Piutau could stand in way of England World Cup bid

ENGLAND will be on a World Cup collision course with the most expensive wing in the game if Tonga succeed in repatriating a few nomadic All Blacks headed by the costly Charles Piutau.

The Ulster wing who joins Bristol next season on £950,000-a-year wants to play for his ancestral homeland in Japan in 2019 according to Tonga’s coach, the former Wallaby No. 8 Toutai Kefu. He is proceeding on the basis that a player can switch allegiance provided he holds a passport for the country in question and that he has not played Test rugby for three years.

Piutau played the last of his 17 internationals for the All Blacks in Johannesburg in July 2015. Frank Halai, a onecap All Black now playing for Pau after a spell at Wasps, is another Kefu target on the not unreasonable basis that he was born in Tonga and that four years have passed since his flit across the Test stage for New Zealand.

The World Cup will be all the better for their presence even if France, drawn alongside Tonga and England in the same pool, have a right to be anxious about the consequences.