Eligibilty thread

[Emu01]

Sydney Report

Organisers are expecting a big crowd. My PAX is in the 3000’s as I got some free tickets. These are in Bay 2 on the Southern end.

Townsville Report
Organisers were very disappointed for the Fiji v USA match in light of the promotion they did.

I leave this thread for 3 hours and we’re arguing what?

Did they put a figure on expected crowd in Sydney?

 

[Jim from Oz]

Back on crowd topic I am heading to Canberra looks like it has sold all right .

Based on what source? Cheers

 

[Pommy]

It's half assed tbh.

It's like saying such and such can't be indigenous because they 'look white'. Racist basically.

Just accept that more and more you will get players with, for eg, a Samoan parent and a Tongan parent, born in Auckland and who grew up in Australia. Accordingly, 4 eligible teams.

It is because of ease of travel and global connectivity.

Switching is a separate subject but eligibility should follow from a period of say 5 years residency...

I don’t think residency should be a thing once someone has turned 18.

 

[Warriors Fever]

I don’t think residency should be a thing once someone has turned 18.

I can kind of understand it but for teams like England ru how can they not find better players in their stocks. They have the highest amount of rugby players per country in the world by a lot.

 

[Perth Red]

the word i used is rife

Paul Vaughan ... an Italian ?

yeah
that'll get em rolling in
I'll watch it , most won't .. I can't argue the toss though
& no one else should either
we reap what we sow

You didn't answer my question, is your issue with the eligibility rules (which are tighter than some other sports) or the number of non indigenous players to that countries team? You seem to have changed your mind half way through the discussion!

 

[deluded pom?]

I can kind of understand it but for teams like England ru how can they not find better players in their stocks. They have the highest amount of rugby players per country in the world by a lot.

For the same reason they fast track league players like Farrell and Burgess. They think it gives them an advantage but it ends up pissing off Union players who have only ever played one game.

 

[Pommy]

awesome
you've found one player in union
theres probably a few more too

its rife in our world cup , it isn't in theirs

There’s more than a few. Manu Tuilagi was ready for deportation by the home office ayers later he was in the England squad.

 

[hutch]

no Im sorry
Jarrad Hayne is not Fijian
Mitch Moses & Robbie Farrah are not Lebanese
they're all Australian & more importantly everyone knows it

it just gives fuel to haters to laugh at us & its hard to convince people to turn up & support these games when there is some validity to the mockery so we shouldn't be surprised no one is turning up.
Fiji didn't need those aussies to beat the USA
Lebanon might have beat France without their aussies

our WC needs some credibility
aussies NRL players in Italian & Fijian jumpers aint it

I didn’t say they weren’t Aussies, but Jarryd Hayne is also Fijian and Farah is Lebanese. It is possible to have more than one nationality.
Yes, we probably use the heritage rule too much, but it is necessary at the moment as that is where our sport is at. Rugby league would exist in Lebanon or Fiji without the success of the heritage teams at previous world cups. One day we may be able to impose a minimum domestic player rule, but at that time this is the only way our sport grows internationally.

 

[Raiderdave]

You didn't answer my question, is your issue with the eligibility rules (which are tighter than some other sports) or the number of non indigenous players to that countries team? You seem to have changed your mind half way through the discussion!

no i haven't
Paul Vaughan .. an Italian ?
theres the problem with our world cup right there among other notable & laughable examples

if the Italians need Australian NRL players with Italian grand mothers who've probably never set foot in Italy to be competitive , then our world cup is lacking a bit of credibility.
No wonder no one is watching it at the venues

 

[Raiderdave]

Id rather see no NRL ( bolster) players in the minnow sides , & we know who they are.
Other people I think would too
so the scores would blow out a little bit more , so what
it brings some legitimacy to the event

tonights game in Canberra will have a 60 or 70 point margin possibly
so these types of scorelines will still occur

 

[hutch]

no i haven't
Paul Vaughan .. an Italian ?
theres the problem with our world cup right there among other notable & laughable examples

if the Italians need Australian NRL players with Italian grand mothers who've probably never set foot in Italy to be competitive , then our world cup is lacking a bit of credibility.
No wonder no one is watching it at the venues

So you’re telling paul Vaughn that he isn’t Italian? He qualifies for them in pretty much all sports on earth.

 

[giboz71]

New eligibility rules has killed the last hopes of the France team. after the defeat against lebanon, many newspapers and people on social networks laugh at seeing our team being beaten by such a country.

We are one of the few nations that really work for the development of rugby and that's how we are thanked ... The logic would be that we get back a lot of TV rights because we were sacrificed to artificially increase the level of this world Cup.

This is a really good point.

France is one of the few teams made up entirely of players from their domestic leagues (and I'm including SL and Championship in this). They are legitimately trying to develop their players.

Yet they come up against a Lebanese team stacked with NRL players who were effectively the difference the other day.

