While the coaches of the national team and of Edinburgh, the country's best-resourced professional side, squirmed with embarrassment after their latest defeats, so SRU administrators were last week spending thousands of pounds fighting among themselves over the right to ban an employee for half a season.
The latest ridiculous example of the implications of state control, SRU-style emerged on Friday, just before Edinburgh became the first home team to fail to score in a Celtic League match this season and before Scotland were humiliated by the second-string Springboks.
Officials from Glasgow, an SRU-owned team, had on Wednesday brought an advocate to the SRU disciplinary panel looking into SRU employee Euan Murray's sending-off the previous Friday.
He duly explained that the hearing was invalid as Celtic League rules state that cases should be heard within 48 hours of any offence taking place.
After two days of legal exchanges, the player, by then in Dublin and hoping to face Leinster that night, was finally told the panel believed they could still ban him for 12 weeks. Apparently because Celtic League rules are drafted under English law, specialists had to be consulted to find a way of letting the panel impose its will.
If the lawyers involved have all taken merely their usual fees, then enough money was spent in a few days to fund season-long contracts for at least two apprentice professional players. This at a time when it is claimed that the reason for the professional teams being so under-manned is down to the SRU's lack of money.
Murray might have been in contention to play in the RBS 6 Nations but for the ban. This, of course, is considered irrelevant, as the standard sanctimonious twaddle in the press release confirming his suspension pointed out. "Scottish rugby is determined that foul play will not be tolerated irrespective of the player's status within the game," we were told.
Similar attitudes led to John Jeffrey being banned for six months by the SRU for the incident which resulted in the Calcutta Cup being damaged back in the eighties, when Dean Richards, the Englishman involved, was suspended for a matter of weeks by his union.
Likewise, the Springboks got the propaganda victory they were after at the start of their 1998 tour when a youthful Jason White was banned by the SRU for four months for allegedly stamping on a South African.
Murray, admittedly, had a previous conviction for foul play before being red-carded for stamping against Llanelli 11 days ago but, because his previous sending-off was almost five years ago, it was not taken into account.
Anyway, in terms of overall justice, should his treatment not be considered alongside the leniency repeatedly shown to Martin Johnson, one of the game's greatest players, when he kneed backs, stood on throats and burst faces open with hay-makers, to mention but three of many unsavoury incidents?
Perhaps this latest high-profile case will finally persuade the rest of the world to take cognisance of the heady disciplinary standards being set here, but Scottish rugby's stock is such, given the way the game is being run, that seems unlikely.
The ludicrous decision to let Ian McGeechan, the director of rugby, head off on a jaunt with the British and Irish Lions just as new plans to address the disarray Scottish rugby is in at all levels are to be implemented, shows just how out of touch some Murrayfield administrators are.
Such is that reputation that an alternative theory is doing the rounds, to the effect that the scale of Murray's punishment merely reflected the disciplinarians' determination to extract revenge for Glasgow's impertinence in catching them with their pants down where tournament rules were concerned.
Surely guardians of the law, even mere rugby law, could not be that small-minded.
If Murray appeals, they will doubtless be able to show they have over-reacted, since the video evidence is apparently inconclusive and the case seems entirely dependent on the view of an inexperienced referee who put in a dreadful performance that night.
In the bigger picture, meantime, Scottish rugby's credibility hangs in the balance, which makes the general meeting, at which the plans for the future are supposed to be unveiled on December 12, more vital than ever.
If there is any consolation for those leading that process, it is that things can only get better. Governance issues must be addressed, and self-indulgent committee men told once and for all that their role is merely to communicate between clubs and SRU executives; the professional game must be improved with external investment introduced; and the club league structure must be stabilised, generating its own income with the subsidy culture killed off.
In short, as Murrayfield burns, it is time that the little empire-builders stopped fiddling about.