Pass the passport! Geographies of the Rugby World Cup 2011

Research Article

Pass the passport! Geographies of the RugbyWorld Cup 2011

John Overton, Warwick E. Murray and Jo HeitgerVictoria University of Wellington, Wellington, Private Bag 600, New Zealand

Abstract: The Rugby World Cup, held in New Zealand in 2011, was a showcase fora rapidly globalising sport involving competition between twenty national teams,comprising over 600 players. This paper analyses the geography of the players’ teamaffiliations and reveals patterns of labour mobility that disrupt and render complexconcepts and definitions of ‘national’ identity. We see that the dominance of profes-sional rugby, particularly by European clubs, is concentrating player resources andrevenue generation in ways that suggest an evolving core–periphery relationship. Wesuggest that the players themselves exercise agency by finding, manipulating andexploiting cracks and opportunities in the complex regulatory framework of the sport.We build a case for a research agenda that maps out these geographies of rugby andtraces their implications for understandings of identity and the political economy ofglobalising sport.

Key words: globalisation of sport, migration, national identity, rugby union, RugbyWorld Cup 2011.

In 2011, the Rugby World Cup (RWC) was heldin New Zealand. As the peak spectacle of agame that is estimated to involve some fivemillion players worldwide (Chadwick et al.2011) it brought together 20 teams representinga range of countries from the Americas,Europe, Asia and Oceania. National identitywas a key element of the competition: gameswere preceded by national anthems, cultu-ral challenges were performed, and nationalcolours and mascots were abundant among themany thousands of supporters who travelled toNew Zealand to support their country teams.As the competition progressed a set of contro-versies highlighted a number of entrenchedinequalities in the structure of the competitionand the wider world of rugby, notably theunequal treatment of so-called tier one and tiertwo nations in the draw, the ability of somenations to exploit eligibility rules to their own

advantage in selecting players nurtured inother countries, and the pressures put onplayers from tier two countries by their clubemployers to either stay away or protect them-selves from possible injuries. These are funda-mentally geographical issues, involving themovement of players and capital across space,and the construction and manipulation of iden-tities. This article is an initial exploration of thegeography of rugby, focussing in particular onthe movement of players and the phenomenonof multiple identities. It sets an agenda forfuture research in this field.

The global labour market for rugby playersinvolves differentiated labour migration inwhich individuals and institutions use complexgeographical strategies to leverage and maxim-ise both economic return and personal prestige.Mobility across space is frequent and continu-ing. Players will often move several times

Note about authors: John Overton is a geographer with research interests in aid and development, thegeography of wine and the Pacific Islands; Warwick E. Murray is a geographer with interests in ruralgeographies, globalisation and South America; Jo Heitger is a research assistant who has never played rugby.

E-mail: [email protected]

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New Zealand Geographer (2013) 69, 94–107 doi: 10.1111/nzg.12013

© 2013 The AuthorsNew Zealand Geographer © 2013 New Zealand Geographical Society

during their globalised careers, such thatnational place of birth, education and domicile,as well as cultural hearth, will not always bestable or aligned, thus complicating the ques-tion of national representation. National iden-tity, of course, is complicated and not a simpleaffiliation to one place. Instead, national iden-tity in rugby is a field of possibility in whichrugby players and their agents can, in thecontext of weak institutions, utilise their familyhistories, their place of birth, their culturalcapital, their ability as players and their mobil-ity to enlarge their options to build careers,wealth and reputations.

Rugby union is a global industry – one char-acterised by an increasing involvement ofcapital investment and both private and corpo-rate ownership. Such capital sits alongsidesurviving but changing local, national and inter-national regulatory institutions and a vast arrayof amateur players and clubs. Fixed-formatannual tournaments among national teams andinternational tournaments among subnationalclub or provincial teams play pivotal roles inthe game’s profile. Rugby’s classed history sawit remain officially an amateur game until 1995and kept it under the control of national bodiesand the British-influenced International RugbyBoard (IRB). When the established orderfinally yielded to pressures from players andcorporate interests alike, mutual interests wereidentified in retaining the centrality of interna-tional rugby in the schedule of annual fixturesand thereby in the identity of the game. Thiswas particularly so in the Southern Hemi-sphere, where national associations retainedcontrol of player contracts. In such a landscape,a small number of highly talented players cancommand high incomes in a global labourmarket but will need to navigate a complexfield of employment opportunities, identity andgeography.

