Australian raised trio called up for Japan Test debut

It’s an interesting situation BT. I worked at a high school in Brisbane in the 90s and we had a Japanese school come over on a rugby tour. Their British coach was in demand as an after dinner speaker at a time when school rugby was on the increase. Recently spoke with a fellow not long back from coaching in Japan who says yes the company aspect keeps Japan Rugby afloat, but Uni based rugby, where the Japanese involvement in the game began, back in 1906, is very much on the increase and improvement. (First game played between Brits in 1866, organised by some Rugby School old boys.)

tonga and japan have special bilateral agreements where a quota of tongan students and migrant workers go straight from the islands to japan..

Is it ‘odder’ than ‘Aussie Bruce’ Tupou running out for the Wallabies?

There is no way there are 45,000 Tongans in Japan. There are only about 35,000 in Australia. Do you have a source for that claim?

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Japanese rugby is quite strange in that the sport is part of company culture, you play rugby actually because your an employee of a company who have a team as a right of passage and to curry favour. The first players to go to Japan in the amateur era were hired as the employees of the company. So not only do a lot take the sport up quite late, they also have to work long hours as well.

That hardly sounds believable there are only 100k Tongans in Tonga, NZ and USA would have about 50k each and Australia is less than that. Japan is a strange country immigration wise, they had substantial American and Brazil immigration but it was descendants of Japanese who immigrated there in the 19th century.

Wallabies, ABs, Springboks, French, English etc rugby teams reflect our wonderful multicultural countries. The Japanese RU team reflects a team trying to avoid a 150 point thrashing.

Fair enough Greysey but do you apply this specifically to sportsmen ? The occupation of many of these is as professional rugby player .Their top payment would be at international level .We welcome into our countries lawyers, doctors, engineers etc all overseas trained at the expense of the source countries and there is no limit on their ability to rise to the top .So there is , at professional level , this conflict which would have to be addressed. A gifted player would not be allowed to play for his adopted country. But a doctor qualified elsewhere could , on merit , become professor at the top teaching hospital . That overused tiresome word discrimination could come into play .For my part I would say that one would have to move to your new country before 13 years .As for the others they simply would not qualify . It all gets a bit tricky. Stander playing all those years for Ireland and then returning to his home in SA does not sit well with me .There is an ingrained pride and nationalism in wearing one's country of birth colours which would not have been so for Stander at al.From where in the heart would he or Rathbone have sung the Irish and Australian national anthem ?

i do think 3 years isnt a huge commitment to play international rugby but its a problem thats already been dealt with by increasing to 5 years

Then its a good thing that the pub test doesnt matter to anyone in any real context. As for the other comment re teams having ‘ heaps of non australian and non nz names’ , this kind of judgmental ignorant xenophobia is something we as settler societies ( we are all migrants besides the natives) really need to move away from! Its not 1921 anymore and non anglo names shouldnt be viewed as foreign, especially as since many chinese, continental europeans etc have been in oz over 200 years, their decendants are australian like anyone else.

Sorry West, do you need me to link you to our discussion last week? We both know that both Aus and New Zealand have a massive foreign born population, in both the general population and in terms of rugby players. When I went through the stats last week I showed you there were very few in the squad not born in Australia or that grew up here.

MadKiwi, I went though this last week with West. The Wallabies squad was virtually identical to the All Blacks - with all but a few in the squad and an overwhelming majority of the 23 either born in Australia or moved here as children and went to school here. Not analogous at all

Thanks mate… I was wondering why he has not being spoken about. Also after last season what happened to him, I hope that he goes well as he has so much talent. And he is a brut of a beast, I would like to see him next to His dad,. :silly: I used to love watching Eroni play

TT… 45k of Tongans in Japan is scary, imagine the size of the SUMU wrestlers now…. :shocked:

Last I heard, He was joining back up with the Blues? Guess we’ll see him next year with the Blues.. a hopefully back in action with the All Blacks Not to mention.. ex-Warriors captain Roger Tuivasa-Sheck joining the Blues :thumbup:

And an ex French player Condom who was a great player, maybe Geoff is playing it safe. :laughing: :laughing:

So true WEST… Funny how some are against the game growing like Nat and JP complaining about imports, but they do not mention their own team. Where would their team be now? :shocked: WEST…. What has happened to Caleb Clarke this season?

These players are professionals .Plying their trade where they can best earn their living. Many from poorer countries .

It also means that those islander players in Japan can feed their families back home.