The New Zealand and Australian Rugby Unions have reiterated their commitment to expanding Super rugby beyond 2011 with South Africa despite the current breakdown in negotiations.
The NZRU and ARU have held meetings in Sydney over the past couple of days to work on an alternative trans-Tasman/Asia Pacific option but the two parties have declared their preference is for the SANZAR relationship to continue.
NZRU chief executive Steve Tew said: "We are still committed to achieving the ultimate goal, which is Super rugby that would involve the three countries."
"But we are not going to let time pass and disadvantage ourselves if we have to go to an alternative."
On Thursday, South African Rugby Union acting managing director Andy Marinos acknowledged the impasse in negotiations and said they were looking at alternatives in Europe.
Tew continued: "As Andy has pointed out, we are at an impasse. He believes we (New Zealand and Australia) need to give, and Australia and New Zealand believe they (South Africa) need to give."
"We're just acknowledging that the impasse is there and the time to make final decisions is nearing."
The deadline to present proposals for an expanded Super rugby tournament to broadcasters News Ltd and Supersport is June 30.
The main stumbling blocks are the start date of the new competition and how best to manage the international window in June.
The South Africans want a start date in February so the expanded tournament will not impinge on their domestic Currie Cup competition. Australia and New Zealand's preference is for the competition to begin in March.
As for the June Test window, New Zealand and Australia accept there is no perfect solution but believe the best of the 'imperfect solutions' is for the competition to continue throughout that period in a 'slowed down' fashion, which would involve a split round and see each team play two games and have two byes without their top-line players being involved.
"That lets us finish in time for the South Africans and ourselves (New Zealand) to look after our domestic competitions and it keeps us from playing in February, which we think is really important," Tew said.
After initially agreeing, South Africa have now rejected that model and have proposed an alternative that would see the South African teams in their conference start the competition two weeks earlier than the other two conferences and not play in June.
"We think that is a big negative for the integrity of the competition because you'd have a situation where the New Zealand and Australia teams would have to play two games without their best players and the South African teams would have all their players for all their games," said Tew.
"We think the integrity of the competition would be challenged and would not represent what we are trying to achieve, which is to have the pre-eminent rugby competition in the world."
While the three unions have reached stalemate regarding the Super rugby competition, all three are committed to continuing with the Tri-Nations regardless of whether Super rugby continues.
Tew added: "We remain in dialogue with the South Africans about how the Tri-Nations will look with or without Super rugby."
"The bottom line is, all three countries recognise the importance of the Tri-Nations to us."
"We're all very aware of the great testing of each other's teams that that competition brings and the great commercial value it has."
Tew,