In Scotland, we’ve had to take a liberal view on players’ eligibility
◆ England are perhaps cutting off their nose to spite their face with rule that squad can only be picked from English clubs
Eligibility in international rugby has always provoked argument and there is no answer to the question that will please everybody.
Birthplace, residence, heredity are accepted criteria, though all may be occasion for argument. It’s disappointing for some of us, Gregor Townsend included, that it seems as if the young Northampton fly-half, Fin Smith, seems to have opted for England rather than Scotland. Sadly, having been born on the wrong side of the Border and being a product of English rugby, he probably feels more English than Scottish. On the other hand, he may also believe that he has a better chance of playing international rugby this year or next for England rather than Scotland.
Some of us, being a bit jealous of Ireland’s record over the last few years, have taken pleasure in remarking that four of Ireland’s first-choice back division in the World Cup were born and raised in the southern hemisphere. Any aggrieved Irishman might sneer at Townsend’s inclusion of the Exeter Chiefs’ prop Alec Hepburn in the Scotland squad, given that he won six caps for England a few years ago. Well, he wouldn’t have been eligible till recently, but a change in the IRB regulations permits a switch of loyalties if your last cap for your first country was three years ago. You may think it wrong, but Hepburn, born and reared in Australia, has a Scotland-born father and grandparents.
Meanwhile, England, acting to protect their Premiership clubs, are taking a risk or self-denying ordinance by limiting their selection for the Six Nations by deciding that only players with English clubs are now eligible to play for England. This is following a less severe Welsh precedent, the WRU having ruled that only players with a certain number of Welsh caps would be eligible to play for Wales if they had moved to an English or French club.
One understands the wish to support home-based clubs, but “cutting off your nose to spite your face” is the phrase that springs to mind. The Scottish argument has long been that if a player moves to, say, England or France, and improves, it’s to the benefit of the national team. This seems reasonable. Finn Russell is a better player now than he was in his Glasgow days. Likewise, few doubt that Blair Kinghorn will not benefit from his move to Toulouse.
The truth is, of course, that the Scottish domestic game has rarely been strong enough to enable us to field a XV of home-based Scots. The 1984 Grand Slam was a happy exception. Only Jim Pollock of Gosforth and Bill Cuthbertson (Harlequins) were playing their club rugby outwith Scotland
– and Cuthbertson had only recently moved from Kilmarnock to Harlequins.
It was different six years later when half the pack wre drawn from clubs in England: Paul Burnell and Derek White, both London Scottish, Chris Gray (Nottingham) and Damian Cronin (Bath), though Derek White had first been capped when with Gala.
In the professional era, Scotland’s coaches have always cast their net widely, not always admittedly to everyone’s approval. Brendan Laney had scarcely had time to shake-off jetlag and sniff the Scottish air before he was in the Scotland side and, in 2015, Verne Cotter had brought his fellow New Zealander John Hardie into his World Cup squad with what seemed to many indecent haste. He had, one should add, a pretty good tournament.
Moreover, a fair number of home-grown players who had made their mark in Scotland continued to be selected when they had crossed the Border or headed over the sea to France. Even before the game went professional Townsend moved from Gala to Northampton, Gary Armstrong from Jedforest to Newcastle, Doddie Weir also moved there from Melrose, Andy Nicol to Bath, Kenny Logan from Stirling County to Wasps. It was quite a long list. Indeed, around the turn of the century, Armstrong, Nicol and Bryan Redpath competed for the No 9 jersey when none was playing for a Scottish club.
The truth is that we have always had to take a fairly liberal view of where players play and indeed of ancestry. Everybody else does the same, though some – Ireland, for example – keep quiet about it. England are caught in a dilemma now. Top French clubs being richer than English ones, the attraction of France is obvious to many players. So the RFU is faced with a problem: do you risk weakening the national team or do you adopt a liberal selection policy that weakens the Premiership? Not easy, but their problem, not ours.
Our domestic game has rarely been strong enough to enable us to field a home-based XV