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 issues:
1. Nation swapping
2. Residency

Nation swapping is necessary I feel when we're a developing sport in many countries. If we want a remotely competitive international scene, the likes of Scotland, Ireland, Samoa, Tonga, etc. are going to have to borrow players from the major nations to compete.
However, the need to swap nations between the bigger nations is completely unnecessary. That's why I like the Vagana idea of selecting a major nation and minor nation.
At 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.

Though the residency rules were five years?

Unless your country of birth has ten faster runners than you, but the country you choose to adopt does not, of course...

In which case I doubt you're going to be in line for too much success either way, TBH.

Really? Competing in the Olympics is still a huge success.

Funding?

I imagine that GB's athletes, for example, are funded alot better than most others.

As Wellsy said, the honour of competing at the Olympics would be viewed as a success by many. That aside, the same principles apply here as for team sports. You could quite easily argue, for example, that Rangi Chase won't 'be in line for too much success' by switching his allegiance to England. But if he didn't switch, he wouldn't be playing international football.

As populations become more diverse and mobile, concepts of national identity have to become more flexible or die. Either/or for me.
You'll get the odd old fashioned flag waving patriot swimming against the tide, but patriotism will be a quaint but redundant concept in a few generations time, IMO.

Fair point. Although I'd still say that the nationality switching in athletics has no impact on the results or competitiveness of the latter stages, which is probably why people care less.

is he blasting England, or Steve Mac?

I completely understand Chase's reasons for doing so, and accept the point about going to the Olympics. I disagree with both if that's the reason for doing so. Like I just said to Wellsy though, I think it probably generates less criticism because a lot of the time you're not likely to be talking about medal hopefuls in those cases, whereas in RL you're talking about the 3 biggest fish in the pond.

Also, with a team sport, if you're not going to enforce enough eligibility criteria for a national side IMO it becomes a redundant concept, they're just club sides in another guise. You might as well scrap it in it's current form and either play club sides against those from other leagues, or SL v NRL representative sides, or even just leave it all together.

Blasting Steve Mac for not selecting Luke Robinson is the crux of his rant I reckon.

that does appear to be his issue

maybe he can give a lecture on loyalty next?

The whole international selection is too complex.

Get rid of the residency bullsheet and keep it simply to if you're english (austrailian, NZ...) then you can play for them. If you arent, then you cant!

Tbh though, union is worse than league for this.