Help! We’re all being overrun by the imports
Within the next 12 months Ireland will be free to cap several more nomadic New Zealanders. Scotland will be equally free to do likewise in respect of still more South Africans.
The latest batch of Irish reinforcements revolve around a trio who played a major part in Connacht’s almost fairytale rise to Celtic champions. They include arguably the best uncapped centre in the game, Bundee Aki, as well as another player straight out of the PRO12 dream team, hooker Tom McCartney, and the captain of the baby All Blacks at the 2012 Junior World Cup, flanker Jake Heenan.
In Edinburgh, more ‘project players’ are about to roll off the assembly line into the national team with unmistakably Caledonian names like du Preez, as in Cornell the No. 8, and Bresler, as in the Namibian lock, Anton. Phil Burleigh, the Kiwi fly-half who qualifies at the end of the season, at least played for the Highlanders, albeit half a world away in Otago.
For every man jack of them, the switch of allegiance is being done strictly according to the laws of eligibility. The three-year residential qualification allows anyone to fly anywhere in the rugby world under a flag of convenience.
No doubt the International Rugby Board, as the governing body used to be known, deluded themselves into thinking it was a good idea at the time. It ought not to have been asking too much for someone somewhere to have realised that such a soft stance on nationality would be exploited on a global scale.
The diluting effect of national identity, by England and France as well as Ireland and Scotland, continues unabated despite the occasional cri de couer from the dressing-room with Ireland’s newly retired wing Luke Fitzgerald questioning the morality of the issue.
At current conversion rates, it can be but a matter of time before there are sufficient of those who walked through the loophole to form an Anglo-French XV against a Celtic one. That is just one consequence of the governing body’s complacency.
A still more outrageous one happened yesterday when three Test matches featured a grand total of eight, eight, Fijian wings on duty for four other countries besides their own.
Three were on show at Twickenham yesterday plus four more on behalf of France and Australia in Paris last night . As a tank soldier in the British Army who has put his life on the line in Afghanistan, Samesa Rokoduguni’s right to represent England in a different theatre of conflict is beyond question.
For his compatriots in the blue of France (Virimi Vakatawa and Noa Nakaitaci) as well as those in Wallaby gold (Sefanaia Naivalu and Taqele Naiyaravoro), the three-year rule made it all too easy.
The All Blacks, of course, have rarely been without a Fijian flier. In taking his place among the substitutes against Ireland last night, Waisea Naholo was following the path taken by Joeli Vidiri, Joe Rokocoko and Sitiveni Sivivatu.
By failing to take decisive action and increase the residential period from three years to five at the very least, World Rugby have allowed the rule to be exploited on a global scale. How they failed to see it coming beggars belief.
Scotland, fearful of being left behind by a shallower playing pool than any of the other home countries, appointed the one-Test All Black, Ben Atiga, to head up recruitment under the title of ‘International Resettlement Advisor’.
Ireland have an Australian, ex-hooker David Nucifora in charge as head of performance. Their success in identifying the best ‘project players’ (a euphemism for poaching them from other countries) has paid handsome dividends in respect of Jared Payne and CJ Stander, both racing certainties for the Lions tour next summer if they stay in one piece.
Next year they will be able to pick another South African at tighthead, Ulster prop Wiebahn Herbst, and a New Zealander at fly-half, Tyler Bleyendaal, late of Canterbury, now of Munster and, like Heenan, a captain of the Baby All Blacks.
By the time they go to Japan for the next World Cup, Ireland will probably be able to pick, should they wish, the New Zealand Maori scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park, now serving his time at Leinster.
When the initial clamour over the inadequacy of the three-year rule began to grow louder, I asked the IRB, as they were then, how much they were concerned and whether they intended to do anything to make the apprenticeship for changing allegiance a longer one.
No, they had no concern. They would ‘keep an eye on it’ but no, there was no need for a review. That was five years ago. Had they acted then, many of those who moved from one hemisphere to the other might have thought twice about spending almost half their career on the off-chance of getting a cap far from home.
Now, of course, World Rugby are conducting a review, responding belatedly largely to the commendable agitation of their vice-president, Augustin Pichot whose Pumas are grossly disadvantaged through their adherence to the traditional view that only Argentinians should play for Argentina.
Talk about closing the stable door. World Rugby’s review looks like being almost as effective as the Post Office changing the route of the mail locomotive after The Great Train Robbery.
“By failing to take decisive action, World Rugby have allowed the rule to be exploited on a global scale”