New Zealand rugby supremo Steve Tew is looking to calm fears of a SANZAR rift © Getty Images

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New Zealand rugby boss Steve Tew has moved to calm fears about the future of the SANZAR alliance after meeting with South African Rugby Union (SARU) officials in Johannesburg.

Despite speculation to the contrary, Tew believes there is no appetite from South Africa to break up the southern hemisphere coalition and he attributed the talk of a rift to a desire to add a sixth Super Rugby team in the Eastern Cape.

SARU had expressed concerns over the future of their relationship with the New Zealand and Australian unions earlier in the week, causing the South African players' union to issue a statement outlining their own issues with a possible split. But after a meeting ahead of the Tri-Nations test at between the Springboks and All Blacks at FNB Stadium, Tew explained that SARU's desire was to have an extra team.

SARU wants the Southern Kings to be that team and politically, it's a huge issue for them as they want to take rugby of the highest level to the Eastern Cape and have been pushing for it for several years.

''There's no truth that they want to leave,'' Tew told the Sydney Morning Herald. ''The biggest pressing issue for South African rugby is that they have a sixth team they'd like to have involved in a professional rugby competition.

''We're currently doing some work to see if that might be possible in Super rugby, but they're also looking at other options and that's where the basis of this comment came from, we understand. 'There are more rugby players registered in that province than there are in New Zealand. 'So it's a big rugby area and it's currently not got a foothold.''