In a scrap held in Los Angeles at an interim IRB board meeting, SARU President Oregan Hoskins was elected Vice Chairman of the IRB.
Decided as the most central venue, and seemingly not able or willing to use free service Skype, IRB members, including Hoskins and SARU CEO Jurie Roux, flew from all over the world to attend this politically fraught five hour meeting in LA …
Hoskins, who faced opposition from current Vice Chairman, Bill Beaumont, needed the Chairman’s casting vote following two rounds of voting which were tied 13-13.
And the election of said chairman was no clear cut affair … Bernard Lapasset, who also faced opposition from Bill Beaumont, was elected as the chairman of the IRB for a second successive term via a 14-12 vote from the 26 members of the Council in the first round of voting.
At least Hoskins knows he has the chairman’s backing, and it can only be good for SA rugby to have him in this position on the IRB … But it’s quite clearly a body split down the middle, and this often leads to bodies making no decisions …
Lapasset has presided over rugby’s return to the Olympic Games (via the Seven a side version of the game), Argentina’s inclusion in The Rugby Championship, a 10-year tours and Test schedule, the awarding of Rugby World Cup to an Asian country for the first time and an exceptional Rugby World Cup 2011 during his recent term.
But the IRB were hardly “Mr Popular” in New Zealand, responding fairly disdainfully to New Zealand and Australia’s threat to not take part in the next World Cup should the revenue model not change … And we all know how Samoa and the other smaller countries felt about their treatment by the IRB at the recent World Cup … The standard of refereeing is an issue, as is the way in which players guilty of foul play are handled …
One would suggest that a few hard decisions need to be made in Lapasset’s next term …
Also elected were the seven representatives to serve on the IRB Executive Committee (alongside Chairman Lapasset, Vice Chairman Hoskins and Chief Executive Mike Miller) for four years from January 1, 2012. They are: Bill Beaumont (England), Tatsuzo Yabe (Japan), Giancarlo Dondi (Italy), Peter McGrath (Australia), Peter Boyle (Ireland), Graham Mourie (New Zealand) and Bob Latham (NACRA).
