“Almost immediately upon expansion to five teams it became apparent that Australia could not sustain that number of teams,” Clyne said.
and
“I acknowledge the mistake of that decision (to sign up for Super 18) but at the time, there wasn’t an option to drop to four teams,” Clyne said.
“Yes we heard those warnings but we didn’t have the option of reducing teams without compensation."
So he basically confessed he had heard the warnings to not go to super 18 but they were more interested in the $$$
All quotes from
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/spo...fefe1f476f9374