World Rugby needs to confront issue of player imports at club level

Is World Rugby prepared to forces countries to impose restrictions on imported players at club level?

Former Reds player Campbell Magnay is returning to Australia to play for the Rebels after a two-year stint in Japan. Picture: Tim Marsden

Is World Rugby prepared to ban countries from future World Cups if they refuse to impose limits on the number of imports competing in their domestic competitions?

That question, which goes to the heart of the most significant strategic challenge the game faces, maintaining the primacy of international competition over club, will be debated at the first gathering of the professional rugby working group in Sydney next week as part of a series of World Rugby committee meetings.

Rugby Australia deputy chairman Brett Robinson, who has been pursuing ways of protecting Australia’s talent from the predatory raids of British, French and Japanese clubs, said that unless gentler ways could be found to persuade clubs to cut back not only on the numbers of overseas ­recruits but also what they are being paid, then World Rugby might be forced to act.

“I’ll be interested to see how the professional players working group is going to go because one card you could always play is that for nations to be eligible for the World Cup, their local leagues have to be compliant with certain regulations,” Robinson said. “It’s whether World Rugby is up for the fight.

“If you want to participate in a World Cup, you have to have certain things in place around your domestic competition, because ultimately this is undermining the competitiveness of the international game. If you are not able to maintain the quality of your talent locally and it becomes club over country, then World Cups are ­undermined. There is going to be a lever that will need to be pulled if we can’t work through other channels to control this.”

The English Premiership clubs do have a salary cap but it is so generous clubs are able to offer sums that Australians players couldn’t hope to earn in Super Rugby.

Ironically, there is no limit to what French clubs pay, although French Rugby president Bernard Laporte, a former coach of Les Bleus, is working desperately to impose some controls, not because he is concerned of the impact on other country’s rugby economies but because having so many non-residential players in France is ­undermining France. If there is widespread gloom in Australia that the Wallabies have fallen to seventh on the world rankings, consider the sentiment in France, where Les Bleus have sunk to eighth.

Meanwhile, it is understood that former Queensland Reds outside centre Campbell Magnay is heading back to Australia from Suntory to the Rebels with an eye to winning a place in the World Cup team after signing a one-year deal, with a one-year option, with the Melbourne club.

Magnay was poised for Wallabies selection last year from the Queensland Reds before he stunned Australian rugby by accepting a two-season contract with Suntory in Japan.

He has backed himself in going to Melbourne, where essentially the entire Wallabies backline ­reside. Will Genia, Matt Toomua, Billy Meakes, Reece Hodge, Jack Maddocks, Marika Koroibete and Dane Haylett-Petty are there. And they are almost certainly to be joined by Quade Cooper.

But after turning down an offer from the Reds to return to Ballymore, the 21-year-old has opted to give himself the chance to succeed under Dave Wessels’ tutelage.