Something resembling first-choice teams have been named. Let’s hope they all survive the weekend.
International rugby on the telly this weekend
Friday 6th September
| Scotland v Georgia | 19:30 | Premier Sports 1 |
| England v Italy | 19:45 | Sky Sports Action / Sky Sports Main Event |
Saturday 7th September
| New Zealand v Tonga | 3:35 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Australia v Samoa | 10:30 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Ireland v Wales | 14:00 | Channel 4 / RTÉ Two |
Ovally Balls 
Ticht – sorry, I didn’t mean to have a go at you. I find the pacific islands, aus and NZ most interesting actually. It really illustrates how much people move around there.
Re the UK I think that ‘born in the UK or not’ is most appropriate.
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Deebee, I think WP was brought in as a project player, but he loves Edinburgh by all accounts, he and his family are very happy and we are happy to have him. He seems a quiet bloke who just gets on with it, whereas Schoeman is a larger than life character, full of boyish enthusiasm, again very popular among players and fans
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@Ticht
It’s hard to get a true picture from the stats – you need to look at individual cases.
Tonga have the most foreign born players, but all of them have Tongan parents.
Most of the Japanese and American foreigners moved to the US as children or teenagers.
Scotland uses the grandparent rule more than any other team. Several of them were playing professional rugby elsewhere and were effectively ‘recruited’. Others might have not been born in Scotland, but grew up in England considering themselves Scottish, played all their teenage and adult rugby there, but technically only qualify via one grandparents. Despite the rules I’d consider the latter more ‘Scottish’ than the former.
The only cases I have beef with are those when professional rugby players born and raised in another country move to play somewhere else for a higher salary and the chance for national representative honours either in 3 years time or immediately due to one grandparent having been born in that country. (often recently discovered)
‘Residency’ alone is not helpful as a large number of players emigrated as children, or moved to another country for reasons other than rugby. There are a number of players who only started playing rugby after having moved.
I have said many times that I would prefer to see a rule based on:
2 x grandparents
1 x parent
Birth
For residency alone I would like to see a scaled system where adults who already play professional rugby have to wait longer to qualify than children and teenagers. This should discourage project players being poached by wealthier nations.
I also would like U20 appearances to ‘capture’ players to that nation.
I also think that more unions should adopt the French policy of insisting that players have a passport of the country they represent.
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Also interesting is that NZ have only three non NZ born players, all of whom moved to NZ before they were 18.
The ‘poaching’ shit is really wide of the mark.
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Ticht, Angola is a helluva country! I hope they got to explore it outside of Luanda and into the hinterland and the south, which is one of the beautiful places I’ve ever been to. I think I described Tunda Vala fissure before here – essentially a 2.6km drop from the escarpment to the valley, with a sheer drop of over 1.2km before it starts to level out. At the summit, it reminds me of rural, windswept Scotland, which gradually becomes tropical as you wind your way down and 5km from the bottom, you’re in the Namib Desert. Great big game fishing off the coast as well.
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At the summit, it reminds me of rural, windswept Scotland, which gradually becomes tropical as you wind your way down
So it’s like driving from Fort William to Maidstone?
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Pro, the new five year rule is the same as the IOC regs, and iirc it’s five because that is sufficient to qualify for a passport in most countries.
Mt problem with needing a passport to qualify is the situation you yourself came up against, in the some countries don’t allow dual nationality (am I remembering this correctly?), and I think it’s enough to qualify for a passport without actually having to hold one if that means relinquishing a right to return permanently to your initial citizenship, should you choose to do so.
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The ‘poaching’ shit is really wide of the mark.
Yeah, but it rankles them, so onward and upward! I generally agree on the project player thing, but it’s far less prevalent than I thought. CJ Stander was basically told he had no future in SA unless he retreaded himself to a hooker, and WP Nel was overlooked, probably in favour of some fat plonker from Cape Town, so I don’t really blame him. And he’s stuck it out in Scottish weather for a couple of millennia over the last five years, so kudos to him!
What does bother me is the agreements being signed by French clubs and our schools. Think it’s only one so far, but it isn’t right. I also reckon that the way the NH has closed the gap on the SH in the last decade or so is to some degree because of the number of top pros now passing their skills and experience on to players from the NH, rather than at home.
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I think Saracens are also “pioneering” partnership arrangements around the world.
This is all a byproduct of professionalism and there is just no way the genie is going back in the bottle
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Japan Captain Michael Leitch:
“In my opinion, the only reason we would ever lose a match would be because we couldn’t execute what we aimed to do. I don’t imagine us losing because the opponent is stronger than us.”
BIG TALK
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That’s a bit of a silly comment, any team loses because they couldn’t execute what they aimed to do, every team aims to score tries, you can’t execute that because the opposition stops you from doing so.
