James Tamou is of Māori and English descent born in NZ. Moved to Aus when he was 13, has represented NZ Māori and now plays for Australia.
For me he's a New Zealander.

now imagine that the RFL somehow got it's head out of the sand (or it's ) whichever and actually manages to organise some form of international games during the season.....how many of the NRL based players would:-
a) want to play for their adopted country
b) be allowed to play with the permission of their NRL clubs...????

wasn't Anthony Milford refused permission by Bennett to play for Samoa recently...just shows the contempt the NRL coaches have for international rugby

That's not a curve ball. That makes you British. All in all there are too many rules and regulations. It should be simple. Wherever you're born, that's who you represent.

You realise people can be dual-nationality, don't you?

Whilst the current system may have too many rules & regs, having it as just where you're born is massively oversimplifying it.


The biggest issue is that players can swap nations. Players should have to stick to their decision, and ideally that decision would be based on which nationality they identify with being the most (rather than being driven by other incentives).

As long as they can do a convincing English accent for the after match interview that should be enough for qualification.

Having a choice isn't a problem, I played with a lad who was born and raised here but whose family was Scottish and he was extremely proud of that so from a young age he chose Scotland.

The problem is people swapping and changing once they have already been capped. We stop that, we start to have a somewhat respectable system. This problem started with the Pacific islanders, but to be fair less of them are choosing NZ first these days, Kata and Hurrell for example sticking with Tonga. Now it unfortunately does still happen in terms of internationals (Tui Lolohea) and origin (Josh Maguire)

Let players with dual nationality, ancestry or whatever choose, but only let them choose once. It's really not that hard.

Exactly my point, and imo Hodkinson chose when he played origin

Keiran Foran for example qualifies for Aus and NZ but passed up what seemed a nailed on origin selection and formally declared for NZ

Bennett needs to find 3 other NRL players who would qualify.

1. Sam Tomkins
2. Joe Burgess
3. Josh Morris
4. Jack Reed
5. Brett Morris
6. Gareth Widdop
7. Trent Hodkinson
8.
9. Josh Hodgson
10. James Graham
11. Mike Cooper
12. Elliott Whitehead
13. Sam Burgess

14. George Burgess
15. Tom Burgess
16.
17.

this fits with my views. As long as someone qualifies they can choose who they want to represent, but the only get to choose once. This would in turn help international RL as the likes of Samoa and Tonga get stronger and aus or NZ don't get to cherry pick the best islanders

About half the NRL will qualify, I think you only need a grandparent, take your pick

Oh and you need to replace tomkins with Greg Eden

Have you seen Eden playing for Brisbane - he is calamity waiting to happen.

Eden is awfully weak in the tackle as well. When he commits he's fine, but most of the time its like he's scared to make a tackle.

Should disqualify anyone from Wigan then.

Point taken.

I've decided to replace Tomkins with Darius Boyd instead.

ENGLAND
1. Darius Boyd
2. Joe Burgess
3. Josh Morris
4. Jack Reed
5. Brett Morris
6. Gareth Widdop
7. Trent Hodkinson
8. TBA
9. Josh Hodgson
10. James Graham
11. Mike Cooper
12. Elliott Whitehead
13. Sam Burgess

14. George Burgess
15. Tom Burgess
16. TBA
17. TBA