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Fox Sports
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fox Sports
2025 MLB All-Star Game: Voting, leaders, how it works
Voting for the 2025 MLB All-Star Game begins on Wednesday, June 4th at 12 p.m. ET. Check out everything you need to know about voting this year, including dates, how it works and results. MLB All-Star Voting Dates Phase 1 - June 4 to June 26 Phase 2 - June 30 to July 2 Phase 1 Phase 1 of voting includes fan voting for players they want to see play in the All-Star Game began and will run through June 26 at noon. In Phase 1, fans can vote on which players they'd like to see start at each position (except for the outfield, where fans can pick three players) in the American and National Leagues. They can do so up to five times every 24 hours. Pitchers are excluded from fan voting. Player ballots and the commissioner's office will determine the pitchers and bench players selected for the All-Star Game. Kevin Burkhardt and Dontrelle Willis broke down whether they believe the New York Yankees can repeat their success from last season in a tough division. Shortly after Phase 1 ends on June 26, the top two vote-getters at each position (plus six outfielders) will be revealed. The top overall vote-getter in each league will be named a starter for this year's All-Star Game, while the rest of the starting spots will be determined during Phase 2. Phase 2 Phase 2 begins at noon on June 30. In Phase 2, fans will get to vote between the top two (or six, in the case of the outfield spots) vote-getters and pick the starting player at each position in both leagues. Phase 2 will end July 2 at 12 p.m. ET, and the winners will be revealed later that same day. Fans can submit their votes on (1 time per day), the MLB's mobile app or at any of the 30 MLB stadiums. How many players are on the All-Star teams? 34 players will be on each MLB All-Star team. This includes 20 position players and 12 pitchers. Here's how the roster breaks down: Fan vote - 9 players Player vote - 16 players Commissioner's Office - 8 players Final vote - one player 2025 MLB All-Star Game Continuing the usual tradition, New York Yankees manager Stephen Vogt will manage the American League squad after winning last season's AL pennant, while Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts will manage the National League squad after winning last year's NL pennant. The 2025 MLB All-Star Game will take place at Truist Park in Atlanta, Georgia, home of the Atlanta Braves, on Tuesday, July 15. The game will be broadcast live on FOX for the 26th time. recommended Get more from Major League Baseball Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more in this topic
Daily Record
29-05-2025
- Sport
- Daily Record
East Kilbride Rugby coach wants 'culture change' at club as he eyes promotion charge
Franklin Clark is keen to change behaviour that he says has cost the team East Kilbride Rugby Club boss Franklin Clark says changing the culture at the club can have them challenging for the West League 1 title next season. Clark says their summer rebuilding programme will be crucial to that, but he first has to convince existing players to stay on, while blending that with an emerging crop of youngsters. The Torrance House gaffer reckons he needs 'two or three' experienced players in key positions to give him a squad that's capable of striving for National League rugby. But things will first have to change. Clark said: 'We're looking to win the title or get promoted next season. 'We're looking to recruit fairly strongly, and we're looking to improve the culture within the club. 'The culture within the playing squad has not been quite what I wanted this season, and we've spoken about it with the other coaches and the players. 'We're keen to change some of the behaviours that have had a negative effect on us at particularly critical times. 'We've been fairly clear about that, and I think if we manage to do that successfully, we should be challenging up at the top end of the league. 'The summer is very important, because we need to make sure not only do we recruit new players, but we retain players as well. 'That's always an issue, some players get a bit frustrated if they've been playing in West 1 for a few seasons and think 'I want to play higher up with East Kilbride, but if they're not getting promoted, I need to go somewhere else to play a higher level of rugby'. 'No matter what club I've been at, it has always been an issue, trying to convince people, unless you're getting promoted. 'That's one of the challenges of being a coach, and that's my job.' Clark's side finished fifth in West Region One this season, just behind local rivals Strathaven on points difference, while also reaching the final of the National Shield, where they lost to Lenzie. To build on that, Clark knows some strength in depth will be required but has revealed he will be without one key man for next season's promotion push for the National Leagues. Clark added: 'I think we need two or three, maybe, players in key positions, and retain the ones that we've got. 'There is at least one guy who has already intimated that he wants to retire – Mark Ellison – so we need to replace him. 'Mark is hoping to stay on at the club in some sort of coaching capacity, which I've asked him to do as well, so that's quite good. 'With young guys coming in, hopefully we can blend them in with some experienced East Kilbride guys and some experienced guys we can recruit from elsewhere. '
The 42
24-05-2025
- Sport
- The 42
'If I was in that changing room right now, the blood would be flowing'
