Jordie Barrett claims a high ball against England. Photo / Photosport
If former Wallabies flanker Brett Robinson finds himself voted in as World Rugby chairman, his first order of business will be ensuring agreement is reached to get the proposed Nations Championship up and running by 2026.
Robinson, who played 16 times for his country between 1996 and 2001, is hoping to become the first Southern Hemisphere chairman of the global governing body when the vote to replace the retiring Bill Beaumont takes place in November.
He’s running on a ticket to deliver financial sustainability, maximise the game’s commercial potential and to keep rugby relevant to all ages, and successfully launching the proposed Nations Championship in 2026 sits as a cornerstone to many of his key ambitions.
The Nations Championship has been a vexed topic in international circles for more than five years now, after the first iteration proposed in 2019 – which had the promise of underwritten broadcast revenue of $8b from Swiss agency InFront - failed to come to fruition due to concerns from some nations about promotion and relegation concepts.
The idea has been revived, but there remains uncertainty about whether it will be up and running for its proposed start date of 2026.
The premise of the proposal is to create more meaning to the July and November windows by ensuring the Six Nations sides play each of the Rugby Championship sides (plus Fiji and Japan), create a similar second-tier competition that provides fixture certainty and better World Cup preparation for the emerging nations, and ultimately deliver a high-value entity the broadcast rights to which could be worth billions.
“We had InFront who were not requiring an equity release from anyone, it was basically a broadcast rollout, two tiers, promotion and relegation and a women’s competition, and I think it was one of the biggest losses and misses that the game has ever had,” Robinson says of the failure to secure the deal back in 2019.
“I was devastated at the time that elements within the game wouldn’t enable it. Nations Championship is mission critical for World Rugby and one of the greatest things we have been working on to get long-term value and performance outcomes.
“I appreciate there has been some pushing and shoving moreso from the Six Nations about striking a deal, but we can’t miss the opportunity.
“The major unions understand there needs to be some level of parking self-interest because the greater good is something we can’t walk away from a second time.”
Agreeing to launch the Nations Championship would help, to some degree, with the ongoing question of financial viability – a problem that Robinson believes has reached crisis point.
National unions and clubs across the world have been feeling an unprecedented depth of financial pain in the post-Covid years, with big-name institutions such as Wasps, Worcester and London Irish having gone bust in England and the Rebels collapsing in Australia.
It may seem that World Rugby is powerless to regulate or influence player markets, and have no ability to regulate the spending of French and Japanese clubs who are driving the wage inflation which is at the core of the problem, but Robinson believes there are mechanisms available.
“World Rugby through regulation has levers be it through regulation 9, availability and also transfer arrangements,” he says.
“I think we have never seriously looked at it. But talking to member unions over the last three or four months, we have convened a crisis meeting in late September to talk about this very issue.
“The unions collectively align about this being a consistent problem for them and need to ask what are we prepared to do about it together?
“What we are seeing and has escalated in the last 12 months, is the volume of clubs that have fallen over and that is affecting everyone everywhere.
“And if we don’t deal with it, we are all going to fall off a cliff and continue to do so.
“There are regulations that talk about compensation for player development, for player release which we have never actively triggered or used to the force of how they could be.
“There are some avenues – we just have to be brave enough to develop them. If we don’t address it, we are just going to see more pain. I don’t think the game can ignore this any longer.”
Robinson’s aim to keep rugby relevant should he land the job has been greatly aided by the way the Rugby Championship is playing out in 2024 under experimental laws.
Based in Australia, he’s seen first-hand how rugby is in an existential fight for survival, and how quickly and effectively it needs to adapt to meet audience desires.
The NRL and AFL have adapted and evolved their respective on-field offerings to meet fan expectations and are booming in popularity as a result.
Meanwhile, rugby tends to move at a glacial pace and is struggling to grow its fan and participation base.
But Robinson says there was one significant breakthrough earlier this year: “We had a conference in March where we brought together administrators, top coaches, broadcasters, tournament organisers and players for two or three days and basically did a brain dump post the World Cup on all the things that were frustrating everyone and our fans.
“At that workshop we had three pieces of feedback from fans.
