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O'Meara wants foreign trading
By Wayne Smith
January 18, 2008
PETER O'Meara, whose turbulent stint as foundation chief executive of Western Force ends on Friday, has made a final appeal for the Super 14 ban on overseas imports to be lifted to allow Australia to exploit a possible exodus of white players from South Africa.
Force officials have been keeping a close watch on recent developments in South Africa, well aware that the appointment of the first black Springboks coach has the country's best white footballers edgy that future selections will be based on race rather than merit.
Significantly, Force even sent its academy coach Geoff Townsend to last year's Danie Craven Week, where the best of South African schoolboy talent meets, to scout potential recruits.
But unless or until there is a change in the rule that only footballers eligible to represent the Wallabies are allowed to play for Australia's Super 14 teams, those four teams will have to turn their backs on eager foreign recruits.
O'Meara said that, at the very least, the movement of players around the three Tri-Nations countries should be permitted.
"If there are surplus quality players in South Africa and New Zealand, why not make it easier for them to transfer here. Everyone benefits," O'Meara said.
"I don't know of any other competition where the convening body doesn't permit movement within the competition."
He may have had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, but O'Meara claimed that had the Australian Rugby Union been more relaxed on overseas imports when Force was having to buy a team from scratch in 2005, the club might not have landed in quite the trouble it did by breaching recruitment protocols.
"Allowing overseas players would have eased the competition for (Australian) talent, which only drives the price up ... everyone cannibalises everyone else," said O'Meara, who was found last year to have seriously bent the rules to recruit a competitive team.
There is a degree of immediate self-interest in the Force's campaign to broaden the recruitment base. Should either Nathan Sharpe or Matt Henjak be injured this season, Force would be battling to find quality, experienced back-ups at second row or half-back.
Neither of the club's two understudy No.9s, Southland (NZ) recruit Adam Clarke, who is eligible to play for the Wallabies because he has an Australian father, nor Brisbane Southshalf-back James Stannard has played a single Super 14 game.
The flipside of the player squeeze is that talented youngsters tend to get fast-tracked, but the Force could break all records this season if it seeks an ARU dispensation to use brilliant 17-year-old James O'Connor.
Rated one of the best products to emerge from Queensland's Nudgee College - no small wrap considering the school is one of the powerhouses of Australian rugby - O'Connor is being seen in the West as the next Matt Giteau. (Actually, it was the East media who gave him that wrap, along with Cummins the year before)
He is a gifted all-rounder capable of playing No.9, No.10 or No.12. The fast-tracking of his development is under way with a special clearance being made for him to play in the Darwin sevens tournament this weekend before leaving for the next IRB sevens event in Wellington next week.
"Don't be surprised if you see him on our bench this season," O'Meara said.
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