A sidestep too far . . .

A few years back a friend found himself in the Samoan capital of Apia watching a school rugby match. On the opposite side of the pitch were a group of white men who stood out from the crowd of local parents, teachers and pupils. The interested outsiders were on a scouting mission from New Zealand’s Wesley College. The boys they were watching were 13 years old.

Every year a raft of promising islanders are offered rugby scholarships by the strongest schools in New Zealand, Australia and even Japan. It’s difficult to determine exact numbers but one reckoning made it more than 40 Fijians going to Australia alone each year.

If the capture and transport of prime island beef resembles a modern-day slave trade at first glance, it’s anything but. In the worst-case scenario these kids are offered the sort of education that usually requires serious sums of money and, at best, are eventually catapulted into the world of professional rugby and all the benefits that come with it.

Today’s “traffickers” of sporting talent are thoroughly modern in their methods, even extending to social media. There is a Facebook page dubbed “Fiji Rugby Guide” that is currently advertising for a flanker to join a Japanese high school and a centre for an un-named Japanese university, both of whom should be “large” and “fast”. Little wonder that Japan’s World Cup squad boasted Toetuu Taufu, Sione Vatuvei and Ryukoliniasi Holani who, I’d hazard a guess, don’t boast too many Samurai warriors in the family tree.

It’s obvious what the islanders get but they are not the only ones to benefit from the deal. The coach of the host country sits back and, thanks to the three-year residency rule, enjoys a ready-made multi-racial melting pot from which to choose his national squad. To take just one obvious example, the current Wallaby squad includes players from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Tonga, Ireland and South Africa.

Even England are at it now and I’m not referring to Manu Tuilagi, who arrived in Britain on a tourist visa and still was allowed to stay. Last year a Fijian teenager, Filimoni Savou, arrived at a junior school in Yorkshire, Terrington Hall, and two more Fijian youngsters followed in his footsteps this September. Savou has moved on, earning a scholarship to the £30,000 per annum Harrow School in London, alma mater of Winston Churchill, and good luck to the lad.

He is in good company. Born in Sydney to Tongan parents, Viliami “Billy” Vunipola is already at Harrow and a member of the Wasps academy. Like his brother Mako, Billy has already represented England at age group level.

England boasts something in the region of 175,000 senior male players to choose from; Scotland has 11,687. The obvious, if emotive, question to ask is whether Scottish rugby should be bolstering its playing numbers with some foreign imports who would qualify for Scotland in time for RWC2015 – if Murrayfield moved with unusual haste?

“I think we should,” says former national coach Jim Telfer, just returned from a month at the World Cup. “Just not too many. A selective choice of three or four young islanders would make a hell of a difference to Scottish rugby and I don’t think that our young players could complain. Look at (Manu) Tuilagi. He’s only 20 and still he was the go-to guy for England.”

Would the Scottish rugby public buy into the idea?

“No, I don’t think so,” is Telfer’s blunt response.

It’s a head scratcher all right. The pro-teams are already largely unloved by the Scottish public so any further erosion of their meagre support base because of an official import policy would prove damaging, although initial resistance may wane if those same imports provided a shortcut to success on the field.

The problem is that few, if any, young Scottish backs look likely to give the status quo a much-needed shake-up, with two possible exceptions.

The first is Mark Bennett, who played a few pre-season matches for Clermont before busting his anterior cruciate ligament, which will keep him out for the remainder of the season. The flying Dutchman Tim Visser, who qualifies for Scotland in June of next year, is the only other. An undoubted talent such as James Fleming has yet to play one minute of one competitive match for either Glasgow or Edinburgh, despite being quicker over 30 metres than anyone else in Scottish rugby, Thom Evans included.

Put bluntly, with Scottish rugby struggling to maintain their place at the top table, should the Murrayfield mandarins target success on the field at all costs or make do with the Scottish players available? Plenty of other unions are engaged in the import trade, either actively or, at the very least, conniving with benign neglect, although just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t automatically mean that Scotland should too, even if our meagre player base offers more reason than most.

In attempting to bolster our numbers there is one obvious place to look. There are supposedly 400,000 first and second generation Scots living in London and picking an “Englishman” with a Scottish granny is infinitely less contentious that picking a Fijian with no Scottish connection whatsoever.

Murrayfield are already planning to beef up the exiles’ network of scouts and are mulling the possibility of putting someone in overall charge of keeping a worldwide database of Scottish-qualified players up to date, alongside the obvious work of growing the game within Scotland.

An SRU spokesman offered this comment: “Scots have put down their roots in many parts of the world and there are Scottish-eligible players in many countries. We are currently looking at ways in which we can better identify and harness that talent if the desire exists within that player to represent Scotland.”

Properly qualified players from all corners of the globe are the immediate answer to a pressing problem, so any Fijians appearing in Scottish colours will be the ones with a granny from Gretna.

It’s just a shame that they are in such short supply.