The thing is, and this is what I find particularly interesting, most of the people I listen to/talk to outside of a Tier 1 rugby environment (so changing the countries OR the sport) appear to agree with me, in quite overwhelming numbers and sentiment if I might add. Can you imagine, playing for Italy's national footie team without even being an Italian citizen? Pretty sure it would stir quite a few pots. Or Germany. Or Brazil. Try playing for a top 30 team in footie and not singing their anthem, see how that goes.
So, i guess calling my view 'closer to the extreme' sounds very, very biased. Maybe the problem lies in the sample you are using.
And i am not talking about some obscure case of a third-tier Tongan playing for Sierra Leone at the sevens world series. This is quite generalized, known, and accepted. Just to name one of the biggest elephants in the room, Quade Cooper has been representing Australia (in one way or another; jrs, sevens, etc) since 2005 and he only got Australian citizenship in 2022. Let me say it in the clearest terms i can think of: he was representing a country while not being a citizen of that country. What you call 'towards the extreme', I call the norm. And not because that is my position. I call it the norm because that is what the evidence (much of it anecdotal, granted) i see strongly suggests! He was in Australia's rooster for 2 world cups and he couldn't fly on an Aus passport because he didn't have one; he wasn't even allowed to have one. Yet according to WR it was all good and dandy. Now THAT i call extreme.
If we could measure it I'd get a second and a third mortgage and bet it all on that most people would agree with me and not you on this. We can disagree, all good.
