Quote: Wellsy13 "There's a bit of a myth about Australia selecting island players.
Apart from Uate, Civoniceva and Tuqiri, who were all born in Fiji but emigrated to Australia as children and came through their development systems, everyone else was born in Australia. NZ are the worst offenders.
As mentioned earlier, there are two main issuesAt the end of the day, nobody bats an eyelid that nation swapping happens in athletics all the time, and that's a far bigger sport.
In regards to the residency rules, I think they're a joke. 3 years is not long enough to represent a country in sport. That's a short-term contract length. It runs the risk of buying players in for internationals.
People that have emigrated here early and developed here yeah, no problem. Someone like Harrison Hansen, who was born in NZ but has lived here as a child, I'd agree with being selected. But Fa'asavalu and Chase being selected were complete jokes.
But again, you only have to look at England RU and Cricket to know we aren't the only ones.
As for Brown's complaints about Henderson, you've got to laugh! "If he sounds like an Aussie and looks like an Aussie..." what does an Aussie look like?! A very stupid comment from him. Especially considering he was born in England to British parents! Did he just morph into looking like an Aussie?! Would he have turned black had he moved to Kenya?!'"
I'd say that in that case it's because it's mainly seen as an individual sport rather than a team one, so the change in nationality is rarely for competitive/career gain.