difficult now with the proliferation of rugby academies throughout New Zealand, and the diminishing status of the once-great University club, but that is the challenge facing Otago administrators.
They're not on their own. Other provinces have problems, too, but some are attacking them with relish.
Hawkes Bay, Manawatu and Southland are all drawing sizeable crowds. Soon- to-be-relegated Northland attracted 14,200 to Okara Park recently - probably not too many fewer than will attend Otago's entire five-match home programme.
The problem is in the cities. Provincial or Super 14 rugby no longer excites Dunedin, Christchurch is jaded from a decade of success, Auckland is ho-hum and the ring of the cowbells in Hamilton is not so incessant.
There's a contradiction. The game is thriving in the heartland but stagnating in the main centres. There's credence to the theory that the surfeit of rugby in the five franchise headquarters has turned the public off.
The players can't escape their share of the blame. Otago has played some turgid rugby in the past few years. Wouldn't it be lovely to watch the ball speeding through the backline and the wing sprinting to a try in the corner rather than big, slow tight forwards getting in the way?There's plenty for the Otago administrators to mull over.
Theirs is not an easy job but somehow they have to win back the support of a once fanatical public which has deserted them in droves.