If we are to begin to understand rugby as anindustry, we need to develop our understand-ings of these processes. There is only a thinrugby literature to draw upon. Harris’s (2010)comprehensive study of the globalisation ofrugby union is one starting point (see alsoHarris & Wise 2011), while others lie in thebroader sporting literature (for example Bale1994, 2003; Maguire 1999; Bairner 2001). AsHarris confirms, rugby union has clearly

become a globalised industry since 1995, drivenby large corporate capitalist bodies in mediaand sponsorship and regulated in complex waysby both international agencies (principally theIRB) and national ones. These interests arebound up with the marketability of nationalidentity and thus with questions of how identi-ties are manifested in sport and how sportopens ways for identities to be reshaped andmoulded (see Maguire & Tuck 1998; Hogan2003; Grainger 2006; Lewis & Winder 2007).Values are manipulated and converted fromcultural to financial circuits through corporatesponsorship and the co-option or reshaping ofcultural and national symbols (Jackson &Hokowhitu 2002; Falcous 2007). Finally, therole of labour migration in professional sportis another potential starting point (Bale &Maguire 1994; Maguire 1994; Maguire &Pearton 2000; McGovern 2002).

Alongside the work of geographers such asBale, these starting points allow us to develop ageographical understanding of the sport ofrugby union. In what follows we take two direc-tions in particular. The first is to seek someinsight, through empirical work, of the detailsof the movement and employment of rugbyplayers. The second is to suggest a researchagenda and a number of attendant questionsthat seek to link understanding of social andcultural concepts, such as identity, with eco-nomic and political processes that shape andregulate the sport of rugby.

At the start of the RWC 2011, there were 602players recorded on the competition’s website.As the competition continued, this numbergrew as some players were injured and werereplaced by others. By the end of the tourna-ment, 614 players had been included in squads,and it is this set that is used for analysis in thispaper. For each of these players, we obtaineddata on their place of birth, age and, wherepossible, their ethnicity, playing history andcurrent club. Where possible, multiple sourcesof information were sought in order to cor-roborate data where there were inconsisten-cies. However, the data set remains partial andin aggregate must be regarded as an estimateof the patterns we describe, rather than adefinitive and completely accurate record.Information was also sought from newspaperarticles and player profiles that allowed a few

Geographies of rugby 95


illustrative case studies to be compiled. Theseplayer ‘stories’ reveal something of the indi-vidual strategies and actions followed thatunderpin the macro-level data and patterns.

The paper begins by introducing RWC 2011and analyses the country of origin of players inorder to illuminate the way different countriesassembled their squads of players. This analysisshows the considerable movement of playerswithin the world of rugby and is complementedby analysis of the geography of their clubemployment. These analyses illuminate the keynodes within the rugby industry, illustrate itschanging geographies and allow us to reflect onplayer agency within the rugby industry. We goon to propose research that investigates howplayer strategies, mobility, shifting identities,changing institutions and the exchange offinancial and cultural values are shapingthe core–periphery relations of a globalisingindustry.

The RWC 2011: An unevenplaying field?

The RWC competition began in Auckland on 9September 2011, involving 20 national qualify-ing teams from among the 117 country unionsrecognised by the IRB (Table 1). While teamslargely represent sovereign states, GreatBritain is represented by England, Scotlandand Wales, while Northern Ireland is combinedwith the Republic of Ireland as Ireland. Partici-pation at the Rugby World Cup, held every fouryears, is decided through a mix of world rank-ings and performance at the previous WorldCup for the top teams and qualifying competi-tions for the lower-ranked teams.

There is a very wide range of playing abili-ties across countries. The top nations play eachother annually in either the Northern Hemi-sphere’s Six Nations (the four ‘British’ teamstogether with France and Italy) or the South-ern Hemisphere’s Tri-Nations (New Zealand,Australia and South Africa) tournaments. Theother major force in world rugby, Argentina,was added to the Tri-Nations in the new‘Rugby Championship’ competition in 2012.In addition, these 10 nations routinely toureither the Northern or Southern Hemisphere.Outside the RWC the other national teamsplay each other or any of the top teams onlyintermittently. Teams ranked below about thetop 12 or 15 struggle to compete againsthigher-ranked teams, sometimes only playingtop-ten teams when they meet in a WorldCup. This tends to confirm and reinforce awide gulf in playing standards that graphicallyreveals the history of rugby as a British colo-nial sport, and one that reached other areassuch as France and Argentina only thoughclass relations.

