Test rugby eligibility: It's simple, play for your nation of birth

Parisse was never going to play for Argentina, he had Italian parents and his dad played rugby in Italy. He was also never selected in any Argentinian junior team before being selected by Italy. Early life Parisse was born in La Plata, Argentina, to Italian parents. His father, also Sergio, played for L'Aquila where he won the Italian Club Championships in 1967 before his job with Alitalia took him to Argentina in 1970. Sergio Junior was born in 1983 and played his early rugby for La Plata. His family spoke Italian at home and every year Sergio would go on holiday to Italy. Club career Parisse moved to Italy permanently in 2001 to play for Bennetton, and made his debut for the Italian Junior team at 17 the same year. He made his test debut against New Zealand in 2002. moved to Italy and joined Treviso where he played for four years. He joined his Italian team mates Mauro Bergamasco and Mirco Bergamasco at French giants Stade Français in 2005.

Owen, Your coffee has not continued to develop and grow since it left South America, unlike a human!

I agree, with the following proviso:- ALL players MUST be released from the club commitments for ANY International game without suffering a financial cost to the player who is to be released to their national team. i.e. rich European club sides MUST be stopped from pressuring players from second tier nation stating that they are unavailable for their national team. Samoa, American Samoa, Argentina, Fiji, Kenya, Spain ,etc.,, etc.,, have been significantly affected by the intransigence of the wealthy European clubs in terms of releasing their players without imposing financial penalties. The "Game They Play In Heaven" has been badly damaged by the self interests of the wealthy!

Wow. We don't have such perplexing conundrums. The only people who aspire to SA citizenship tend to just hop across Beit Bridge or the Limpopo river.

The only qualification should be citizenship. None of this residency, parent and grandparent rule crap.

Why can't a resident not represent their adopted country? Are they not part of the culture of that nation? Are they to be forever relegated to an existence as an "other?" Citizenship would only be fair if every country had uniform regulations.

The problem with this is that nationalistic identification is far too fluid and multi-faceted to be governed by a set of rules. The essential truth that always escapes discussions of this nature is that it is entirely possible to be largely dissatisfied with, and distasteful of, the place in which one was born and grew up, and to hanker to live in and be a part of somewhere else. National identity is not some kind of natural part of the brain's growth process - it can form at any point in someone's life (or not at all) and have its basis in any number of trivial details. As an Australian born to Singaporean parents, who spent the last 10 years in Canada, I identify as Canadian, and if asked my background, I tell people that my parents were from Singapore. I have no problem with Australians, but as I had a fairly unhappy childhood growing up there, where I always felt like an outsider, I could not wait to get away. In my role as an ESL instructor, I've met any number of young people with similar stories, who've been all over the world trying to capture a sense of belonging they were simply unable to feel in the place of their birth. You simply cannot legislate for sentiment or the wide spectrum of differing experiences.

"it kind of makes a mockery of the idea of nations playing against nations" I honestly don't see why this should be the case. We live in a world where, outside of the sporting arena, our notions of nationality and belonging are increasingly less dependent on the circumstances of birth. We accept that migrants can be proud, fervent, and patriotic citizens even when they come to our countries in their old age, and we celebrate this belief in many ways, but we feel it to be devaluing the notion of international competition to have them actually represent our countries at sport? The assumption seems to me to be that people are innately connected to, and passionate about, the place in which they're born, and that simply isn't always true. Sometimes they're more passionate about and connected to the places in which they've consciously chosen to live, where they actually want to be. The fact that, in our little example, I should be eligible for Singapore but not Canada makes far more mockery of the notion of international competition. On the one hand, we have a country where I've spent my entire adult life, where my friends and family live, and where I've made a life. On the other, we have a country which I've visited twice (both times for funerals), where I don't speak the dominant language, but where my parents were born. Yet somehow, it makes more sense for me to represent the latter than the former?

Speight didn't move to Aus from Fiji, he moved from NZ.

They're actually not. It's no harder for an NZer to get permanent residency in Aus than an Irish or British person. The difference is that NZers, unlike Irish or British people, are allowed to live and work in Aus without a visa, but that's a special privilege. Basically Aus extends a privilege to NZers but it doesn't follow through to full citizenship. Now, there's arguments both ways as far as whether this is fair or not, but I don't think it's accurate to say they're subjected to harsh rules as far as gaining citizenship goes.

Parisse did not played for ARgentina because he decided to get paid for playing in a national team and at the time he got the called players were not paid for playing for The Pumas. He decided to play for Italy and get the money and now he cannot represent Argentina. I wish we have him. In this topic I am all in for will the article, I think in life you must make harder choices than this one, I know some players in Argentina that they have have turned down good money in order to be eligle to play in Tha Pumas squad for free, I find it unfair to have players in a national team that don even know the words of the national anthem of the country they are representing. Call me a romantic but a really enjoy watching a team thaat plays with their hart rather than the pocket, and in these days of super pro sports test matches have that for me.

"He will also likely spend the bulk of the rest of his life in New Zealand. How is he not a NZer?" Absolutely. The more you try to defend your idea Owen, the more you sound like Hando and his gang of thugs at the start of Romper Stomper. "This is not your country." Give us all a break and stop digging.

I've spent 18 years in New Zealand, went to high school here, went to university here and I have not lived anywhere else. I pay my taxes and have voted at every election, both local body and general. I am also now employed in the education sector in this country, having trained at a New Zealand university to be a teacher. However, I was born overseas. And Owen, if you were to tell me I had to prove to you, or some imaginary tribunal that you've cooked up in some apparent fever dream, I would not hesitate to tell you where you can stick your tribunal, and it would be somewhere uncomfortable, like the backseat of a VW Beetle.

Well, when a dad and a mum love each other very much, that leads to the birds and bees procreating and a stork constructing and delivering a baby to them 9 months after the parents... do whatever it is that they do. But sometimes, mum and dad might be living in one country and after the baby is delivered, they might move to another country. Like Stephen Moore's parents did when they were in Saudi Arabia. Or maybe the baby is one of those ones that gets left behind, and a mum and a dad or two dads or two mums might offer to take that baby with them, and that baby might have been put together overseas.

And different nations have different citizenship rules. This idea won't be realistic unless there's some sort of uniform regulation across the board when it comes to citizenship. And then we get other situations like the Cook Islands/Niue/Tokelau, where their citizens are also automatically New Zealand citizens by birth due to their respective nation's status as a protectorate of New Zealand. And then we also get situations like the former Yugoslav republic or the Netherlands Antilles. Both countries ceased to exist. What then?

Yep. Or is Owen suggesting that an immigrant can not be integrated into the social fabric of another country, and should perpetually considered an outsider?

And you idea would only work in a world where travel between countries, particularly ones not land-linked, would be impossible and concepts like "expatriates" did not exist. Your idea is insanely restrictive, impractical and unrealistic. People migrate and move around, often looking for better work opportunities. Kids grow up in countries where they weren't born. And who are you to tell them that they should not be allowed to represent the nation where they grew up?

Clyde Rathbone was already a professional rugby player. He moved to Australia for the same reasons as millions of others; for what he saw was better life chances for himself and his family. That was the reasons he gave himself, when asked. Henry Speight moved for many reasons I'm sure but one is that the political suituation in Fiji for the Speght family is not a particularly safe one. His family had significant trouble getting visa to watch him play because they were considered refugee risk ( which is pretty nasty reason in my view but that's the current Austrlain way sad to say). There is not such thing as a simple, answer to complex questions.

Like Brad Thorn.