The British and Irish and Australian and South African and New Zealand Lions doesn’t have the same ring to it as the British and Irish Lions, but that’s what it will be when it arrives in Australia next year.
By my reckoning, the Lions could easily have six Sanzaar (South Africa, New Zealand and Australia) players in the squad. If that proves to be a conservative estimate the total number will be pushing towards 20 per cent of the squad.
The elevation of Sione Tuipulotu to the Scotland captaincy this week shows that the outstanding midfielder is on course to be Lion rather than the Wallaby he once aspired to be.
Good on him. His personal story is about taking opportunities when they come up and should be greeted with pride in Australia, mixed in with the obvious disappointment that another one slipped through the net.
But it is delusional to think that Australian rugby hasn’t been damaged by the attitude of the Six Nations countries, who are happy to scour the Australian player base for ancestral links while former Lions simultaneously stick the boot into Australian rugby and suggest they aren’t worth touring any more.
Administrators in this part of the world have been far too passive on this subject, but they need to wake up to the fact that the Celts in particular are trying to pick off players using rugby’s eligibility laws that are heavily skewed in favour of the Home Nations.
Mosese Tuipulotu made his Super Rugby debut against the Hurricanes.Credit: Getty
New Zealanders Tom Jordan and Blair Murray were the latest Sanzaar players to receive international call-ups this week, for Scotland and Wales respectively. The pathway has become so routine, and accepted, that no one bats an eyelid.
Of course, as soon as this subject is raised the familiar riposte of the Wallabies and All Blacks “pillaging” the Pacific Islands comes up. But if this principle was actually held dear by those in the north, their ire would be focused on Japan and not Australia or New Zealand.
Of Eddie Jones’ starting XV to face the All Blacks on Saturday, eight come from Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji and Samoa.
The secondary argument put forward by those up north is that Test rugby has become a transactional game, and that player movement is simply part of modern society in which members of any given workforce can cross borders.
There is truth in this, and again this column is no slight on the Tuipulotus or their right to play for Scotland under current laws.
But where this argument falls woefully short is in the “transactional” bit, because Australia will get nothing in return despite the fact that Sione could cut them to shreds twice in the next eight months.
There’s no money in it for Australia, despite the country having a clear and important role in helping the former Junior Wallaby become the player he is today.
The only winners are Scotland, and they have doubled their victory by also naming Mosese Tuipulotu in the Scotland squad this week, despite having done next to none of the hard, and expensive, development work with the younger brother.
Similarly, take the case of Fergus Burke in New Zealand. He had been steadily groomed through the Canterbury and Crusaders systems to take over from Richie Mo’unga, but ended up joining Saracens in the UK because he qualifies for both England and Scotland (although he missed out on both of those squads this week it would be a minor surprise if he is not in contention by the time the Six Nations rolls around).
Canterbury and the Crusaders got nothing from their investment in Burke, and copped the flamethrower treatment from fans and former player Wyatt Crockett for signing James O’Connor to plug that gap that he left.
It might be wishful thinking that Australia or New Zealand, or the Pacific Islands, receive a cent in compensation for the constant stream of players they prepare for other nations, but it is the big idea that Brett Robinson has talked about repeatedly during his campaign to replace Bill Beaumont as World Rugby chair.
The importance that Robinson put on the idea has somewhat been lost in the blizzard of other rugby headlines in recent months, but having spoken to Robinson at length I am convinced that the Queenslander who could soon become the most powerful figure in the game is increasingly convinced the current system is broken.
I don’t like using excuses for Australia, particularly when there is clearly work to do in areas such as talent identification, but a world in which it has effectively become a fee-free nursery for others to use is one in which the Wallabies will forever be locked out of the top five.