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Deebee, that Grey-Montpellier connection hasn’t siphoned off many yet but the French clubs have signed up some good lads from other schools – the excellent Wolhuter and Rogers from Paul Roos. And strangely this year’s Grey outside half FC du Plessis is off to Toulon.
The fantastically named Mink Scharink from the 2018 Paul Roos team is at Saracens
SA chose not to select boys who signed for overseas clubs for the representative teams after Craven Week this year.
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Ooh. A bit of research tells me Mink is one of pro’s. He’s a Dutch lad who went to SA for the last 2 years of schooling and to learn some rugby.
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@ticht
Quite.
Would have won if it weren’t for those darned opposition players.
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Good stout Englishman our Mink is too!
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@Chimpie, I remember one of the Evans brothers was in the studio before a game and he was asked why Scotland just weren’t performing and getting the wins. He replied something like, “I don’t know, the moves are all coming off in training”
Fitzpatrick and Pienaar were rather ungallant with their guffawing, I thought.
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Deebs – progress is rarely a straight line. From what I saw of SA when I visited in 1999 and from the media I’ve seen since (Louis Theroux and District 9 – just kidding) I think that things are slowly getting better.
It’s nice to have a locals perspective so thanks for that. The saffas I speak to have all left and they tend to bring a narrow perspective only.
Don’t blame you for staying.
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The saffas I speak to have all left and they tend to bring a narrow perspective only.
I get that a lot of South Africans have left because of crime or perceptions of anti-white discrimination in the workplace (including in sports teams), but quite a few left because they hold deeply racist views of Africa and Africans. In many instances they’re not easily distinguishable. My lad, as most of you know, was born in SA but his mother moved to the Isle of Man when he was about 5. Had he remained in SA, I would have looked far harder at what his opportunities may have been and whether I would have stayed. I was spared that decision at the expense of not having much contact with him outside of phone calls, Skype and a couple of visits a year.
It’s very difficult: my brother has moved to the UK twice, both times for the wrong reasons (in my opinion), whilst my one sister has lived in Europe since she was a student and quite frankly is a stranger to Africa these days, with very antiquated views of our country and continent.
For myself, for someone who has always thought of themselves as Anglocentric given my heritage, I was quite shocked at how different a world view I had to Brits when (including my extended family) when I started going over about 20 years ago. I’m African, for better or for worse, and always will be. Obviously I worry about crime and the economy and the future, but I’m supremely lucky and privileged that I can live a lifestyle that I don’t think is possible for middle income people anywhere else in the world.
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Conor O’Shea oot, Rob Howley in, apparently
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That’s a surprise
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‘Coca-Cola’s new water is called Glacéau Smartwater. The water, which comes from a spring in Morpeth, Northumberland, is “vapour distilled”, then injected with electrolytes. In other words, the water is evaporated and then condensed again, a process Coca-Cola describes as being “inspired by the clouds”.’
‘smart’ water. What a load of nonsense.
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@chimpie
You do need loads of aerosol-forming particles to form clouds mind, but I doubt dimethyl sulfide is a very marketable additive.
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@OT
It inspires clouds. Inna natural kind of way. Just needs a bit of a marketing massage.
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If the water was so smart how come it allowed itself to be captured, tortured, torn apart and stuck inna bottle by Big Food?
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just realised that 3 of the 4 wingers who played in the RWC 1995 final are deceased.
It’s rather sad.
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@expro
and 4 of the SA team have died. One from MND, one from brain cancer and two from heart attacks.
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Dee bee, quite a lot of (white) South Africans who still live there have or express those attitudes to Africa and Africans from my experience. I heard it in Pretoria (natch), Joburg, PE, Durban, Cape Town and it was one of the hardest things I found about living there. Equally I heard horrible things about non-SA Africans. And about South Africans from Congolese or Gabonese or Burundian people.
I think it’ll take time to work through and all that stuff about the Rainbow Nation, which we’ll hear again should the Boks go a long way in the World Cup, is just brilliant PR.
It is a wonderful place. If you’ve got some money it’s even more wonderful. But it can be a hard hard place as well. The reasons for the latter are steeped in the choices and policies of both past and present.
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My absolute favourite racist remark I heard in SA was in a small town called Lydenburg, where Kwagga Smith’s from. We were staying in a lovely b’n’b. The landlady prepared a fantastic breakfast for us and we got to talking. She asked my missus where she was from and didn’t really know where the Czech Republic was so we explained it was next to Germany.
At the mention of Germany her eyes lit up and she said she’d love to go there. Ah, yes, it’s an interesting place. Yes, yes, we were told Germany’s wonderful and the first thing the lady would do is go to a post office and kiss the floor because she was sure the post office would be spotless “just like ours were before 1994”.
