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Definitely agree with you. I can understand that we (France) set-up academies in New Caledonia or Wallis&Futuna for example, which are French territories.
But setting up academies (like Clermont and Stade Toulousain I think, I'm sure for the first one at least) in Fiji to steal young talents, and tell everyone about it as "saviours" or "opportunity givers" blows me away. How the fuck did they allow that? And don't tell me we do not have any player reservoir in France, our U20 win world cup twice recently.
If you take the wingers for example, Toulouse made a former U20 from the first world title play a lot last season (Tauzin), he pretty much destroyed every opponent in 1vs1 during last season. And that's not by picking foreign players on a specific position that you will find local talents for this position.It is not a new point of view, but I remain convinced that with more organisation, more structure, and none of their players "stolen", pacific teams islands would pretty much butcher half of the top ten nations. I believe it is part of the reason no one is funding them or anything, it would jeopardize too much other nations.
On your idea to authorize switch of nations for unused players, that is a great idea. There were plenty of examples of naturalized players "secured" with 1 cap, and never picked again. Building a "far-from-home pacific center" in Europe where they manage their teams, support their players overseas, offer structure etc. would be a killer idea IMO and would help them progress a lot.
Inherently (physically and with individual technique) they are already above almost any nations, it's crazy when you watch them play sevens it must be a nightmare to play against.
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paulbiche
The Pacific Island teams play in a Pacific tournament, I think with Japan, USA and maybe Canada? The fundamental reason they're not being brought into the other tournaments is because they bring nothing financial to the table. No significant domestic TV audience, the logistics of travelling there are onerous and there are no big stadiums to get gate receipts from. Japan will be brought into the Rugby Championship for exactly the opposite reasons. the real concern re the Pacific Island teams is no longer ANZ, but the fact that France have 3 'academies' across the islands, so the most promising young players get contracts with French academies and by the time they mature they're French qualified. There was some ridiculous stat recently that across the French league there were more Fijian wingers than French ones. Maybe no French wingers, but that sounds too extreme and I can't be arsed to check...
The issue with bringing other teams into the established tournaments (the same argument runs for promotion/relegation into the 6 nations, without which how do Georgia/Spain etc develop) is that the existing nations are the shareholders and it would be turkeys voting for christmas for Italy/Scotland to vote to open up relegation. This was the premise of the recently tabled 'Nations League' which would have guaranteed the non-tier-1 teams more games and introduced promotion/relegation. Scotland vetoed it. Understandable, from their perspective, but so short-sighted for the future of the game!
One rule change that would have a MASSIVE impact would be re national qualification, such that if a tier 2 qualified player was capped by NZ/France/England etc, but then not likely to be picked again, they could revert to their country of birth/qualification and play for them. It would seriously enhance the playing resources of the smaller teams and mean that all of the academies and 'poaching' wasn't necessary so negative as a load more players would have access to professional training but still could perform for their home nation if it didn't work out with a tier 1 team.
Also, re the inaccessability and non-commerciality of the pacific island teams (and allowing for the fact that almost all of their players are based outside their home nations anyway) you could set them up in Spain/Italy/France/UK and have them play a local tournament in that region - they would almost certainly pick up a significant ex-pat and local fanbase and it would make everything so much easier logistically and commercially...