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Conferences aren't a dirty word in my opinion. In fact, the original implementation of them in SR made sense and actually worked out quite well. It was the changes made to fit the Sunwolves, Jaguares and Kings in that completely cocked things up by not looking at it logically. The Kings should have joined the SA conference, the Sunwolves the Australian conference and the Jaguares the NZ (thanks to the direct flights between Auckland and BA).
So if we see two or even three more Aus based teams then working on some kind of conference system really wouldn't be that much of an issue as long as it's done logically. But the time zone issue really isn't one even with added Aus teams. Jet lag would be minimal when on needing to cross two time zones at most.