It was so bizarre that we were speechless for a minute before changing the subject.
And the strangest thing was she was really pleasant woman apart from that one bit of conversation and had seemed contented.
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TomP – you’re absolutely right. There is still a huge amount of racism in SA. I think the most difficult part is how casual a lot of it is. No doubt about it. I was just commenting on Craig’s comment about South Africans in the UK.
I don’t know if you’ll hear much about the Rainbow Nation when we win this time around, probably more about Siya being the first Black Bok captain to lift the trophy. It’s gonna be a party!
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Deebs – I haven’t just spoken to white saffas BTW. There’s been a few people of South Asian and… Sorry I want to say ‘African’ heritage but that’s probably incorrect?
But a lot of people have simply moved to work in financial services and a few seemed to have suffered something in SA which prompted them to leave. I’ve only met one person who holds anti African views however. That seemed to be pan African though.
And BTW, from what you post on here, your lifestyle is amazing.
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Dominic Cummings was asked by reporters this morning “What’s your next move?”
He replied: “Get out of London….go and talk to people who are not rich Remainers.”
Cummings (educated at Oxford and married to the daughter of Sir Humphry Wakefield of Chillingham Castle in Northumberland) is the co-owner of a farm that has received €250,000 in EU farming subsidies. He lives in a £1.6 million Islington townhouse which has a “tapestry room”, a reading room and a “formal” living room.
Wow.
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@Expro – I think we should all give a thought to Jeff Wilson and toast his health!
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Should clarify, they all had reasons to leave. From ‘lack of opportunity’ to a feeling that they are not safe. But it wasn’t just a ‘white only’ perspective. If that actually means anything.
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Expro – meh. £1.6m will get you space for a wheely bin in London nowadays.
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I loves me a post office floor.
Phoooaaarrrrr!!
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Craigs, I do understand. I listened to a black South African woman, in her 20’s being interviewed recently about her future. She’s a qualified nurse and had landed a wonderful job, was looking forward to progressing through the ranks that her qualifications and the country’s legislation have afforded her and to bringing up a family and securing their future. The sad part is she was talking about Australia, where she’d moved to because the health system in SA is such a shambles.
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Anyway, enough of SA’s problems, I thought Corby didn’t want an election? Or does he just not want to vote for Boris’s election? I’m heartily confused.
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A post office floor is an unusual thing to obsess about.
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makes a change from the ‘OK he was a murderous fascist dictator but at least the trains ran on time’ meme.
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Most of the population was subjugated and treated as sub-human but by golly I didn’t have to brush my shoes off after being in the post office!
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Chimpie – talking dirty to me and it’s not even 3pm.
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Writer of Rastamouse to do time for benefit fraud.
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@Deebee
If the opposition allow Fatty to have an election between now and 31/10 he can frame it as ‘parliament / opposition trying to stop Brexit – vote for me and I’ll deliver’
Although Leave / Remain is pretty much 50-50 in polls, more seats want to Leave than Remain, so advantage Fatty.
Fatty would also like to pull off no-deal and then call an immediate election (prior to any of the bad shit happening, so ASAP after 31/10) and stand as the guy who delivered Brexit and stuck two fingers up at Jonny Foreigner.
The best thing to do is to force him to ask Brussels for an extension and THEN agree to an election.
Fatty then takes a thrashing from the radicalised pensioners of the Cult of Farage and will look even more of a lying incompetent bellend than he already does.
In any case, even if he gets his way Fatty’s plan is risky. He’s basically going to surrender seats in the moderate South and West of England in the hope of getting working class nationalists in the Labour heartlands to vote Tory for the first time ever.
I suppose Brexit is a deranged enough concept to get working class pensioners who have voted Labour all their lives to vote for an Eton Mess.
I fear this is merely laying the foundations for a new divide in UK politics: Progressives v Authoritarian Nationalists.
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Are we going to end up with dirty post offices post no-deal? Can’t be doing with that.
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Mind you it may discourage Craigs from acts of public indecency
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Chimpie – loosen up a bit. Stop being such an authoritarian nationalist.
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Chimpie’s a national socialist ??
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Err. No.
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This is going to be a long post, I think it appeared in the Times a few days ago, if there is any copyright probs then please delete
[Editing to provide link to article: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sam-warburton-i-did-not-enjoy-80-of-my-career-but-id-do-it-all-again-ttfch3s5q
It is a very good article, and you can read one article without subscribing.]
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‘He talks of a maximum number of games per season of, say, 25 with strict time limits for full-contact training. As a jackal, he wants proper enforcement of laws on binding to stop the reckless clear-outs.’
All sounds pretty sensible
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