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Nomination stage begins to find Bill Beaumont's World Rugby successor
By Josh Raisey
The nominations window for the 2024 World Rugby elections has opened to find the successor to Chair Sir Bill Beaumont after eight years in the role.
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Nominations are open from September 23 to October 15 2024, whereupon the elections will be held on November 14 in Dublin, with the 52 members of the World Rugby Council voting for a new Chair, Vice-Chair and Executive Board members.
The elections are the first under a governance model introduced in 2022 following an independent review. In accordance with Bye-Law 9, Council members will elect a new Chair first, followed by the election of six members to the Executive Board, from which a Vice-Chair will be elected.
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The Executive Board will comprise two northern hemisphere High Performance Unions, two southern hemisphere High Performance Unions, one non-High Performance Union and one regional association member, who will be elected for an initial four-year term.
Beaumont, who replaced Bernard Lapasset as Chair in July 2016, can no longer stand having served a maximum of two terms.
To be eligible, candidates for the role must be members of the World Rugby Council and be nominated by a member union or regional association. All nominated candidates will be independently vetted by the World Rugby Independent Ethics Officer, a position introduced as part of the new integrity code in 2022.
Nominations have opened just days after Vice-Chair John Jeffrey, one of the favourites to succeed Beaumont, ended his bid after failing to receive backing from his own union, Scottish Rugby.
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The Chair will become independent upon election and will join the EventsCo Board.
The election for Vice-Chair will follow the same secret ballot process, with the candidate receiving the most votes being appointed.
Candidates will need a simple majority to be elected. Voting will be conducted by secret ballot, overseen by independent scrutineers, with voting numbers being published.
Must be kak being the designated non-high performance union.
Drain the swamp.
Can we all at least agree that the next guy shouldn’t be from England.
Beaumont's legacy is tarnished with his and that criminal he ran with last time's underhanded tactics that saw Pichot sidelined.
It is time to bring in a SH thinker who can save the game from ruin.
Please, please, please vote in John Jeffrey - an excellent player and a Scotsman, not a Pom Posh Boy either - and ignore Brett Robinson the Aussie who has apparently thrown his hat into the ring. While I'd love to see a Southern Hemisphere chairman, I'm afraid not him, or any other Aussie. Why? Simply because IMHO we would see even more rule changes pushing rugby union towards league, with which the Aussies have been fighting for popularity - and losing: they're third behind Aussie Rules and rugby league - for years. And to anyone that questions my contention, just ask Robinson why on earth he's going for the job? I'd certainly say it's really not for the betterment of union...
And hoping that Jeffrey gets the job, DP (see below), and I, would love to see Rassie as chairman maybe in four years' time because he would certainly improve union even more than JJ will have done. He's a rugby genius and the game would benefit hugely from his input, not that I'm biased in any shape, size or form!
Thanks for the insight on John Jeffrey mate.
I am just disappointed that Agustín Pichot's name is not in the hat.
All this ring fencing in the 6N's best interests is what is killing the game, and somebody needs to put a stop to it before everybody else decides they have had enough and break away. All it would take is one billionaire willing to take a risk with the SH & T2 nations and WR would be burnt toast.
Totally agree with Australia's infatuation with speeding up the game, in other words converting it into league. Rugby is a game of chess and should not try to emulate league which has no scrums, mauls, rucks or lineouts. Wayne Smith would be my choice as IRB Chairman. He is as smart as Rassie and has the respect of the world in both men's and women's versions.
Rassie would have been perfect.
Not yet!!! While I totally agree with you, let him hopefully win one more RWC - on dry grounds we hope in Australia - and then take over from John Jeffrey (see my comment above about why under no circumstances must they get the Aussie Robinson).
Maybe the next WR Chair won't be a stuck-up blazer brigade old fart like Beaumont.
Rugby needs to move out of the stone age into the future and it won't be able to do that with people like Beaumont in charge.
Looking back at the past 8 years of Beaumont and seeing that it's doing worse now than it was when the game was 100% amateur and wondering how the game survived.
And that's the Posh Boy method. They're the same sods that held back the professional game for years (until 1995!!!) because they wanted to keep it to themselves, and have probably been doing the same now under Beaumont. The same ones that even had a 'Gentlemen vs Players' cricket match at Lords that I saw on black and white TV back in the 60s, where the toffs and the oiks came out of different gates onto the field. And have made as big a stuffup of running the country too.
As I noted above in another reply, Jeffrey is the man to take over and get WR out of the stone age.
So sick off all these old guys sitting in exec chairs need a young dynamic bloke to take over one from the S/H will do fine
Good. Its high time that WR moves on. Bill's a nice guy, and no doubt has done a lot for the game, but rugby is in need of fresh thinking, fresh energy and strong leadership.
The sooner he goes the better.