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'I'm excited by his vision': Alan Gilpin becomes new World Rugby CEO
By Sam Smith
World Rugby have confirmed that Alan Gilpin has succeeded Brett Gosper as their new chief executive. Gosper switched to NFL in January and having initially minded the fort as interim CEO, the 47-year-old Gilpin will now assume the role on a full-time basis.
A World Rugby statement read: “Gilpin has a broad and intimate understanding of World Rugby’s business operations having performed the dual role of chief operating officer (COO) and managing director of Rugby World Cup since 2016 after joining the international federation in 2014 to run the portfolio of Rugby World Cup properties.
“His leadership expertise, ability to assemble strong delivery teams and focus on innovation, along with the fan and player experience have played a strong role in the hosting of the most successful men’s and women’s Rugby World Cups to date. He has also transformed the future hosting model to broaden interest and impact.”
Gilpin said: “With a new strategic plan ready to launch, considerable talent within the organisation, and an executive board that has ambitious goals for the next few years, it is set to be a pivotal period in the growth of the sport.
“I’m also well aware of the challenges that we face as we emerge from the global Covid-19 pandemic and seek to get rugby back on the field in many parts of the world. We will continue with our mission to grow the global rugby family, while furthering welfare and injury prevention for players at all levels.
“Rugby World Cup 2023 in France will be a spectacular tournament, marking the 200th anniversary of rugby, while the Rugby World Cup 2021 tournament in New Zealand (now postponed to 2022) is at the core of our increased commitment and investment in the growth of women’s rugby.”
World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont added: “I have long admired Alan’s passion, energy, innovation and leadership skills. I’m excited by his vision for the future of the organisation and the moves the sport needs to take to become truly global and drive sustainable growth in new, key markets.
“His intimate knowledge of the business of the sport, the opportunities and challenges we collectively face as a family and his excellent leadership and stakeholder relations skills make him the stand-out and right choice for this role at an important and exciting time for the sport globally.”
World Rugby vice-chairman Bernard Laporte said: “There were a number of excellent candidates, including Alan, but I’m delighted for him – he is the right person to lead the organisation forward.”
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Latest Comments
Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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