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Rugby Europe announce support for Beaumont in World Rugby election

By Ciarán Kennedy
Agustin Pichot and Bill Beaumont (Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

Rugby Europe has announced that they are supporting Bill Beaumont in his bid for re-election as World Rugby chairman.

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Beaumont, who has held the position since 2016, is up against former Argentina international Agustin Pichot for the role, with voting starting yesterday.

With many of the northern hemisphere unions believed to favour Beaumont, Rugby Europe – the governing body responsible for the promotion, development, administration and management of international competitions for the 48 European member unions – have now confirmed that they are siding with the current chairman.

“As the vote for the position of World Rugby Chairman opened on Sunday, April 26th, 2020, Rugby Europe has decided to take the position in favour of the project led by the current Chairman, Sir Bill Beaumont,” a Rugby Europe statement read.

“During its last meeting, which was held on April 8 by conference call, the Rugby Europe Board of Directors unanimously validated this position and gave its proxy to the president, Mr. Octavian Morariu.

“The manifesto led by Sir Bill Beaumont and the president of the FFR, Bernard Laporte, corresponds to the priority actions necessary for the development of rugby in Europe.

“Rugby Europe considers that the substantial work initiated over the last few years, in terms of governance reforms, the structure of men’s and women’s competitions and financial support for member unions, should allow our sport to face the current crisis and become better structured for the challenges ahead.”

Morariu, President of Rugby Europe, added: “We fully support the manifesto led by Sir Bill Beaumont and Bernard Laporte.

“It is a continuation of the discussions we have had recently and will have provided member unions with the basis for a stronger rugby world, better represented and integrating all the challenges of the sport of tomorrow.

“We are confident that together we will modernize our organizations and give our unions the means to win on and off the field.”

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Flankly 17 hours ago
The AI advantage: How the next two Rugby World Cups will be won

If rugby wants to remain interesting in the AI era then it will need to work on changing the rules. AI will reduce the tactical advantage of smart game plans, will neutralize primary attacking weapons, and will move rugby from a being a game of inches to a game of millimetres. It will be about sheer athleticism and technique,about avoiding mistakes, and about referees. Many fans will find that boring. The answer is to add creative degrees of freedom to the game. The 50-22 is an example. But we can have fun inventing others, like the right to add more players for X minutes per game, or the equivalent of the 2-point conversion in American football, the ability to call a 12-player scrum, etc. Not saying these are great ideas, but making the point that the more of these alternatives you allow, the less AI will be able to lock down high-probability strategies. This is not because AI does not have the compute power, but because it has more choices and has less data, or less-specific data. That will take time and debate, but big, positive and immediate impact could be in the area of ref/TMO assistance. The technology is easily good enough today to detect forward passes, not-straight lineouts, offside at breakdown/scrum/lineout, obstruction, early/late tackles, and a lot of other things. WR should be ultra aggressive in doing this, as it will really help in an area in which the game is really struggling. In the long run there needs to be substantial creativity applied to the rules. Without that AI (along with all of the pro innovations) will turn rugby into a bash fest.

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