Why Wales should let Reffell stay at Leicester
AS a Welshman thriving in the English Premiership, Tommy Reffell knows that a time will come when he will have to tackle the penalty of his success. Now that he has made a storming start to his Test career, Leicester’s newest international will be forced into making what appears at face value to be a non-choice: remaining an integral part of England’s champion club or going home to join one of the four under-funded, under-nourished Welsh regions.
Why, on earth, would he even think about making such a move, let alone doing it?
Because once his contract expires and at least one Welsh team offers him alternative employment, no player earning his living outside Wales can play for Wales unless he has been capped a minimum of 60 times. Refusal to comply is tantamount to automatic international exile.
The Tigers say that day of reckoning is some way off. When it comes, and should the same rule be applied, Reffell will be put in the awkward position of having to choose between club or country.
The Welsh Rugby Union say the 60cap rule is under “constant review”. In that event, they must be asking themselves some searching questions over the knock-on effects of a ruling designed to keep their best young players in Wales. Its introduction five years ago would have been predicated on the assumption of the four regions ensuring those playing elsewhere provided an alternative as competitive as the one they would be leaving. Regrettably, that is no longer the case.
The regional quartet, sacrificed by successive WRU administrations on the altar of Team Wales, have been withering on their collective vine to such an extent that it is an event if one qualifies for the Champions’ Cup.
Far from discouraging their more promising players to leave Wales, the Union executive should be confronting the reality and recognising that many of those same players are, or will be, all the better for a cross-border exposure to the Premiership.
Reffell may well have made it had he stayed in his native Ospreylia but would he be this good this soon had he not spent the last eight years in the Tigers’ school at Leicester? Almost certainly not.
Wales, therefore, reap the reward. That ought to be sufficient reason to review the rule and acknowledge, albeit tacitly, that their waning regions are not the attractions they used to be.
The quartet, in two cases the creation of shotgun marriages between neighbouring clubs, have long been losing the battle for hearts and minds but the rule raises a moral issue over
“Reffell has been a Tiger since leaving South Wales at 15”
narrowing horizons and breaking emotional ties.
Reffell has been a Tiger since leaving South Wales for the East Midlands at the age of 15. The club clearly means the world to him and yet Wales, unless they change the rule, will send him an ultimatum when his current contract expires: Come home or you won’t play international rugby.
Those with minds as broad as their ambitions to sample the wider rugby world find such a restriction insulting. Jamie Roberts, who sailed enough of the seven seas to play in South Africa and Australia, doesn’t beat about the bush. He calls it blackmail. “It absolutely breaks me,” he says in his autobiography. “Who are the Welsh Rugby Union to deny players that opportunity and basically blackmail them for the Welsh jersey?’’
The WRU will argue that they don’t have the same control over players based beyond their jurisdiction as they do over those at home. Consequently, they lose their English contingent for one of the four Tests every autumn because they are required for domestic duty.
Far from making a song-and-dance about, the WRU ought to be big enough to say: “So what?” It doesn’t really matter if Reffell plays only three Tests every autumn instead of four.
What does matter is that he maintains the level of performance which has pushed him from the back to the front of a very long queue of Welsh flankers – James Davies, Shane LewisHughes, James Botham, Taine Basham, Jac Morgan, Aaron Wainwright, Josh Navidi.
Others have decisions to make on their futures, like Louis Rees-Zammit at Gloucester, Callum Sheedy and Ioan Lloyd at Bristol. All would readily agree that their success in the Premiership has enhanced their international status.
Yet none is tied to his club by a stronger umbilical cord than Reffell. “Tigers took me in at an early age and made me into the person I am now,’’ he said after renewing his contract there two years ago. “Ever since I arrived at Leicester, the main goal for me was to get into the first team, play regularly and make a name for myself.
“There have been some world-class players who have worn the No.7 jersey. So when I pulled the shirt on there is a sense of pride and a sense that I have worked hard for the jersey. I just want to play well in it.’’
It is in Wales’ best interest to ensure that he keeps doing that for as long as he likes without any disruption over his international future.