Joker said:
East Coast Tiger said:
Ian Rubin was born in the formerSoviet Union, so is a birth rule player - no problem there.
Actually, yes there is. In 2000, the Soviet Union did not exist. Rubin was born in Odessa in The Ukraine, which is NOT part of the Russian Federation. So on that basis he had no claim to represent Russia - it would be like Marcus Bai playing for the Kangaroos because PNG was a territory of Aus before 1975.
Furthermore, Rubin probably spent as much time in the former Soviet Union as Campbell and Donovan.
Ian Rubin was born in the former Soviet Union and lived there until he was 4, but I don't believe Campbell of Donovan have ever been to Russia, Ukraine, or any other former Soviet republic.
And although he was born in the Ukraine, I believe it was of Russian parents. Therefore he qualified for Russia through his parents rather than grandparents or place of birth.
Secondly I remember in the analysis of the Australia v Russia game, more media 'experts' (hacks) bagged us
If you wanna worry about what particular quip some Ruggeroid media hack uses, then go right ahead. I doubt that hack is losing any sleep.
was an Australian called Donovan (not a typical Russian name don't you know)
I'm quite aware of it, smarty. :roll:
Get used to the fact that the hacks will bag League
regardless of what the sport does.
This "they are all against us" attitude is pretty simplistic.
Rugby League will certainly get bagged if there are reasons for it, and rightly so. We do it ourselves often enough.
I think two Australians with tenuous links to Russia suddenly playing in the World Cup deserves to be bagged.
The inclusion of the Australians in a Russian side did tremendous damage to the perception of authenticity of the World Cup.
And what good did it do? Not much, since they got thrashed anyway. It's a matter of opinion, but I don't think they would have been beaten by much more than 110-4 without the ring-ins. Even if it was 140-0, that isn't really much worse from a competitive point of view than 110-4.
<snipped>
Why don't you, Dimitri and griff try examining why you hold the social and cultural prejudices (i.e. to the grandparent rule) that you do?
Ah, that old chestnut, label the opposition as prejudiced.
My argument is nothing to do with prejudice and all about preserving the authenticity of the World Cup.
I'm not completely opposed to the grandparent rule, but when players,
solely for the World Cup, play for countries they have never been to and probably never will, and in doing that make the World Cup look like a joke, then I have a problem with it.
At one end of the scale, you could have a World Cup full of NRL players, and it would be pretty competitive. But it would have zero legitimacy.
As East Coast Tiger said, it is about the right balance between competitiveness and legitimacy. Even with the ring-ins, Russia etc are
not competitive. Since you don't have competitiveness, you need to have legitimacy.
Russia could have easily had a 100% Russian squad drawn from their domestic competition. But they picked a few players from Australia to make their squad slightly more competitive. In doing that, they completely sacrificed their legitimacy.
As the Rugby Union World Cup showed, to have a successful tournament the perception of legitimacy is much more important than being competitive.
There is also the argument of hard-working Rugby League players not being able to represent their country due to places being taken by ring-ins.
As I've said many times elsewhere, there are other solutions and finding the right BALANCE is important. My suggestion is to install a minimum quota for Home grown players for international football - i.e. every international team should be required to include a minimum 4 in every match day squad of 17 and 1/3 of the tournament/tour/series squad.
Funny how we come opposite sides of the argument to a similar conclusion. I pretty much agree with this sort of concept.
As I said before, I'm not sure whether it should be an enforced quota system, or just each country doing the right thing for its own circumstances. I don't really like the idea of having different classes of players within the one squad.
But I suppose it would have to be enforced, as countries would probably be shortsighted and just pick the strongest available squad even if it was completely ring-ins.
Rather than have a grandparent rule, I think eligibility should be based on claims to nationality under that country's nationality laws. So the eligibilty rules should be something like:
1) a citizen of that country or eligible to become one; or,
2) resident in that country for 3 years; or,
3) have represented that country previously in international sport; or,
4) have a parent who represented that country in international sport.