World Rugby Members vote against increasing Residency Period

Report in today's Times suggests that the length of residency needed to qualify for a country was discussed at a World Rugby conference this weekend. It seems that the consensus was that 3 years was far too short and too open to abuse, yet come vote time mebers were against increasing the timespan.

I am not sure I have ever seen anyone on here defending the 3 year residency rule, only defending the right to use it as it is, after all, the rule.

My gut feel is that as a compromise residency should be raised to at least 5 years (would rather 7 - but could be harsh on precosious talents who arrive at 12/13). I would also like to see parentage rules move to being at least one parent or TWO grandparents.


All countries have "abused" the lax regulations so rather than name calling etc, can we discuss what we think the International qualification processes should be?

That sounds very corrupt and FIFA like to me. Obviously the members would vote against it, they want the next Jonah Lomu playing for their won country not the country he was born in.

Anyway, what I am staunchly against is the rich NH clubs and unions fluttering money in front of the eyes of young talent from the SH and making them promises of grandeur. If these youngsters are being tempted in this way then the country of their birth should have some sort of appeal or insurances that they cannot represent the nation of the club they are joining until the country of their birth gets first dibs.

As I understand some of the rich French have academies setup in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, they then take these players to play for their respective clubs and they then end up French qualified by the time they break into the club side, how on earth is this fair ?

5 or 7 years sounds much better to me but it should scale with the age of the player when moving to the new country. Anything under 16 and 3 years residency is perfectly fine for me as they're much less likely to be project players who switch allegiance to get an easier route to international rugby.

I cant think of any possible advantage or reason not to increase this time length.

It is part of what makes a mockery of the sport at the moment.

It should be a minimum of 5 years.

Grandparent rules scrapped.

Parents rule is fine.

This is very alarming and needs sorting:-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/international/fiji/11854929/Rugby-uncovered-Despicable-abuse-of-young-Pacific-talent-is-huge-stain-on-game.html

Problem with scrapping the grandparents rule fully GF can be highlighted by my situation:

My parents are English, I was born in Germany due to father being in army - thus I qualify. I have two children, one born in England, but one born in US due to where me and her mother were working. Her mother was born in India but moved to UK aged 6 months.

Thus without grandparents rule (and remember I suggest at least two) one of my kids is deemed English and one not. (mind residency cuts in I guess)

LondonTiger wrote:Problem with scrapping the grandparents rule fully GF can be highlighted by my situation:

My parents are English, I was born in Germany due to father being in army - thus I qualify. I have two children, one born in England, but one born in US due to where me and her mother were working. Her mother was born in India but moved to UK aged 6 months.

Thus without grandparents rule (and remember I suggest at least two) one of my kids is deemed English and one not. (mind residency cuts in I guess)

Issue with residency is they lose it if they move away. So if the kid who qualifies via residency gets a job in Wales for a year and then comes back, loses the qualification.

The most reasonable one for me would be to have at least 5 years residency. For anyone who is either born, at least one parent born or at least two grand parents born would have to fulfil 3 years residency. I would also say that 10 years residency fixes the qualification for anyone.

I personally think people should really play here before playing for England. I don't like the idea of someone playing for England just because they have a parent, or even were born here (e.g. Heathcote).

But this doesn't really surprise me.

I can see that argument.

My only concern is the likes of Waldrom etc. He has no affiliation at all with the uk,...finds a granny and plays for England.

If you say both Grandparents must be English, then I think that might cut a lot down.

LondonTiger wrote:Problem with scrapping the grandparents rule fully GF can be highlighted by my situation:

My parents are English, I was born in Germany due to father being in army - thus I qualify. I have two children, one born in England, but one born in US due to where me and her mother were working. Her mother was born in India but moved to UK aged 6 months.

Thus without grandparents rule (and remember I suggest at least two) one of my kids is deemed English and one not. (mind residency cuts in I guess)

I would certainly have a rule whereby people serving in forces or diplomatic service are deemed to be exceptions and children born when parents serving abroad are counted as having been born in home country.

Of course unions will vote against increasing the residency qualification period.

They are benefitting from it.

Nothing to discuss, it is wht it is, money is power.

Its something that is seriously rotten in rugby.

For me Im not happy at all at the prospect of Nathan Hughes playing for England...like I was unhappy with Hape, or Vainikolo, or Waldrom etc. And Brad barritt when he was being touted for the England team.

We will see a lot more SA's over here if these new race quotas come into South African rugby. Just imagine the amount of top quality players will leave SA in all levels of the game.

I find this story a little strange, does anyone have anything in writing that World rugby was sitting in conference this weekend? A quick look on the World Rugby site makes no mention of this vote.

Was anyone from New Zealand/The Pacific Islands in attendance?

The residency rule only benefits the rich rugby nations that can afford professional leagues and therefore is totally discriminatory against small rugby nations. These are the nations that have already plenty of players to choose from and it is totally ridiculous that they get even more players through residency at the expense of their home countries. My solution is to only allow a player to qualify on residency if he has spent the majority of his life in that country.

The parent/grandparent rule is totally different. It is possible for a small country to recruit a player on this rule just the same as a large one and at least is fairer in that respect.

Another ridiculous rule is that of playing for a designated team tying the player to that nation for life. This patently only helps the 'big' nations who have lots of fixtures and A teams so with lots of opportunities to tie a player to them for life. World Rugby would be far more competitive if a player could switch allegiance if he hadn't got a second cap after a period of time.

