Bill Beaumont, the former England captain, will have to wait until December to mount his challenge to become the chairman of the International Rugby Board.
Beaumont, a co-opted member of the Rugby Football Union's management board, is the IRB's vice-chairman and wants to succeed the current chairman, Bernard Lapasset.
A vote was due to be held by the IRB's council on Wednesday, but it was deferred until December. The ostensible reason was that both candidates agreed that it was wrong for the election to take place during a World Cup.
If Beaumont had won, Lapasset would still have presented the Webb Ellis Cup at Sunday's final between New Zealand and France at Ellis Park because his term of office runs until May.
The vote was expected to be close, with Beaumont's supporters saying that Lapasset had gone back on a private pledge to their candidate, made when he was elected in 2008, to stand down next year.
It is understood that Lapasset's supporters, concerned that the vote was too close to call, proposed the postponement to give their candidate two more months to gather the necessary support. Beaumont's backers were not confident enough of victory to force the issue, especially with Lapasset ready to ask for a show of hands rather than opt for a secret ballot.
December will be a crucial month for the IRB, which will decide then when the next World Cup, which is being staged in England, will start; how the spoils from the tournament will be divided, with a commitment already made to the tier-one unions that they will be compensated for any loss of income in 2015 resulting from taking part in the tournament; and how to relax the commercial restrictions imposed on a union's sponsors during the World Cup.
The postponement suits the members of the Four Nations, who are most vociferous for change in the way the game is run and who have been most keen to hear the vision of Beaumont and Lapasset of how the IRB could improve the way it governs the sport.
New Zealand and Australia in particular are not happy with Lapasset's support of the IRB chief executive, Mike Miller, and want to know Beaumont's stance – and they would like a commitment from him that he will not support Wales's bid to play most of their group matches in 2015 at the Millennium Stadium.
Beaumont will return to England next week to find the RFU in as great a state of turmoil as when he left for New Zealand last month. Rebel clubs are ready to call a special general meeting when a vote of no confidence in the union's acting chief executive, Martyn Thomas, will be proposed.
Nearly 140 clubs have signed up for an SGM, but the trigger will not be pulled until next Tuesday when Thomas returns from New Zealand. He will be asked to resign to prevent the affair dragging on at least another couple of months. If he refuses, the SGM will be called immediately and would probably be held at the beginning of January.
