Bill Beaumont wins World Rugby's game of thrones

On May 11 around 3 o’clock (AES time) World Rugby sent out a media release with the headline ‘Bill Beaumont elected next World Rugby Chairman’.

The headline was followed with four dot points:
– Beaumont unanimously elected Chairman and will begin term on July 1
– Agustin Pichot becomes first-ever Argentinian to serve as Vice-Chairman
– Elections cap historic day for World Rugby as new governance model is implemented with Georgia, Romania and USA brought onto Council.
– Rugby experiencing record global growth with 7.73 million players.

The point here is that Beaumont is inheriting a World Rugby organisation and a rugby game that has moved dramatically away from the Home Unions’ model that Beaumont as the chairman of the RFU fought hard to maintain.

The eight years of the Frenchman Bernard Lapasset as chairman of World Rugby have been the most productive, inclusive and dynamic in the growth of rugby in its history.

A World Rugby media release at the beginning of the year headed “Lapasset relishing game-changing 2016 for rugby” summarised his achievements as chairman:

– Rugby set to return to the Olympic Games after 92-year absence
– Global participation set to top eight million as record growth continues
– One million children introduced to the game in 2015 via Get Into Rugby
– Rugby World Cup 2019 preparation gathers momentum as the Rugby World Cup host process continues

Lapasset was a shrewd diplomat and an accomplished linguist who speaks four languages. At the opening of the 2011 Rugby World Cup tournament he wowed the Auckland crowd by beginning with a Maori welcome.

This sense of world-wide expansion in world rugby was reflected in his decision to break the Home Unions model of the International Rugby Board and re-brand it as World Rugby.

The psychology behind the re-branding, which I support, is that the IRB over its history has had a Home Unions fixation.

Back in 1924 the IRB even convened an Imperial Conference to consider whether rugby should be restricted to English-speaking countries only.

The conference was a blatant attempt to ban France and other the European countries playing rugby, like Germany, from the rugby community. The South African delegates to the conference pointed out that the majority of rugby players in their country spoke Afrikaans and any English-speaking requirement would disqualify them. So the English-speaking dispensation was dropped.

It was not until 1948 that the IRB allowed delegates from South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to take their place on the board, rather than their British surrogates.

The IRB’s belligerently oppositional attitude to a Rugby World Cup tournament, a proposal promoted by the ARU and the New Zealand Rugby Union, is one of the more infamous episodes in its checkered history. The Home Unions argued that its then Five Nations tournament, the epitome of rugby tournaments in their opinion, would be challenged by a world tournament.

Bernard Lapasset dragged the IRB out of this Home Unions-first mindset. He came from a background of French rugby administration that had challenged the restricted Home Unions mentality with an expansionist European model.

It was this French/European connection that forced the hand of the Home Unions grouping on World Rugby to push for the Olympic status of rugby. The IOC was interested but meet with some resistance from (surprise, surprise) the Home Unions grouping.

A tentative decision was made by the IOC to negotiate with FIRA, the European rugby union, rather than the IRB/World Rugby.

Faced with this rival for the control of rugby around the world, or at least the rapidly-growing sevens rugby game, World Rugby reluctantly jumped on the Olympic cart.

Rugby sevens is now exploding around the world. It is a huge story in world sport right now, for instance, that Jarryd Hayne is trying out for Fiji.

The World Rugby Sevens Series in 2015-16 has been attended by over 640,000 spectators, averaging 70,000 for each event across ten destinations.

The markets for sevens have exploded in countries out of the Home Unions dispensation. NBC’s coverage of the Las Vegas Sevens was watched by more than 1.5 million viewers. Alisports and CCTV now broadcast Sevens Rugby in China. The result is that the 2015-16 series has generated over 6,000 hours of coverage in more than 100 territories around the world.

Bernard Lapasset was also a leading advocate, along with Australian rugby identities like Rod Macqueen and John O’Neill, for the laws of rugby to be modernised to make them more logical, more easily understood by players, referees and spectators and provide more of a spectacle in the modern era of mass viewing.

Under his leadership the Experimental Law Variations (ELVs) were developed, codified and played. The rugby played under the ELVs was among the most explosive and thrilling the game has seen. Unfortunately, the Home Unions clique on the IRB/World Rugby torpedoed some of the more important ELVs.

I got an insight into the Home Unions-type thinking behind this veto when I had a chance to chat about the ELVs with Bill Beaumont. The occasion was a meeting between a number of senior Australian rugby writers and the IRB/World Rugby board before the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

We were seated on either side of a long table, with the official party sitting on one side and the journalists opposite them on the other side. As luck would have it, I was sitting opposite from Beaumont. I expressed my disappointed to him that the ELVs on short-arm penalties for most scrum infringements and the concession allowing a rolling maul to be dragged down at any time (the two most important ELVs in my view) had been rejected.

