WE GO AGAIN
KEVIN MCCALLUM: As transparent a rugby affair as smoke and mirrors
Rugby painted itself into a corner with its poorly conceived double process of lobbying
Say something enough times and you can convince yourself it is true. World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont may have woken up on Thursday morning, looked at himself in the mirror and said: "Transparent." He certainly said it enough times after France was named host of the 2023 World Cup. The process was "rigorous" and it was "transparent", he said. Transparent. Trans. Parent. Bill, tell us about the process? "It was transparent." There you go. What about that last bit, Bill? When they voted? In secret? How would you describe that? Transparent? Well, yes. Transparent in the sense that everyone knew what Bernard Laporte, the weasel-faced Mr Burns of French rugby, was doing. He was offering backhanders, buying votes with promises and money. That’s what lobbying is. It’s not pretty, it’s not entirely legal, but World Rugby painted itself into a corner with its poorly conceived double process — the first rigorous and transparent, the second a cesspit of old men convinced by personal preferen...
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