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Former Rugby Canada chair Sally Dennis is running for a position on World Rugby’s Executive Board. The election is set to take place Nov. 14 at the Interim Meeting of Council in Dublin.HO/The Canadian Press
The eyes of the rugby world continue to be squarely focused on Dublin this week.
Following the All Blacks’ victory over Ireland last weekend in a much-hyped rematch of last year’s epic World Cup encounter, now it’s the turn of the sport’s executives to get stuck in as World Rugby prepares to elect its new executive board on Thursday.
The election gives Canada a chance to have a representative on the panel for the first time in recent history, with former Rugby Canada chair Sally Dennis one of three contenders vying for the one seat available to non-high-performing rugby nations. The 14-member panel essentially acts as the governing body’s board of directors, formulating and implementing World Rugby’s strategic plan, and overseeing its budget, among other roles.
Dennis, who will be up against Samoa’s Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi and Uruguay’s Sebastian Pineyrua for the seat, believes that, particularly with the men’s and women’s Rugby World Cups coming to the United States within the next 10 years, having a North American voice on the board is critical.
“We have a very different sporting environment from a lot of Europe, with all the other major sports and what-have-you,” Dennis said in a phone interview from Dublin. “With the planned World Cups coming up in 2031 and 2033 in the U.S., I think it’s the perspective that is going to provide a context to some of the discussions going on around that and the planning for it and the implementation.”
Unlike the 2026 men’s soccer World Cup, for which Canada will be a co-host along with the United States and Mexico, the two rugby World Cups don’t involve Canada. But Dennis is confident that if she gets elected to the World Rugby executive board Thursday, she can help push Canada’s case that it should be involved.
“We’re certainly in conversations about it,” she said. “Our position is that absolutely we should be and that it makes a lot of sense.”
But World Cups are a conversation for another day. In the here and now, the sport in this country is at a strange juncture. On one hand, the women’s team is fresh off an Olympic silver medal last summer in the sevens, while the women’s 15s team is ranked No. 2 in the world. That contrasts drastically with the fortunes of the men’s program: Its sevens squad was recently relegated from the elite SVNS World Series; the 15s squad failed to qualify for last year’s World Cup for the first time.
Dennis feels like having a voice within the corridors of World Rugby will help keep this country front of mind from a rugby standpoint, even as one significant segment of the sport continues to flounder.
“If people only look at the men’s game and look at the men’s standings, they’re going to go, Canada no longer is a credible rugby nation,” she says. “I think having a presence on the board says, ‘Well, the rest of the world thinks we’re important. Like, look at us, we’re at the big table with the big boys and we have a voice notwithstanding.’ I think it does help that. I think it’s a bit of a morale thing.”
One of the criticisms thrown at World Rugby is that the sport is as tradition-bound as any on the planet and the governing body simply maintains the status quo. In recent years, the World Rugby chair has been filled by members from what might be termed as blue-blood rugby countries, such as Ireland, France and Wales. The incumbent, Sir Bill Beaumont, a former captain of England, is retiring and will be replaced on Thursday by one of France’s Abdelatif Benazzi, Italy’s Andrea Rinaldo or Australia’s Brett Robinson.
As Dennis sees it, trying to get rugby to think outside of the box, to break away from the old boys’ network, is vital for the sport to continue to grow across the globe.
“I think it’s important, first of all, to have a voice that’s other than one of the key nations,” she said. “The new structure that now mandates that a non-high-performance union be on board shows that people realize that it is a different voice. We have a different perspective.”
A former lawyer by trade, Dennis is no stranger to acting as a trail blazer. Having been appointed to the Rugby Canada board in 2017, she became its first female chair in 2021, and led efforts to overhaul the culture of the organization. She has also been Canada’s representative on the World Rugby Council – the larger, decision-making body which will vote for the executive board Thursday – since 2023, when she succeeded Pat Parfrey.
Current Rugby Canada chair, Kathleen McGinn, says that with any board – sporting or otherwise – diversity is key. That’s something that the World Rugby executive board is slipping on. While former U.S. hockey player Angela Ruggiero is there as an independent member, the board is losing another of its female voices with Ada Milby’s term coming to an end this month. Among the nominees for Thursday’s election, only Dennis and Ireland’s Susan Carter are female.
“You can really see with boards, especially executive councils, where a lot of decisions get made, that the voices in the room, as long as there’s a lot of diversity of voices and different views, there’s just much more effective,” McGinn says.
The decision of whether to add Dennis’s voice to that room is now up to the World Rugby Council.
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