Abdelatif Benazzi defeated for World Rugby presidency, Australian Brett Robinson elected

Brett Robinson was elected president of World Rugby, the international federation, on Thursday, beating Abdelatif Benazzi. The former Australian international received 27 votes in the second round against 25 for the former captain of the French XV. Faced with the current difficulties of rugby, particularly financial, he focused his campaign on making the game more spectacular and faster. During the first round, Robinson received 22 votes, compared to 21 for Benazzi and 9 for the Italian Andrea Rinaldo.

Robinson succeeds the Englishman Bill Beaumont, in office since 2016 and who could not run again. The 54-year-old Australian assured in the World Rugby press release that he wanted to initiate the “culture required to achieve commercial results for a modern global sport“.

He defends the 20-minute red card

Robinson is a strong supporter of several regulatory reforms currently being tried, such as reducing the time to shoot conversions or to prepare for scrums and throw-ins. He also defends the 20-minute red card, which allows a team whose player is excluded to replace him after this period and therefore no longer be outnumbered. The vote on the worldwide experimentation of this measure was postponed pending a “more in-depth feedback” on the consequences of its adoption, the World Rugby Council decided on Thursday.

France had positioned itself at the forefront of opposition to this change, in the name of player safety. Benazzi, one of the vice-presidents of the French Federation (FFR) in charge of international affairs, had promised to work to open rugby to other countries, beyond the historic nations which are still hegemonic on the ground but also in international bodies.