The Australian Rugby Union has pulled out all the stops – and the very big bucks – to keep Australia's most influential player in the green and gold.

That includes a three-year deal, understood to be worth more than $4 million. In the sabbatical year he will take home in the region of $750,000 for three, one-hour meet and greets with individuals of the ARU's choosing.

He will play some rugby, having signed a second, lucrative three-season deal with Japanese Top League club Panasonic Wild Knights.

But after taking the rest of next year to freshen up in body, mind and spirit, Australia's highest paid player will rejoin the Brumbies and Wallabies in 2018 and the crucial World Cup year after that.

It is an eye-watering sum of money to pay a player who will play no rugby for you for a full third of the term of the deal.

But in today's landscape, when every union, club and governing body in rugby outside Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are awash with cash, a fully paid year-long leave of absence is simply the cost of doing business.

It is worth noting that only Pocock and his Wallabies stablemate Israel Folau (on about $4 million over three years) could be said to be on the silly money. It is the Michael Cheika model, where the top players are paid accordingly and everyone else, to greater and lesser degrees, takes what they're given. He brought it to the Waratahs and you can bet he is similarly recasting the national landscape.

But for a game on the ropes financially – the latest rumours indicate new Queensland Rugby Union boss Richard Barker inherited a basket case this year – and the ARU struggling to fund its core businesses, let alone any of the code's myriad good causes, the success or otherwise of Pocock's sabbatical and three-season stint in Japan will be watched with interest.

ARU chief Bill Pulver would not comment on the terms or value of Pocock's deal – which he signed in March after turning down a reported $2.4 million-a-season offer from English club Wasps – but Pulver was unapologetic about securing the country's top talent by any means necessary.

"I am very comfortable with what we do around that," Pulver said.

"We are at such a financial disadvantage that we have to be creative about the way we retain our talent. That means we will do our best to put a proposal in front of our very best that addresses their needs. We do that every year.

"We're not going to stick our head in the sand and say there's one way to contract people and take it or leave it. If you want to surround yourself with the best possible people then you need to be as flexible as possible."

It is hard to argue with him. While the game is struggling here, it is in obscene health in Europe and Asia.

World Rugby this week announced record annual financial results with revenue of nearly $585 million generated in 2015 mainly due to last year's World Cup and a $321 million profit.

The governing body said it would inject $416 million into the game in the next four-year cycle to 2020, topping by 22 per cent the $340 million investment for the preceding three-year period.

At the same time, global rugby participation topped a record 7.73 million, according to World Rugby, almost double the figure at the start of the cycle.

The sleeping giant that was professional club rugby in England has woken. With a salary cap that will double in four years to more than $12 million next year, the English Premiership has become a destination of choice for Australian players.

Cheika was not scaremongering this week when he responded to reports Test newcomers Rory Arnold and Tevita Kuridrani were in the crosshairs of French rugby tzars.

"For us to keep our players, we've got to be doing an unbelievable job on the ground," Cheika said. "They can offer them more in [pounds] sterling ... We've got to make sure that playing, not just for Australia but for your Super Rugby team, is something that's going to make you a better player, a better person."

Initiatives such as the midweek tour game against the French Barbarians last month were an example of the "extras" Cheika is adding to keep in touch with Australians abroad, to let them know of  the interest in them back home.

And then, in this new unreality of international rugby, there will always be one or two Poeys or Izzys. The guys for which you have to pull out all stops, and every last cent, to retain for the good of the game.