Changes to provincial teams player qualifications

- One non-Irish eligible (NIE) player only in each of the 15 field positions across the provinces of Leinster, Munster and Ulster e.g. one foreign player allowed across all three teams per position.*
- For the 2013/14 season and onwards, for any given position involving a contracted NIE player, a province will not be permitted to renew that NIE player contract or bring in a new NIE player into that same position in its squad.
- All future provincial injury replacement players must be eligible for selection for Ireland.
- All future provincial non-Irish eligible player contracts will be position specific.

* The Connacht professional side is external to this process as it has recently commenced a new programme of structural and performance development agreed with the IRFU.

Point 1 states that if, for example, Ulster have an NIE scrum half, then Munster and Leinster must have IE scrum halves. Not just in the team, but the entire squad.

Point 2 states that once an NIE players contract is up, they're gone. And the next player in must be IE

Gibson wrote:

Sin é wrote:

Don Alfonso wrote:The Johnny Sexton article is all very well and good, but the bottom line is: did he go?

The answer is no, he didn't. He wasn't lost to Irish rugby. He's now first choice 10 for Leinster and Ireland (arguably). He got discouraged, he got a chance, he took it. Given fifteen minutes, you could re-write that article as a celebratory peice explaining how well the system currently works.

Chances are he might not have got much of a chance to succeed abroad as his confidence would have been so shot (bear in mind Leinster had 3 NIQ OHs ahead of him, including a very aging Horwell and neither Contempomi or Nacewa were any great shakes at OH).

Oh Sin let it go man. Felipe was the best in Europe. Yes, far better than ROG. Like Sexton is now.

On 16 May 2010, O'Gara was awarded the ERC European Player Award, crediting him as the player who had made the greatest contribution to European Rugby during the first 15 years of the Heineken Cup. The selection panel consisted of Sir Ian McGeechan, Lawrence Dallaglio, Ieuan Evans, Fabien Galthié, Donal Lenihan, Michael Lynagh, Stuart Barnes, Stephen Jones and Jacques Verdier.

Sin é wrote:

Gibson wrote:

Sin é wrote:

Don Alfonso wrote:The Johnny Sexton article is all very well and good, but the bottom line is: did he go?

The answer is no, he didn't. He wasn't lost to Irish rugby. He's now first choice 10 for Leinster and Ireland (arguably). He got discouraged, he got a chance, he took it. Given fifteen minutes, you could re-write that article as a celebratory peice explaining how well the system currently works.

Chances are he might not have got much of a chance to succeed abroad as his confidence would have been so shot (bear in mind Leinster had 3 NIQ OHs ahead of him, including a very aging Horwell and neither Contempomi or Nacewa were any great shakes at OH).

Oh Sin let it go man. Felipe was the best in Europe. Yes, far better than ROG. Like Sexton is now.

yourself

On 16 May 2010, O'Gara was awarded the ERC European Player Award, crediting him as the player who had made the greatest contribution to European Rugby during the first 15 years of the Heineken Cup. The selection panel consisted of Sir Ian McGeechan, Lawrence Dallaglio, Ieuan Evans, Fabien Galthié, Donal Lenihan, Michael Lynagh, Stuart Barnes, Stephen Jones and Jacques Verdier.

The Doc didn't even make the team

I think they've just applied a sledgehammer to a nail in a very arrogant way. The more I look at this the more I actually think it's the most spectacularly ill-judged, ill-advised decision by the IRFU they've ever made.

Feckless Rogue wrote:Just listened to the latest off the ball rugby podcast. The pundits basically think this whole thing is ridiculous and very worrying for the future of Irish rugby. The blazers have not consulted with the provinces, who are very angry, and there's a danger that the likes of Joe Schmidt will be driven out of Ireland by these ridiculous restrictions. Here's a quote from Gerry Thornley.

I think they've just applied a sledgehammer to a nail in a very arrogant way. The more I look at this the more I actually think it's the most spectacularly ill-judged, ill-advised decision by the IRFU they've ever made.

