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Date Posted: 08:53:01 11/17/02 Sun
Author: Tappe Henning's Psychiatrist
Author Host/IP: 203.97.2.243
Subject: Gwlad nonsense

Capten Synhwyrol (From Gwlad front page):
"The Pacific Island nations, in particular, have suffered since the advent of the new eligibility rules in January 2000 thanks to the tendency of many of their finest players to move to New Zealand or Australia at an early age and sometimes end up playing test rugby for their adopted nations."

Is this wanker suggesting that these "finest players" were already identifiable as such when just babies? A huge number of Pacific Islanders emigrate to NZ. Some of their kids or grand kids end up playing for the country of their birth: New Zealand. Naturally enough, these people identify strongly with NZ, the place they were born, nurtured, educated, and trained. Is this Capten Synhwyrol too big a fool to understand that NZ is a multicultural society with a very strong Polynesian feel to it, especially in Auckland? There isn't a "New Zealand" and another quite separate community made up of Pacific Islanders. Those with Pacific Island ancestry who live in NZ ARE New Zealanders, just like those whose ancestry may be Scottish, Pom, Irish, African, Asian, or even Welsh (God forbid). Why the sob story on behalf of the Pacific Islands? The Pacific Islands are small poor countries; they are not rugby super powers in the waiting. They do about as well as they ought to. The latest eligibility rules have certainly hurt the Pacific Islands, but not in the way most Europeans think. The great Samoan team of the early nineties was largely made up of NZ-born players; many had never set foot in the Pacific. Some had no Samoan blood in them at all. (Stand up Frank Bunce.) If it looked like you were not going to make the ABs, you had a quick check of the family tree and turned out for Samoa...or Scotland,Ireland or for the truly desperate, Wales.
Fact: Only about twenty non NZ-born players have ever made the All Blacks. That is from over a thousand players. The biggest providers have been Scotland and Ireland.

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