In 2011, even before the first match, anumber of controversies were aired in the pressconcerning inequities in terms of the treatmentof differently ranked teams. Lower-rankedsquads were systematically disadvantaged byscheduling, seeding and squad selection. Thecompetition itself was designed on a basic dis-tinction between the leading (‘tier one’) teamsand the others (‘tier two’). The former con-sisted of the Tri-Nations and Six Nations teamsthat generally lead the world rankings. Thesecond-tier nations consisted of a mix ofreasonably consistent performers that hadappeared at previous World Cup events (Fiji,Samoa, Tonga, Japan, USA, Canada and

Table 1 Rugby World Cup 2011 pools and International Rugby Board (IRB) rankings

Pool A Pool B Pool C Pool D

New Zealand (1) England (5) Ireland (8) South Africa (3)France (4) Argentina (9) Australia (2) Wales (6)Tonga (12) Scotland (7) Italy (11) Samoa (10)Canada (14) Georgia (16) USA (18) Fiji (15)Japan (13) Romania (17) Russia (19) Namibia (20)

Source: IRB World Rankings 5 September 2011. Retrieved 10 January 2011 from http://www.irb.com/rankings/archive/date=2011-2009-05/histranking.htmlIRB rankings as at 5 September are in parentheses; ‘tier one’ teams are in bold.

J. Overton et al.96


Romania) and countries that had to earn theirplace through preliminary competitions withlesser-ranked teams (Russia, Georgia andNamibia). These two tiers were distinguishedby seeding in the tournament reflecting theirhistorical performance and lower status. Theteams were divided into four seeded pools offive teams each (see Table 1), and tier twoteams were placed into pools that eachincluded at least two of the top teams.

Whilst seeding is normal practice in sportstournaments, Samoa became the victim of aninflexible seeding system that saw it seededbelow Italy (ranked 11) despite its worldranking of number 10 at the time of the tour-nament. As a consequence it was drawn into avery tough pool (including South Africa andWales) (see Table 1).The lower-tier teams werealso disadvantaged by the scheduling of games.Whereas the top eight tier one teams – thetop-two-ranked teams in each of the four pools– all had an itinerary that gave them weekendgames and a minimum of six days1 betweentheir games, tier two teams (and two tier oneteams, Scotland and Italy, both third-ranked intheir pools) often had to play games in mid-week and had to face a break between somegames of only four or five days (and sometimesnine days or more). This inequity was com-pounded by the relative lack of strength indepth among the weaker teams, who were lessable to draw on talented reserve players whenthey had shorter periods between games. Theproblem was identified before the competitionbegan, and some of the results seemed to justifythis concern. Tonga, for example, beat thehighly ranked – and eventual finalists – Franceafter the former had had 10 days to prepare butearlier had lost to the lower-ranked Canadianteam following a break of only five days.

A further controversy was a complaint fromsome Pacific Island teams that they were notable to field their best teams because some oftheir eligible players were not being releasedfrom their European clubs. Such clubs weresupposed to untie all players called for WorldCup duty, as directed by the IRB and theirown national governing bodies. However, therewere rumours that some players were beingoffered inducements to stay away or take timeto recover fully from injuries in the off-season.Thus, for example, Isa Nacewa from Fiji, a

highly regarded club player in Ireland, madehimself unavailable for Fiji, staying in Leinsterinstead, though he stated ‘family reasons’ asexplaining his non-availability (Thomas 2011).This echoed the situation in previous tourna-ments. In RWC 2003, for example, two keySamoan players (Trevor Leota and HenryTuilagi) made themselves unavailable, Leotaadmitting that they would lose a great deal ofincome from their clubs if they played forSamoa (Grainger 2006, p. 51).Thus, despite thefact that the top 20 rugby nations earned theirright to compete at RWC 2011, arguably it wasstructured as a competition of unequals. Impor-tantly, this was at least the case from theperspective of Pacific Island countries, whichprovide much of the raw talent and many of themarquee players for many of the world’s pro-fessional rugby clubs in Europe and Japan andthe provincial franchises of the Southern Hemi-sphere. The geographies of the sport and itsgovernance meant that not all nations wereequal at the start of the competition.

‘National’ teams andmultinational players at

RWC 2011

The national squads that assembled for theRugby World Cup 2011 involved over 600players, who represented the 20 countries thatqualified. Many played for teams that were notthe country of their birth and/or arguably fornations that they would not necessarily identifywith as national subjects. These included anumber of ‘rugby migrants’ who were able toclaim eligibility to play either for the countrywhere they played their professional rugby dueto length of residence or for a country by virtueof distant bloodlines. The English trainingsquad, for example, contained many playerswho hailed from overseas. Players such asShontayne Hape, Thomas Waldrom or DylanHartley (from New Zealand), Matt Stevens(from South Africa) or Manu Tuilagi (fromSamoa) were selected, qualifying for Englandonly by virtue of recent residence or, as in Wal-drom’s case, because his grandmother had beenborn in England. All, however, were playingclub rugby in England in 2011, and nonehad previously represented another country atrugby at national representative level. The



Japanese squad also attracted comment with itsinclusion of players born in Tonga, Samoa,Aus-tralia and New Zealand.

