Wallabies on risk of becoming second-tier nation - Former Australia captain Stephen Moore

Former Wallabies great Stephen Moore has expressed concern about the state of Australian rugby following their dismal performance in the ongoing Rugby World Cup.

Australia under Eddie Jones became the first ever Wallabies side to be eliminated in the opening stage of a World Cup for the first time as Fiji managed to secure a losing bonus point in a crucial Pool C encounter against Portugal. Even though Australia and Fiji were tied with 11 points, Simon Raiwalui's men sneaked into the quarter-finals having defeated the Wallabies earlier in the round.

Ever since Jones took over, Australia lost all their matches in the Rugby Championship and also suffered defeats to New Zealand and France in the warm-ups leading to the World Cup and Moore has urged the Australian board to take stringent action to arrest the downfall.

"It's been alarming the way the team's gone backwards," Moore told AAP.

"It's really been in the last couple of years that we've really slipped down into that bordering on being a second tier side, so it's been a rapid decline."

Moore, who has played 129 Tests for Australia and also captained them to the final of the 2015 Rugby World Cup said even though Jones' appointment months ahead of the showpiece event and his faith in a youth squad had misfired, he said the problems compound to the structure of domestic circuit in the country.

"Five Australian teams is not working for us from a performance point of view, from an entertainment point either, so we need to look at different ways of doing it," added Moore.

"I think the trigger for all these things is that we just we're not improving, so we have to keep exploring how we can get better and we seem to be keen to just keep going down the same path and expecting something different to happen.

"We've got to be pretty courageous about what the future looks like, because we're at that point now, aren't we?

"I think the code in Australia has probably gone to another low, so we really have to do something urgently."