SOMEHOW, IT'S BEEN eight years since Sean Cavanagh last kicked a ball for Tyrone. During a 16-season senior career he won three All-Ireland titles, six Ulster titles, two National Leagues. Five All-Stars. A Young Footballer of the Year and a Footballer of the year. Captain of Ireland and winning International Rules series. He's still the holder of the record number of appearances for Tyrone. 239 times, as it happens. 196 in league and championship. 89 in championship. After county retirement, came an All-Ireland intermediate title with The Moy. Then seasons spent as player-manager. Controversy as a pundit with surprising comments about his former manager Mickey Harte. Business interests mushrooming and exploding. Tyrone never really replaced him. Neither have The Moy as he targets another season playing for them at 42. Here, he gets to the very heart of what still drives him. Declan Bogue: I was in Dungannon last year for a club championship match, standing behind the goals. I was watching you play in the intermediate championship game against The Rock and chatting to your former team mate Peter Donnelly. And I just asked him, like, what is that man doing? At his age? What has he left to prove? Sean Cavanagh: Do you know what, like, ironically now, I probably am able to appreciate the game more for the game itself. Through my county career, there's probably something inside me that I don't even understand what it is, but I demented myself through my kind of career. Like, I literally put myself to extremes that I know you'll always hear people say this, and a lot of the top people have it naturally, but if I was to tell you some of the things that I've done . . . if you were to speak to my wife Fionnuala and you were to get a list of some of the extremities that I went to whenever I was playing with county football, you'd say you're either lying or you're mad. I did player-manager for a few years, just as I was wrapping up and I took one year out. Actually, we end up getting relegated the year I took out. I said, 'look I'll just park it. I'm done.' As of right now, I haven't gone back yet this year. I've played a couple of training matches there the last couple of weeks, but I might, probably, will go back. With brother Colm Cavanagh after they won an All-Ireland intermediate title with The Moy in 2018. Ken Sutton / INPHO Ken Sutton / INPHO / INPHO It's only now I'm able to kind of enjoy the game whereby, for the most part of my career I was either physically torturing myself (or) training to levels that you would never understand. The whole irony is a lot of clients who don't even know the game, they go, 'Oh, you're the man who brought in the black card.' Whenever I was young coming through, I took a lot of abuse myself. I was maybe a marked man, and a lot of games I played probably weren't at times all that enjoyable because of that, you know, because I was getting physically manhandled. So ironically, now, the age of 42, I'll be able to go into the games, not be the main player, but yet enjoy the game for what it is. DB: You've four children now? SC: Two girls; Eva 14, Clara 12, Sean 7, and Lorcan's just turned 5 there, so four, and they're doing a lot of sports and things. I'm able to enjoy it. Every year I started as a Tyrone player, I had only one thing in my mind and that's, I'm being honest with you, it's just 'We're going to win another Ireland and I'm gonna give everything'. I remember the day I retired and I woke up the next morning and I went for a game of golf actually in Armagh. I remember someone saying to me, 'Are you going to miss it?' Not one day have I missed county football because I knew I left everything I could give to that, to that part of my life. I could not give any more. DB: Has the frustration you felt with Mickey Harte dimmed? You had one year under Art McRory and Eugene McKenna and 15 years under Mickey. That's some length of time to sustain a relationship. SC: I only had one year of Big Art and I absolutely adored the man. The impact he had on my career, and like ironically I didn't play all that much. I injured my ankle midsummer in in 2002 and I missed the Sligo game we lost. But some of the things he did for me! Even I was quite overweight and stuff, and I remember he used to very directly, but with like a joke with a jag. I remember one day I was sitting eating a bag of Tayto cheese and onion. I didn't eat salad sandwiches and the pre-match meals were salad sandwiches. We had a qualifier match down in Wexford, went to the shop, come back with a Tayto cheese and onion and a Snickers. He's looking at me and he was like, 'You know, big Cavanagh, if you get rid of that shit, you know, you're gonna be one of the best players in Ireland.' But aye, Mickey was, I actually think me and Mickey are very similar, you know. He's an incredibly competitive person and, and someone who came in and give us an incredible sort of winning attitude. But, look, there always was misunderstanding. Books complicate things. I'm sure if he was sitting here he would maybe see it differently than I did, but after the Cork game in 2009 Fionnuala's dad came in one day and he goes, 'do you see what's in the Sunday Times?' It was around the time Mickey was releasing a book and it was the headline was, 'The roof caved in on him,' about me not playing against Cork that day in the semi-final and I suppose that's that. Didn't do our relationship any good. Put it like that. But equally, I'm a great man at being able to put things into compartments in my life, move on very quickly. You'll have seen plenty of footage over the years after that, he'd made me captain in what's it, 2014-odd and I