Six Nations snub Pichot
your community that it has always been . . .
‘‘Please, dear clubs, I implore you, let us start again with the right structure. If no club offers payment, then there will be no market for player wages and no club will feel the need. If no club breaks ranks and we all play for enjoyment, for our town or village of birth, for the club with whom we hold the strongest affinity . . . then no club will suffer the same threat of oblivion that is currently being felt in some quarters if a similar crisis were to strike again.’’
Those are the sort of words that we long to hear from the leaders of our game, but who among the nominations for the top of World Rugby, apart from Davies, would you trust to utter them. I’ll stick my hand up for John Jeffrey, a former flanker who once got into trouble for booting the Calcutta Cup down Prince’s Street and who once said that the only regret he had about his beautiful farm was: ‘‘If I stand on a hill I can see England.’’
As an Englishman that makes me smile and Jeffrey is one of the good guys. So, too, I suspect is Davies and Brett Robinson of Australia. But then I’m struggling. The rest of the nominations for the executive are wheeler dealers or ’suits’.
Mark Alexander, of South Africa, (whose nomination was seconded by NZR, presumably in return for South Africa’s seconding of Campbell) has been described as ‘‘a serial administrator’’. who has spent the last 30 years of his life sitting on committees.
Bob Latham is an American lawyer and committee-sitter who first got on the executive when he helped re-elect Bernard Lapasset in 2011. Latham has since embraced professionalism in America with disastrous consequences. USA Rugby recently filed for bankruptcy.
Khaled Babbou, from Tunisia, is another of those who spends a lifetime sitting on boards and committees – like Africa Rugby, the African Sport Confederations and the American Chamber of Commerce in Tunisia.
Sadly the nomination of Campbell shows just how desperate NZR is for money at the expense of many of the values it used to hold dear.
Agustin Pichot has been snubbed by Six Nations unions in his bid to become chairman of World Rugby.
The Argentine great revealed the indifference from the powerful European rugby powers as his election battle against incumbent Bill Beaumont of England heats up.
Pichot wants to speak personally to unions in the final week of the election.
‘‘I would like to talk to each individual union. I sent a personal note to every country and I haven’t had any replies from some of the CEOs,’’ Pichot said.
‘‘I only received one email asking me about the future of the game from the Six Nations unions – that was Wales – and I think that’s poor.
‘‘Every CEO should be responsible for learning what is best for the game, even if they don’t support you.’’
The vote for chairman will be made by electronic ballot on April 26 and the results are set to be announced on May 12. Beaumont already has the public backing of England, France and Italy and it seems they aren’t interested in Pichot’s views.
Pichot, the current vicechairman, said the inability by
World Rugby to get their proposed Nations Championship rubber-stamped last year made him challenge Beaumont for the job.
The Six Nations saw the
Nations Championship as a threat, particularly with its promotion-relegation element in a 24-team competition split into two divisions and contested annually.
‘‘It’s not that I wanted to be chairman, [but] I couldn’t carry on for four more years like that, I had to be true to myself,’’ Pichot said.
‘‘For me, it was just a better tournament: yearly, inclusion of emerging nations, more money for the game, more money for investment in emerging nations, more money for investment in the women’s game – and it didn’t happen.’’
An advocate for emerging nations, Pichot is wary of Beaumont and running partner Bernard Laporte with their powerful England and French unions taking control.
‘‘Two of the biggest economies in World Rugby leading the way. The powerful people get more power and the emerging nations get less power. [It’s] quite patronising, to be honest – and that’s what everyone felt,’’ Pichot said.
It seems Pichot will have to garner his votes from outside the powerful European block if he is to have any chance of unseating Beaumont though the Englishman’s image hasn’t been helped by World Rugby being forced to investigate allegations about Francis Kean, a convicted killer nominated by the Fiji Rugby Union for a seat on the international rugby body’s powerful executive.