The qualification maze might seem unsatisfactory to some but often it comes down to the personal preference of the player
shirt? As the BBC commentator Andrew Cotter wryly observed: “Bundee Aki looks like he’s about to wrestle the whole of Cardiff … and I would back him.”
While the required Test residency period is now five years rather than three, Abrahams says that certain nations are now simply scouting southern hemisphere talent at a younger age. He also dislikes the mechanism under which players who have not played for their original country for three years can instantly become eligible for a second nation on ancestral grounds, with Scotland’s former Wallaby forward Jack Dempsey among the beneficiaries.
Most pertinent of all, perhaps, is his contention that qualification by residency based purely on signing for a professional club in, say, Britain, Ireland, France or Japan unfairly tilts rugby’s global playing field. He is not wrong to suggest the best-paying leagues in the world remain economic magnets for southern hemisphere talent, thus giving the countries in which the big leagues are based an advantage.
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