This selection issue rendered controversialthe notion of ‘national’ teams. It was based on apact of mutual interest: countries across the tierlevels selected players of ability to enhancetheir performance, and the players could playat the national level, thus raising their profileand boosting their chances of a lucrative clubcontract. Structured into ‘the field’ of rugby,both players in the stronger Southern Hemi-sphere nations and Pacific Island breedinggrounds and the more wealthy clubs in Japanand Europe have participated in these merce-nary logics for some time. At the same time,Australia and New Zealand have been criti-cised for ‘poaching’ Pacific Island players (seeThomas 2005), for the latter teams seemed tohave a disproportionate number of players ofPolynesian origin. Grainger (2006) cites thecriticisms of Samoan/New Zealander MichaelJones, who has accused New Zealand of attract-ing and holding young Samoan players in theNew Zealand system. Perhaps even more strik-ing in the RWC 2011 in terms of the multina-tionality of teams was the coaching staff. Harris(2010, pp. 92–106) has discussed how rugbycoaching has become professionalised to alarge degree since 1995 and how both clubs andnational teams seek coaches from a globalmarket. At RWC 2011 only 12 of the 20 teamswere coached by people from that country.Most notably, New Zealanders coached fiveteams (including tier one teams Australia andWales).

The tournament therefore exposed a situa-tion whereby, despite the strong rhetoric of‘international’ competition, many players andcoaches did not have a simple affiliation to justone country – and certainly not the country oftheir birth. Rather, thanks to their ancestry,employment, schooling or residence they werefaced with the opportunity of representingmore than one country. There are no rulesregarding coaches, and this practice of coachingforeign teams is well established in sports suchas football. Arguably, the IRB’s rules allowplayers to play for any country as long as theymeet either residency or ancestry requirementsand have not played rugby at a senior repre-sentative level for another. Thus, many players

could qualify for multiple countries, and thosewith talent faced a choice. This complicates thequestions of national identity upon which theinternational game rests and introduces ques-tions of multiple identities.

Figure 1 is a conceptual map of national rep-resentation and place of birth at RWC 2011.Data on their place of birth were available forall players competing at RWC 2011. Suchinformation may not have been completelyaccurate, and some anomalies were found.2

Furthermore, place of birth as an index ofnational identity is flawed in some ways whenresidence at the time of birth was temporary orwhen the formative years of a child were mostlyspent elsewhere. Nonetheless place of birthdoes provide a reasonable index of nationalidentity and is the only one that is amenable toaccurate analysis. The large circles representthe 20 countries in the finals, whilst the smallercircles are countries3 not represented but inwhich players were born. Arrows representplayers moving from their country of birth totheir country of representation, and thenumbers in the circles show the number ofplayers at the tournament born in the country.

The first impression from the geographicalinterpretation of nationality is that there is avery high degree of mobility between place ofbirth and country of representation. Of the 614players at the tournament, some 113 (18.4 percent) were born in a different country from theone they represented. Only three countries(Romania, Georgia and Argentina) had squadsentirely made up of home-born players.England (71 per cent) and Japan (67 per cent),together with the USA (60 per cent) and Italy(61 per cent) had relatively low percentages ofhome-born players in their teams, but – surpris-ingly perhaps, given the rhetoric of playerpoaching from the Pacific Islands – the teamwith the lowest representation of home-bornplayers was Samoa – fully half of its playerswere born overseas (all in New Zealand).Tonga (70 per cent home-born) was similarlydependent on overseas-born players. Clearlythere is a geography at play that is morecomplex than simply first-tier (England) orwealthy (Japan) core countries ‘buying’ playersfrom the rugby-playing periphery. Further-more, it is interesting to note that some coun-tries are notable as generators of rugby players.

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New Zealand, in particular, was the birthplaceof 68 players (11 per cent of all players at thetournament – or more than enough for twocountry squads); South Africa was also notable,‘supplying’ 42 players. An interesting footnoteis that the country not represented in the com-petition that supplied the most players to RWC2011 (six) was American Samoa, a small terri-tory of around 65 000 people where rugby isbut a minor sport.

This picture of rugby player movement, asdepicted in Figure 1, presents an interestinggeography of a globalising industry that is atthe same time intimately entangled in widerpatterns of mobility associated with its primaryasset, the bodies of athletic young men. Indeed,we can use the metaphor of core–periphery tobegin to analyse this industry. We can identifytwo global cores: Europe and Asia-Pacific. Inthe former we see a tight grouping of countriescentred on the Six Nations competition teams(England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotlandand Wales) where there is some (albeit limited)movement of players within the region –players stay largely with their country of birth –and some importing of players, to a high degreein Italy but relatively limited in most othercountries. The Asia-Pacific region (Australia,New Zealand, Japan and the Pacific Islands),however, reveals a much higher degree ofplayer movement and attendant patterns offamily migration and player trade. This is mostevident in the outflow of New Zealand-bornplayers to Samoa, Tonga and Japan. Thus,we can envisage a map of various types of‘export-oriented’ countries (New Zealand,South Africa and Argentina – between themthese three countries supplied the equivalentof nearly five full squads), large ‘import-dependent’ countries (Italy, Japan, USA,Samoa), the smaller importers (Canada,Namibia, Wales, Ireland and Scotland), largelyself-sufficient countries (Romania, Georgia,Russia and France) and, finally, those thatengage in both ‘importing’ and ‘exporting’(Australia and England).

