World Rugby election: Agustín Pichot could be unlikely saviour for English club rugby
Stuart Barnes
The Times
In his playing days, the man who would be the next chairman of World Rugby was one of the few lefties in a sport renowned for blazers, gin and tonics. We are talking politics, not feet. Agustín Pichot was the Pumas’ very own Che Guevara. The former Argentina scrum half still sounds like a man of the people. “One country, one vote,” the rugby world is promised. Tunisia an equal vote with England.
If he is that same charismatic Gus, he has made some unlikely bedfellows on his journey towards the post of chairman. While success for the South American would be a breakthrough for the less traditional rugby nations, it would also be a huge victory for the club game, especially the Premiership.
Pichot has promised them, quite rightly, a place at any future negotiating table but there’s more than a say being offered — there is influence. The thoughts of Bruce Craig, the owner of Bath and a persistent political protagonist since the day he bought the West Country club, can be detected in the background of Pichot’s bid.
The driving force behind the raising of the salary cap, a significant influence in the negotiations to form the European Champions Cup — a tournament where Anglo-French power muscled out the original Celtic sway — Craig has long harboured hopes of a structured global season. The muddle that has been the club-and-country overlap has “devalued” the aspiring club game.
The echoes of Pichot’s recent words suggest the two men share the same philosophy. I will never forget the first time I read Craig describing the autumn Tests as “friendlies”. Immediately, I suspected a subtle play on words to devalue the Test arena, turning a November clash with Australia into nothing more than those aimless football friendlies. It was smart.
Now here is Pichot, on club and country: football, he said, had managed the contradictions well. The example he quotes is — perhaps unsurprisingly — Lionel Messi. Barcelona might pay him 20 times as much as his country, but he plays every single championship game for Argentina because it is meaningful.
International sport can co-exist with club sport as long as there is “meaning” to it. This was the point that Bath’s owner made. He could not have written the words better himself. Friendlies disappear as an annual international tournament replaces the November Tests and summer tours, leaving instead a “meaningful” competition.
Having played for England against New Zealand, I can confirm there is no such thing as a friendly between these nations but from the perspective of television, a meaningful competition does wonders for the marketability of “the product” — as Pichot has described the sport.
This is good news for Craig and the Premiership. The Bath owner is right to say that the sprawling growth of the international game by its very nature diminishes the professional club game. Yet a structured competition — with an agreed breathing space for the French and English leagues — allows club management to plan their seasons in a way that is so much more coherent than the present impasse, where club matches clash with the Six Nations and autumn internationals.
It just happens to make CVC Capital Partners happy as well. The former firebrand admits that he “can’t go against the free market.” If you can’t beat them, he proposes to welcome the company — which has bought stakes in Premiership Rugby and the Pro14, and is close to buying stakes in the Six Nations — on his pragmatic journey.
Venture capital is not the obvious partner in what Sir Clive Woodward sees as a potential rugby revolution. In the longer term it is of concern to the game. CVC’s open-mindedness may galvanise the game in the short term, but it has none of the steady government required when the revolutionary days begin to dim.
Right now, we are going through some of the most torrid times imaginable. It is easy to dismiss the future and focus on immediate salvation, which is CVC in cahoots with any one of Sky, Netflix, BT or even terrestrial broadcast partners. However, for all the excitement of a brand new — non-friendly, big-bucks international — tournament, the future should not be neglected.
Can the sport really go as global, as Gus thinks it can, with one vote for all? And is this the time to attempt such a manoeuvre? Growth goes against the grain at a time when stability and experience are seemingly required worldwide. Some say that coronavirus has forced the hand that the freer-thinking Argentinian will play. Others fear that rugby is in danger of utilising its own form of shock doctrine with the venture capitalists, broadcasters and rich but battered club owners, driving its policies through an established opposition that would resist such a shift in less troubled times.
Is this really a revolution being promised to the forgotten smaller nations or a beautifully described putsch? The former Puma scrum half mentions spending time with Craig. The Bath man has rarely hidden his unease with the sort of establishment that has held an — albeit weakening — grip on the game since it went professional.
World Rugby sees him and his types as interlopers. Craig is close to having someone close to power who speaks his language. What’s good for them may not be good for the “rich” nations. One man wants to save the rugby world, the other the club game. It is impossible to blame either.
Always a Wasp
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