Identity and Test rugby: the problem with Pichot's Twitter list

Pichot was clumsy with his facts. As the Twitter-sphere was quick to point out, he appears to have included the likes of George North in his global equivalent of a "plastic Paddy" alert list. North was born in England to a Welsh mother and an English father but moved to Wales as a toddler. Along with Sefa Naivalu (Australian-qualified Fijian through residency) and Marika Koroibete (ditto), Australia's share of 'imports' would presumably include David Pocock (Zimbabwe), Will Genia (Papua New Guinea) and Dane Haylett-Petty (South Africa), all players who spent a larger or smaller portion of their childhood overseas.

Is Pichot arguing they should never have been eligible to play for Australia?

The second problem with the list is that his focus on birthplace glosses over the qualitative differences between a player born in one country who is playing for another country after meeting World Rugby's three-year residency requirement (Naivalu or Ireland's Bundee Aki); a player born in one country but raised in the country for which he now plays (Pocock); a player born in one country but playing for another country on the basis of a parent or grandparent's place of birth (England's Mako Vunipola); and a player - such as 102-Test Wallaby Sekope Kepu - who was born and raised in one country and left it because another one was willing to give him an opportunity. While few would lump Kepu in with Aki or Naivalu, Pichot's Tweet did just that.

The third problem is that though a country like Argentina can claim the moral high ground - if one exists in this debate - on birthplace, a few astute observers pointed out that Pichot's list does not recognise that many current Pumas have been developed by foreign systems.

To say nothing of the fact that Pichot is the vice chairman of the game's global governing body. He is the second-most powerful man in international rugby. His outspokenness on this issue has hit the mark when he has urged World Rugby to do more to strengthen the Pacific Islands nations of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga so that they may provide genuine pathways for their own players. But his Tweet clouded an important issue.

This is not to underplay the importance of eligibility rules that protect the integrity and credibility of Test rugby, which may have been what Pichot was getting at. From 2020 the residency requirement for Test eligibility will be extended to five years.

But beyond that, notions of nationality and identity are hard to pin down.

Take the Wallabies Indigenous jersey, which the Australia Test side will wear against England at Twickenham on Saturday. Its joyous depiction of the different life stories of the 14 Aboriginal men to play for Australia, from Cecil Ramalli to Kurtley Beale, is as much about the modern Wallabies as it is about those players.

Artist Dennis Golding told the team as much when he presented them with the jersey ahead of its debut in Brisbane last year: that identity was something different for everyone. But that just like the Wallaby linking the circles on the front of the jersey, they were all linked too - no matter where they were born - to a common cause and to what they were about to do for Australia and their fans.

The issue looks different from every angle, not least from a country like Australia, where almost 30 per cent of the resident population was born overseas. The Wallabies' 23 that beat New Zealand in the Indigenous jersey last year reflected that statistic (34 per cent), including that intolerable 'Plastic Aussie', Stephen Moore (born in Saudi Arabia). Should a Test nation stack its team full of three-year imports? No. Should Pichot get his facts right and frame the issue in a manner befitting his influential role in the global game? Absolutely.

World Rugby is doing important work in the Pacific Islands to strengthen talent identification and player pathways so that in a generation more players from those regions might be able to make a living playing at home. The Drua's NRC title last month was that work in action. Last week Fiji and Samoa were given voting rights on the World Rugby Council. Pichot should offer more of that on his Twitter feed and fewer spurious statistics.