This is a complex geography that extendswell beyond the rhetoric of simple playerpoaching and a rich/poor divide, though boththese elements may be in evidence. Instead theflow of players between countries reveals an‘industry’ architecture built up from a complex

array of individual player movements exercisedby rugby players who seek to exploit cracks inthe regulatory framework and use their birth-place, cultural heritage and marketability as arugby player to broaden their professionalplaying options, laid over the top of social pat-terns of mobility that have seen large numbersof Pacific Island families migrate to NewZealand and Australia and New Zealanders(many of whom are second- or third-generationPacific Island migrants) move to Australia. Mul-tiple identities, eligibilities and affiliations arecreated through these migration processes andin turn are manipulated, created and utilised asa way of gaining national representation andthus increasing earning potential and prestige.In this, individuals are openly supported bysome country rugby unions keen to strengthentheir playing squads and prospects of success.

Professionalisation and the RWC2011: Corporatised clubs and

globalised players

Players develop their strategies within a fieldset by the organisation of the game domesti-cally and internationally. Rugby union becamean openly professional sport in 1996 followingthe RWC in 1995 when large media organisa-tions moved in and struck deals, particularlywith the SANZAR group of South Africa,Aus-tralia and New Zealand. Professionalisation ofthe sport soon moved to Europe, where clubsrapidly hired players and sought commercialsponsorship and media deals (Collins 1998,2009; Smith 2000; Ryan 2008; Williams 2008;Harris 2010). Professional rugby loomed largeover the Rugby World Cup of 2011 even thoughthat competition was not connected to profes-sional club rugby. In this sense, the study of thegeography of rugby needs to move beyond anation-centric analysis, very important thoughinternational competitions such as the RWCare in terms of understanding the globalisationof the sport and the economic and social issuesthat accompany it. Most professional rugbyplayers engage with greatest frequency in pro-fessional clubs and franchises, sometimesprivately owned, which attract revenue fromgate attendances, broadcasting, sponsorshipand marketing. These are the institutions thatemploy players virtually all year round, and

J. Overton et al.100


although national representation may bringconsiderable status, visibility and income, it isthe day-to-day work in clubs that provides mostprofessional players with their livelihood –even though international players in NewZealand are contracted in the first instance tothe New Zealand Rugby Union.

Clubs, and regionally based franchises andunions in the case of the Southern Hemisphere,seek to employ the best players within the con-fines of local employment and immigration lawsand their financial resources. In most cases thissets limits with respect to the number of over-seas players clubs can employ. Richer clubs willoften seek their players on global markets, withEuropean clubs able to employ from acrossEurope. The squads of premier European clubsare thus often highly diverse, with British,French and Italian players found alongsidePolynesians, Argentines, South Africans andNew Zealanders. In the Southern Hemisphere,the ‘regional’ Super 15 competition does notgenerate on aggregate nearly as much revenueas European club rugby, there are fewer teamsand tighter eligibility rules mean fewer non-national players. Nonetheless, it continues toattract and retain top players in part because theAustralian and New Zealand Rugby Unionsthat control their national franchises havemoved to maintain quality in their domesticgames and their Super 15 franchise teams byrequiring that players who wish to representtheir country have to play in their respectivenational competitions.4 Japan has relativelylucrative professional rugby competition, but inNorth America, Eastern Europe,Argentina andthe Pacific Islands there are no large-scale pro-fessional competitions and club structures thatcan compete with the larger franchises.

Professional club rugby involves players whomay be on very well-rewarded contracts along-side others who may be only semiprofessional.While an analysis of the club affiliations of the614 rugby players selected for the RWC cap-tures only a sample of the overall mobility, itdoes reveal a fascinating geography of profes-sional rugby (see Fig. 2).

Figure 2 depicts the location of the club affili-ations of the players at RWC 2011.5 The basemap is the same as for Figure 1, with the largecircles representing the 20 teams at RWC 2011.Lines show the movement of players from their

club location to the country they represent.Thisreveals a quite different pattern to the geogra-phy of national representation shown inFigure 1, as there is a marked divergence interms of where players are produced/born andwhere they are employed.Again, and to an evengreater degree than for place of birth, the initialimpression is of very high mobility of players.Overall, 230 (or 37 per cent) of players at RWC2011 played their club rugby in countries otherthan the country they represented.

