Other than the reason for moving, which is completely irrelevant no.

Civonicevas parents moved for economic reasons, Manu moved for Economic reasons. Civoniceva wanted to represent his new nation, Manu wants to represent his new nation.

its geoff carr who looked into it, not a journo, and the only reason he cant is because he has represented another country in the last two years making him inelligble for origin. (lets ignore the hypocrisy of that stance considering the history of Lam and Carroll)


Nonsense, their nation is whatever they decide it is. And when you have a player like Petero, a proud fijian, born in fiji, or fijian heritage unable to choose to represent fiji (even though he has publicly said he would like to) because he also would like to represent his state, it shows the double standard Australia apply.

And you are right, the answer is to give meaningful test and rep rugby to the pac islanders, but considering the lip service the NRL and ARL pay the NZRL and RFL I cant imagine that happening any time soon.


what are they getting in return for making this commitment?

In return for giving up the chance to play meaningful, top tier internationals every year, for giving up origin, what do they get? a game against the Prime ministers x111? a tournament against the other 2nd tier nations if we can be d putting one together for them? a world cup every so often?
and the choice clearly favoured australia, had petero being split 50-50 over which nation to represent, the opportunities offered by Australia far far far outweigh those offered by Fiji

not at all, he isnt english, isnt good enough and has played for another country.

well if you cant see the difference between somebody such as civoniceva who moved to australia before he turned 1, who grew up playing rugby league in qld and went on to make the nrl, his state and his country playing for australia, and manu who grew up playing rugby league in australia and took up a contract to play rugby league in england before being named in a 30 man squad with the potential to play tests for england after 3 years residency, then i think we are wasting our time here.



geoff carr is an idiot who makes things up as he goes along. the further away he is from rugby league, in particular international rugby league the better.



an australian playing for qld and australia is now a problem?



completely agree with you, the arl are terrible for the international game and usually only have their own interests at heart. massive change is needed in order to help grow our game. i would hope that the rfl and nzrl make a stand against them one day for the good of the game, i dont know why they dont.



i agree with you here as i have stated in my posts. they need more a chance to play regular, meaningful tests and tournaments and perhaps more players of their heritage will commit to them. in saying that, if someone such as fui fui moi moi for example was truly a tongan, surely he would stick to playing for them and nobody else. i would never play any sport for a country other than australia!



i see your point, but again, an australian is playing for australia so i dont see the relevance here in comparison to willie manu.


one thing we would all agree on though is the one nation for life rule right? this nation swapping is massively damaging the game at international level and is one of the biggest issues holding us back as a sport. why cant the powers that be understand this?

If Manu plays for England and scores the winning try against Australia you won't all be whinging then.

In fact I reckon you will all be saying what a great rule it is that non English nationals can be given the wonderful opportunity to represent such a fantastic sporting nation as England.

APPARENTLY....According to some on these boards.......

Barry_McKenzie was born in the North of England but is now the pride of Australia

Insane!

why did that start?

ive been accused of being someone called AP before as well

Bazza...I know you're a true crim (and if you aren't, you should be banged up)......and you're like a breath of fabreeze after the guff served up by the other colonial upstarts.......

in other news
I thought this thread was going to be moved to other sports......Man U for England? Don't be daft...their squads all johnny foreigner

...just like HKR

in principle there is no difference. Where are you wanting to draw the line? 1 year old? 10 year old? 15? 20? 25? are you prepared to tell someone who moved a little later than YOUR limit that THEY arent the nationality THEY decide to be?

so it wasnt a media beat up was it?

it isnt a problem at all. A fijian not being able to play for Fiji is.

because the ARL would take their bat and ball home and we will see the poor international game we saw between 96 and 04 again.

so you are Tongan, but you also qualify for Australia. You can play in top tier RL in the every year, you can play in NZ, Australia, france, and England every two years, you can play in a world cup every 4 and a tour every 4, you can also play in the origin series once a year. And you would give that up just so you can represent Tonga once every so often?



No, i dont agree at all. The one nation for life rule will only weaken the 2nd/3rd tier nations. No decent player is going to risk missing out on the opportunities playing for one of the big three offers for the chance to maybe represent one of their nations in a 2nd tier comp

we need to make it so the decision doesnt need to be made. Where FuiFui can represent Tonga AND play international rugby at the highest level

we dont seem to be getting anywhere on this point. age has nothing to do with it, manu only moved to england to take up a sporting contract with a club, he is not english and should not even be considered. end of story, i dont see how you cant seem to understand this.