had some amazing times and even I remember after we won the games in 2013, we made the semi-final as well, plenty images where me and Mickey were as close as we ever were. With Mickey Harte in 2016. Lorraine.O'Sullivan Lorraine.O'Sullivan Things get muddied somewhat. Whenever I spent a bit of time then doing The Sunday Game and you have to make a comment. I remember making a comment that maybe, maybe it was coming up to the time that Mickey would look at making a bit of a change. And I think a lot of people saw that as a sort of some sort of a direct dig, but it never was. Like any 16-year relationship, there's always gonna be these wee moments of highs and lows, and I think everyone sometimes only sees the lows. I think if we're both being honest with each other, both of us loved Tyrone so fecking much! We're just very, very competitive as people and it's, it's sort of… I think I'm able to now as a 42 year old and an adult who sees life moving on very quickly . . . DB: Your business is brisk. You have accountancy firms in Dungannon, Omagh, Moy, Armagh, London. That's very busy. SC: I am involved in a London Irish Centre over there. I'm a trustee in at the Camden Centre. I'd had a lot of, a lot of friends and clients that were involved in that and brought me into the Centre a few years ago and I've fairly heavily involved ever since that, but yeah; very real, very real. A lot of people come to London in the '50s and '60s and literally had nothing and there's still the sort of dorms there at that Centre that a lot of people stayed in. DB: The Irish that came at that point, a huge number of them worked in hard jobs and had to keep their foremen sweet with drink, send a lot of money home, they weren't paying their stamp and they kept the Irish economy afloat at home. SC: And equally now, I see it in a business context where a lot of those people have now amazing businesses and you'd go, 'God, fair play, you're now running a business that has like I don't know, 200 million turnover,' and they'll go, 'I came over here and I had nothing. For the first ten years, I slept rough or I went to the Centre. 'I had no money to buy food and went to the Centre and they give me hot meals three times a week or something like and that sort of thing that kept me going.' Advertisement You don't have to look too far anywhere around the world, the Irish communities are still alive and well and people have always been very good to one another. DB: Your autobiography said a great deal about how hard work shaped your whole family. SC: I worked here (the Ryandale Hotel) as a 13 year old. I worked in a bar as a 13 year old. Mum washed the dishes. She was originally a cleaner here, sort of graduated on to be a cook. Dad's a labourer and still is a labourer and still to this day working at 72. He labours to a plasterer and mixes the plaster to put into the buckets. And I never had a minute as a kid in a summer holiday. I was woken up at 6 in the morning and told, 'Come on, you're coming to me on site,' so I went and I laboured with my dad, wheeling wheelbarrows and then worked in the evenings in the bar. Then I worked in a bar in The Four Seasons, Club Mex up in Monaghan. Never stopped. I'd get home probably about 4:15, the music stopped at like 2:30, and you always took about an hour to get red up. And then Tyrone minor training on a Sunday morning. My mum and dad aren't, they're not wealthy people by any means. But they're incredibly hardworking people. Both of them worked two jobs all my life, and they were manual jobs. Mummy was a cleaner and a cook, and Dad, as of right now, still has two jobs, labouring to a plasterer and he still is doing the door in Club Mex, four nights a week. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, he's not home until half four in the morning and then he gets up on the Monday morning and goes labouring. But you know what, that was the best thing that they ever gave me, you know, because it taught me that relationship between work and rewarding. I know sometimes people say this and it makes it sound very glossy and whatever, but it was the best thing ever happened to me because I've now just carried that work ethos. Mummy and dad would have said to me, 'Look, do you wanna go out on site with your dad, or do you want to go and get a career in something?' DB: Now you have a role helping members of the Gaelic Player's Association manage their businesses and finances? SC: It's something that started years ago. Like a business incubator scheme. If you spoke to a lot of the players playing in county football now have really, really, really good businesses, genuinely really good businesses. And with that, the GPA then supports them, so they'll come to us. We get them set up in business. Typically a lot of guys sort of go for coffee shops or saunas and gyms and things like that, but some of them have tech businesses, manufacturing. I saw a lot of people whenever I was playing sacrifice their own personal and business interests. A lot of ones are typically teachers and I'd go, 'Why are you teaching?' - 'Well, it kind of suits, you know, because I'm finished up at 2:30 or 3:30 in a day, and I'll be able to play football during the summer and all that. It was a bit of a bugbear of mine because I was like, 'You're gonna have a life after you finish as a county player.' After the All-Ireland final of 2008, when a switch to full-forward changed everything for Tyrone. Cathal Noonan / INPHO Cathal Noonan / INPHO / INPHO So it's class to be able to see lads now set things up while they're still county players that they'll be able to transfer their energies to them once the county