The global landscape of professional clubrugby is highly concentrated. There is only oneinstance of the representation of a country inFigure 2 not at the RWC 2011, that being Spain.Clubs in two countries – France and England –dominate the global market for professionalplayers. Clubs in these two countries aloneaccounted for 227 of the World Cup players –enough to fill seven and a half squads. If oneadds in the other British countries and Italy –the countries that contribute to the EuropeanHeineken Cup club competition – we see that335, well over half, of RWC players played clubrugby here. The only other places to draw inoverseas players to their competitions are Japan(with its own competition and firm commercialbacking) and the SANZAR countries (SouthAfrica, Australia and New Zealand). In thesetwo countries the opportunity to represent anation and all that goes with that opportunity,including professional and social status as wellas increasing the value of the player as an assetin lucrative rugby labour markets once he hasbeen branded in this way, is used as an induce-ment to retain players. It is the pivotal strategyused by national bodies to protect the values(identity and financial) of their national teambrands and their domestic competitions againstthe globalising tendencies of player movementtowards the European core and lucrative Japa-nese playing contracts built on the organisationof Japanese rugby around major corporations.

Elsewhere, the globalised nature of profes-sional rugby is evident in the weakness ofdomestic competitions and clubs in the evolv-ing periphery. Unable to attract local sponsor-ship or tap large attendances and marketingopportunities, countries at RWC 2011 such asArgentina, Georgia, Samoa and Tonga had torely for their national squads on players playingoverseas. Georgia’s squad of 30 players, for



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example, included only seven who played clubrugby within Georgia; the other 23 all belongedto French clubs. The Tongan and Samoansquads were more widely dispersed (Tonganplayers were found playing in seven othercountries) but each had but a single playerplaying in local clubs. Argentina is one of themajor suppliers of top professional players toFrance and England, its own competitionlacking a strong professional base (Harris &Wise 2011). In between these extremes of clubriches and poverty lie a group of countries(USA, Romania, Namibia, Canada and Russia)who mix largely amateur players from localclubs with professional players plying theirtrade in overseas clubs. Scotland was the onlyEuropean team that was dependent on squadmembers who were contracted elsewhere inEurope. Only just over half (16) of its squadplayed club rugby within Scotland.

Although the distribution of professionalrugby in terms of professional clubs and compe-titions is highly concentrated, player recruit-ment is very much a global phenomenon. Manyplayers hire agents to find and negotiatecontracts – particularly important for well-established top tier players – and for manyothers there are recruitment agencies that canlink clubs and players. The internet has becomeimportant in the activities of agencies such asRugbyweb, Rugby Central and Rugby Recruit-ment where players and coaches send in theirrésumés and become exposed to hundreds ofclubs worldwide.

Thus the global structure of professionalrugby is chiefly centred on a core of WesternEuropean clubs interacting, penetrating andexploiting a differentiated but largely subordi-nated periphery. Professionalism has becomethe dominant globalising force in linking theagency of players and coaching staff in new andcomplex ways that disrupt notions of nationalidentity, and it is towards a research agendathat seeks to untangle this increasingly intricateweb that we turn in the next section.

New lines to touch: Exploringagency and identity in the

Pacific region

There has been little primary research into theexercise of agency by players. Such work

would provide a lens through which we can seehow individuals themselves perceive, engagewith, manipulate and even subvert both theregulatory frameworks and commercial pres-sures they encounter. Secondary data offers abrief and partial analysis of this engagementamong players at the RWC 2011 and offerssignposts to further work. We concentrate hereon players of Pacific Island origin, some ofwhom were particularly audible during theevent and, in the eyes of some analysts, haveparticular reason to be aggrieved with thepower asymmetries that characterise the geog-raphy of the game.

Grainger’s insightful analysis of Samoanrugby players (2006) provides a compellingargument that Pacific Island rugby has been, ineffect, exploited by more powerful unions suchas that of New Zealand. Although concedingthat some individuals have benefited fromengaging in professional rugby, he argues thatthey have remained largely peripheral and mar-ginalised in the world of rugby:

[T]hough some Samoan players have cer-tainly benefited from the professionalization(and subsequent transnationalization) ofrugby . . . their position as migrant workersis still largely dependent on the hegemonicstates who direct the policies and practices of[the] IRB. (Grainger 2006, p. 52)

It is certainly the case that players of Samoandescent, for example, are unable to representSamoa if they have played, however briefly,for another country and clubs also do with-hold players from playing for their country.However, we perceive a more nuanced situa-tion in which individuals do exert someagency in the expression of their own complex,often transnational, identities. In particular, itis necessary to look not just at national repre-sentation but also the wider landscape of pro-fessional club rugby and undertake deeperqualitative investigation of how this processunfolds.

