Steve Tew is hoping that the IRB will act on inbound tours © Getty Images

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New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) chief Steve Tew has conceded defeat on plans to allow players to represent two countries following the IRB's latest meeting, but is hopeful that northern hemisphere sides will play three Tests when they head south in future.

Tew emerged with mixed feelings after the New Zealand-led proposal to allow former internationals to play for a second-tier country of origin after a 12 month stand-down was refused. The proposal would have allowed the likes of former All Blacks Doug Howlett (Tonga), Jerry Collins (Samoa) and Joe Rokocoko (Fiji) to return to Test rugby.

"There's a fair amount of resistance to that up here because it has European law complications so they are very risk-averse in this part of the world," Tew said. "You'd have to say they're also fractionally nervous as to what it might do if it strengthened the island teams."

Tew did strike a blow by securing a chief executive's meeting on the issue of tour games in February, with a report hopefully presented to the IRB council in May. Tew is in pursuit of greater revenue from the inbound tours to New Zealand after not making anything from summer dates with France and Italy before drawing big crowds for all of their November tour games.

"What we're aiming for in the long term is a commitment that they'll do the best they can when they come south," Tew said. "We're arguing for the two years that are not Lions tours or a World Cup, it'd be really good to have three-test tours. That's our goal. This year we proved how silly it was that it was 1-1 against France, then they toddled off to play Australia and we hosted Italy. A decider would have been a hell of a lot more interesting to our players and our fans."

Tew described the balance between revenue and player welfare as a "vicious circle" and admitted that the current workload on tour is taxing for the players. The All Blacks will play the Barbarians at Twickenham on Saturday in a money-spinning showdown.

"There's no shortage of opportunities, it's just how many games before we start to devalue what we're doing, and take it past a reasonable point or the players," he said. "This tour being effectively seven weeks long has really stretched everybody.

"Our argument is we don't want to play six games on these tours, but to remain competitive against these guys in the market for our own players and coaches, you need to generate money to feed into the game. So there's almost a vicious circle."