If a week is a long time in politics, then three weeks is an eternity, but that is all the time it’s taken to change the shape of southern hemisphere and, possibly, world rugby. The Pacific Islanders close their five-match campaign in Gosford, Australia, on Saturday against South Africa.
The Islanders hammered two Australian state sides and then scared the bejeezus out of the Wallabies and All Blacks. Whether or not they beat the Springboks is largely irrelevant, what matters is that the International Rugby Football Board (IRB) takes note of the Islanders’ achievements and puts a plan in place to make the amalgamated team a permanent fixture on the world stage.
The only thing standing in the way of this happening is politics. Most of the same IRB politicians who refused to allow the Springboks to play a Pacific Warriors team in 2002 were involved in the decision to grant the Islanders a dispensation in 2004. What has changed?
Part of the answer is that the IRB is beginning to recognise that its blinkered approach to nationalism is not working to enhance the game in the manner it would wish. In 1999 the IRB closed the loophole that allowed players to appear for more than one country at Test level. It stated that once a player had represented one country he could never play for another, no matter how long he might be resident in that second nation.
Ironically it was a former Springbok captain, Tiaan Strauss, who was last in before the door closed. Strauss was famously omitted from Kitch Christie’s squad for the 1995 World Cup, but got a winner’s medal four years later with the Wallabies. Under the post-1999 dispensation, however, Zimbabwean flyhalf Kennedy Tsimba can never play for the Springboks unless the IRB changes the rules.
The laudable aim of the change was to stop New Zealand from cherry-picking the best players out of Tonga, Samoa and Fiji to play for the All Blacks and thereby to uplift the standard of play in the islands. What actually happened was the exact opposite: island teams got weaker because young players with any talent at all refused invitations to represent their country.
The reason was an economic one. You don’t get rich playing for Fiji, but a five-year career with the All Blacks could set you up for life. To name just the most recent example of this attitude, Tongan-born back rower Sione Lauaki, a stand-out player for the Islanders in their matches to date, looks set to play for the All Blacks in the Tri-Nations.
New Zealand will argue that there is nothing wrong in this. After all, Lauaki may be Tongan, but he went to school at Kelston Boys High in Auckland, played for the New Zealand Colts in both 2001 and 2002 and plays his rugby for the Chiefs in the Super 12 and Auckland in the National Provincial Championship. How much more Kiwi do you want?
The bald fact of the matter is that whatever happens going forward, nothing will stop a talented rugby player from the islands from seeking his fortune in New Zealand, for exactly the same reason that there are more people living in Soweto than there are in King William’s Town: there’s more money to be made in Gauteng than there is in the Eastern Cape.
So now we come to the tricky bit. If the IRB grants the Pacific Islanders Test status will the likes of Lauaki simply refuse to play for them? Possibly, but that shouldn’t stop the politicians from granting Test status, for what the Islanders have proved in the month they have been together is that they are a team that people want to watch.
Given that southern hemisphere rugby is in the throes of renegotiating its television rights contract with Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp, this last factor is perhaps the most germane. Representatives of the islanders are arguing for a place in an expanded Super 12, but that could be counter productive. After all, both Tonga and Samoa had a place in the old Super 10 competition and it got them precisely nowhere.
What they actually need to do is argue for Test status in an expanded Tri-Nations, using the Super 12 as a proving ground for their players in exactly the same manner that happens today. Add in Argentina, who have been trying for years to get into the Tri-Nations, and you have a competition that would attract huge sponsorship, at least some of which would go back to the islands to improve the game there.
With money flowing in, before too very long the Islanders would cease to be a band of gypsies and would have the infrastructure to be able to host games in the islands. You might like to call the new competition the Five Nations, a title that was used very successfully in Europe for 80 years until Italy joined to make it the Six Nations.
Then again, you might like to call it Eric, for the name doesn’t actually matter. What matters is that the IRB must seize this chance to improve the game, so that the next time the Islanders play the Springboks players can swap shirts at the end of the game knowing they broke a nose or cracked a rib playing in a proper Test match.