Phil Gifford: World Rugby's chance to even the Pacific Island playing field has come

Charles Piutau of the Bristol Bears is not allowed to play for Tonga this weekend. Photo / Getty

OPINION:

How can this be fair?

Tonga will play England at Twickenham this weekend. England's players will get NZ$42,800 each for the game. The Tongans are on NZ$931 for the week.

That's bad enough. But Charles Piutau, one of the superstars of European club rugby, who last played for the All Blacks six years ago, is not allowed to play for Tonga despite his Tongan ancestry.

What's really sad is that there's no guarantee that World Rugby council members will do the right thing on November 24 and move the scales so that, after a three-year stand down, players like Piutau could choose to represent the country of their ancestors' birth.

As things are now, playing one game for a New Zealand or Australian sevens side, or five minutes as a replacement in a test, bans a Pasifika player from ever playing for another country.

At a time when any thinking rugby person would be aware that one-sided thrashings are not a spectacle that does rugby a lot of good, there's a chance, if 75 per cent, or 39 out of 52 votes, at World Rugby's council vote for a change, the brutal blanket ban would be dropped.

The teams that without question would benefit most from an eligibility change are from the Pacific Islands, Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji.

Seventeen-test All Black, Pita Alatini, born in Nuku'alofa in Tonga but brought up in Auckland, has strong feelings on the issue.

They date back to when he played club rugby in Japan, after his career in New Zealand ended in 2004. "There were a few of us (former All Blacks with Tongan roots), Charlie Riechelmann, Isitolo Maka, and myself, who just felt, three or four years after playing for the All Blacks, that we wanted to play international rugby again," Alatini said. "But the biggest thing was to help our Pacific island teams. It's giving back to your country of origin. A lot of former All Blacks could still offer a lot to their home nation."

Pita Alatini was unable to represent Tonga after playing for the All Blacks. Photo / Getty

In 2018-19 Alatini was in the management group of the 'Ikale Tahi Tongan squad in the lead up to the World Cup in Japan. "I saw the need for this change to happen," he said. "If the rules had been different, when we looked at the 15 we could have had for that World Cup, my gosh, we'd have been looking at winning games, not just surviving, or trying to keep the score down."

Sadly that may be where the problem at World Rugby lies. The greatest shock for northern hemisphere rugby probably dates back to the 1905-06 All Blacks. The 15-0 belting of England by upstart Colonials must have rocked the British rugby establishment to the core. But running a close second would be Samoa beating Wales 19-16 in the Samoans' first ever World Cup game in 1991.

Eligibility rules didn't matter then. In fact, in the next couple of years, three players, Frank Bunce, Stephen Bachop, and Pat Lam, from that '91 Samoan team bounced the other way, from Samoa into the All Blacks.

But the prospect of Pacific nations taking over places in tier one rugby from European teams meant the International Rugby Board clamped down on swapping countries in the early 2000s.

Some of the results were ludicrous. Isa Nacewa was a hugely gifted 20-year-old, born and brought up in Auckland, when he played 120 seconds for Fiji at the 2003 World Cup as a late sub against Scotland. He had so much talent the NZRU took his case as a one off to the International Rugby Board to allow him to be eligible for New Zealand, but were stonewalled. Nacewa could never be an All Black.

In November 2010 the NZRU tried for a blanket change, to allow Pacific Islanders who had played for the All Blacks to play for a Pacific country after a stand-down period.

The move was roundly defeated. Only Australia and England supported New Zealand.

"Almost everyone voted against it," said NZRU chief executive Steve Tew at the time. "I'm not sure that Fiji drawing with Wales last weekend helped the cause."

Tew's comment may have been slightly tongue in cheek, but there's little doubt in most New Zealand officials' minds from the time, that self interest from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Italy was the reason for the roadblock. "Countries like Scotland and Wales were bloody terrified they'd be overtaken," a former NZRU councilman told me this week.

It's a situation that Alatini finds sad and slightly weird. "It'd make for a better competition globally, keeping the margins closer," he said. "Some nations may vote against it, because of the threat from smaller nations. But the wealthier teams, in Britain, with all their resources, with development centres and academies, still have the upper hand in some ways. So why do they keep denying the rule change?"