The challenger had run on an expansionist platform, urging that the sport's flagship tournament be made bigger to accommodate more places for developing football nations, and that far more emphasis be placed generally on global football development.

Rugby union, one of the beautiful game's more physical cousins, will probably require a similar "moment" if the degree of control and playing supremacy exercised by the old guard, drawn chiefly from bits of the world map that used to be coloured pink, is to be significantly diluted.

The question is: "Is that moment upon us?"

Sir Bill Beaumont, the 68-year-old former England lock who has been chairman of World Rugby's Council since 2016, is being challenged by Agustín Pichot, the 45-year-old former Argentinian scrum-half, who has served as Beaumont's vice-chairman.

The result should be announced on May 12, although, with the electorate cooped up like the rest of us and unable to travel, votes will actually be cast, as I understand it, during the course of next week, commencing April 27.

The accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers will handle the voting process.

Pichot's platform is based on what he terms the "global realignment of our game", with a campaign hashtag #GlobalGame – that might have been handpicked for Havelange, had campaign hashtags existed in 1974.

He seems to have struck a chord, with those expressing support including England Rugby World Cup-winning coach Sir Clive Woodward, who was a team-mate of Beaumont's in England's Five Nations Grand Slam-winning squad of 1980.

But could the parallels with 46-years-ago extend to the South American candidate actually winning?

Let's just say that, as often appears to be the case in International Federation (IF) elections in which a challenger is taking on an incumbent, the odds look stacked against him.

Some of this is just bad luck.

As the "change" candidate, Pichot would probably benefit from going out and about pressing the flesh and promoting his ideas.

But coronavirus, of course, prevents this.

Other factors are, well, nothing to do with luck.

We are a long, long way from one-country-one-vote territory in this election.

Ten countries, consisting for the most part of the sport's old guard, are allotted three votes each – and since 26 votes will be enough for victory, this privileged group have the voting-power to elect the winner all by themselves.

The four countries of the British Isles alone command 12 votes.

It would be hard to imagine a system more calculated to lock in conservatism – which is a little ironic when you consider how relatively adventurous rugby union has been in recent years when it comes to tweaking the actual laws of the game to make it more entertaining.

Only 18 countries are deemed worthy of any individual votes at all.

The rest have to make do with expressing their views via regional amalgams such as Asia Rugby and Rugby Africa.

This means, for example, that whereas world champions South Africa will have three votes in the contest to decide World Rugby's next leader, the rest of Africa combined will have only two.

As if this were not enough, when checking bye-law 9, which governs the Council, I came across sub-section 9.4 (e), which says, "the chair shall have a casting vote".

I thought I had better just check that this did not mean that Beaumont could conceivably have the casting vote in an election in which he was one of the candidates.

And – what do you know? – he could, as a member of World Rugby's excellent administrative team told me: "The chairman does not vote, but he does have the casting vote in the event of a tie".

If rugby union is serious about becoming a genuinely global game, it really does need to do something about the more archaic aspects of its governance regulations.

The other point I wanted to make was about timing.

COVID-19 has been a disaster for rugby as for almost every other sport. 

But the timing of its dissemination has been fortuitous for World Rugby in one important respect: the virus delayed its appearance until after last year's Rugby World Cup in Japan.

This should mean that, unlike most sports bodies, including others attached to rugby, World Rugby does not have to worry about securing its income for the next four years.

In the current restlessly uncertain atmosphere prevailing in sport, cash is king; World Rugby's projected £150 million ($180 million/€165 million) or so surplus from that latest edition of its flagship tournament could, with skillful handling, be utilised to increase its leverage in all sorts of ways.

This makes the identity of those who will lead the body into the next four years unusually important.

One hopes that the electorate, unbalanced as it is, will have this, rather than more parochial concerns, at the forefront of their minds as they cast their votes next week.