Sydney – Australia could lose its proposed new Melbourne-based Super 15 franchise and millions of dollars in broadcasting revenue, with a South African team poised to exploit the infighting over the Victorian licence, ARU executive director John O’Neill has warned.

An ARU board meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) is expected to endorse a management recommendation to award ownership of a fifth Australian Super 15 franchise to a group of former VRU directors backed by a Sydney mining magnate but O’Neill said a SANZAR meeting in October could award the licence to a Port Elizabeth team.

O’Neill met South African officials in Perth on the eve of the Tri-Nations match between the Wallabies and Springboks and learnt the South African Government is willing to invest heavily in a sixth Super 15 team based in a predominantly black region of the Republic.

This would inevitably devalue Australian broadcast rights because a Port Elizabeth team would be forced to play in an Australian pool with Australia’s four Super 15 teams, under a 2011 restructure of the SANZAR competition which creates more local derbies.

The deadline for News Ltd’s offer for the Australian and New Zealand rights to broadcast SANZAR games closes today (Monday), and it is understood an upgraded bid is predicated on five Australian teams playing each other twice.

O’Neill said the feuding between the successful bid team, Vic Super 15 and the establishment VRU, was undermining Australia’s hopes of a fifth team.

”Everyone wants to be on the bus but they’re squabbling over who wants to be the driver,” O’Neill said, pointing out the image of the ARU has been tarnished by the uproar.

”It’s very much about local personalities, and it’s exploded like Mt Vesuvius with a bucket of the proverbial being thrown over the ARU.

”If Melbourne don’t get their act together, there is a real risk of losing the franchise to South Africa.

”There is another bidder for the licence, and rugby people have got to realise this is not an ARU decision but a SANZAR decision where the team is located.

”Sure the 15th team will play in the Australian conference with the other four Australian teams [Reds, Waratahs, Brumbies and the Force] but the location of the team is yet to be determined.

”People are entitled to ask how can you have a team on the eastern coast of South Africa playing in an Australian conference but Melbourne has got to realise the South African Government is a major backer of a sixth team from South Africa. The Eastern Cape team would be called the Southern Kings and based in Port Elizabeth.”

O’Neill said the likely but ludicrous possibility of a Port Elizabeth team would devalue the broadcast rights and be a logistical disaster.

”Four Australian teams travelling in and out of South Africa every second week would be far from ideal,” he said. ”We’re in the middle of selling our broadcast rights, and News Ltd have indicated they will pay a premium if the fifth team is based in Australia.

”The significant increase in local content is the driver of the expected increase.”

The number of SANZAR games in 2011 will rise from 91 to 120 with more local derbies.

Assuming SANZAR at its October meeting endorses Melbourne as the 15th team, games played in Australia will rise from 26 to 40, and South Africa, New Zealand and Australia will each produce a champion and a guaranteed place in the play-offs.

If Port Elizabeth is awarded the licence, the number of games played in Australia will increase from 26 to 32, with more matches in viewer-unfriendly timeslots and possibly two conference champions from South Africa.