Beaumont vs Pichot

[neiliog93]

If I were a benevolent billionaire I'd set up a Super Rugby team in Fiji and finance academy facilities and schools to the max. Would have great knock-on for the national team and could be home to players from all three of the Pacific Island teams. I'd gladly whittle away a big fortune on that.

[Ruckedtobits]

I am also completely convinced that with regards to TV coverage, the best way to grow the game is to get matches on terrestrial TV. That is exactly the opposite approach to how rugby across the world has tried to operate in the last 10 years. They have tried to include teams in the same competition from the other side of the world – for example, the Jaguares in Super Rugby, the Cheetahs and Queens in the Pro14, and they have taken the game off free to air TV to a huge extent.

The viewing numbers are huge for terrestrial TV compared to non-terrestrial TV. If you want to 'grow the game', which from my perspective means getting more people playing it and more people watching it, then you have to put matches on free TV. TV money will drop immediately, players and other professionals involved will get less money [initially] but you build a much bigger – and wider – audience. If you have a bigger audience, logically you should get better sponsorship deals from major corporations. So obviously less TV money up front, but hopefully offset to an extent by more sponsorship money.

Players' salaries will go down initially, but in a relatively short period of time, their public profiles will go up ... and in a slightly longer period of time the money they earn from endorsements will go up.

So my view is that the last decade of 'progress' - more PPV, wider geographical areas covered by tournaments – has not really been progressive at all. It has been an experiment which has seen some progress, but as much regress. That's not to say that it has been a waste of time, because if you don't try new things, you won't find heretofore unexplored positives. But you also have to recognise when new ideas don't work, and discard them.

Those views get to the heart of the matter. Rugby may now be facing an existential crisis for its very future. First we had the concussion issue which has scared so many parents (and young players) that we have seen a serious reduction in playing numbers in many countries, including NZ. Now we have to deal with the "Personal Distancing" aspect of contact sports, both on the field and among spectators. Neither element can be readily ameliorated by a publicity campaign or just good PR.

Both challenges are on aspects that have been fundamental to our game for a long time. Perhaps World Rugby should focus all its efforts on using this period of "pause" to get every Union and Club totally focussed on reducing the tackle height to waist-line or below with no exceptions. Possibly introducing an immediate RED Card sanction for every infringement. As for the requirement that spectators must practice Social Distancing, that hits at every aspect of community interaction - Concerts, Town Hall rallies, Political meetings, every form of Committee Meeting etc. etc. How we re-commence such assembles, in the absence of a working vaccination, is beyond me,

However, when the Taylor Report was issued in the UK following Hillsborough, the majority of the commentary was that those recommendations would kill football stone-dead. Abolishing Standing Room would rob every stadium of the atmosphere considered essential for football. It didn't and it hasn't really done anything except increase Ticket Prices (in English Premiership). So now rugby has got to find solutions which work but also it has to go out and find audiences who will follow and support our sport. PPV has not proved the solution for anybody except Players and Coaching Staff. So, FTA maybe the route to follow.

[JB1973]

That is a brilliant post in fairness

Free to air is the best way to grow the game, putting games on sky, bt, premiersport or whoever just limits the number of people who can watch it

Also The price of going to games is going up and up especially at test level and the only people who seem to benefit for this are those at the elite level especially the players and their agents


Maybe well see a global salary cap after this meaning leagues are less desperate to get the most lucrative TV deals but get the ones that are best for the sport and the ones with the biggest tv audience , but would the super rich English and French clubs come on board?

[neiliog93]

Low tackles can be lethal, knees flying into people's faces etc. There are inherent risks in the game and the obsession with tackle height is misplaced IMO.

[hugonaut]

Low tackles can be lethal, knees flying into people's faces etc. There are inherent risks in the game and the obsession with tackle height is misplaced IMO.

I used to think it was, but it seems like there is plenty of evidence in its favour. I follow a guy called Ken Quarrie on Twitter who is a sports scientist at NZ Rugby [and has been for 20 years] and he has put forward a very strong case that has convinced me.

[hugonaut]

Fallout from the election of Beaumont: https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/ ... -1.4252418

“The only reason I have been a part of World Rugby to this day, and which in turn is the same one that has moved me to run for president, is the conviction that World Rugby needs change. But my proposal, which I strongly believe in, has not been chosen, and that is why I choose to step aside. I cannot conceive of occupying a place just for the sake of occupying it.”

Toys and pram.

I was inclined against Pichot beforehand. I'm not going to pretend I wasn't. I don't have a huge problem with him. I wouldn't think about him very much at all really, but when he was coming up more frequently in recent weeks I found myself pretty sceptical of him and his motives. I totally understood [and would commend] his efforts on behalf of Argentina, to get them a place at the SANZAR table, but I wasn't convinced by what he was promoting when running for president of World Rugby this time around. It felt to me like he cared an awful lot more about power than about the game.

The idea that the election was strictly a vote on a governance programme rather than a decision on a mix of personality and programme ... well, that's a nonsense. Neither party ran with a strict manifesto declaring what they would do. It was all aspirational. Besides, it's not a dictatorship. Whoever won the election was always going to have to work with the other person, and with those who backed the other person, in order to effect any change.

So if it the things he was saying [like 'the future of rugby being in Africa and Asia'] were as important to him as he said they were, I'd imagine that he would bite down on his gumshield and carry on. He's got the biggest profile of anybody in the World Rugby organisation, and he hasn't been involved very long. He's got a strong lobby behind him, which would give him loads of bargaining power. If he really wanted rugby to change, he'd have to swallow his pride over losing the election, and then get himself back involved, campaigning for the things that are important to him and winning people around to his cause. Instead he has resigned.

[Dexter]

Fallout from the election of Beaumont: https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/ ... -1.4252418

“The only reason I have been a part of World Rugby to this day, and which in turn is the same one that has moved me to run for president, is the conviction that World Rugby needs change. But my proposal, which I strongly believe in, has not been chosen, and that is why I choose to step aside. I cannot conceive of occupying a place just for the sake of occupying it.”

Toys and pram.

I was inclined against Pichot beforehand. I'm not going to pretend I wasn't. I don't have a huge problem with him. I wouldn't think about him very much at all really, but when he was coming up more frequently in recent weeks I found myself pretty sceptical of him and his motives. I totally understood [and would commend] his efforts on behalf of Argentina, to get them a place at the SANZAR table, but I wasn't convinced by what he was promoting when running for president of World Rugby this time around. It felt to me like he cared an awful lot more about power than about the game.

The idea that the election was strictly a vote on a governance programme rather than a decision on a mix of personality and programme ... well, that's a nonsense. Neither party ran with a strict manifesto declaring what they would do. It was all aspirational. Besides, it's not a dictatorship. Whoever won the election was always going to have to work with the other person, and with those who backed the other person, in order to effect any change.

So if it the things he was saying [like 'the future of rugby being in Africa and Asia'] were as important to him as he said they were, I'd imagine that he would bite down on his gumshield and carry on. He's got the biggest profile of anybody in the World Rugby organisation, and he hasn't been involved very long. He's got a strong lobby behind him, which would give him loads of bargaining power. If he really wanted rugby to change, he'd have to swallow his pride over losing the election, and then get himself back involved, campaigning for the things that are important to him and winning people around to his cause. Instead he has resigned.

We probably all know people like him in the corporate or "real" world, who are generally termed as "bluffers" and "spoofers", correctly or incorrectly. He is the manager who goes mad when another manager gets a bigger office.