Whilst World Rugby seems to have taken my essay on player eligibility rules seriously and are considering it, the Scottish and Irish Rugby Unions resist all engagement. The sole response of Scotland has been “We have previously advised that we will not engage in any discussion on this, which remains our position”. Ireland has acknowledged receipt but otherwise maintains a stony silence.
Perhaps the following anecdotes, touching on rugby nationality, will reach some hidden spot in their minds where a true understanding of “Scottish” or “Irish” resides.
Early on Friday, 2nd November in 1991, I took a plane from my hometown at that time, Paris, to attend the final of the Rugby World Cup, between England and Australia, at Twickenham. The reason for my arrival prior to the big day was to manage some business in hand. With the aid of a subsidy from Australian Business in Europe, I had employed a team of ten young London-based Australians to hand out 23,000 copies of “Advance Australia Fair”, at Twickenham, where the final was to take place.
Gregor Townsend (third left) in action against England at at Murrayfield in Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: Dave Cannon/Allsport
The crazy hope was to persuade Wallaby supporters to sing along with the military band that was to play our national anthem, given that the English Rugby Union had not planned for singers to accompany the two anthems. Possibly our supporters could hold up the Australian end with the words “Australians all let us rejoice”; so that we might at least achieve a draw in respect of the first salvo of the match – the anthems. Advance Australia versus The Queen.
As it happened, the anthem story had made quite a splash down under. In the days prior to the final, the Australian Financial Review had carried it at the top of the front page – via one of my close mates, Andrew Clark, who was then its London-based editor.
Clearly Clark was of the view that if the best of patriotism can’t express itself on match-day of a Rugby World Cup Final, pitting Australia against England, then the spirit of Anzac would truly be dead.
So, on the big day, there I was at Twickenham, arms loaded down with printed copies of the anthem. There were quite a few takers – every Australian coming through the turnstiles, for a start. But the memory, I will always retain, was that of being accosted by a man, with a heavy Scottish burr.
“Hi,” he said, “could I grab an armful of those sheets to hand out to my Scottish mates. We all played for Scotland in the early matches. Good luck to you”.
Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend and Australian-born Scottish skipper Sione Tuipulotu ahead of their clash against South Africa at Murrayfield on November 10, 2024. (Photo by Ross Parker/SNS Group via Getty Images)
The Scots had grievances with England, going back centuries. Likewise, Australia had longstanding sporting bones to pick with the “Mother Country”. For both Scotland and Australia, they were our traditional sports enemy. Nothing could change that. Nothing could dilute it. In matters of rugby, nationality matters.
The man who came up to request those sheets that day in 1991 clearly took a different view of nationality to Scotland’s current coach – and former international – Gregor Townsend.
Townsend is the man who has the final say on the choice of the foreign players that Scotland’s scouts identify, target, groom and capture; just as scouts working for Ireland and France do as well. These three Northern countries, in particular, exploit at will, the impossibly weak rules of Eligibility laid down by World Rugby.
The man who came to relieve me of an armful of copies of our national anthem – to hand out to his Scottish teammates – what has he become? At what moment did Scotland abandon the concept of “Who we are”, Who they are”? And substituted it with a figment of his country’s imagination, namely, the fiction that a foreign player becomes a legitimate capture for Scotland – becomes, to all intents and purposes “Scottish” – merely by spending five years in that country (playing for a super franchise) or having a granny hailing from some Scottish hamlet, long before some antecedent of that player, turned off the lights, closed the door on Scotland and began a totally new life in a foreign land.
In some cases (and to repeat what I say in my essay), that player not only emerges with a fake Scottish or Irish aura, but some have citizenship bestowed upon them – by a country with which they hitherto had no contact whatsoever; zilch. And at the time of players like Lowe, Aki or van der Merwe qualifying for Ireland or Scotland, World Rugby only required three years residency, not five.
Scotland’s Duhan van Der Merwe celebrates with Sione Tuipulotu after scoring against the Wallabies on November 24, 2024. (Photo by Ross Parker/SNS Group via Getty Images)
You can be sure that citizenship and public utterances expressing the foreign player’s love for his new country all help in papering over the cracks of Irish, Scottish or French awkwardness in the face of what they must know is a confected pathway to Test-rugby qualification. It is a pathway that will never allow a claim that these players are products of the nation and its home-grown rugby ethos. It is one that certainly doesn’t pass the pub test.
Do the likes of Townsend really now believe that these foreign players so magically transform into being “Scots” that the fact of not having been born in Scotland, not having grown up there, not having been developed in Scotland, not having played a single youthful match there; that all of that is irrelevant?
Under Townsend, the Scottish Rugby Team is doing this in spades; this capturing; this appropriating. The Irish Rugby Union is doing the same – even if their present number of foreign players in the Irish team is two or three less than Scotland.
Having returned to Australia, some years after that World Cup, I went to Paris, in 2010, at my own expense, following an urgent request from former Wallaby, Simon Poidevin, President of the Classic Wallabies. The Classics (he told me) were unable to come up with a European-based ex-Wallaby who might be willing to present the jerseys to the Wallabies prior to the match against France, in a few weeks’ time. Might I be interested in doing this, asked Poidevin. Might I what!
Anthony Abrahams has called on World Rugby to tighten up their eligiblity laws. (Photo by Brendon Thorne – World Rugby/World Rugby via Getty Images)
Most of my presentation to the Wallabies that day, in a small team room, on the top floor of a Novotel, in an outer Parisen suburb, was taken up by a poem I had written and had decided to take the risk of reading out to the team. It was unapologetically partisan and patriotic and was titled “When You Wear the Green and Gold”.
A rugby fan, Peter Fenton had done something like this, when he wrote a poem that began “There’s a spirit in these Wallabies that words cannot describe; it’s as if they had descended from a legendary tribe”. Folksy perhaps; simple pentameter. But, against the background of what our team means to us, those words sure do get the hairs on the back of the neck standing to attention.
At the Novotel that day, the last stanza of my poem, read as follows:
So, when you wear your country’s colours, when you run out down the ramp
Remember whom you represent and whose hopes you uphold
Remember that the Nation‘s there as you carry high the lamp
Remember that you don’t relent, when you wear the Green and Gold
I don’t need to choose that last stanza; the others express the same sentiment. That is what a national team invokes.
It is impossible to sing or recite these ideas into life when a polyglot team comprising Scotsmen or Irishmen, on the one hand, and mercenaries and ring-ins, on the other, runs out onto the field.
Do the supporters of these importations also believe that it is acceptable that a real Scot or Irishman misses out on Test selection every time they are displaced by a foreign one?
Let us give the final word (already footnoted in my essay) to a Scottish soccer captain. When asked, in 2014, what he thought of the enlistment of foreign players into the national side, he said:
“I don’t care if they call in Zinedine Zidane, I would rather lose with a team of Scotsmen than win with a team of foreigners. This is not a club we’re talking about; it’s SCOTLAND. I know the players will definitely be against it”.
Anyone can understand that; Gregor Townsend surely understands that; as does Andy Farrell.
Footnote: That day in 2010, at the Stade de France, the Wallabies beat France 59 to 16.
Anthony Abrahamshttps://https://ift.tt/ZfOdX9H and Scotland have sold their souls chasing an impossible dream – World Rugby must pull them into line
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