Pom isn't a derogatory term. It is equivalent to you saying Aussie - which we don't have any problem with.
In fact, my father was born in Cambridge, and my nickname for many years was little pom, because my father was big pom - and it never even occurred to me to be insulted by that.

Or it’s a cost saving exercise.

Offensive or not, it's not the same as calling you guys Aussies. That would surely be calling us Brits? Pom is rhyming slang for immigrant isnt it?

Good to see he's exporting his undoubted skills down under, after trashing Salford at OT.

Property Of (his/her) Majesty.....deported convicts.

Samuel Tomkins, formerly of Wigan Warriors, now with the Catalans Dragons, was the star of the England side, and showed why he is one of the greatest open field attacking players that England has ever produced. Only the immortal Roger Millward comes to mind as a better attacking half. What a pity that Australians and New Zealanders did not see the best of him during his injury hampered NRL years.

Samuel Tomkins is truly sublime in attack, and worth every euro that M. Guasch paid for his services.

Great post! Until I saw kirkmond mentioned mind

I had to throw another Yarkshire player in for appeasement purposes. He was the only one off the top of my head and I based it on previous seasons.

I just want to know wtf Kirkmond is.

He plays in the same team as Burrows, Maguire, Seinfeld, McGilivray & Johnson and is coached by Wain.

It's actually a shortened version of Pomegranate, which is believed to have been an Australian attempt at Rhyming Slang and also because pale skin immigrants turned the same colour as said fruit when out in the sun for too long.

It is not either Property of Mother England nor Prisoner of Mother England, and is accepted as non-offensive in Australia (which is not to say it isn't)

Aussie, same as Paddy, Sweaty, Taffy & Kiwi are all common names for 'stralias, Irish, Scottish, Welsh or New Zealanders. Only the Astralians refer to Brits as Poms, whilst Kiwis refer to them as Pakeha

How bad were hall and mcgillvary?

Tomkins was the only one who looked half interested for England

I have no idea where the word pom comes from, and no one else does either.
All I know is that no one uses it as an insult, and if you take it as an insult, that's your problem, and we really don't care if you choose to be like that.

They call us Poms, we call them convicts, did anyway on the Ashes tours I've been on. Didn't tend to come up while living out there with relatives for some reason.

The player of the Nines World Cup tournament was Australia's Mitchell Moses who is of Lebanese descent. He just pipped the Kiwi Shaun Johnson, who is partly of Laotian descent (his mother). The third best player was Samuel Tomkins, who is pure English. It shows that the game has a truly cosmopolitan pedigree and we need to take advantage of that by bringing the game to foreign shores as soon as possible. Rugby Union does that, and that is why it is thriving around the world, and stealing our best players.