World Rugby boss Agustin Pichot has sparked outrage among rugby fans after tweeting out a list of the top 11 rugby-playing nations with ‘foreign-born’ players in their teams.
And his social media post, which has got the rugby world up in arms, has led to calls for the former Argentina scrum-half to resign from his position as vice-chairman of the game’s governing body.
Jugadores No nacidos en sus paises/ Foreign-born players en Noviembre 🏉
🏴 46.3%
🇯🇵 37.1%
🇮🇹 29.7%
🇦🇺 29.4%
🏴 27.7%
☘ 26.1%
🏴 24.3%
🇫🇷 12.9%
🇳🇿 12.5%
🇿🇦 & 🇦🇷 0%
— agustin pichot (@AP9_) November 20, 2018
SOCIAL REACTION:
The list is absolute nonsense & you should be ashamed of yourself for propagating it, George North isn’t really Welsh because he only moved there aged 2 despite having a Welsh mother, heaslip shouldn’t be considered Irish because his dad was on duty with the UN peacekeepers?
— Propwinger (@propwinger) November 20, 2018
This tweet
💩100%
👍0%— Dai Lama (@WelshDalaiLama) November 20, 2018
@BillBeaumont thoughts on this Bill? When talking about multi-cultural societies, we generally don’t consider people who moved to England as kids as foreign. That’s how xenophobia and racism spreads.
— Matthew Wilkinson (@1MattWilkinson) November 20, 2018
Gus, do you have a statistic on the number of Argentinian players over the past 20 yrs developed to International standard by French, Italian Irish, Welsh, English and Scottish clubs? All whilst earning Euro and Pounds? Presume you don’t as it would be an equally dumb stat
— Philip Bredin (@philbredin) November 21, 2018
And your Argentina number is incorrect as Sebastian Cancelliere was born in the US.
— Paul K Murphy (@PhdMurphy) November 20, 2018
what drivel – takes no account of whether players have family links to a country or grew up & came through a country’s rugby pathway. Why not focus purely on ‘project’ players, which is what I suspect your real target is, rather than simplistically picking country of birth?
— Dan Weasel (@dan_weasel) November 20, 2018