Overall, IRFU's new policy has a lot of merit

ALAN QUINLAN

FROM THE BLINDSIDE: The one obvious problem is that there was little enough consultation with the provincial coaches and officials before the announcement was made

WAY BACK in 2002 or thereabouts, word came through of a new signing for Munster that would be arriving from New Zealand. There’s always a bit of excitement around the place when you hear that someone is coming to join up and you convince yourself that this guy is going to come in and improve your team from the word go. The player’s name was Clinton Huppert and from what we heard about him, he was the second coming of Christian Cullen. He was reputedly Cullen’s understudy in Wellington, exactly the type of signing that would put a bit more zip into our backline.

I don’t know if a wire got crossed somewhere or the wrong name was given to the wrong guy or what. It was a late enough signing in the season, around September or October, so maybe it was rushed a little. However, it happened and the lad who showed up to play for Munster wasn’t exactly ready to turn us into European champions straight away. Clinton Huppert came and trained with us and, well, let’s just say he was a disappointment.

You had to feel a bit sorry for him. I don’t think when he was flying halfway around the world he quite expected to land with Munster and be hailed as this big new signing who was going to score loads of tries and be a top-class overseas import. He was only a young guy who probably thought he was coming over to develop as a player and improve his own game. Munster were looking for the finished article and he wasn’t that.

In the end, he went and played club rugby for Shannon for a few months to see could he improve and get up to the level the province needed.

That didn’t work out too well either. One Sunday morning, he was playing for Shannon’s second team and Noel “Buddha” Healy was the coach. At half-time, Noel turned to Clinton and told him he was coming off.

“But you can’t take me off,” said Clinton, who was getting very annoyed by now. “Alan Gaffney said he was going to be here to watch me in the second half.”

Noel looked at him and said, “That’s why I’m taking you off.”

Every foreign player who comes to play professional rugby in Ireland has a different kind of story to tell and just as they’re not all Clinton Hupperts, they’re not all Rocky Elsoms either. If the IRFU’s new policy with regard to foreign players guarantees one thing, it’s that the provinces will have to get the process of finding new recruits from overseas down to a fine art over the coming years. They will have no other choice.

I have to say, I think some of the outrage there’s been since it was announced just before Christmas has been a bit over the top. If you sit down and go through it, there are some very good ideas in the new policy.

It makes sense from a national point of view. The objective of aiming to have two Irish-qualified players for every position is a worthwhile one and I suppose the IRFU can argue that since it’s not coming in until the end of next season, the provinces have time to think ahead and work out how they’re going to deal with it. It definitely needs tweaking in a couple of areas but overall there’s a lot of merit to it.

One obvious problem is that it looks as though there was little enough consultation with the provincial coaches and officials before the announcement was made.

I heard around a year ago something was in the works with regard to the number of foreign players under contract in Ireland but you hear rumours about a lot of things that never come to much in the end. For it to turn from rumour to what looks like a fact of life without the provinces being fully involved doesn’t seem right or fair.

When Munster beat Toulouse in the 2008 Heineken Cup final, we took a certain amount of pride in the fact that all eight starting forwards were home-grown. To do that and still beat the team with the biggest budget in Europe was a fair achievement and obviously something that’s worth striving for. But it’s rare you’re going to be able to do that and there’s no doubt a certain amount of overseas players will always be needed to compete in the Heineken Cup.

That’s just the way it is. The incredible standard of the competition won’t allow you to get away without having a handful of world-class players at your disposal. You can blood as many young lads as you like in the RaboDirect Pro 12 but when they make the step up to European level, they’ll get blown away if they’re all pushed in together. You need experience around them and there’s only so much experience you can grow in-house. Some of it has to be bought in from abroad or you just won’t compete in the competition. And if Irish provinces aren’t competing in the Heineken Cup, if they’re not winning it or making finals on a regular basis, then the knock-on effect on the national team will be negative no matter how many good young players are developed.

When we were coming through as professionals, we had John Langford in Munster. We were still learning what was required to be professional rugby players – the fitness, the diet, the attitude. Langford came in and changed every one of us in one way or another. It shocked us how fit he was and how hard he trained in the gym. We thought we were training hard but we were nowhere compared to him. We weren’t able to do the sessions he was able to do and he’d burn everyone in the 3km run to an embarrassing extent.

