New Zealand Rugby are adamant they're not the bad guys in the Super Rugby revamp that will see three teams from South Africa and Australia cut loose for the 2018 season and beyond.

Some media outlets in both Australia and South Africa have portrayed New Zealand as the driver for change in Super Rugby's first major retrenchment that will see the competition reduced from its current four-conference, 18-team format to 15 teams spread over three conferences from 2018.

That will see one team from Australia (either the Force or Rebels) and two from South Africa (the Kings and Cheetahs are considered leading contenders) shed to make way for a reduced competition that officials are confident will increase the level of play, general competitiveness and overall fan engagement.

NZ Rugby chief executive Steve Tew had a sharp response on Monday when asked if his organisation was the villain in a process that will see a large number of players, coaches and management lose out on professional opportunities in both Australia and South Africa.

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"That's crap," Tew told Fairfax Media in the wake of Sunday night's blood-on-the-floor announcement. "This has been a Sanzaar decision. We've made a very considered, long-thought-through and based-on-fact decision as a joint venture. It's not a decision driven by New Zealand at all, and if you look at the information coming out of South Africa from their union I'm sure they'll attest to that.

"We're all in this together. We've been going for 20 years. There's no way one country is going to dominate a decision like this. That's pretty flawed thinking."

Tew said it had been a difficult decision for all countries involved in the joint venture to make, but "ultimately the numbers were speaking for themselves.

"We've got a decline in Australia and in South Africa and we needed to make some changes. So going back to the three-conference, 15-team setup we think is the best thing, and we've tweaked the finals series to make it a little bit fairer in terms of the best teams having the best chance to get through to the final."

The NZR boss said there was no significant downside in the new format from a New Zealand perspective, but stressed the axing of teams had not been taken lightly.

"The reality here is this has not been easy for anyone. We're incredibly sympathetic and grateful to our colleagues in Australia and South Africa who are going to go through a very difficult decision {on which teams are culled]."

Tew said that fans across all countries had sent a clear message on the product as it currently stood.

"Sanzaar has been carrying out market research right through this process, both before we designed the new competition and when we designed the 18-team competition, and the numbers by the end of last year and beginning of this year in those two countries (Australia and South Africa) are very plain.

"We needed to make a change. Both South Africa and Australia recognised they're probably struggling for the depth of player to sustain the number of teams they had and made a big call. That's very courageous, and good luck to them."

Tew denied there had been a back-flip on the expansion philosophy from little more than a year ago; but more that a new reality had emerged.

"There is no escaping the fact that particularly here in New Zealand we cannot sustain professional rugby unless we find some new markets to grow some revenue," he added. "It's why the All Blacks play games away from New Zealand, it's why we play more games than we'd like and its why we're giving the [Tokyo-based] Sunwolves a decent crack at getting established, because we need to use RWC 2019 and the Tokyo Olympics as an opportunity to grow rugby into Asia.

"Otherwise we'll get beaten in the race for money by particularly the French and British clubs."

The change, though, is significant in that it has occurred mid-contract with broadcasters. Tew said the co-operation from partners, such as Sky TV in New Zealand, had been "outstanding" as the new format was hammered out.

But he did confirm that New Zealand would not be receiving a bumped-up share of broadcasting revenue to allow for the fact that from 2018 on it would be financing one more team than its principal partners.

"We've largely left the revenue split as it was," he said. "We're comfortable that's the right thing to do given the circumstances. There will be costs in unwinding these teams in any case so we're not unhappy about that."

He admitted the new broadcasting agreement in 2020 could factor in the differing representations from each country, among other things. "It's a complicated negotiation at the best of times," he added.

The Kiwi rugby chief also conceded he was likely to cop some flak from his own players over bumping local derbies back up to two full rounds. The attrition of those contests is a major concern for the leading New Zealanders.

"That's fair," said Tew. "Certainly the conversations I had over the weekend with players would reflect that. But they're also mindful that there's a complicated jigsaw here and the pieces aren't always independent of each other, so we'll take that on board as we go forward to 2020."

Tew couldn't promise Super Rugby would be an improved product in 2018, but felt the Saanzar unions had now given it every chance to re-engage those faltering fans.