In an alarming round Australia’s Super Rugby teams – the Brumbies, Melbourne Rebels, NSW Waratahs and Queensland Reds – all lost their games even though three of the matches were played on home grounds. It exposed the weakness of the Australian conference and also raises the unpalatable question: can Australia support four Super Rugby franchises and be competitive against New Zealand and even South African sides?

Rugby Australia would have no appetite to cut an Australian team after the agony of culling the Western Force last year and that is entirely understandable. It was a messy and painful execution, which has left scars on the Australian rugby landscape, particularly in Western Australia.

The reduction to four Australian teams was meant to make them stronger by re-distributing the ex-Force players among the surviving teams, but the evidence so far this season suggests RA did not go far enough. Australian rugby is operating in a false economy. When Australia expanded to five Super Rugby teams the prevailing wisdom was bigger is better, but history tells us less is more.

The biggest problem facing Australian Super Rugby is the player drain to Europe. There are now more professional Australian players playing overseas than in Australia. While RA is still able to retain sufficient leading Wallabies to keep the Australian team reasonably competitive in Test rugby, it is the loss of talismanic Super Rugby players which is really damaging the game.

Many of the Brumbies’ current problems would be solved by playmaker Matt Toomua, who is playing for English club Leicester, while flanker Scott Fardy’s outstanding form for Irish province Leinster is drawing comparisons with Heineken Cup hero Rocky Elsom. Boom backrower Sean McMahon has already been lost to Japanese rugby, while Reds five-eighth Jono Lance, Waratahs winger Taqele Naiyaravoro and Brumbies centre Kyle Godwin are leaving at the end of the year. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Australian rugby cannot compete financially with rich clubs in Britain, France and Japan for players, which means the game in this country has a stark choice – either it starts to find ways to generate more income to retain players or makes more cost-saving measures.

The culling of the Force was a financial disaster for RA, but from next year it will have an extra $6m to spend annually and much of this money should be directed towards retaining key Super Rugby talent. If that is not enough to make a difference, Australia will need to seriously contemplate reducing the number of teams again to save more money which it can re-invest in the remaining sides to make them more competitive and marketable.

Of course, Australia’s Super Rugby teams could make more money if more people attended games and watched on TV, but that will not happen while teams are not performing satisfactorily and they will not perform while quality players continue to leave. It’s a vicious circle. Three strong and competitive Australian teams would help to generate revenue by attracting crowds to games and viewers to television sets. It is not the number of teams that generate income, but the number of eyeballs watching.

Also, concentrating Australia’s talent into three teams would help to enhance the cohesion of the Wallabies and make them more competitive, which would also be good for the financial health of the game. It is worth remembering the last time the Wallabies held the Bledisloe Cup in 2002 there were only three Australian Super Rugby teams.

So if you had to make the cut, who would it be? Clearly, the heartland states of NSW and Queensland are too big to fail because between them and the Wallabies they generate the vast majority of the broadcast revenue which underpins the professional game in Australia.

After what happened with the Force, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for RA to come wielding an axe at the Brumbies or the Rebels, but a merger between the two teams, an idea which was floated during the Force culling saga, could help to solve the twin problems of Australian competitiveness and commercial viability.

The iconic Brumbies brand is a valuable asset which should not be lost if that can be helped, but growing the game in Melbourne, a city of four million people, is potentially important to the future of the code. A scenario in which the Brumbies play half of their games in Canberra and half in Melbourne could be the answer, but that outcome would need to be negotiated with all parties agreeable.

Australian teams have now lost 35 Super Rugby games in a row to New Zealand opposition, which is more than Malcolm Turnbull has lost consecutive news polls. If Australian rugby has not got the wherewithal to break this cycle, the game will just go around in ever diminishing circles.

Whatever RA decides to do, it must act before the expiry of the current broadcast agreement in 2020, which may well be Australia’s last chance to get the balance right between income, expenditure and results.