The thing is, there’s no need for a John Langford-type figure to be brought in to Irish rugby these days. Langford changed attitudes as much as anything else but we’re past that now. We’re in a different era that has moved on to the point where young players are coming out of the academy system with the right attitude and the right training methods already in place. They don’t need that foreign influence as much as we needed it in terms of development. These days, the foreign players who come in need to be world class and they need to be match winners who are going to help you win the Heineken Cup. They need to be an addition to what’s already there.

But it’s the IRFU’s responsibility to take an overall view of things and I can see a lot of sense in what they’re proposing. We’re a decade and a half into the professional game here and the time is probably right to build up a pool of quality Irish players for the national squad. The foundations have been laid and now the union can start building on it. This new policy will probably hurt the provinces in the short term but over time I can see it doing some good.

I do think it needs changing in a couple of areas though. Some parts of it that are unnecessary will do more damage than good. For example, the part that limits overseas players to just a single contract will only mean that the quality of player we get coming to Ireland will go down. That’s the only outcome I can see.

Think about it. Say you’re a 29-year-old Aussie or Kiwi player looking to play out the last few years of your career in Europe. You’re going to bring your family on a bit of an adventure while you still have some earning power but you don’t want to be dragging them all over the place. Let’s say you get two offers – one from Leinster and one from Leicester. If you choose to go to Dublin, it won’t matter how well you play or what roots you put down, you know going in that you won’t be offered a second contract.

There’s no guarantee with Leicester but at least the possibility is there.

Ireland, England – it’s all the same to you where you go. So nobody could blame you for choosing the option that has a future.

I really think that element of the new policy needs to be looked at. In theory, it’s there for mentoring young Irish players and bringing them along. But in practice, what it will mean is that the best overseas players won’t see coming here as an attractive option. The IRFU say they want non-Irish qualified players to keep being a big part of bringing success to the provinces but it’s hard to see how that will happen if you can only bring them in for two years and then send them on their way.

The overall concept itself is a good enough one. Everybody knows we’re short in key areas, that we don’t have enough tighthead props for instance. But as the playing population grows, we have to find room to develop players in all areas even if there’s a risk involved and even if the provinces suffer in the short term. I’d say you might find some of the exiles playing in England coming home as provinces try to find a way around it.

But all in all, this is going to mean Irish players will get more opportunities to improve and to play at the highest level. In the long run, that can only be a good thing.

Mickado wrote:That’s a redundant point LB, the blazers in the IRFU might well be former players but they’re certainly of a different era.

Thornley is spot on in my opinion, imagine Joe Schmidt having to call up Philip Browne, or whoever, to ask him is it ok to play Isa Nacewa at fullback this week because Rob Kearney and Luke Fitzgerald are both being rested (due to the player management policy) and Shane Horgan is now back to fitness so we’ve good cover for 14. It’s humiliating for any coach to have to be subservient to a bunch of pencil pushers like that.

If the IRFU had decided to reduce the NIQ quota from 5 to 4 I would have said that’s perfectly reasonable, if they had used a bit of nous when approving foreign signing, a power which they already hold, then that would have been reasonable, but imposing one size fits all rules across the provincial spectrum will ultimately – cause strong provincial coaches to leave these shores, new coaches will be merely IRFU puppets, good quality foreign players will not want to play in Ireland, the provinces will be less successful and eventually we’ll have a larger playing pool of mediocre players who regularly get knocked out of the Heineken cup at the group stages playing for the national side.

The lads on the Leinster podcast made a good analogy, they’re trying to build a pyramid from the top down, hang the key stone in the air and hope the bottom builds itself.

Sin é wrote:Good article by Alan Quinlan in Irish Times today who is broadly in support of it as well.

Mickado wrote:Pedantry police, I’m just picking an example.

Who are the pencil pushers of the IRFU to tell anyone how to run a team. they can administer the game, and they do that well to their credit. But what experience do they have in picking a team?

Does Kidney have any input into any of this? Would Kidney stand for the top brass of the IRFU telling him who he can and can’t pick?

roddersm wrote:

Sin é wrote:Good article by Alan Quinlan in Irish Times today who is broadly in support of it as well.

I wonder how much Quinlan will be in support of the changes when Munsters scrum is being pounded into the turf without a top class NIE tight head?

