Administrators need to realise that the way rugby is marketed needs to change beginning with a calendar that works for allThe truth can be elusive in rugby union. Even in exceptionally unstable times there will always be those who dismiss it as simply a bit of light turbulence. So things must be serious when those with extensive knowledge of the game’s economics publicly query its future as a global professional sport unless its administrators wake up to the onrushing reality.Over in Japan some believe it may already be too late, regardless of the post-coronavirus landscape. With 30 years of experience in sports marketing worldwide, Robert Maes knows his subject and says rugby union’s rulers need to wise up.“The players are...
Talks will continue regarding the global season but ignorance of mounting problems in the Covid-19 fallout is alarmingNo one could ever accuse rugby union of rushing into big decisions. It is 25 years and counting since the sport was effectively ushered into a new professional era and still the arguments continue regarding how it should ideally look. Monday’s global calendar forum – the word summit was studiously avoided – was never going to solve everything overnight.At least all the various factions were mostly represented, sticking up for what they insist they believe in. You could fill an empty lake bed with the multiple leaks from various sources over recent weeks, few of whom – sadly – will repeat in public...
With the re-election of Sir Bill Beaumont as the chairman of World Rugby, the sport has missed a chance to moderniseFamiliar English white smoke is once again billowing from the chimneys of World Rugby. Those who had hoped for a dash of Argentinian sky blue underestimated the powerful vested interests and conservative instincts still prevailing in rugby’s core heartlands, not to mention the widespread need for a comfort blanket in these uncertain times.This is not to say that Sir Bill Beaumont’s defeat of Agustín Pichot is a guaranteed backward step, merely that a glorious opportunity to reinvent the sport’s image has been spurned. Related: Bill Beaumont beats Agustín Pichot in battle for control of World Rugby Related: The Breakdown |...
British Olympic Association chairman Sir Denis Follows was determined not to join the Moscow Games boycott in 1980, to the fury of the prime ministerSir Denis Follows, 71, short and bald, started every day’s work by opening his post. It was a habit he’d had as secretary of the Football Association, and a habit he kept as chairman of the British Olympic Association. In between the two jobs, he’d been knighted. Which was some going, for the son of a stationmaster, but it hadn’t changed him much. He still wore a pair of thick horn rims, still worried about putting on weight, was still the same avuncular, pragmatic man who had kept the Jules Rimet trophy under his bed and...
The ban on protests at the Tokyo Games this summer comes from an organisation, the IOC, that considers itself far too noble-minded to allow unfortunate ‘divisions’ in the real worldIn a memoir published a few months after Arthur Ashe’s death the tennis champion reflected on one of the most famous demonstrations in sporting history. Tommie Smith and John Carlos made their Black Power salute at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, the year that Ashe won the first US Open. “Although I did not always agree with everything these men had said and done,” he wrote, “I respected the way they had stood tall against the sky and had insisted on being heard on matters other than boxing or track and...