“They said we are sick of senseless kicking. Sick of time being wasted and we can’t understand why hanging on to the ball is not supported by law to promote you attacking with the football rather than not having the football.
“Those three things were put to Sanzaar about what we could move on quite quickly.”
The outcome was the introduction of various shot clocks and an empowerment of referees to actively encourage teams to use the ball quicker from rucks and to stay onside.
The Rugby Championship is also being played with a 20-minute red card – something Robinson would like to see universally adopted but understands the reluctance of the North to do so.
“There is a class action in play and there was real anxiety about the 20-minute red card being seen – real or perceived – to be soft on managing head contact.
“What we have tried to do is educate and show that the data is showing that we are still dealing with the impact of what the player is doing and that there is still a sanction process that is significant.
“But we are not interrupting the spectacle of the contest for the rest of the game.
“I am very confident we will get that through by the end of the year.”
Seeing the Rugby Championship play out with a greater sense of urgency, to not have prolonged stoppages and dead periods of inactivity, and well-communicated officiating where the relationship between the referee and TMO is clear, has provided an evidential basis to show that if decision-makers move quickly, they can get immediate and effective results.
There is one area, however, he feels still needs attention and that is the way some teams continue to use enforced injury breaks to strategically inject or elongate stoppages.
It’s been a scourge in the game for years and continues to be a problem even in this new drive to speed things up.
“One of the things that is still frustrating me in the championship is about breaks and players are rightly or wrongly seeking assistance and slowing things down,” says Robinson.
“We have introduced all these other mechanisms to speed things up and what we are trying to do is introduce fatigue to move us a bit further to the middle away from the anaerobic nature of the athlete.
“We have become a power-based, short-spurt, large-body game and there is a desire for us to move back to the centre where endurance, agility, fatigue frees up a game.”
Referees have said they don’t want to have to adjudicate or determine whether injuries are real or imagined as they don’t want to be forcing front-rowers into scrums if they are genuinely hurt or in need of medical attention.
As a qualified doctor himself, he feels the answer to this problem lies with asking rugby’s medical fraternity to play a greater role in helping referees determine how to keep games flowing safely.
So far, Robinson and former Scotland flanker John Jeffrey, who is the current vice-chairman, have signalled their intention to stand.
Robinson says his motivation to pitch for the job is being driven by his conviction that he wants to give back to a sport that has been his everything.
He fell in love with rugby when he was at school in Queensland, and it gave him opportunities all over the world, including Oxford University where he completed his PhD and played in the Varsity match.
Broadly speaking, Robinson, 54, who has been Rugby Australia’s high-performance director, has served on World Rugby’s executive since 2016 and is currently chief executive of one of Australia’s largest retirement village operators, Retire Australia, is seen as the candidate for change.
He’s wary, though, of being sold as the Southern Hemisphere’s candidate to challenge the older, more conservative contender from the North, as he feels geography is irrelevant in the discussion about who is best equipped to do the role.
World Rugby, as he sees it, has become a major business, with projections that the surplus generated by the 2027 World Cup will be around $1b, then growing to $1.4b in 2031.
Not only is it big business, but it has a footprint all over the world and he feels World Rugby needs a chairman with strong corporate leadership experience, commercial acumen and the rugby history to ensure that the sport retains its essence.
“The role of the chair is a critical one,” he says. “I am mid-50s and I have been involved in organisational roles – executive, non-executive, director, chair, deputy chair – over the last 20 years and the tone of the board is set by the chair.
“It is such a significant role and effective governance and qualities of leadership are really important for organisations to achieve what they hope to achieve and if you don’t have those skills it can be a real handbrake despite the capability of directors and despite the capability of your executive.
“So I think it is really important for me that the selection focuses on what does the game want the role to be and what are the skills and capabilities the game needs for where it is now and for what the organisation needs over the next 10 to 20 years to propel it, and to make the most of those opportunities.
“It is a serious business and there have been some conversations about north versus south, but it is more important that we focus on the skills and capabilities of the candidate rather than where they live.
“When I look at my experience and when I look at some of the others who are thinking about running, I do think that I would regret if I didn’t put my name forward.”
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.
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