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The International Rugby Board has been called in to help settle a row between two of the game's top six nations which highlights the danger of reducing test competition to pure farce.
No sooner had the dust settled on the first Six Nations to generate more than £100m ($278m) than the practicality of end-of-season tours in a World Cup year has been called sharply into question. England have done their best to get out of their trip to South Africa, and France are resigned to leaving more than half their squad on club duty when they go to New Zealand.
Wales will rest most of their front-line players rather than take them to Australia - but the real rub is with Ireland and their proposed two Tests in Argentina.
The first is to be played on May 26 and the Irish are still waiting for someone to tell them the venue. They have been trying to find out for so long the series is now close to being aborted.
Philip Browne, the Irish Rugby Union's chief executive, said: "This is ludicrous. It is not a matter of being professional or amateur. It's a matter of courtesy and we have been in endless correspondence for months without any joy.
"Unless we get a response from the Argentinian Rugby Union within the next day or so, we really have to question whether we can go on this tour. The match is nine weeks away and they need to provide a satisfactory response very rapidly."
The second Test, on June 2, has been booked for Buenos Aires but nobody has a clue about the first. It could be in Santa Fe, Mendoza, up north in Salta near the Bolivian border - or nowhere at all.
An ultimatum from IRB headquarters in Dublin has not had any immediate effect.
A Board spokesman said: "We are chasing them but their administration is severely undermanned. We've told them straight that we can only wait for so long." The ongoing farce ought not to mask the real issue - the absurdity of end-of-season tours in a World Cup year. Test matches are meant to be exactly that - not devalued, lop-sided affairs because one side is giving the majority of their players a break.
For a fortnight at the end of the domestic season, three of the four home countries will be engaged in so-called tests against the same opponents they will be meeting at the World Cup in September - Ireland against Argentina, Wales against Australia and England against South Africa.
Why show your hand and risk being trumped when it really does matter? The Irish, like Wales, will want to leave virtually their complete first XV at home.
England are agonising over the same question, although they have the handicap of still trying to identify their best team.
The heavily-intrusive impact of a September World Cup has had a concertina effect on the season, forcing countries to plough straight into tests within six days of the European club finals.
Should Leicester and/or Wasps be involved in the Heineken Cup - unlikely but possible - a whole raft of English players will be eliminated from the first Springbok test in Bloemfontein.
