A press conference took place in Dublin 2 yesterday to announce the appointment of the new chairman and vice chairman of World Rugby. The event might have passed into the cavalcade of utterly unforgettable press conferences were it not for a tasty interview that new WR vice chairman Agustin Pichot did with Ruaidhri O'Connor of the Indo and others.
The legendary Puma scrum-half, it seems, is not a fan of the rule that sees CJ Stander (and hopefully next year) Bundee Aki in an Ireland jersey.
Somebody will kill me, but we need to change it. This is my personal opinion. It's wrong. It should be for life, like in football. I understand maybe a five-year [qualification period] and it has been discussed and I think it will be on the agenda in the next six months.
Pichot is clearly be voicing his own opinion, not that of his employer, but nonetheless it is clearly a strongly-held viewpoint. There are no doubt countless others who support him across world rugby (lowercase) and it will be interesting to see if this is the beginning of a movement.
Pichot goes on to make the case for a five-year residency rule.
There are special cases when people move when they're 10 years old, but going back to when a player is taken, like they are doing now, from an academy in Tonga and putting him to play, say, in an Ireland shirt, I'm against it, it's not right. I would love him to play for Tonga, to make money in Tonga and live well.
When I see the national anthem and people not singing it, it confuses me a little bit.
We take Pichot's point but if anthem singing was the sole barometer to judge a player's passion for their country, we'd have Stander for life and be down a northern portion of our team.
