Chief executive Andy Marinos' insistence that Super Rugby maintains a conference system to build in future expansion is almost Trumpian in its absurdity. Having stuffed up expansion once, to such a horrible extent that both South Africa and Australia are currently actively considering cutting one of their sides from the 2018 season, you'd think that SANZAAR would have learnt its lesson. But no.

Now we are to believe that Europe, North America, and potentially Mars are the salvation for the competition. Not that this should come as a surprise. Take a close look at the official Super Rugby draw released on Tuesday and you will see that kick-off times are listed prominently in GMT as well as Australian time. SANZAAR is already answering to new paymasters in the European television market.

It's a depressingly orthodox, business school, 'my conference is bigger than yours' way of thinking.

This expansionary zeal reminds of the English Premier League. It's as if SANZAAR wants Super Rugby to become a rugby equivalent of that soulless marketing-led juggernaut. But let me tell you about modern football (or soccer), and this comes from someone who grew up on football in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s, and who used to love the game.

Modern football is a disgrace. It's a carnival of cheating, in which moderately talented players on obscene wages try and con officials multiple times during a game. Or worse, crowd round and bully a referee who earns in a year what they do in a week with a constant stream of foul-mouthed abuse. That's modern football, and the Premier League is the epitome of that.

If that's what SANZAAR wants for Super Rugby, then count me out. Let French rugby have that title if they want it so bad. All that money that is sloshing around their club game has proved completely ruinous to their national team.

There are other models. Look at La Liga in Spain, or even the Bundesliga in Germany. When is the last time you heard German officials bang on about taking over the world in the way the English Premier League marketers do? Then ask yourself when is the last time a top level, current German international moved to the EPL? Doesn't happen. Germany, incidentally, are the world champions.

The best response to the challenge posed by French (and English) money is the quiet one. By building competitions with such an emphasis on player development and welfare that no one wants to leave. By making them true centres of excellence that offer players an opportunity to reach their potential and even give them the tools that might prove rather handy in later life. New Zealand have done this nicely, but clearly South Africa and Australia need help.

This should be SANZAAR's focus, not wasting time on whether the New York Nobodies can pass a feasibility study by 2020. Besides, SANZAAR's failure with Japan's Sunwolves has been abject. It is clear that the corporations still run Japanese rugby (and it should have been clear to SANZAAR, had it asked the right questions of the right people). So who in their right mind would trust SANZAAR to manage future expansion any more effectively than the Sunwolves debacle?

I love Super Rugby, I really do. I would be much better read had I watched less of it over the past 15 years but that's a sacrifice I've been happy to make. But these days, I love it a little less.

So our only hope is that this vision of a global competition goes the same way as the 18-team model: a laughing stock after one season, a sporting Icarus just after the wax began to melt.