One could also imagine a club rule about XC currency
Sure; anything is possible, I guess. But I've never heard of any clubs with such a requirement.
Rightly or wrongly, most pilots and clubs place their currency emphasis on basic airmanship: circuits, stalls, spins, PFLs, etc. The popular assumption seems to be that any idiot can fly cross-country (and assuming a working GPS and a reasonable knowledge of how to access weather reports, perhaps that may not be far off the mark).