Vernon Pugh

International Rugby Board chairman of formidable intellect

Vernon Pugh, rugby administrator and barrister: born Ammanford, Carmarthenshire 5 July 1945; called to the Bar, Lincoln's Inn 1969; QC 1986; Chairman, Welsh Rugby Union 1993-97; Chairman, International Rugby Board 1994, 1996-2003; married Dorinda Davies (three daughters); died Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan 24 April 2003.

Vernon Pugh was, by his own admission, a rugby union player of strictly limited ability – a long association with the Cardiff High School Old Boys club and a handful of senior appearances for Pontypridd was hardly the stuff of legend, and he was never likely to join Gareth Edwards and Barry John as a priceless treasure of the Welsh golden era. Yet, as a rugby administrator of vision, he wielded unprecedented influence and led the most complex and politically embattled of team sports into territory unimagined by the vast majority of his peers, let alone by officials of earlier eras.

He was born in 1945, the son of a Welsh miner. From Amman Valley Grammar School he went to Downing College, Cambridge, and became a barrister, specialising in commercial, development and environmental law and taking silk in 1986. He was also a Crown Court recorder, but passed up an opportunity to join the High Court bench because of his interest in rugby governance, a decision that cost him rather more money than he ever made out of sport.

After coaching Cardiff HSOB – typically, he decided that club would never progress far with so unglamorous a name and re-christened them Cardiff Harlequins – and Welsh Universities, he rose through the ranks of the Welsh Rugby Union to become chairman in 1993. He also chaired the Five Nations and Home Unions committees.

In the early 1990s, Pugh published a report that acknowledged the inevitability of professional rugby – anathema to the governing classes of the time, who chose to cling to their age-old amateur principles despite widespread evidence that players were already being paid – and then guided the International Rugby Board's amateurism committee through the difficult weeks following the 1995 World Cup in South Africa. It was at that tournament that the host nation, along with Australia and New Zealand announced details of a unilateral broadcasting deal with Rupert Murdoch that effectively established professionalism overnight. Within months, the union game was declared "open".

Almost eight years later, many still believe the IRB in general, and Pugh in particular, mishandled the transition, and it is certainly true that the so-called "dash for cash" seriously disadvantaged a number of vibrant rugby nations – Romania, Argentina, Fiji, Samoa, even Wales and Scotland – and created a damaging imbalance in the global game. But, unlike many of his IRB colleagues, Pugh understood that Murdoch's buy-up of southern-hemisphere rugby meant there could be no turning back. He knew a fait accompli when he saw one and boldly attempted to manage the sport according to the new reality.

Elected the first independent chairman of the IRB in 1996 (he had served a previous term of office in 1994), Pugh was instrumental in consolidating European club rugby as a major plank of the northern-hemisphere game. As ever, this was an uneasy process. English clubs, very much at the forefront of the professional movement, boycotted the European Cup and European Shield tournaments in 1998 after months of committee-room conflict. It was at this time that Pugh took on the English rugby establishment, fining Twickenham for failing to prevent member clubs playing unsanctioned matches against Cardiff and Swansea, who were in dispute with their national union.

Once that issue was resolved, he resumed his campaign to re-establish rugby union as an Olympic concern. It had been a feature of the games until 1924 – bizarrely, the United States are the reigning champions – but was then ditched after outbreaks of on-field violence. Under Pugh's initiative, full International Olympic Committee status was granted in 1997, and he pushed for the sport's inclusion in the 2008 Games. The success of seven-a-side rugby in the last two Commonwealth Games, in Kuala Lumpur and Manchester, was not enough for the chairman, who believed exposure to the vast audiences of the United States and China was crucial to rugby's future.

Sadly, the latter stages of Pugh's rugby life were soured by in-fighting over the 2003 Rugby World Cup, the major global showcase for the game in the absence of an Olympic platform. This year's tournament had been awarded to Australia, with New Zealand as sub-hosts. When New Zealand refused to sign final agreement documents because of concerns over commercial issues, Pugh was dragged into an unpleasant and embarrassing public spat that quickly became personal. He travelled the world in an attempt to thrash out a solution – increasingly, rugby matters took precedence over his legal work – but New Zealand were eventually stripped of their right to host matches, much to the annoyance of that country's government.

Pugh often operated under difficult circumstances bordering on the impossible, but he was a man of formidable intellect and possessed a happy knack of getting things done. He was also a consummate sporting politician. Without him, rugby union faces a period of serious administrative uncertainty.

Chris Hewett