Thats a pretty shocking article from Quinlan to slate a fellow pro like that, especially one who is relatively low profile. Maybe Quinlan could have given his assessment of Warwick, Tipoki, Williams, Payne or Howlett too? No mention either of how Munster would fair without BJ Botha right now or how Munster have more often than not fielded an all NIQ centre pairing over the past decade?

roddersm wrote:

Sin é wrote:Good article by Alan Quinlan in Irish Times today who is broadly in support of it as well.

I wonder how much Quinlan will be in support of the changes when Munsters scrum is being pounded into the turf without a top class NIE tight head?

Thats a pretty shocking article from Quinlan to slate a fellow pro like that, especially one who is relatively low profile. Maybe Quinlan could have given his assessment of Warwick, Tipoki, Williams, Payne or Howlett too? No mention either of how Munster would fair without BJ Botha right now or how Munster have more often than not fielded an all NIQ centre pairing over the past decade?

Sin é wrote:

Mickado wrote:Pedantry police, I’m just picking an example.

Who are the pencil pushers of the IRFU to tell anyone how to run a team. they can administer the game, and they do that well to their credit. But what experience do they have in picking a team?

Does Kidney have any input into any of this? Would Kidney stand for the top brass of the IRFU telling him who he can and can’t pick?

The IRFU supply the provinces with the wherewithal to have a squad of 40+ players that they can select from. They are getting 2 years notice to sort it out.
Isa is a fantastic player for Leinster and obviously a great pro - but its not as if Leinster are short of some very fine backs. I'd say Isa is on big money - his salary probable would pay the salary of 5 or 6 Andrew Conways who would be of some use to the national team.

leinsterbaby wrote:

Sin é wrote:

Mickado wrote:Pedantry police, I’m just picking an example.

Who are the pencil pushers of the IRFU to tell anyone how to run a team. they can administer the game, and they do that well to their credit. But what experience do they have in picking a team?

Does Kidney have any input into any of this? Would Kidney stand for the top brass of the IRFU telling him who he can and can’t pick?

The IRFU supply the provinces with the wherewithal to have a squad of 40+ players that they can select from. They are getting 2 years notice to sort it out.
Isa is a fantastic player for Leinster and obviously a great pro - but its not as if Leinster are short of some very fine backs. I'd say Isa is on big money - his salary probable would pay the salary of 5 or 6 Andrew Conways who would be of some use to the national team.

I completely agree plus to add many couch pundits (Thornley included) forget that ISA was quite poor when he first started with Leinster and it took him about 2 seasons where Cheika persisted with him to get him up to scratch. Whose to say that Conway one of the most exciting young players, with an amazing underage try record will not be as good of he is afforded the same game time.

roddersm wrote:Sin did it occur to you that the Irish provinces wouldn't be spending large chunks of their budgets bringing in NIE tight heads if there was sufficient talent available in that position?

Changing the rules will not help create international standard tightheads for Ireland, it will simply make it easier for substandard players to get game time.

Sin é wrote:
There could be a few Mike Ross's out there. Ross didn't get a contract in Munster in '06 - he had to go to England to get one. Now he is the starting Irish TH.

Mickado wrote:So basically his first season consisted of 3 months off with a broken arm, with a return in December and a good display in the HC knockout stages (he was as good defensively as anyone on the pitch against Quins).

So to say that he was poor for "about 2 seasons" is complete rubbish.

You're point about Conway confuses me too, he was injured, played himself into form with the A team, now he's back in the squad rotation, he'll get plenty of time to shine.

SecretFly wrote:
But the IRFU know one thing - one important thing. We all know it too but seldom sit back and really reflect on it. That is that as Irish rugby basks in the glow of a relatively successful last decade and as we sit on our hands and feel that change is not needed "nothing broken, don't fix it" - the other nations will not be sitting back. The other nations will be honing their national and club systems to better suit the increasing pressures, financial and emotional, to be successful.

Sin é wrote:

Mickado wrote:So basically his first season consisted of 3 months off with a broken arm, with a return in December and a good display in the HC knockout stages (he was as good defensively as anyone on the pitch against Quins).

So to say that he was poor for "about 2 seasons" is complete rubbish.

You're point about Conway confuses me too, he was injured, played himself into form with the A team, now he's back in the squad rotation, he'll get plenty of time to shine.

