Most, if not all, of SL's marketing, branding, and strategic decisions that people bag as 'plastic' were ones they were forced into because of legal reasons or circumstance. Not having club branding, the competition logo in the middle of the jersey, shared jersey designs, even things as big as the Mariners and Rams being part of the comp, were all decisions that they were forced into.
As such it's at best disingenuous, if not out right dishonest, to make out that those elements of SL are somehow representative of SL, or the SL "vision" if you will.
It's also simply wrong to suggest that the NRL is just an extension of SL, or that SL won the "war", as the NRL is not, and never has been, representative of the SL plan.
RL would probably be much better off if SL (or the ARL for that matter) had really won the war outright, because the NRL is a compromise that is the worst of both worlds in a lot of ways.