The flood of imports coming to play for Edinburgh or Glasgow will, or could be, Scottish international players unless they’re already committed to another nation, Scottish Rugby chief executive Mark Dodson confirmed yesterday.
Dodson said that Scotland had to follow other nations like England and Australia and find players willing to complete the statutory three-year residency period such as South African Cornell du Preez, who joined Edinburgh but has said that international rugby with Scotland was “the main reason” he came.
More foreign-born players will arrive in Scotland shortly to join Du Preez and Glasgow’s Josh Strauss, the South African back rower who has made a big impact with the Warriors and has completed a year of the three-year process.
Despite the disquiet in some quarters that native players are being denied opportunities, the chief executive said Scotland were following “what happens round the rest of the world”.
“You look what happens in England, and even with Tim Visser coming over here, this is a global market place,” he said. “We either play our part in that or we don’t.”
“Much though Cornell has followed Alan Solomons over here to Edinburgh, you can’t blame the boy for having a look at playing for Scotland. We saw the quality in his performance against Munster and he is only going get better.
“We have got him young and he is a high-quality player has been throughout his career.
“Our criteria for bringing people here is that they either have to be very, very different from anything we have got here that will leave some impact with our game when they have gone, or they have to be qualified or can qualify for Scotland.”
The SRU will leave it to the individual players concerned, but the issue of international qualification will be a factor in discussions as players signed for either of the pro-teams, he said.
“You will find that most of the people we are bringing over are Scottish-qualified or can be Scottish-qualified,” he said. “It is their choice, I don’t want to bring people over and expect them to show allegiance to Scotland straight away.
“We bought them primarily to do a job for our pro teams but have made sure we are buying people who are either as good as people who have left, or better, and can have qualifications for Scotland if possible.”
Dodson added that with this policy it would be “hypocritical” to be outraged by the dual-qualified Scotland under-20 cap Tommy Allan if he chose to put in his lot with Italy.
“He (Tommy) has some choices to make and we respect whatever choice that is. If he wants to come back to Scotland we would be open-minded to that if he wants to go to Italy we wish him all the best in the world.
“If you look at the number of players coming over to Scotland from their own country, it would be hypocritical if we were outraged when somebody else makes that same move”