Forgive my cynicism but one could easily argue that's a way for tier 1 teams to poach tier 2's best. Test rugby is not a grant-your-wish foundation so that players who are good but not good enough for their national team could have a crack at a world cup playing for another nation.
Well, it actually is, but I believe it shouldn't. That is precisely the problem.
You could even state it in the law: 'Players from tier 1 RU can go to tier 2 national teams but not vice versa'. But they won't. Because that ruins the poaching. And sure, someone will come up with a stat that shows there are more NZ-born playing for other pac islanders than the other way around. What they won't mention is that the ones who do so did it because they couldn't make it to the All Blacks. The opposite doesn't work. The quality of the players that shift from one team to another, sadly, matters.
Is that going to hurt tier 2 rugby though? I'd say it'd be more valuable to, using your example, Dutch rugby if they had a superstar who played a few games for the Netherlands, was way above the level and got his break for the Books playing in world cup semi finals and finals. Luka Doncic isn't a national icon in Slovenia for what he does with the national team. Huge potential to grow the game if this happens, far bigger than qualifying for and getting dicked in a World Cup I'd argue.
Basically you are advocating for, dunno, the Netherlands which can't produce their own to go out shopping for the breadcrumbs of South Africa's system so that they could beat other nations with (potentially) stronger grassroots and development systems. You probably don't give a flying turd, but quite a few in Spain, Portugal, Germany and Belgium do.
Half of these teams have been DQed from one of or both of the last two world cups, I reckon they'd be delighted with looser laws!
Ultimately though, diaspora helps until it doesn't Irish soccer's over reliance on English and Scottish born players ultimately killed the sport here.
That is not what I want. And the hypocrisy, dear lord. It's SOO evident that it pains me to even have to mention it. Everyone cries foul whenever the situation hurts their national teams but looks the other way when it benefits them. I don't mean you (seriously, i don't), but a LOT of your countrymen are going at Kleyn as if he were some sort of traitor. Throw a CJ Stander comment in the mix and wow, the reactions. "no, that is completely different".
No, it's not.
I haven't really seen much of this, apart from D'arcy but he's not the full deck of cards really. Twitter searches of "Jean Kleyn traitor" or "Jean Kleyn Mercenary" give zero results.
Munster fans are painting it as if we have let a player with the combined skill of Martin Johnson, Victor Mayfield and Will Skelton go. Leinster fans want him or Snyman off the books.
Idiots on both sides are coming out with the odd howler.
As an aside it would have been great if Stander had done this, would have killed the rule, or at least forced an alteration incredibly quickly I think. I'd also have been very intrigued to see who Munster fans would have supported in our group game v SA, reckon we just edge their loyalty at the moment because of POM.
You either want a system that encourages national teams to purchase players from other countries or a system that does what it can to prevent that from happening. The rest is just bells and whistles.
I think this kind of hits the nail on the head in many ways. Nobody knows what World Rugby want out of these rules, seemingly least of all them. They said this rule is to make tier 2 more competitive and the Pacific Islands seem to be benefitting but it's overshadowed by the likes of Kleyn and the Wallaby playing for Scotland.
If you're going to declare motivation for a rule change, implement it correctly. This is just a free for all which as you clearly point out is being exploited to devalue the game. Had Ireland not made shite of the last world cup Kleyn could have ended up playing the only two world cup games between Ireland and SA to date, one for either team in consecutive tournaments. Bizarre. (Slight tangent but I think the qualification period should be extended to 4 years to avoid this in agreement with WT above)
The tier thing is, imo, an insult to injury. If switching teams if not something desired then what the hell does the tier have to do with it?
A lot of people are talking about Tonga's/Samoa's squad for the world cup. All apparently happy about it. 'Look at that back line, amazing to see them playing together in a world cup!'. Ask a Roumanian or a Chilean about it, see how that goes. It destroys their effort. Kills it. These teams go through a lot, i mean a LOT to get to a world cup.
Yeah but take that away and you've got Uruguay, Spain and previously Germany (before the ERCC jokers killed the sport there) benefitting from proximity to tier 1 nations and artificially increasing the quality of their club game. Much like my point re diaspora above geography helps until you're over reliant, England soccer constantly fall short due to their club game's reliance on imports.
Italy and Georgia have invested in underage structures that will eventually pay dividends, the signs are there. Scotland on the other hand have been bouncing their head off the ceiling with their approach, their underage game is in a bad way and the future looks bleak, an absolute waste of producing a handful of homegrown generational players at once.
Or we could have the old boys club we've had and pretend we're expanding. We can tell each other that ad nauseam. We can even make a ppt about it while the heads of all top 10 RU nod in unison and congratulate each other.
/end rand
PS: nothing against you. Just took the opportunity to blow off some steam.
No disagreement there. There is no thought process or direction. WR take credit for progress like Uruguay's and Georgia's even when they blatantly go against their system, I think they massively overvalue the Pacific island nations in their search for a new contender.
The current trend across sport seems to be loose nationality rules, and I think rugby can benefit from it by trying to make the world cup a competitive arena where good teams will fail to qualify (ultimately where I'd like rugby to be), that should be the goal in my opinion and nationality switches between formalised tiers can certainly help that. There's a lack of foresight though and that needs addressing, otherwise countless back and forth conversations like this will be had and lead to nothing.
All that said, the two of us personally have fundamentally opposing views on nationality so we won't get too far apart from covering every side of the arguments to be had and potential concessions!
