Former Wallabies Morgan Turinui and Justin Harrison have warned that picking overseas-based stars in the Test team won’t automatically translate to an uptick in Australia’s rugby fortunes.
In the wake of another heavy Bledisloe Cup defeat, Rugby Australia is considering the possibility of loosening the ‘Giteau Law’ restrictions on the Wallabies selecting players from abroad.
RA chairman Hamish McLennan told Stan Sport’s Rugby Heaven that chief executive Andy Marinos and board members Phil Waugh and Daniel Herbert would make a recommendation in due course but said it would not be selection “open slather” as per South Africa.
Turinui said he was heartened by McLennan’s “tempered” comments.
“I would advise caution to people that think well let’s just open it up and we’ll pick our best players and then suddenly we’ll kill everyone,” Turinui said on Rugby Heaven.
“If I was picking a Wallabies team this week there’d probably be three players who could make a Wallabies 23.
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“Two or three of the (Will) Skeltons or Richie and Rory Arnold in the locking position, Adam Coleman as well.
“Samu Kerevi is in the squad and a Sean McMahon – the time may have past him by but that’s a guy I would have looked at. Apart from that, that’s probably about all you’d pick.
“Someone might throw a Tolu Latu out as a hooker and that’s about it.
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“You pick some of those guys and I would caution people to assume that that would directly result in this massive improvement in the Wallabies.
“Because yes, you’ll get more talented players, I suppose. But it’s not just about that.
“You will lose a lot in terms of shared understanding and experiences, the cohesion model that smarter people than me like the Ben Darwins talk about.”
South Africa have a free for all selection policy and a Springboks team stacked with overseas-based stars won the 2019 Rugby World Cup and this year’s British and Irish Lions series.
But McLennan pointed out that South Africa’s domestic competitions had been “decimated” by the relaxed policy.
“People throw out South Africa as a model, well the thing about South Africa is that so many of their players have come through the Western Province Stormers system that they have this great understanding and experience,” Turinui said.
“That’s a big reason on why they’ve been successful, not just about picking superstars from elsewhere. I think it’s important to say that there are so many pieces to this situation, that I don’t want people to think we’re going to pick these few players and we’re going to kill everyone.
“What’s our pathway like for these players coming through, how do we promote quality players staying in Super Rugby and that model at that tier, NRC comes into it, all these things come into the picture.
“It’s encouraging that people like Phil Waugh, Dan Herbert, Andy Marinos are looking at the whole picture.”
Harrison, now chief executive of Australia’s rugby players association, also weighed in on the eligibility debate on Rugby Heaven.
“There’s 150 players onshore that should be getting turned into Wallaby players,” Harrison said.
“Now the panacea is not just putting a dream team of names together who are offshore.
“Players don’t always offshore and get better. They’re coming back into a system that’s established Wallabies principles of play and then drill into the high performance model at Super Rugby level.
“Get players into that system that get better inside that nationally aligned program.
“We’re a niche sport operating in a very, very powerful, international market and any time we have an artificial barrier or lever in place, that prevents us putting the best Wallaby team on the paddock, and the most competitive five Super teams, we have a problem.
“So it starts to remove some of those but it needs to be tied in to a strategy piece.”