thing comes to an end. I set my business up in the last year that I knew I was finishing with my county. I always had that natural transition in my mind. Whenever I took a defeat bad or I was annoyed about football – and I took it ridiculously seriously – I was able to flick very quickly and then into a very heavy enough sort of accountancy job at that point in time, so I was able to change very quickly and move my mind away from football and bring it somewhere else and then bring it back to football, and I felt the freshness of that, you know, I felt I was able to do that well. DB: That ambition meant you didn't care about being liked, which is very refreshing. SC: I've never been any different. I've always had a thing of saying what's in my mind, you know. I'm acutely aware that sometimes people take that in, in the wrong way. I remember whenever I was starting to play for Tyrone, someone saying to me, 'Just always say what's on your mind, because no one will ever be able to catch you out.' A lot of people sometimes have taken offence at what I've said even in punditry circles over the years. But I don't remember saying one thing that I regret. I don't remember saying anything and thinking to myself afterwards, 'God, you shouldn't have said that.' A lot of people that you would do the punditry with, they'll say something. You'd be sitting watching a game and they'll go, 'Such and such is doing this right or doing that wrong. And then they go on TV and they'll not say that. Meeting former team mates Conor Meyler and Darren McCurry after Tyrone won the 2021 All-Ireland. James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO They've got this great filter that they'll block away what they really feel and sugarcoat things and change things. I say exactly the same thing behind the camera as they do in front of the camera. DB: The danger is punditry is oftentimes it is not set in context. You are a man working in accountancy and aware of UK and Republic of Ireland directives and yet during the Covid Lockdowns you did a podcast in which you referred to being 'up here in the UK' and the fallout was ridiculous. SC: That was in an office 100 metres down the road. I did that interview on a Friday morning and in my heart, I'm useless in the morning and usually by Friday I'm wrecked as well after a long week of business. I never thought anything of it. I'm not political at all. I've never been into politics or religion, it's never been my thing. But that really hurt, like. It really hurt me as a person as well, because my proudest moment ever on a sporting field, I remember standing in Perth, 2008, captain of Ireland singing Amhrán na bhFiann, 45,000 people in the Subiaco Oval, hair standing in the back of my neck, feeling 'This is as good as it gets.' I was at a thing last Friday with Ciara Mageean and the Saffron Business Forum in Belfast and they're asking her, 'why did you get into athletics?' And she said, 'I wanted to get into a sport that I could represent Ireland on an international stage. And I felt like I was doing that, that evening in Perth. I felt, 'This is me leading my country tens of thousands of miles away from home.' Leading out Ireland for an International Rules game. Cathal Noonan / INPHO Cathal Noonan / INPHO / INPHO And because I'm not good at the whole language around politics, and because my work… If you went down to my office now and sat with me for an hour, all I ever do, because we have offices in Ireland and the UK and as in England and stuff, I'm always talking about the, the variances, the difference between under UK and Ireland. I'm going, 'Well, under UK legislation, under Irish legislation,' that's just how we speak, because there's two different jurisdictions there. That morning, Pat Spillane was talking about how he couldn't go for a walk on the beach. So in my mind, it was like trying to find a way of showing that difference between the Irish Covid response and the UK Covid response, because, you know every Sunday night I was watching the Boris Johnson announcements because he was telling us, all my staff can't work on the Monday morning. In my mind it was perfectly normal to reference the difference of the jurisdictions, but of course people just see that one clip it and think UK. I've always considered myself a very, very proud Irish person. And people who jumped on that at that time . . . It's very disappointing. A bit of a needless attack on something that in my mind was a simple mistake. DB: What are your impressions of Tyrone? Because there was the All Ireland in '21, but the support and interest, even for the U20 teams who are so successful, has plummeted. SC: It really worried me last year. I was up at the Roscommon game in Omagh, and I met a few guys that are really, really good Tyrone supporters. There was nobody at the game really, and even they were sort of shrugging their shoulders. It's actually sad. I brought my wee kids up to the game in in Clones there, the Tyrone-Armagh game. I was at a Go Games that morning in Derrytresk and I was asking lads were they going to the game that evening? And they're like, 'Nah, nah. Hassle . . . Saturday evening in Clones . . .' I played a lot of basketball, played a lot of soccer as well. One of the reasons I played Gaelic football, I did like the sport, but it was the games. '95 and the 13 men against Derry, Canavan, 11 points, wherever it was, I remember standing on the hill that day. I remember going, 'Wow! Like this is a spectacle, this makes the hair stand the back of my neck.' And now I'm hearing a lot of people in Tyrone going, 'I'm not gonna bother going up.' This is our biggest rivals, all