Both had given it a damn good shot, finishing second last and third last in their comps respectively with about a 25 per cent winning record.

At season's end, both faced big decisions about their future.

The Brumbies decided to throw everything out on the front lawn and throw a match on it. Coach sacked. Assistant coaches sacked. Senior players let go. The clean out of the playing and coaching groups had been so thorough that when new coach Jake White got the group together to begin training for 2012 they had to wear nametags.

In contrast to the Brumbies' scorched earth approach, the Raiders opted for optimistic tinkering. They commissioned a review.

They paid lipservice to consultation, memorably inviting fans to contribute their views online ... in 200 characters or less, basically a text message. They later changed that to 200 words.

Bar booting an assistant coach out and bringing in some new gym equipment, in the grand traditions of such reviews, it was hard to discern any meaningful change. The head coach was being better supported - that's what everyone was told.

The question after the Brumbies and the Raiders took such dramatically different paths out of the mess of 2011 was which would work. Would it be the way of destroy and rebuild or the way of defiant faith in how things were done?

There's been an obvious answer to that question for some time, long before David Furner's sacking on Monday.

The Brumbies - having embraced Jake White's authoritarian style, where he tells players what to eat, when to sleep and, most importantly, how to play his winning style - are a buoyant organisation once again.

They missed the 2012 finals by a whisker and made it all the way to contest this year's grand final. They knocked off the British and Irish Lions and this week picked up a World Sevens title to boot. The no-names are now the core of the Wallabies.

Compare and contrast to the Raiders. Until yesterday, the only tough decisions the club appeared to have made was how long to stand down wayward player X or Y for an off-field misdeed.

The talented generation of players who won the club the under-20s title in 2008 is now scattered to the wind. Star players have been trying to escape their contracts and there have been rumblings among the leadership group.

While the Raiders made the 2012 finals, winning a home final in week one, the season played out in the same frustrating fashion of recent years. After the now traditional mid-year freak out, they won eight of their last 10 games.

This year has been as lacklustre as those before it. The pattern has been two wins, two losses, two wins. When they finally managed to string three wins together, they followed up with the worst defeat in their history against Melbourne, ending their home winning streak beginning a three-match losing run they're now on.

People are puzzled why, given all the support offered to Furner over four and a half years, the axe fell with three games left and hopes still there of them making the finals. It seems a strange response, hinting at deep chaos within.

And that can't all be David Furner's fault.

Having taken the easier path of tinkering around the edges two years ago, the club's board and its management should now own that decision, just as they do that of sacking their once favourite son.

It could well be time to take that tougher path of real change.