THE faltering health of rugby in Australia and in SANZAAR’s other core markets remains “critically important”, but continued expansion in Super Rugby over the next decade is the way to ensure the cashed-up northern hemisphere doesn’t bury the code in the south.

SANZAAR boss Andy Marinos delivered the long-term vision on Monday as the new South African CEO also presented an update on the shorter-term future of Super Rugby, which was the subject of large-scale strategy talks in Sydney last week.

Eighty executives, coaches and broadcasters from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina and Japan gathered to discuss the likely change of Super Rugby’s structure in 2018, following an underwhelming first season of the newly expanded, 18-team competition this year.

After being hired for a root-and-branch review into the state of rugby in all of SANZAAR’s teams and markets, consultancy company Accenture presented their findings and various alternative competition models that ranged from downsizing to 12 teams through to further expansion to 24 teams.

No decisions have yet been made about competition size or structure but Marinos revealed:

* Super Rugby’s conference system will be retained regardless, to preserve player welfare;

* Each conference will likely continue to get guaranteed home finals, contrary to a New Zealand push for a straight finals system;

* The priority of SANZAAR nations is fixing the competitiveness of all teams, above the fairness of a lopsided draw;

Super Rugby is likely to expand rather than shrink in coming seasons. Source: Getty Images

The SANZAAR stakeholders took away the Accenture data for further consultation, said Marinos, and in most regards “nothing is off the table” for future competition changes.

But one thing seemingly locked in is that there is no chance of a round-robin competition returning in 2018, given the onerous travel demands it would create.

“They (SANZAAR partners) all identify that there are challenges around the current structure and it was about the high performance side, around the competitiveness of the teams,” Marinos said.

“Integrity (of the competition) is that elephant in the room but all the stakeholders understand with expansion a pure round robin is not going to be there.”

New Zealand’s dominance in Super Rugby this season saw four Kiwi teams make the playoffs but only one play a home final. Despite having superior points, under the system of each conference winner getting a guaranteed home final, three New Zealand sides had to play away.

Kiwi CEOs have called for that system to be scrapped but Marinos indicated it would not be changed given a home final is so valuable to broadcasters and the game as a whole in Australia and South Africa.

“Last year was an exceptional year, where they absolutely dominated,” Marinos said.

“You have to weigh up the commercial and fan interest versus the pure rugby interest.”

Concerns emerged in 2016 about the draw being unbalanced — one African conference doesn’t play New Zealand teams — and given the results of some lower teams, that Australia and South Africa don’t have the depth to field five and six teams respectively.

Marinos said focusing on strategies to increase the competitiveness of all teams was a solution for many problems, including the balance of a draw, the finals series and size of the competition as a whole.

The Hurricanes won this year’s Super Rugby title but New Zealand teams are concerned with the current set up of the competition. Source: AFP

“If the teams are all competitive, we have consistently better results out of all the games, that does go some way to managing people’s expectations around the integrity of the competition,” Marinos said.

Marinos defended Super Rugby from critics, however, pointing to increased overall spectator figures (2.2 million) and almost 50 million TV viewers globally.

“People think the whole thing is broken — well, it is not,” Marinos said. “It’s a damn good competition.”

Country by country analysis paints a different figure, though, with average crowd sizes down in Australia and New Zealand and most SANZAAR nations struggling to stay afloat financially.

Though the strategy planning is figuring out where Super Rugby will be in ten years time, Marinos conceded strengthening the health of the game at the “base” had to be a first priority for SANZAAR.

“The only way you can look at an expansionary model is if you have strength in your core markets. You have to get that right. It’s like building a house,” he said.

“(Australia is) critically important, because it is one of the founding members. Not to be too romantic about it but we have always had three key pillars: Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. It is the strength of those national unions and its Super Rugby structures that have always been the strength of the international game and the strength of SANZAAR. So, we are working very closely with Bill and Rob Clarke and the guys at the ARU, and with the clubs, to understand what are the pressures and the dynamics.”

Marinos wouldn’t be drawn on whether the Western Force — who are under pressure to survive — had value given Perth’s geography and timezone, or whether Super Rugby would have fewer teams in 2018.

The Western Force are under pressure to survive. Source: News Corp Australia

It would seem unlikely given expansion remains firmly on SANZAAR’s long-term radar.

Expanding Super Rugby further might send shivers down the spine of cash-strapped Aussie rugby bosses, who are crying out for more local product to please their fans and their sponsors.

But Marinos said with the huge money on offer in Europe, growing the game to new markets is the only option to tap into new money.

“I don’t think we can hide away from the fact that the amount of money in the game in England and France at the moment is a significant threat to the game in the southern hemisphere,” Marinos said.

“We have already seen a mass exodus of players out of Africa and Australia and if it continues at the rate at which it is, it could impact all the other markets in SANZAAR.

“So, yes, it is a reality we have to deal with, and looking at expansion and looking at moving into new markets, a driver for that is obviously to realise more commercial revenue and be able to fund a lot more in our core markets to enable us to retain our top players for as long as possible.

“If we want to grow and grow exponentially, not incrementally, we are only going to attain that growth if we are moving into new markets.

“Because South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, we are pretty much getting to saturation level in terms of how much we can extract from our key commercial drivers.”

The 2017 Super Rugby draw — which will continue unchanged with 18 teams — will be released on Tuesday.

Marinos also said he was “very happy” with the SANZAAR judicial system despite copping flak from the non-citation of All Blacks prop Owen Franks for making contact with the eye region of Kane Douglas in the second Bledisoe Cup Test in Wellington.

Citing commissioner Decker Govender, of South Africa, declared it was not worthy of a red card, and Marinos revealed for the first time Govender been backed up by two other citing officers.

“The citing commissioner who sat over that, he collaborated with two other guys, two other respected citing commissioners, and that’s the independence,” Marinos said.

“They’re three other independent people, and that’s the decision that they got to. It’s not one person sitting on his own, making a rogue call. There is a collaboration.”

Marinos conceded SANZAAR could apply more transparency with judicial matters and give more information to the public about the process, but they declined to disclose the reasons given by Govender for not citing Franks.

The All Blacks’ hotel bugging scandal remains in the hands of the NSW Police and SANZAAR said they await the results of the investigation.

SANZAAR operations manager Brendan Morris said: “They are being pretty thorough. From what I understand they are investigating all sorts of angles on it, from how do you buy it, how did it get there, they’ve interviewed a lot of people from the hotel, they’re not leaving any stone unturned. Because of how public it was, I think they’ve thrown a lot of resources behind it.”