Ireland champions, hot summer's day, Saturday evening. Why is nobody going? I think it's just a bit of a disconnect in the county in the last few years, See that we've had some mediocre enough performances, but I think as a county we need something to ignite us again. DB: A win in Ballybofey this Saturday would surely do that? SC: If we don't get a result in Ballybofey, which everyone knows how tricky it is against a McGuinness team up there and all the psychology that goes with that one. But, if we don't win on Saturday night, essentially it leaves us to a place that it's a must-win against Mayo. But I left Clones that evening of the Armagh game with a friend of mine and turned to him and I just said, 'You know what, Tyrone's in a good place.' I think Malachy has seen a few things. A few players maybe just aren't ready or weren't ready, and I think it'll take those changes, but I think myself, we played at 50 or 60% and we were in a position to win with three minutes to go. To give up so much possession on a dry day and concede that against Armagh, yeah, I don't think they'll do that again. Brian Kennedy and Ben McDonnell on that day was very good, Conn Kilpatrick, we do have a lot of size, and Hampsey will come back into that mix and Kieran McGeary's a strong lad. I think Malachy recognised that was something that he will change. Ironically, I left thinking to myself, 'God, we're better off going this route.' We're better off because it keeps us out of the limelight. Cavan put their head down there for a few weeks, went down to Castlebar and get away and that's why you're sort of thinking: Tyrone have always been good in the long grass. The team who wins All Ireland are the team that that has the most momentum coming into June, July, that's what Armagh did last year. I'm not saying Tyrone's in a position by any means to win an All Ireland, but I think we're in a good position to take a couple of scalps and be very hard to beat. DB: Why is Ballybofey such a graveyard? SC: I think Jim McGuinness is a genius at putting out all these subliminal hints. They're not the team I played against, you know, where the two McGees were pulling the head off you, and Lacey, real tough tough cornerbacks and defensive players. Against Neil McGee. Presseye / Andrew Paton/INPHO Presseye / Andrew Paton/INPHO / Andrew Paton/INPHO For me anyway, it was always about the psychology. I remember the bus pulling up one year and it being soaking wet and we just got these new white shirts and being told we had to get off the bus and walk in. And then I remember we went to try to get into the changing rooms and they said, 'No. Changing rooms are closed.' And we had to change in a squash court. It was like the New York Yankees stripes, like you were beaten before the ball was thrown in. And the toilet, I remember one of the toilets we went to try we were told, 'No, the toilet's closed, it's blocked or whatever.' DB: This sounds more than unusual! SC: Well, here, it can't all be coincidence that we couldn't get the bus couldn't through the gate, and the toilet was closed when we went up to play them in Ballybofey. And then the sidelines used to always be brought in as well. So in my mind, I'm a very analytical person, so those wee things always played in my mind. I was going, 'Why is the lines taken in three metres from when we play here in the league? Why is that toilet locked? So all of a sudden, you're getting angry. Your fire has been stoked and all the while you're thinking to yourself, 'This an ambush. We're in trouble here. So they have you on the back foot'. And I don't know whether it's because the record and the McGuinness factor and the crowd's so close and everything, but you just always feel, 'we're up against it here today.' But look, Tyrone went and won there in 2018. It's a new team. Donegal is not the same team. They haven't got that same physical prowess and power and defence that they always had. If anything, the tight pitch might go against them. So, you could turn a lot of the factors around now to say Tyrone might have the edge in certain areas that they didn't previous. I think Malachy's a brilliant manager, and I think he has a good group of players there right now. I think there is going to be a moment and hopefully it's the next few weeks that arrives. They were good against Cavan. They don't get that much credit because it was Cavan. Tyrone were expected to beat Cavan and always have beaten Cavan, but, I do feel that this Tyrone team does need a big scalp and a big statement. That's what we are as a county, I think that's who we are. As people as well. I always loved being in that changing room where we felt we were chasing something. That people wrote us off and I think Tyrone people rise to that narrative. I think if I was in that changing room right now, the blood would be flowing and I'd be thinking, 'what a chance we have here.' Seán Cavanagh was speaking to mark the launch of a new partnership between the Gaelic Players Association and LIA, the leading organisation in the education and development of financial advice and planning professionals. This new collaboration will see the 'Smart Money Habits' financial wellbeing programme made available to 4,000 GPA members, enhancing financial literacy across multiple key areas. Check out the latest episode of The42′s GAA Weekly podcast here
Telegraph
28-02-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
Controversial tackle-height change has ‘reduced head contacts'