Beaumont shoved aside my comment, as if he were mounting a verbal and unstoppable rolling maul, with a dismissive argument that endorsed the slow-plod England game, which he as a player was so good at employing.

I wonder if someone who has these views (does he still have them?) and who is now standing down as chairman of the Rugby Football Union (the pretentiously-named England rugby union) and Six Nations Rugby has the world rugby instincts and viewpoints to be an effective chairman of World Rugby.

It should be remembered that on Beaumont’s watch at the RFU that England, playing stodgy out-fashioned rugby, became the first host country not to make the finals of a Rugby World Cup tournament.

The main issues facing Bill Beaumont and World Rugby are:

– What the UK Telegraph calls “the mounting stalemate” over a global season. The agreement on Test matches ends in 2019. The southern hemisphere unions want the June international tours shifted to July. England coming here next month, for instance, means that the current 2016 Super Rugby tournament has to be closed down for a month.

– The southern hemisphere unions also want a share of the revenues generated by their November tours to Europe. What happens now is that these tours by the Wallabies, the Springboks and the All Blacks generate far more revenue for the European nations than their tours south generate for their host nations.

But the ARU, SARU and the New Zealand Rugby Union do not share appropriately in this largesse they generate.

England’s Sydney Test this year, for example, will be played at the Allianz stadium rather than at the much large ANZ Stadium at Homebush, where the All Blacks invariably play. The reason for this is that England does not have the pulling power in Australia that the Wallabies, say, have at Twickenham.

– A better scheduling of Rugby World Cup tournaments to provide more time for the southern hemisphere to complete their Super Rugby tournament and The Rugby Championship and leave time for the players to recover for the Rugby World Cup tournament.

Along with this better scheduling, which in reality means holding the tournament in October (its original date) rather than in September (which suits the northern hemisphere countries), the south wants a fairer distribution of the profits from the tournament.

When New Zealand Rugby Union chief executive Stew Tew suggested after the Rugby World Cup 2011 (and was endorsed by the then ARU chief executive John O’Neill) that the New Zealand Rugby Union would consider withdrawing the All Blacks from the Rugby World Cup 2015 tournament if this issue wasn’t addressed (it was partially), Stephen Jones told his readers in The Sunday Times that Spain could take the place of New Zealand and the crowds would still pour into Twickenham.

– These various money and scheduling problems are combined in the general challenge that rugby needs a global season. That season would require the Six Nations tournament to be moved from its present schedule. The European season, for the professional game, would follow roughly the same sort of calendar as the game in the southern hemisphere.

This is something that the English clubs would welcome. I remember talking about this in 1999 with Nigel Wray, a sports-mad businessman who is an owner of the Wasps club. His capacious office was behind Selfridges in Oxford Street. He told me his vision was for the England Premiership to be played as a summer tournament.

This would allow afternoon matches and a family atmosphere that he argued was crucial for the growth of his club and the Premiership.

Bill Beaumont, as chairman of the RFU, has never endorsed summer/global season concept.

I was intrigued, therefore, to read that part of his manifesto supporting his bid to become chairman of World Rugby included this commitment: “I will address the challenge of the global calendar immediately on taking office. World Rugby cannot be silent on this matter. This complex and important issue must have a solution designed to benefit the entire rugby community.”

How will this commitment square with the recent statement made by the chief executive of Six Nations Rugby John Feehan: “The idea of moving the championship from its traditional February-March slot is non-negotiable.”

Until a couple of weeks ago Feehan got his policies from Bill Beaumont in his capacity as chairman of the board of Six Nations Rugby.

Beaumont’s response to this ultimatum was: “I think you have got to be prepared to look at it, moving the Six Nations forward by a month. That could well be a solution.”

If this is a solution, England and France would have to start their season later in the year, re-schedule their tours to the southern hemisphere from June to July and allow the Rugby World Cup tournament to start in October rather than September.

Can Beaumont the poacher become Beaumont the game-keeper?

***

The answer to that question is for the future.

What we do know is that the Bill Beaumont of 2016 is expressing entirely different attitudes from the Bill Beaumont who was expected to take over as IRB/World Rugby chairman in 2007 from Syd Millar.

Millar, a doyen of the Home Unions union, a terrific, sometimes terrifying tight forward for Ireland and later a noted rugby administrator, had taken over from the first paid chairman of the IRB/World Rugby, the Welsh QC Vernon Pugh.

Beaumont expected that the Home Unions club would endorse him as the England successor to a Welshman and then an Irishman.His argument, as he told delegates, was that “it’s my turn this time.”