Was Isa not primarily brought in as outhalf backup originally? - am I getting it wrong that when he got injured, Horwell was brought back from Australia. All of those (The Doc, Isa & Horwell) all blocked Sexton's progression. Isa is blocking Madigan's progression (he is taking his kicks for him).

Felix Jones & Fionn Carr might have stuck around Leinster if they thought they would get an opportunity to progress. Leinster brought in a succession of scrumhalfs and didn't give Paul O'Donogue much gametime. Its probably too late now for him.

My point is that the IRFU have had enough of chequebook signings and are putting the foot down fully.

Sin é wrote:
That gives the national side great confidence that they can also compete with the best as well.

leinsterbaby wrote:There is an attitude in Ireland that we need foreign players to build our fragile indigenous players' confidence, skills. What a load of nonsense. If our players need development by all means bring in foreign coaches the likes of feek, Kiss or Schmidt etc. however, there is more than enough talent in Ireland to have two top players per position. Problem is they are not playing enough rugby.

Mickado wrote:

Sin é wrote:

Mickado wrote:So basically his first season consisted of 3 months off with a broken arm, with a return in December and a good display in the HC knockout stages (he was as good defensively as anyone on the pitch against Quins).

So to say that he was poor for "about 2 seasons" is complete rubbish.

You're point about Conway confuses me too, he was injured, played himself into form with the A team, now he's back in the squad rotation, he'll get plenty of time to shine.

Was Isa not primarily brought in as outhalf backup originally? - am I getting it wrong that when he got injured, Horwell was brought back from Australia. All of those (The Doc, Isa & Horwell) all blocked Sexton's progression. Isa is blocking Madigan's progression (he is taking his kicks for him).

Felix Jones & Fionn Carr might have stuck around Leinster if they thought they would get an opportunity to progress. Leinster brought in a succession of scrumhalfs and didn't give Paul O'Donogue much gametime. Its probably too late now for him.

My point is that the IRFU have had enough of chequebook signings and are putting the foot down fully.

Was Isa brought in as a backup outhalf? No, he was brought in as a 10/11/12/14/15.
He played outhalf with the Blues, which is why he was playing there. Blocking Sexton's progression me arse, lets look how he progressed.

Isa might be blocking Madigan's placekicking, but by that logic so is Sexton and McFadden. Place kicking is the one aspect of an outhalf's game that can be successfully improved off the field anyway. O'Donaghue is just not good enough, he never really was when he played for us, and he's not good enough for Connacht now. Fionn Carr left Leinster before Nacewa joined. Jones was a quality player but there were and are better players than him at Leinster, he wasn't prepared to wait (fair enough) so went to a club where he's automatically first choice. He wouldn't get into the Leinster team now so that would vidicate his move as being good for all parties.

Anything else?

roddersm wrote:

Sin é wrote:
That gives the national side great confidence that they can also compete with the best as well.

There in lies the problem. Kidney's mentality and the old Irish and Munster one was about competing with and even beating the best.

The current mentality that we are seeing in the young players, most markedly in Leinster, is not that we should be beating the best...but that we are the best, at least within Europe anyway.

With the crop of players we have we should not be going into games with an underdog mindset and trying to shut down other sides but with the mindset Leinster have which is that other sides should be trying to stop us.

Sin é wrote:
Explain to me how a Munster mindset of being proud that a group of local (Irish qualified) players have BEATEN the best is somehow worse than the mindset of a Leinster player who have needed foreign signings to help them beat the best. Rockey Elsom or Isa Nacewa cannot play for Ireland.

roddersm wrote:

Sin é wrote:
There could be a few Mike Ross's out there. Ross didn't get a contract in Munster in '06 - he had to go to England to get one. Now he is the starting Irish TH.

Who kept him out? A NIE?

Just because he was in England didn't mean Ireland couldn't select him. I think you'll find it took Kidney quite a while to pick Ross even after his return as he was still fixated with Buckley.

I suspect these changes will be more likely to produce more Buckleys and Courts at TH than Mike Ross's.

roddersm wrote:

Sin é wrote:
Explain to me how a Munster mindset of being proud that a group of local (Irish qualified) players have BEATEN the best is somehow worse than the mindset of a Leinster player who have needed foreign signings to help them beat the best. Rockey Elsom or Isa Nacewa cannot play for Ireland.

The Munster 2008 team were all Irish?