Tuesday 15 May 2012

Hooker duck: Brown, Henderson and aquatic fowl

It must be the time of year, the dawning of spring (eventually) heralded by serial whinging about Rugby League international selection criteria.

"If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck isn't it?" postulated Nathan Brown in relation to the selection of Ian Henderson in the England squad for the upcoming Exiles games, seemingly suggesting that he can deduce someone's nationality by looking at them and listening to them. Clumsy he may have been with his phraseology, but his comments have struck a chord with many in the Rugby League fraternity.

The thing is that people - including Brown - are railing against different things at the same time and as such, the argument is incoherent. Brown's contention is that Henderson is Australian and therefore has no business playing for England. This is plain wrong. Brown went on to criticise the selection of Rangi Chase - possibly more fairly - but again he's clumsy in his reasoning, saying "Chase says 'bro' and has Maori tattoos". If we're barring people with Maori tattoos from representing England, we're not going to get thirteen players on the field, but that's obviously not the point he's attempting to make.

To get to a resolution, the argument needs breaking down into it's constituent parts:
  • Nationality
  • Rugby League's international selection criteria
  • Switching allegiances

Nationality is not and never has been the same as being eligible to play for a given country. It's an element, sure, and back in the day was tantamount to the same thing as global travel and the opportunity to settle away from the country of your birth were not as easy. The chances of people being able to claim multiple nationality has also never been higher. Neither is residency the same as nationality. Nobody is claiming that Rangi Chase is English and until such time as he takes citizenship, nobody will. He is, however, domiciled here and, by all accounts, planning to settle here in the long-term. The two things are subtly different. The argument about nationality has become one of 'if you were born there, that's who you can play for', but nationality isn't as simple as the place you happen to have first drawn breath and it never has been.

For now, residency of three years is enough for you to become eligible to play international Rugby League for a given country. So is having one grandparent from a given country, a passport or citizenship of that country. If these definitions are too loose for you, then by all means argue that point. The English cricket team has recently been bolstered by a number of South African ex-pats and in response to concerns about that - from the English and South African game - the ECB upped the residency requirement from four years to seven, a move which if implemented seven years ago would have seen Kevin Pietersen ineligible for the 2005 Ashes. Again, if this is the issue, then by all means compain about it.

The one that raises a lot of hackles - perhaps more than any other - is that of people playing for more than one nation. This is a by-product of two things: the difference between the top three (maybe four) and the rest and the scrapping of Great Britain. Henderson has played for Scotland, as indeed has Danny Brough, and previously could have played in GB teams without a bother and go back to Scotland for the World Cup. Now, they are not afforded that opportunity. If a player wants opportunities to play against Australia and New Zealand more than a maximum of twice every four years, then they've no option than to declare for England and the goalposts were shifted from when they first made a decision about international rugby. There are rules on switching allegiance and many don't think they're strong enough, or should even exist. But to deny someone an opportunity under the systems in place now that weren't in place at the start of their careers hardly seems fair and it's never as simple as saying 'how can someone be Scottish and then be English?' as both are nebulous concepts that one person's interpretation of and significance placed in are quite different to the next. To reform this properly would need every Rugby League nation to be on an equal footing which simply isn't the case. If you introduced a rule that says if you've played a competitive game for a country, that's who you're with throughout, what would happen to the Cook Islands, Lebanon, Tonga, Samoa, Ireland, Scotland, even Wales? Rather than strengthen those, the consequence is equally as likely to be that few will declare for those countries - at least until they're much older - and end up retracting the world game rather than expand it.

Given those three areas, a fourth enters the equation. Whatever your thoughts are on each individual area, the rules laid down in those areas are clear. Is it not incumbent upon the head coach of England to select the best possible side from players eligible for England under those various rules? It is perfectly possible to argue for change to those rules while accepting the situation the rules have created. I was in Ireland during the 1994 football World Cup where Jack Charlton's Irish side did extremely well, including beating Italy in New York. Talking to people in the pubs where I was staying, there was a general acceptance that there's little about John Aldridge and Ray Houghton to call Irish and maybe it'd be nice for an all Irish-born side to be playing, but these were the best players available to the country. If Chris Heighington is the best second-row available to Steve McNamara and he can pick him, why wouldn't he? Ditto Chase, Henderson, Danny Brough or Maurie Fa'asavalu.

Too often, all the separate threads of this whole area get mixed together which makes it very difficult to reach a consensus on how to reform things should reform be needed, especially when unhelpful language akin to that of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu (he used the duck analogy in describing Iran, but added that the Islamic Republic is "a nuclear duck") is used. But while that argument is being had, can we just agree to allow a coach to pick what he sees is his best side? it would save us all having to fall out.

2 comments:

G1 said...

Articulate, informative, reasoned and well written. I agree entirely with your interpretation of the issues and the conclusions that you draw. However, I feel you miss the main crux of the argument in Brown's favour.

Rangi Chase is shit.

Or have I missed the point?

John_D said...

Thanks for the comment G1.

I did use the word 'if' in relation to McNamara's thinking that Chase might be his best option in the halves, so any discussion on that would require a dissemination of what goes on inside McNamara's head. That's a separate issue entirely and simply isn't something I wish to do.