South African Rugby CEO Jurie Roux believes SANZAAR's decision to cull three Super Rugby had to happen, but it may still no be enough to revive the competition to its former glory.
Next year will see two teams from South Africa and one from Australia cut, bringing the number of competing sides down to 15.
But Roux says that figure was still too many and the tournament should probably have never been expanded from the 12-team format that was played between 1996 and 2005.
"The ultimate competition probably was Super 12 and to be honest we should have probably never moved from it, but there were different reasons," Roux told SuperSport.
"I'm sad to say that a lot of (the expansion) was due to driving revenue and there were some political decisions that drove the process.