Ousted Rugby Australia chair Hamish McLennan says he does not regret the hiring of Eddie Jones as Wallabies coach and claims instead he lost his position due to his push for reform of state rugby.

On Sunday, McLennan vowed to fight to hold on to his position despite six member unions, including Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory and Western Australia, demanding his resignation. But McLennan’s bid to keep his job ended on Sunday night after an emergency board meeting.

McLennan said on Monday “some characters up in Queensland” have hijacked the game after his push to centralise operations was met by resistance from associations including Queensland Rugby and the ACT.

“Those characters will say it’s not but it’s really about centralisation,” he told the ABC. “It’s about money, who gets what, and my personal view is that they want to maintain a level of independence.”

The chairman of REA Group and former Channel 10 chief executive said hiring Jones was the right decision at the time and one the entire board backed, even though in hindsight it was a “mistake”.

“I’ll own it 100%, if everyone thinks it was a dumb call, but at the time, everyone knew we had to do something because [former coach] Dave Rennie was at a 36% win rate and you make calls in life and some of them don’t work out,” he said.

World Cup-winning Wallaby Daniel Herbert has been named as McLennan’s replacement. McLennan opted to quit the board entirely rather than remain as a director.

The six member unions said they welcomed McLennan’s resignation.

“It is an honourable decision that recognises his continued service had become a distraction to the game,” a joint statement issued on Monday said. “Mr McLennan cannot be faulted for his energy or devotion to rugby, nor his tireless efforts for the game.”

McLennan’s time in charge was marked by Australia’s worst World Cup, under Jones.

On Friday, the six rebel union members – which also included South Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania – took the extraordinary step of sending a letter to the RA board declaring they had lost faith in McLennan following a shambolic year for the code.

The disastrous 2023 campaign culminated in the Wallabies’ worst World Cup performance – failing to progress from the group stage – and coach Jones walking away 10 months into his five-year deal.

The doomed appointment of Jones after the sacking of Rennie in January was seen as a “captain’s pick”, although McLennan claimed the move was supported by the board.

“We do not believe Mr McLennan has been acting in the best interests of our game,” the letter from the state unions read. “We no longer have any trust or faith in his leadership, or the direction in which he is taking rugby in Australia.”

Initially resisting the call for change, McLennan claimed the states were putting “parochialism and self-interest” ahead of the game.

McLennan received the public backing of billionaires Andrew and Nicola Forrest, who own the Western Force and therefore constitute one voting member of the Australian Rugby Union.

But it wasn’t enough to save him from the axe.

McLennan was appointed RA chair in mid-2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic with the code in dire financial straits. Since then RA has secured hosting rights for the next men’s World Cup in 2027 and the women’s tournament in 2029.

Herbert played 67 Tests for Australia and was a part of the Wallabies teams that won the 1999 World Cup, 2001 British and Irish Lions series, the Rugby Championship and five straight Bledisloe Cups.

The 49-year-old now faces the huge task of uniting a fractured code. He said he hadn’t coveted the role.

“I was quite happy in the background,” he said. “It was, I guess, the faith the other directors put in me to do it that that sort of got me over the line.

“What I’m excited about, it’s why I joined – I think I can add value in an area that I know is broken.”

The new chair rejected suggestions that RA had become a boys club. The chief executive, Phil Waugh, the president, Joe Roff, and Herbert played for the Wallabies together. The chief executive of the Rugby Union Players Association, Justin Harrison, is another former teammate.

Herbert said it was good former players were keen to give back to the game.

“Some of these guys that we played with, we’re not hanging out together, we haven’t seen a lot of these guys for a long, long time before joining this board,” he said. “There is I guess a camaraderie from when you play together, but we’ve all gone on with our lives and done different things.”

Herbert has been on the RA board since 2020.