He'd prefer chopping South Africa altogether, but former Wallabies captain Stirling Mortlock says the likely axing of one of Australia's five Super Rugby teams is the harsh reality for the ARU.
Mortlock, a two-time Super champion with the Brumbies who proudly ended his career with the Melbourne Rebels, is saddened by the prospect of one of his beloved clubs being cut in 2018.
"It's very disappointing to hear one might not be around moving forward," Mortlock told AAP on Thursday.
"Having said that, I do understand the logic behind it to a certain degree and it's not just a reflection on the state of Super Rugby teams. It's the state of rugby in general across the country.
"We haven't had a very strong and robust pathway to developing our players consistently.
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"That starts at club level and having a third-tier comp all the way up into flowing into provincial rugby, which flows into playing for the Wallabies.
"So if you look at all the current Super Rugby franchises across Australia, they're all struggling.
"You name it, there's been holes or consistencies and there hasn't been continuity of our strategy or our programs, full stop, for a long period of time.
"And that's got us to the state now whereby everybody's questioning our depth to field five teams."
Mortlock said he would "hate to see the Brumbies name evaporate" and felt a merger between the ACT outfit and the Rebels could work.
But Australia's 2007 World Cup captain wished that all six South African teams were axed instead.
"My preferred model personally is actually an Australian-New Zealand model expanding up into Asia," Mortlock said.
"The South African time zone does hardly anything for our viewers at all.
"For South African fans, it's fantastic because they can get up in the morning and watch rugby all day long.
"The reality is, though, SANZAAR is made up of all the relevant countries so they're not going to like me saying that.
"And there's no way that's going to happen either. That's been spoken about historically, but it never happens.
"I also feel like a big part of the solution hasn't been spoken about as well.
"The current status of just expanding to expand to create more content isn't the solution.
"Having proper teams and higher quality competition is paramount."
Even if that means that ultimately either the Brumbies, Rebels or Western Force perish.
"What we've probably got to have in mind is this is arguably going to be in the best interests of Australian rugby," Mortlock said.
"And secondly, the current model is borderline broken, if not broken.
"So tough decisions need to be made."