I'm not surprised there are questions being asked back in France as they probably assumed the Lebanese team would be made up of domestic players just like their team. Instead there are only 5 home grown Lebanese players and the rest are all Australian based including bona fide NRL stars like Moses, Farah, Mannah etc.

I know this is a reality of the World Cup to spread the talent and have more competitive teams, but it's hardly a fair situation for teams like France who are trying to grow their game domestically.

 

[Pommy]

New eligibility rules has killed the last hopes of the France team.

What hopes? The World Cup was won by Australia before kick off, if Australia have a few injuries or suspensions plus a bad day England or NZ could maybe win it.

 

[Bobby DIGital]

Sounds like a bit of a slow news day. Ha.

Bloods and crips playing music too loud, beeping horns, standing on cars and crossing against green lights.

Send in the national guard.

You can't see much in the video, but there is a 30+ year history of gang violence between Tongans & Samoans in South Auckland. It's been happening since Jonah Lomu's uncle got decapitated by a machete at the Otara markets in like 88.

Our beautiful jersey used to bring all these people together. Now they've got their own teams, they wanna tear each other apart.

 

[adamkungl]

France had far more professional players than the "stacked" Lebanon side.
I was hoping for a France win too.. but really they only have themselves to blame. Just another chapter of disappointment in modern French RL.

 

[SBD82]

You can't see much in the video, but there is a 30+ year history of gang violence between Tongans & Samoans in South Auckland. It's been happening since Jonah Lomu's uncle got decapitated by a machete at the Otara markets in like 88.

Our beautiful jersey used to bring all these people together. Now they've got their own teams, they wanna tear each other apart.

Oh I get that it's probably serious. I wouldn't want to be standing between a bunch of fired up Tongans and Samoans.

It's just that the news seemed pretty funny. Reminded me of an old Bill Hicks bit about hooligans knocking over dustbins in Shaftesbury.

 

[johnny plath]

This is a really good point.

France is one of the few teams made up entirely of players from their domestic leagues (and I'm including SL and Championship in this). They are legitimately trying to develop their players.

Yet they come up against a Lebanese team stacked with NRL players who were effectively the difference the other day.

I'm not surprised there are questions being asked back in France as they probably assumed the Lebanese team would be made up of domestic players just like their team. Instead there are only 5 home grown Lebanese players and the rest are all Australian based including bona fide NRL stars like Moses, Farah, Mannah etc.

I know this is a reality of the World Cup to spread the talent and have more competitive teams, but it's hardly a fair situation for teams like France who are trying to grow their game domestically.

Without wanting to come across as a rude prick, I kind of feel like this defeatist attitude is more the problem rather than the so called stacked Lebanese team.. A handful of NRL players - a mix of has beens and up and comers - should not be the scapegoat for a French loss. They also have a number of current super league players, and players from second tier comps that wouldn't be a dissimilar standard to Q and NSW cup comps where the majority of the Lebanese team is from. I would have thought that France should have nailed this but choked, and the fact they didn't may be a reflection of coaching and attitude rather than standard of players. It is disappointing, but they should have beaten lebanon. Blaming heritage rules is poor considering France has from my understanding good level domestic comps, as well as top level fully professional teams playing in England. Did they have a number of players unavailable, or was this their best possible squad?

 

[Springs09]

hahahaha
delusion , look it up , theres a pic of you under it
its the sole problem

how can a game between 2 minnow union teams in their world cup draw 19K in canberra
& the same teams in ours ... with australians pretending to be fijians & italians to bolster the quality of the match .. draw 3K
no one wants to watch that , not in Canberra , Townsville or anywhere else , why should they
& I'll back the RL version to be a better sporting spectacle , but one has cred ,one doesn't
one is legit , one isn't

I already said, because Union is seen as an event. Do you think people who go to see Japan play know who the players are and where they are from? Do you think they spend an hour looking at their wiki pages so they know where the players are born? Do they see Craig Wing is playing and decide they aren't going?

If it was an 8 team World Cup and France were playing Wales in Canberra with 100% national players do you think it would get a bigger crowd than the Lebanon game?

Also go and tell the Fijian players they aren't Fijian, that'd be a laugh.

Union's eligibility laws are as bad as ours if not worse. The residency rule is garbage. The most criticism we get is when Radradra plays for Australia or Rangi Chase plays for England. And I agree with that criticism. But Union does the same. The heritage rule is fine. In fact it's the only way Tonga and Samoa can have a competitive team and that includes in Union. There is not a player in the Tongan team that you couldn't call Tongan, and all the Tongans I know support them to the fullest. The support has also been seen in Tonga and NZ.

And in the last RUWC Samoa and Tonga both had at least 13 heritage players. And both only had 1 or 2 that played in the domestic comp.

 

[Irish-bulldog]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/league/news/article.cfm?c_id=79&objectid=11939933

Interesting lol.

 

[Springs09]

Did they have a number of players unavailable, or was this their best possible squad?

They had 6 or 7 of their best Super League players missing.