We can offer a number of hypothetical state-ments based on initial observations that mighthelp set an agenda of questions to investigate infuture work. As we have seen, it is professionalclub rugby that provides the greatest financialbenefits for players. If they secure a contract



with an established club in Europe or in Japan, itmay provide an asset base for life beyond rugby.In some cases it also provides an opportunity tostep into a professional career in coaching or themurky and weakly understood world of playeragency. Professional rugby players are effec-tively commodities (Moor 2007) who are‘owned’ through contracts by clubs or nationalunions and often traded globally. Yet a player’scommodity value – and income – is not justdetermined by performance on the field.A highprofile, whether gained through representingone’s country in international matches or bycultivating a personality on and off the field, willattract attention from a better-paying club.International representation credentialises aplayer’s talent and increases his visibility, espe-cially where the player plays for a top-tiercountry whose teams play many times each yearin large stadia and with very large televisionaudiences. Players build identities and act stra-tegically to secure eligibility statuses that allowthem to play international rugby. In doingso, they negotiate the field of opportunitiesand contradictions among social and financialrewards and commitments to different nationsand face the risks associated with non-selection.The cases of four Pacific Island families whofound themselves represented in different waysat RWC 2011 are illustrative.

In the late 1970s, George Ma’afu movedfrom his home in Tonga to play rugby in Aus-tralia for the Drummoyne club. He and hiswife (who has Fijian ancestry) had three sons,all born and raised in Australia. The sons thuscould claim nationality in three countries: Aus-tralia as the land of their birth, Tonga fromtheir father and Fiji from their mother.Indeed, the three sons ended up representingall three of these countries. The youngest,Apakuka, was not selected to play at RWC,but he has represented Tonga at sevens rugby.Salesi, the oldest, was selected for Australia,whilst the other sibling, Campese, was selectedfor Fiji (Warren 2010).

Another set of brothers (Sailosi and MichaelTagicakobau) played on opposite teams atRWC 2011: Samoa and Fiji, respectively. Butboth were born and raised in Auckland, NewZealand, where they went to school and playedprovincial rugby. Now both play in England forleading clubs Saracens and London Irish. Their

father hailed from Fiji and their mother wasSamoan. Both would have been eligible to playfor New Zealand, but deciding that they wereunlikely to be selected, they looked to theirPacific heritage.Yet although they were stronglyaware of their Pacific family origins, the linksand possibilities were not immediately obvious:

Sailosi had never been in touch with hisSamoan side until he travelled with a NewZealand Marist sevens team to a tourna-ment in Samoa in 2000. When the Samoansfound out he was one of theirs – half,anyway – he was invited to play sevensthere and stayed. From the national sevensteam he graduated to the 15s in 2003.(Niumata 2011)

Michael later chose Fiji, where his father hailedfrom the chiefly island of Bau.

As well as these two examples of expatriatePacific Island families linking back to theirorigins to find a country to represent, thereare many examples of players moving in theopposite direction. The Tuilagi family fromSamoa is perhaps the most remarkableexample. Of seven brothers in one family – allborn in Samoa – six have played professionalclub rugby in England (mostly for the Leices-ter club) and one (Fereti, the eldest) first wentto England to play professional rugby league,later to switch back to rugby union (Godwin2006). Five brothers have represented Samoaat rugby since 1994, one, Alesana, playing atRWC 2011. But the youngest, Manu, playedfor England at RWC 2011. Interestingly, Manuqualified to play for England by virtue of resi-dence, having been to school in Leicester andlived there for six years. Yet in 2010 he wasthreatened with deportation because he hadentered England originally with his family ona six-month holiday visa and stayed on. Hiscase was then overturned by the Home Officeand he became eligible to represent England(This is Leicestershire 2010).

These Pacific Island examples represent buta few of the individual stories and point to theintricacies of player identities and affiliations atRWC 2011. There are examples that stretchbeyond the immediate Pacific region and Aus-tralasia. For example, the five players born inArgentina who represented Italy may have



been eligible because of residency (throughplaying professional rugby there), or they mayhave been able to call on long-standing familyties between the two countries. The New Zea-landers and Tongans who played for Japanlargely did so because they eventually qualifiedfor Japanese citizenship on the grounds of resi-dency. Some of these strategies are purelyopportunistic, revealing the ability of someplayers to squeeze through the regulatorycracks and gain representation of a countrythey have little or no long-standing affiliationto. Yet others result from long-term commit-ment to their new country. Tangaki Taulupe(Toby) Faletau was born in Tonga, but thanks tohis father moving to Wales to play rugby forEbbw Vale when Toby was seven years old, hehas a strong Welsh identity and regards it ashome (Burgess 2011).

