posted Nov 7, 2008

Bit late I know, but in response to the birth certificate qualification, "if you are born in international waters you qualify as the nationality of the ship you are on". Most likely be playing for Panama then as that is where the vast majority of ships are registered to. Do I win uninteresting pedant of the week award ?

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posted Nov 7, 2008

with all the UK rugby players that England has to choose from, it just shows the lack of talent the UK has, The northern teams have only won the world cup once so i guess you can borrow the souths players as they are already here teaching your premiership teams how the game should be played, and between Australia NZ and South Africa we have all the other Worlds Cups.

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posted Nov 7, 2008

How about this then, Armitages brother plays 7's for the West Indies side. Also Barack Obama, his father was born in Kenya when it was still a crown colony so he can claim British Citizenship, therefore so can Obama. As for me i'm a forces brat, born on a RAF base in West Germany. Mother a brummie, father from Belfast. I have 2 English grandparents, 1N.Irish and 1 Dutch. My birth was registered at the nearest British Consulate, so am i elligible for all home nations, not in my mind, as when you're registered abroad your parents can choose your admin centre - London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. Mine is Belfast. So even after living most of my life in South Wales I still say i'm N.Irish first.

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posted Nov 7, 2008

Bit late I know, but in response to the birth certificate qualification, "if you are born in international waters you qualify as the nationality of the ship you are on". Most likely be playing for Panama then as that is where the vast majority of ships are registered to. Do I win uninteresting pedant of the week award ?

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Not true. If you are born at sea & the ship/vessel in question is not within the borders/waters of another country then it is the LAW of the country that the ship was registered in that applies (in most cases Panama)

In terms of nationality, it depends wether the country that you want to apply for citizenship from subcribes to the JUS SOLI or JUS SANGUINNUS rule on nationality. Jus Soli states that you can only apply for citizenship if you are born in that particular country or any of it's colonies. Jus Sanguinnus states that you can claim citizenship through heritage (parents/grandparents) or residency.

Just to stir things up........both of these methods apply in the UK!!!!

Under these rules, Armitage, Stevens, & Hartley would be fine as they can claim heritage/ residency.

The only "grey area" would be Riki Flutey as he has no known British/English heritage & has not been "over 'ere" long enough to claim citizenship.

He could have course have avoided all this fuss by just marrying a nice English/British girl & would have had full citizenship within 6 months & could choose any of the home nations to play for!!

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posted Nov 7, 2008

If you are born in England can you choose to play for Scotland or Wales as you have a British passport and not an English one.

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posted Nov 7, 2008

However, none of the above are relevant as we are not talking about citizenship, we are talking about international rugby.

Under IRB rules, he has not represented any other country at FULL international level & has been resident in England for 3 years+. In short, he is perfectly eligible to play for England & the best of luck to him.

This is just another case of bending the rules to benefit your team. Players do it all teh time (especially a certain Mr McCaw & most 7's in general!!) so why can't coaches or unions do it to benefit their teams??

IMO this is just the administrive version of killing the ball!!!

I do not think that any of these players were "groomed" or "poached" deliberately to play for England in the future so, it is something that has just happened.

Wales tried to deliberately poach "talented" youngsters from other countries such as South Africa & we ended up with Hal Luscombe!!!!

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posted Nov 7, 2008

New Zealand wouldn't have a team if they weren't allowed to poach from the islands. I am sure the ABs will have a good tour over here but they are chokers when it comes to WRC. Zinzan Brooke blames their choking on Scotland!

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posted Nov 8, 2008

Why do people say Flutey is not good enough to play for New Zealand?

It's all about form - he was head and shoulders above Aaron Mauger last year in the Premiership and Mauger has served the ABs with distinction over the years.

Different style of player but I would pick Flutey at 12 before Nonu.

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posted Nov 10, 2008

Cyr101: If you were born in Holland I'd say you coud only represent The Netherlands, if only going by birth certificate. Your arguement regarding who you'd want to represent, which I can uderstand, again gives so many variations. Your children; Switzerland.

The best logical/factual arguement I've seen here (against birth certificate only) is the remark of being born in a British embassy. Go by the birth cerificates of the parents. Their may be a choice here as each parent may have a birth certificate from different countries. Once you've chosen then that's it!

Lots of debate, which is what 606 is all about. How about a compromise? Birth certificate, 10 year residency and can not change country after representing a country at any level?

There is no definative way to agree on nationality as many/all people have their views. The issue that runs through this thread is that players can 'apply' or be approached by national teams, rather than representing 'their' country. I think most people would like to see this stopped.

As this will be my last post (!) on the subject I'd pick Fluety at IC again as he did reasonably well for his first game and he qualifies for Engalnd under the current rules.

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posted Nov 28, 2008

Save the England team: Give Luke McCallister a Passport and anything else he wants to pull on the jersey

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