Two years ago the sudden and controversial decision to lower the tackle height in the community game sparked outrage across English rugby. Now, the Rugby Football Union has revealed that head contacts and red cards were reduced in the aftermath. Such was the uproar over the RFU's decision in 2023 that the governing body released an apology at the time, releasing a statement saying: 'In our desire to act quickly to reduce head impacts and concussions, we have upset many of you. We fully acknowledge we got the engagement wrong, and we are truly sorry.' The data, which is still in its early stages, is drawn from analysis of 200 matches across the National Leagues, the university system's BUCS Men's Super Rugby and schoolboys under-18 level to examine the effects of lowering the tackle height to below the base of the sternum. In BUCS matches, tackles above the sternum following the law-change dropped from 42 per game to 28. In National One, the average number of head contacts dropped from six to three. A knock-on effect from lowering the tackle height was an increase in offloads and a reduced number of breakdowns. At National League level, the number of average tackles per game dropped from 259 to 225, while offloads increased on average from 19 to 23. The number of red cards issued for dangerous play under Law 9.13 notably decreased, while the number of reported concussions in men's levels three to nine stabilised, having steadily increased since 2009-2010. The concussion numbers for the women's game remained similar to previous seasons. Discussing the Domestic Law Variation, Paula Carter, RFU board and council member and chair of the RFU's head impact prevention and management steering group, said: 'The RFU takes player welfare incredibly seriously, and we are determined to promote the many benefits of our game alongside analysing data and science to make our sport as safe as it can be. 'These early results of the initial impact of the reduction in the tackle height are positive indicators that the community game, where most of the rugby is played in England, are benefitting from the decisions we are taking relating to welfare and injury prevention. We are grateful for all the work the community game is doing to make this a success.' The figures provide a welcome update on how that law change is progressing after its introduction in 2023 triggered a backlash from players, with one describing the process as 'a total shambles'. The RFU was also heavily criticised for the manner in which the radical development was first introduced, with critics pointing to 'a lack of transparency and communication'. Plan to empower clubs in decision-making The tackle height update is part of a published response from the RFU following a roadshow around the country to speak with aggrieved clubs after last year's bonus scandal surrounding chief executive Bill Sweeney. Having met already with representatives from 400 clubs, and with more roadshow events in the pipeline, the RFU has announced that action will be taken in multiple areas. The most interesting proposal regards governance reform, with Sir Bill Beaumont, the interim chair of the RFU board, proposing an additional motion, ahead of the special general meeting to be held on March 27. The motion calls for the RFU's 'governance and representation review' to be expedited, giving clubs more decision-making power at a local level. 'We want to create a new relationship between clubs and the union – with stronger engagement in how the game is run,' the RFU says in a document titled 'Our Commitment To The Community Game'. 'We anticipate this accelerated governance review will enable the union to move to a regional structure where more decisions can be made locally, with greater flexibility achieved in competition management and devolved funding to help local decisions to be made to drive participation growth, aid player retention and support club sustainability.' Beaumont urges clubs to back Sweeney In the letter, Beaumont urges RFU members 'to vote in favour of this resolution which can bring about meaningful governance change and against the motion that members have no confidence in the Chief Executive Officer', adding that the RFU board 'unanimously supports Bill Sweeney remaining as CEO'. Addressing the push from the group known as Whole Game Union, made up of the Rugby Football Referees Union and Championship clubs who called for the SGM, Beaumont warns that a vote of no confidence in Sweeney 'risks sending the Union into paralysis and creating a costly leadership vacuum'. Whole Game Union responded to the RFU's announcements in a statement, stressing that the letter calling for the SGM had been signed by 152 clubs 'and is supported by scores more at every level and in every region'. The statement continued: 'It is only because of the Whole Game Union's ability to corral the dissatisfaction of English Rugby with its leadership that Sir Bill and his board belatedly discovered the need to go out and meet clubs. None of the proposals in his letter would have been forthcoming if our Union was just a few malcontents stirring a pot. The pot was already boiling. 