[urlhttp://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/spo...-1225882487266[/url

looks like it wasnt, but it was the nsw selectors who are even more retarded than carr who actually said no to the idea.





assuming you're referring to petero, he plays tests for australia, he made his choice and has stuck with it. fijians have the chance to play for their country. there was a pacific cup last year and they also have played tests v png and samoa. having more tests with full strength teams available would be a good thing.



i dont think they would, we have to play against somebody! other countries should voice their concerns about the amount of power the arl have in the international game.



last year tonga played in a pacific cup, this year they have tests against samoa and possibly png. if you are truly tongan, you would play for tonga. they also had the chance to play in this years 4 nations by winning the pacific cup last year. if there was a one nation policy they could have a chance to build a team over the years in the build up to the world cup but they seem to take the easy option every time and pick players who would be rather playing for someone else and it shows.



the system we have now is a disgrace and does nothing for the long term development of pacific nations. allowing players to pick and choose almost at will is just a quick fix, and the results have showed. by locking players into playing for a nation such as tonga for example gives them an opportunity to build a national team over the years and gives them a clear cut choice in the players they have eligible every year. in the last world cup tonga were a joke. they picked current australian internationals, current nz internationals and pretty much anyone who had a link to tonga and also completely ignored the domestic quota rule and their results showed.



that is ridiculous! playing for your country is the highest level. it seems that you would be happy having 6 teams of australians of different backgrounds pretending to be national teams playing in a world cup. allowing players to play for 2 different countries is the biggest thing holding us back as a sport internationally.

and Petero's dad only moved to Aus because of the economic opportunities it offered. It isnt like young Petero at 1 year old decided that Australia was his cultural and spiritual home.

they both migrated because of economics, one earlier than the other

but it shows the aussies clearly arent above 'that sort of thing'

he personally has said he would have liked to play for Fiji. Jarryd Hayne and Lote Tuqiri did. They then chose Australia because of the greater opportunities it offered

or they could just not play them, its not like they earn loads of cash from them.

like FuiFui MoiMoi, who only came to Australia to take up a sporting contract, who could barely speak the language when he moved, He isnt a true Tongan?
but they wouldnt, they simply wouldnt choose to play for Tonga, people qualified for Tonga wouldnt play for them, they would risk not playing meaningful international RL for their whole career by playing a game or two against 2nd tier nations.

playing for your country should be, unfortunately it isnt. Because if you dont play for England, NZ or Aus, representing your nation means you never test yourself against the best teams in the world.

When was the last time Tonga played one of the big three in a full test match? Samoa? the Cook Islands? outside of the world cup Fiji?

And i'll show my in Wollies window if that happens

no they didnt. petero was raised in australia. manu moved to england on a sporting contract. peteros australian, manus not english. end of story!



possibly true, but as it stands today we havnt had a manu play for australia.



he said he would help out fiji after he has retired from rep footy in australia. hayne played a test match for australia in 2007, and after missing out on the aussie world cup squad he then played for fiji. up until that point he had no idea about his fijian heritage other than his dad was born there. lote played for fiji in the 2000 world cup with the knowledge he would still be able to play origin and for australia. if there was a one nation for life rule he would still be locked into fiji. if that rule forced him to abandon fiji because he wants to play for australia then so be it, its not like fiji really gained anything out of him (and hayne) playing for them for one world cup only and them dropping them as soon as they are good enough for origin and australia.



the international board does, and the players want to play for their country. i would like to see the rfl and nzrl make a stand against the arl and not bow down to their every request. apparently the future rlif board will also have voting members from the newly formed pacific federation and the euro fed.



you do know moi moi grew up and went to school in nz right? of course he could speak the language, he is a shy man and didnt want to face the media so he pretended not to speak english. as for being a true tongan, its up to him i guess but so far he has gone from tonga in 06, to nz in 07, back to tonga in 08 (switching back by taking the rlif to court but not actually playing) and back to nz in 2009. you dont think this makes an absolute mockery of our sport?



then they dont play international rugby league then! playing for a country is a commitment, not something you do because you missed out on playing for another country and just want to compete in a tournament before switching back to the original country you wanted to represent. i understand the frustration of these nations not playing enough meaningful tests and tournaments, this is changing but not quickly enough. it needs to change in the future for the good of our international game.



this is slowly changing through tournaments such as the 4 nations, world cup and pacific cups. more needs to be done though, esecially mid season when australia play origin.



tonga play nz this year, samoa have played full tests v nz the last 2 years both outside of the world cup. fiji have played the odd test v australia over the years and have started playing png annually. this isnt enough, but it is a small start.