Eligibility rules are area fraught with difficulty
There are some issues in rugby that fall into the ‘just too difficult’ category, and player eligibility is somewhere near the top of the list.
Currently a player is eligible to play for a nation with which he has a ‘genuine, credible and established link’, such as he, or a parent or grandparent being born there, or having lived there for five continuous years (that applies from December 31, having previously been three years). Once a player has chosen their country, currently that’s it, they are tied to that decision, but it seems that the plan is to allow a player to change nations as long as they ‘stand down’ for three years.
The current rules lead to some bizarre situations where players who clearly come from one country, find themselves able to play for another that a grandparent left in the middle of the previous century, and with which they have no real link. When families move abroad, their children can play for their adopted country as a result of another eligibility criteriby on, that ten years living there – it doesn’t have to be consecutive years makes them eligible. I have no problem with that one, as someone who settles in a country and makes their life there, perhaps even becomes naturalised, is an entirely different kettle of fish from someone who’s bought in.
The result of all of this is that countries, such as Scotland, can turn out teams containing players that are only in the loosest sense Scottish. Their argument, and it has some merit, is that they’re a small nation, and have to their pool of talent in order to compete with bigger nations. For today’s game against the Wallabies, the Scots have two South African project players, and another who qualifies courtesy of having a Scottish mother. Both the project players qualified under the iniquitous old three-year residency rule.
There are players who were born, bred, and live in a country, who see imported ‘project players’ sweep in and take what might have been their places, and that has to be galling. A project player, in the harshest terms, is someone who can’t make it in their homeland but was ‘bribed’ to come and qualify for a country with which they have a tenuous link. For me that was always totally wrong, and taking it to five years was a spineless fudge – abolish the rule altogether.
On the face of it the proposed changes that would allow a player to change nations could help the Pacific Island teams: a Fijian, Samoan or Tongan could make their money, and then go back and play for the land of their birth. However, the returning players are likely to be close to, or past their sellexpand date. Will this help the Island nations? Probably not as much as some might expect.
Inconsistency in refereeing standards continues to mar the game, and last week’s money-spinner between Wales and the All Blacks had a number of controversial decisions. Premiership fans have become used to deliberate knock-ons being punished with at the very least a penalty, and more often than not a yellow card – the deciding factor in whether the player ever had a realistic chance of catching the ball is whether he goes for it with one or two hands. So, when Beauden Barrett went for a one-handed interception, fans shouted ‘yellow card ref !’
French ref Mathieu Raynal decided a penalty was the right sanction. It epitomised the biggest single issue supporters have with the way games are refereed.
When one of ‘our’ players commits a sin, we can live with it more readily if we see that his punishment is the same as every other player receives when they do something similar – it’s the sense of injustice created by inconsistency that is so damaging.