There was an unexpected turn in the 2007 election, though. This was the emergence of the Frenchman Bernard Lapasset as the first credible candidate to challenge the Home Unions monopoly of world rugby’s top job.

Lapasset gained the support of the ARU (then a big player in rugby politics with its dynamic chief executive John O’Neill), SARU and the European unions.

The ARU support was based on Lapasset’s support as Chairman of the FFR (the French Federation) of Australia in ensuring that the Australia won the co-hosting rights to the 2003 Rugby World Cup tournament. And when New Zealand lost its hosting rights, the FFR supported the ARU’s decision to run the tournament on its on.

The RFU was not supportive of this decision by the ARU.

The ARU had also opened up its books from Rugby World Cup 2003 so that France could use its intellectual property on how to run a great tournament in their 2007 Rugby World Cup. In 2005 O’Neill received the French decoration of Legion of Honour for this support of the France’s Rugby World Cup 2007 bid and preparations.

We move forward now in this game of thrones history to 2011 when Bernard Lapasset is up for re-election and is challenged again by Bill Beaumont who again runs on a “it’s my turn this time” campaign slogan.

The initial vote taken immediately after Rugby World Cup 2011 was so tight that it was held over for several months to see if either Lapasset or Beaumont could succeed in lobbying for a winning majority.

At a meeting in Los Angeles in early 2012, Lapasset had worked the numbers to give himself a narrow 13-12 victory, without using his own vote.

A key to the way Lapasset constructed his voting numbers comes from the vote for the South African Oregan Hoskins as vice-chairman (with Lapasset’s casting vote) and the outrageous (as far as the Home Unions were concerned) result that representatives from Japan and the USA replaced delegates from Scotland and Wales on the executive committee.

So the coalition voting for Lapasset was made up essentially of the FFR, FIRA (European rugby), UAR (the Latino grouping), SARU and ARU. This was an anti-Home Unions combination of forces.

When you talk to insiders it is clear that John O’Neill played a key role in putting this combination of forces into play in ensuring Lapasset’s second term as chairman of World Rugby.

Now here is a bombshell revelation.

A few months after this victory in 2012, Lapasset confided to O’Neill that he would like him to be his successor in 2016. Lapasset indicated that the coalition that voted for him would support O’Neill.

O’Neill later told his ARU chairman Michael Hawker about this conversation. O’Neill had to be sure that he remained on the World Rugby Council as an ARU delegate to be eligible for the nomination to succeed Lapasset in 2016.

Hawker said that he understood this even though O’Neill’s contract with the ARU expired at the end of 2013.

O’Neill unexpectedly resigned from the ARU in October 2012. He was not re-appointed to the World Rugby Council. The opportunity for the first southern hemisphere chairman of World Rugby disappeared.

***

Or has it?

We come back to the recent election of the vice-chairman of World Rugby, Agustin Pichot. In my opinion, Pichot could be running against Beaumont when the vote for chairman is taken in 2020.

Like Bill Beaumont, Pichot is in Rugby’s Hall of Fame as one of the greatest players in the history of the game. He transferred his brilliant on field skills to an equally brilliant off the field politicking.

Look at his achievements. He has convinced the then SANZAR to allow Argentina into the best Test tournament in world rugby, The Rugby Championship, a tournament between the Wallabies, the Springboks, the All Blacks and now the Pumas.

Complementing this success is SANZAR’s other huge decision to allow an Argentinian team, the Jagueras, to play in the best provincial/club/franchise tournament in world rugby, Super Rugby.

And here is where the rugby politicking becomes intriquing and perhaps offers clues as to Pichot’s skills in getting what he wants.

The chief executive of SANZAR (the second A in SANZAAR relates to Argentina) when these two decisions were made was the New Zealander, Greg Peters.

Peters is no longer chief executive of SANZAAR. Where is he now?

He is chief executive of the Jagueras.

***

Following the appointment of Bill Beaumont and Augustin Pichot to the top jobs in World Rugby, there was an important meeting of all the top officials from unions around the world.

These powerbrokers discussed the shape of the international calendar following the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the re-jigging of the global and domestic competitions, the tensions in France and England between the unions and the privately owned clubs and the splitting of profits in Tests in Europe between northern and southern hemisphere powers.

Steve Tew, the outspoken New Zealand Rugby Union chief executive, said that there had been “little movement” on the major sticking points at the meeting.

I have a modest proposal for the SANZAAR powers to adopt to force the needed changes.

Tell Bill Beaumont and Agustin Pichot that unless there is an agreement that suits the interests of the southern hemisphere powers by the 2020 elections their positions will be challenged by candidates, supported by SANZAR and its coalition of friendly unions, who will force through the changes World Rugby needs to make.

The lesson World Rugby’s game of thrones is that support is temporary but self-interest is permanent.