Makes one wonder whether it would just be more manageable to have a criteria where you cant play for a country unless you are a current passport holder for that country.

Then again Probably wouldnt work in Europe as we see people on the news that just go from one country to another they dont even know where the border is half the time let alone whether theyve got a passport. Even though you could probably qualify for a Syrian passport after fifteen minutes.

GeordieFalcon wrote:I cant think of any possible advantage or reason not to increase this time length.

It is part of what makes a mockery of the sport at the moment.

It should be a minimum of 5 years.

Grandparent rules scrapped.

Parents rule is fine.

Agree with all of the above.

aucklandlaurie wrote:
Makes one wonder whether it would just be more manageable to have a criteria where you cant play for a country unless you are a current passport holder for that country.

Then again Probably wouldnt work in Europe as we see people on the news that just go from one country to another they dont even know where the border is half the time let alone whether theyve got a passport. Even though you could probably qualify for a Syrian passport after fifteen minutes.

Not much use in UK where one passport covers four teams.

GeordieFalcon wrote:Its something that is seriously rotten in rugby.

For me Im not happy at all at the prospect of Nathan Hughes playing for England...like I was unhappy with Hape, or Vainikolo, or Waldrom etc. And Brad barritt when he was being touted for the England team.

It is interesting that there seem to be complaints about SH born players playing for England whilst the numerous English born players playing for other countries do not provoke much comment. Wales for instance have nine English born players in their senior squad. Over the years Scotland have survived on English players - famously one did not even have the required Scottish granny!

It's hard to see turkeys voting for Christmas. If the PIs were allowed separate votes then I wonder if there would have been a different result.

5 years for me, although some thought needs to be given to passport holders. The grandparent rule should be abolished I think. As an example my children could turn out for Ghana, despite never having set foot in west Africa , just because a grandparent was born there.

Bathman_in_London wrote:It's hard to see turkeys voting for Christmas. If the PIs were allowed separate votes then I wonder if there would have been a different result.

5 years for me, although some thought needs to be given to passport holders. The grandparent rule should be abolished I think. As an example my children could turn out for Ghana, despite never having set foot in west Africa , just because a grandparent was born there.  

By that logic (and current rules) my kids quality to play for Mars because my mother-in-law.........

Interesting little story came out of Australia during the week. Apparently Quade Cooper cannot be considered for the Australian sevens team for Rio, because he doesnt have an Australian passport, he still travels on his New Zealand one.

When these racial quotas come into full swing in SA; Europe, Japan and now North America will be flooded with quality South Africans looking to secure their future and play international rugby.

aucklandlaurie wrote:Interesting little story came out of Australia during the week. Apparently Quade Cooper cannot be considered for the Australian sevens team for Rio, because he doesnt have an Australian passport, he still travels on his New Zealand one.

Surely he can get a new passport between now and the summer? I know he lives in France now but before that he was living in Australia since he was a kid.

One has to meet a far more stingent standard to be an Australian as opposed to being a Wallaby.

This is really disappointing.
3 years is imply not enough of a deterrent for those looking to abuse the poor system.
5 Years after the age of around 18 sounds perfectly fair to me and maybe 3 beforehand.

There are two issues to the current system.
Random players looking to play international rugby with absolutely no ties to a country. I'd much rather see a fiercely proud Welshman play for Wales than a World Class SH player with no ties for example.

However, the complete and utter taking advantage of lesser nations is far more troubling. So much money goes in to taking players away, particularly away from the PI's when this money being pumped in to the game in said countries would help create a wider spread of quality rugby and facilities.

For a game that advocates responsibility, accountability, teamwork and honesty, the powers that be show an inept amount of these qualities when it comes to this matter.

It is possible to become an Australian citizen in 4 years. In Ireland, its 5 years. or say if you marry an Irish citizen it is immediate (or almost anyway!)

In footbal, one of the Middle East countries was just giving out citizenship to Brazilians!

Its really is a very tricky situation.

if you banned the entire residency rule and fix it at min 1 grandparent you would immediately protect almost 100pc of all the biggest losers

Namely

Fiji
Samoa
Tonga

A large proportion of

South Africa

that would stop the big predators from simply signing up anyone who they fancy from these nations which is whats happening now.

raising residency from 3 to 5 years only means more countries signing players up younger. Same problem pushed back .

As for the passport issue forget that youll never get a solution. if the player has a french passport and hes from new guinea hes playing.!!

I imagine the Scottish would have swung the vote, without all the commonwealth boys they would be in real trouble. They can't even produce a national coach.

DirtyRucker7 wrote:I imagine the Scottish would have swung the vote, without all the commonwealth boys they would be in real trouble. They can't even produce a national coach.

Take a bow

Wheres Eddie Jones from ?

alive555 wrote:

DirtyRucker7 wrote:I imagine the Scottish would have swung the vote, without all the commonwealth boys they would be in real trouble. They can't even produce a national coach.

Take a bow

Wheres Eddie Jones from ?

Sir Clive Woodward pal world champions and you? thought so.

DirtyRucker7 wrote:

alive555 wrote:

DirtyRucker7 wrote:I imagine the Scottish would have swung the vote, without all the commonwealth boys they would be in real trouble. They can't even produce a national coach.

Take a bow

Wheres Eddie Jones from ?

Sir Clive Woodward pal world champions and you? thought so.

Clive Woodward isn't the English coach England's not world champions and Eddie Jones is Australian .

Plonker

Does anyone know details of the number of votes held by the respective countries under the new IRB[World?]setup