I ONCE heard the great Danny Buderus describe the NRL pre-season as being "like knocking in a cricket bat".
Any half-decent cricketer will know that you don't buy a brand-new piece of willow and use it straight up in a game.
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First you take it home and apply a couple of coats of linseed oil. Then you tap it with a ball mallet, gently at first, and gradually move on to hitting an old cricket ball maybe five or 10 metres.
You might then have a couple of net sessions and, just to be on the safe side, add a protective plastic face and fibreglass tape on the edges.
Eventually you feel confident enough to christen it in a game. The last thing you want is your new stick, which cost a minimum of a few hundred dollars, to crack straight up the middle, first time you use it, because it's been underprepared.
After the NRL announced on Thursday that it was preparing to resume its suspended season in seven weeks, on May 28, I couldn't help pondering Bedsy's analogy.
Everyone involved in the game - clubs, officials, players, staff, broadcasters, fans and the media - will welcome Thursday's news.
Life without sport has been a dreary, depressing experience for all of us, not least those who have lost their employment or accepted savage pay cuts because of the coronavirus hiatus.
The sooner professional sport can return to our TV screens, the better for everyone.
But in saying that, there are still myriad complex logistics that must be negotiated before we next hear a referee's whistle signalling the kick-off for an NRL fixture.
None of which, from what I could make out, were properly explained by NRL chairman Peter V'Landys or innovation-committee head Wayne Pearce on Thursday.
Other than announcing the proposed May 28 resumption date, details were scarce. The competition format, venues and game-day protocols were all apparently still in the "to be confirmed" basket.
All of which means NRL coaches are none-the-wiser about when they can start "knocking in" their players.
It is now almost three weeks since the last round of games, and in the interim players at all clubs have been training in isolation, either at the local park or in makeshift home gyms.
The majority of them, I assume, will have been professional enough to do their best, in the circumstances, to maintain fitness levels.
They are presumably liaising on a regular basis with their club's strength-and-conditioning staff, despite the fact that most of those personnel have been stood down without pay.
But none of this is a substitute for their normal training routine, in particular the full-contact sessions that are crucial in preparing for the physical brutality of competition games.
As a number of players told me this week, it's not feasible to go from no contact to full contact in the space of a few days, or even a week.
It's a process that they work through gradually throughout the pre-season, so that their bodies are hardened and match-ready by the time round one arrives.
So the starting point in any resumption in the competition has to be a date that will give coaches and conditioning staff enough time to prepare their players appropriately for what rates as one of the most dangerous collision sports on the planet. It can't be rushed. There is a duty of care.
And that brings me to the second obvious dilemma. If the rest of us are abiding by strict social-distancing laws, why should rugby league players be cleared to engage, en masse, in what would appear to be exactly the type of activity that would appear conducive to spreading the coronavirus?
For several weeks we've read and heard about players from all clubs entering so-called isolation "bubbles", possibly for months, so that they could train and play games without having any contact with the general population.
It struck me as far-fetched, bordering on nonsensical. As the father of a daughter who is serving 14 days of mandatory confinement in a Sydney hotel room, I can assure you it's not something anyone would do by choice.
Then, of course, there is the sheer expense of accommodating, feeding and transporting more than 500 people for months at a time.
The NRL tried to convince us, nonetheless, all this was do-able. Yet suddenly, on Thursday, that option was apparently consigned to the wastepaper basket.
Now it seems the plan is for players to resume training and playing, and return to their homes and families in between. To wives and children who may have been at a supermarket, or childcare centre, and come into contact with someone contagious.
The mind boggles.
If indeed the NRL does receive government approval to proceed with this course of action, what message does it send to the rest of society?
Does that mean we'll all be allowed to congregate in large groups at the beach, or the pub, or start using the gym again? Will I be able to resume my weekly game of squash (war in a white box) with my two equally masochistic mates?
The only conclusion I can reach is that this was named "Project Apollo" because they're all on another planet.