Clearly, good Pacific Island players are highlysought after by clubs and countries in rugbyunion worldwide, and there are instances ofyoung players being offered high salaries tomove overseas to play in high school or clubrugby. Yet Pacific Island players are not simplypassive or exploited in this process. We canborrow the analysis of Epeli Hau’ofa in his sug-gestion of a ‘sea of islands’ whereby Oceanicpeople have long been adept at moving toexploit opportunities in far islands and coun-tries (Hau’ofa 1995). In the contemporarycontext, and embedded in extended familiesthat themselves operate often sophisticatedtransnational economic strategies and culturalidentity making, they have also become adeptat managing the economic and cultural valuesat stake.We can see Pacific Island rugby playersas being aware of their commodity value inter-nationally, being willing to move long distancesand adopt quite different lifestyles and evenresettle permanently, often being able to adopta new national affiliation (through family tiesor length of residency) and being adept at cir-cumventing regulatory barriers on issues suchas citizenship.

Conclusion

Rugby union is a globalising sport that hasbecome professionalised and linked to globalcapital through sponsorship, media coverageand ‘ownership’ of players through contracts.

Its most public expression is in the majorinternational competitions, principally theannual Six Nations of Europe, the RugbyChampionship of the Southern Hemisphere,and the Rugby World Cup held every fouryears. Here are seen overt expressions ofnational identity and support: the playing ofnational anthems, the performance of tradi-tional challenges such as the haka (seeJackson & Hokowhitu 2002), the waving offlags and the parading of fans in nationalcolours. Such international competitions arecritical for the sport: they give it global mediapresence, they attract the largest crowds andthey gain from lucrative sponsorship. Theseeconomic values draw heavily upon thesocio-cultural values associated with nationalidentity as well as upon entertainment. Forplayers also, these competitions present a wayfor them not just to gain prestige and pridefrom representing their country, but to gainfinancially – and significantly – by advertisingthemselves to potential clubs and sponsors, aswell as from game payments.

Yet the reality of the global industry that isrugby union is that it is driven much more bythe professional competitions that are basedon clubs, provinces or franchises, which run forlong seasons during the year and whichinvolve a much larger number of players. Con-tracts for such clubs and franchises are highlysought after, just as those clubs seek the bestplayers available, increasingly on a globalplayer market. It is clear that rugby union isnow characterised by a high degree of labourmobility as players seek not only professionalclub contracts but also opportunities to repre-sent countries in international competitionsand that in this, it is little different to manyother sports (Maguire 1994, 1999; Maguire &Pearton 2000); that its identity and economicvalues are tightly entangled; and that thestructure of the industry is core–peripheryin nature. Our paper highlights the poten-tial value of political economic research forunderstanding the new geographies of powerasymmetries that are shaped by, and shape,the increasingly corporatised and globalisedgame.

What is of particular note in the world ofrugby is a very high degree of player agency:the ability of individuals to develop strategies



that cut across and through national and regu-latory boundaries, as well as being constrainedby them. These strategies allow the players towiden their options for national representation,either ‘scaling up’ to represent a top-tiercountry that they were not born or raised in or‘scaling down’ to find a country to representwhen they realised they were not going to beable to represent the country of their birth ormain domicile. In the case of Pacific Islandplayers this is much more complex a phenom-enon than implied in rhetoric concerning theway some countries ‘poach’ players from thePacific or exploit their player base. Our paperpoints to two geographical research impera-tives in this regard. First, research should bedone into how this agency is framed and shapedthrough the work of player agents; and second,only qualitative ethnographic research canhope to uncover the interplay between identityand economic values in the exercise of agencyand, in turn, their encounters with structuringagents and institutions. It is this latter endeav-our in particular that we recommend for futureresearch.

Endnotes

1 South Africa, ranked top in Pool D, did have onegap of only five days between its matches with Fijiand Namibia.

2 For example the Australian player David Pocockwas variously reported as having been born inSouth Africa (on the official RWC 2011 website) orZimbabwe (on the Wikipedia website). He grew upin Zimbabwe and moved to Australia in 2002.

3 ‘Country’ here is defined as a sovereign state or, asin the case of American Samoa, a territory that isrecognised by the IRB as a national union.

4 It is arguable whether they would be able to retaintheir top players in the Super Rugby and othernational competitions if they did not make thisstipulation.

5 Information on club affiliation was sought by doingonline searches for each player, though most had aWikipedia entry that gave club affiliation, and mostcould be checked through a search of club websitesand media stories. Players may change often, andthis fluid situation made data gathering difficult.However, as near as possible, the club playersbelonged to at the time of RWC 2011 was used forthis analysis. Only two players – from the USA –did not have a stated club affiliation, but in thesecases it was assumed they played their rugby in thatcountry.

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Pass the passport! Geographies of the Rugby World Cup 2011