Bill's right, Six Nations owe SANZAAR nothing

THE gnashing of teeth and wailing from the southern hemisphere unions that accompanied the failure of Agustin Pichot to unseat Bill Beaumont as World Rugby chairman was predictable.

- NICK CAIN

New Zealand, Australia and South Africa have made such a mess of their own competition structures that they were seduced by Pichot’s siren call. He promised that if they backed him he would fill their coffers by becoming Rugby Union’s answer to a Robin Hood – or his own hero, Che Guevara – by taking the wealth from the bold, bad barons of the Six Nations and redistributing it among the downtrodden poor of the south – with a few coins thrown to the Tier 2 nations.

This was and is hogwash. It is based on the false premise that somehow the Six Nations owe southern hemisphere unions a huge debt.

Fortunately, the Six Nations managed to stand together for once, rather than dissolve into faction fighting, and the self-styled Argentine revolutionary – ludicrously hailed in some quarters as rugby’s equivalent to his countryman Guevara – was outvoted 28-23, despite the full support of the SANZAAR block.

Guevara and Pichot both played rugby in San Isidro, the same well-heeled suburb of Buenos Aires, but it is inconceivable that given Guevara’s communist beliefs, he would have approved of the former Argentine scrum-half ’s role as a director of one of Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest’s copper mines.

Pichot’s sincerity in advocating a more democratic and meritocratic game, or administrative structure, is not in question – although that does not include remodeling World Rugby using FIFA-style ‘democracy’ as its template. Otherwise, this game could find itself hosting its own World Cup in Qatar.