'The desperation inherent in this letter to clubs can be summed up by the sudden realisation that they need to make promises to address the points made in the SGM letter. Our message remains that the board and the CEO have lost the dressing room.' Analysis: This is first step towards RFU regaining clubs' trust By Ben Coles To say that the Rugby Football Union is beginning to show signs of improving its communication with its members and the wider public means, given recent events, that a very low bar has been cleared. Friday's news, however, feels like a marked improvement, an implied mea culpa, which continues the work that began with Sir Bill Beaumont's return to the RFU to kickstart one of the great charm offensives in English rugby. Focus on this Bill, not the other Bill. While the bonus payment made to Bill Sweeney provoked a level of outrage so startling that the RFU never saw it coming, intel from the roadshow events suggests that the size of Sweeney's salary is not a primary concern for clubs. The Pontefract chairman Phil Atkinson described it as a 'red herring' in my colleague Ben Rumsby's piece covering one of the events. Teams want to know how their floodlights will be fixed and why they were not consulted properly about lowering the tackle height. Those issues matter more than the chief executive's pay packet. Releasing data on the impact of lowering the tackle height in the community game does not vindicate the RFU's failure to properly communicate such a fundamental shift in how the game is played. But it will at least help to persuade those concerned for the future of the sport that the change was necessary. Members likely knew already that something had to give. You can separate the professional and amateur games but the high-profile court case concerning former players and brain injuries, which has hung over the game in recent years, affects the overall perception of the sport. What members wanted was an opportunity to voice any queries and to push for answers, rather than to be directed without consultation. Improving county and regional governance, meanwhile, which should allow greater flexibility between areas of the country where player numbers differ and give counties more of an identity and voice, feels like a common-sense approach, too. Club vote will reveal success of Sweeney roadshow The tackle-height data is encouraging, absolutely, but it should be stressed that it is still in its early stages. A better picture will emerge over the coming seasons as more matches are studied and dissected, and you suspect the numbers will continue to trend down and up appropriately, as players continue to adapt. The aim of reducing head contacts and concussions was always creditable and worth exploring. The execution of it was just such a mess. Beaumont's letter does not hold back, 'urging' members not to vote against Sweeney in the forthcoming special general meeting, arguing that he is 'spearheading vital commercial and broadcast negotiations that will play a huge role in safeguarding our financial sustainability'. The success of Sweeney's speaking (but mainly listening) tour of the country will become apparent when the votes are cast at the SGM. It all feels like the start of a long road for the ruling body to win back everyone's trust. But a start nonetheless.
Boston Globe
24-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Frank Wisner, seasoned diplomat and foreign policy adviser, dies at 86
'I could recite the names of every prime minister in the world,' he told Foreign Affairs magazine, 'while my friends could tell you the starting pitchers in the American and National Leagues.' Advertisement Mr. Wisner became a Foreign Service officer in 1961 and came of age during the Vietnam War, joining a diplomatic circle that grew to include his friends Richard C. Holbrooke, who helped negotiate an end to the war in Bosnia, and Leslie H. Gelb, who became a journalist and chaired the Council on Foreign Affairs. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Unlike them, Mr. Wisner was seldom in the limelight. But he made a vivid impression in world capitals: bald and barrel-chested, with a fondness for claret, hunting, and cigars. President Carter named him ambassador to Zambia in 1979, and he was tapped as top diplomat in Egypt by Ronald Reagan, in the Philippines by George H.W. Bush and in India by Bill Clinton. For a few hours in January 1993, the day of Clinton's first inauguration, he served as acting secretary of state. The position came in between a pair of influential Washington postings, as undersecretary of state for international security affairs and undersecretary of defense for policy. Friends who knew him in Vietnam, where he was stationed for four years at the height of the war, recalled him as 'short and straight-backed, handsome and rakish,' as journalist George Packer wrote in his 2019 book 'Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.' 'He spoke in a slightly old-fashioned diction that was only half jest, using phrases like 'in due course' and 'well in hand,'' Packer added, 'and he believed in old-fashioned concepts like having a good war, which meant seeing one's share of action.' For Mr. Wisner, who was assigned to an interagency 'pacification' program, that meant accompanying soldiers on night patrols. Advertisement While serving as ambassador to Egypt from 1986 to 1991, Mr. Wisner sought to ease tensions in Cairo after Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait, generating panic among American expats in the region. On his next assignment, to the Philippines, he worked to stabilize relations with President Corazon Aquino, although he had less success lobbying for a lease extension that would have kept the US Navy's sprawling Subic Bay military base in place. Mr. Wisner remained an influential voice in US diplomacy even after he retired from the Foreign Service in 1997, turning down a reported offer to serve as ambassador in Paris so that he could start a second career in business. He served as a vice chairman of the insurance giant AIG for more than a decade, and was a board member at Enron Oil & Gas (now EOG Resources) and an international affairs adviser at the lobbying and legal powerhouse Squire Patton Boggs, where he worked until his death. While on his way out of the State Department, Mr. Wisner helped the Clinton administration in negotiations with Boris Yeltsin's government in Moscow, aiming to curb Russian weapon sales to Iran. Eight years later, the George W. Bush administration enlisted Mr. Wisner's help negotiating Kosovo's status as a sovereign state, an effort that was largely successful - even as Mr. Wisner lamented that Serbia, Kosovo's northern neighbor, still refused to recognize the country's independence. Advertisement Mr. Wisner returned to the news in 2011, when he was recruited by the Obama administration to meet with Egypt's authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, amid antigovernment protests that were sweeping through the Arab world. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later said that she had selected Mr. Wisner to coax Mubarak, a key US ally for three decades, into easing the country toward a democratic transition. The two men had a close relationship that dated back to Mr. Wisner's ambassadorship in Cairo. But the envoy's appeals were ignored, at least at first: When Mr. Wisner left the country not long after their meeting, Mubarak was still holding tightly on to power. Days later, Mr. Wisner made headlines when he appeared to contradict President Obama while addressing an international security conference in Munich. 'You need to get a national consensus around the preconditions of the next step forward,' he said, adding that Mubarak — rather than step aside — 'must stay in office in order to steer those changes through.' The administration distanced itself from Mr. Wisner, with a State Department spokesman clarifying that he had spoken as a private citizen, not a US envoy. Mr. Wisner drew further scrutiny after British journalist Robert Fisk reported that Mr. Wisner's employer Squire Patton Boggs did business with the Mubarak regime, in what appeared to be a 'blatant conflict of interest.' The episode was overshadowed when Mubarak resigned the next week, under pressure from millions of Egyptian protesters who had taken to the streets. His ouster set the stage for a tug-of-war among protesters, the military, and the long-banned Muslim Brotherhood, with retired general Abdel Fatah El-Sissi taking power in 2014. Advertisement To Mr. Wisner, the revolution's chaotic fallout underscored the importance of the patient approach he had advocated for in Munich. 'We ought to have been calling for an orderly transition, rather than telling Mubarak 'get out of town, get out of government,' with no strategy for what happens next,' he told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius in 2016. 'We needed a responsible path to stability and evolution, not revolution.' Mr. Wisner, then ambassador to India, presented Mother Teresa an award of honorary American citizenship in 1996. Anonymous/ASSOCIATED PRESS The oldest of four children, Frank George Wisner II was born in Manhattan on July 2, 1938. The family moved to Washington after World War II, and Mr. Wisner spent part of his school years in England, when his father, also named Frank, was posted in London as CIA station chief. The elder Wisner had served in World War II with the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, and later oversaw the CIA's clandestine branch, playing a role in US-backed coups in Iran and Guatemala. He was diagnosed with manic depression, now known as bipolar disorder, and took his own life in 1965, three years after he retired from the CIA. Mr. Wisner's mother, the former Polly Knowles, was a fund-raiser for Washington arts organizations and a close friend of Katharine Graham, the longtime chair of The Washington Post Co. After her husband's suicide, Polly married newspaper columnist Clayton Fritchey. As a young man, Mr. Wisner prepared for a diplomatic career by traveling overseas, living 'with a couple of old ladies in a suburb of Tours' to learn French. After graduating from Woodberry Forest boarding school in Virginia, he studied Arabic at Princeton University, wrote his senior thesis on Algeria's war for independence, and received a bachelor's degree in 1961. Advertisement The next year, he arrived in Algiers, where he settled into his first State Department posting just as the country was celebrating its independence from France. Mr. Wisner was sent to South Vietnam in 1964 and, after postings in Tunisia and Bangladesh, joined a presidential task force managing the resettlement of some 1 million Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees. His first wife, Genevieve de Virel, a French advertising executive, died of cancer in 1974. His second marriage, to Christine de Ganay, the stepmother of future French President Nicolas Sarkozy, ended in divorce. In 2015, he married Judy Cormier, the owner of a New York City art gallery and design business. In addition to his wife and son, David, he leaves a daughter from his first marriage, Sabrina Wisner; two stepchildren from his second marriage, Caroline and Olivier Sarkozy; two stepchildren from Cormier's earlier marriage, Jamie Nicholls Biondi and Christopher Nicholls; a brother; and 12 grandchildren. Interviewed about foreign affairs after his retirement from the Foreign Service, Mr. Wisner repeatedly championed the importance of political engagement over military action. He joined another former ambassador, Edward P. Djerejian, in publicly cautioning against the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. 'We cannot allow ourselves to be seen to be dictating to the world,' he had said in an oral history a few years earlier. 'We must be in search of partnership, of balance. Not of assertion, but of compromise.'
