and as i pointed out TSR, those 30 players are "choosing" not to look for another team in the Australian franchises as they are waiting on Twiggy's new idea to take shape, you can' t blame the 4 Australian super rugby teams getting players from NRC or even from overseas instead of recruiting from the "30 odd non-contracted players " if those players are making themselves unavailable for now, there is nothing they can do but the clubs need to sign players now as their is an open window for recruitment. South Africa super rugby teams have no influences from "foreigners" but they have been doing poorly as well, so its not the foreigners who are the issue, for Australia, its the ARU and to a degree, the coaching staff of the wallabies, also personally, i think the 4 coaches of the Australian super rugby teams are poor as well.
regarding "good players", there are atleast 12 (or maybe more) non-australia qualified players playing in the 5 Australian super rugby teams this year and personally, Mafi was the only impressive one, yes its a shame that the best 8 in the aussie franchises cannot play for australia as he is capped for another country, its a shame indeed but just because australia does not have a good number 8 right now, doesn't mean we blame all foreigners playing in the aussie franchises cause they took the place of someone locally grown, that will be silly, I bet Rebels fans are so happy that they have Mafi and he has won done many good things for the rebels this year, even if the team did not win many games..again, just because the Wobblies do not currently have a good number 8 doesn't mean its mafi or all non-australia qualified players fault, infact apart from Isi, there is one another good 8 out there in Richard Hardwick, now if Chieka refuses to give him game time, thats the fault of him and his coaching staff, not anybody elses's
Clubs in Top14/Pro14/Aviva Premiership competition will be nothing without their non-qualifed players. How many Pro12 or ERC/heineken cup games do you think Leinster would have won without Isa Nacewa (fiji qualified)? The top 4 of the 5 try scorers in Top14 this year are not france qualifed players [3 are fijians].South africa qualified player are doing better playing for english, french and irish clubs than for their own teams in super rugby
Why Australia has like 5 fijian wingers [Sefa, henry, eto, Taqele, Marika] in the last 2 years or so is something you should be asking ARU, personally of that 5, Fiji would probably only take Sefa Naivalu if we could as he is the only kind of winger we need, the rest is pocket change, we have many like them already. Samoa and Tonga are the 2 pacific island teams that complain when NZ (or sometimes australia) take a player qualified for their country , Fiji doesn't, infact even when we lost 2 players that could have been very very useful for us in Tevita Kuridrani and Nathan Hughes, we didn't mind cause this allowed us to look deeper to find a replacement and we did, Peceli Yato (Clermont) is a far better number than 8 Nathan Hughes and at 13, we have 4 options now with Goneva, Nayacalevu, Vatubua and Vasiteri
Fijian players face a lot of racism and xenophobia in france but they have no option but to stay there cause clubs in NZ and Australia refuse to pick "foreigners" even though these country pillage our islands for talents all the time.Former NZRU CEO Hobbs decided to get rid of all non-nz qualified players from NPC (mitre10) back in 2008-10 and this hurt fiji the most because then most of our players were in france and french clubs are fluffybunnys who refuse to release them for international duties and our national team suffered, we all know what happened to fiji during the 2011RWC thus why Fiji has been trying since then to get as many players possible in super rugby teams or the english premiership clubs as it was the only way to ensure their availability during teh June and Novemeber tests, unfortunately, 80% of our team is based in france, we only use 2 or 3 local players cause honestly, they are not good enough for national duties and about 15% of our players are pulled in from australia, france, nz and England. Even though Fiji won 4 of the 5 tests this year (their one loss was to australia oddly), we fielded a really weak team with majority of our star players from france pulling out due to their club directive. Australia should be happy they have so many talents which are readily available when the time comes, we are not. so if we can get 3 or even 4 more players into super rugby, it will be a huge win for us. French clubs come in early and take our youngsters away to france and at this rate, we won't even have good national team after 2019RWC. Our u20 is so shit that we felt to 2nd division in 2014 and finished 6th in that division this year, we really need to get a few players into super rugby as its the only way for our team to survive in the next 5 years.
