David Nucifora, the general manager of the IRFU's High Performance Unit to give him his fittingly grand title, last night indicated that the union's stringent restrictions on the provinces' acquisition of foreign players will remain in place.
Amid frequent references to the Union's "succession planning" as part of their 2015 World Cup review, significantly Nucifora read out aspects of the 2011 World Cup review which pinpointed "the same concerns", namely the lack of game time for some Irish players.
Just as tellingly, perhaps, the one example he cited from the more recent World Cup review was that of Ian Madigan. "He played only a handful of games for his province as a starting number ten. When starting at ten in a World Cup quarter-final, is that the perfect preparation?" asked Nucifora rhetorically in reference to the quarter-final defeat.
“Unless we address that sort of detail we won’t get on top of the situation,” added Nucifora, who stressed that “Ian was in that position with Jimmy Gopperth for two years when not ideal. We’ve got four teams and we have to keep remembering that when we’re building depth we’ve got to use those four teams really wisely,” and added “how succession planning effects the provinces and national team.”
The Union’s review of the World Cup took in interviews with the coaching and management staffs, as well as an unspecified number of players within the squad and key figures in the provincial set-ups. Yet ultimately, its primary area of concern was that which was being voiced within the union in the days following the defeat to Argentina.
In winning their group by dint of beating France, Ireland had achieved their primary goal, but the way Nucifora saw it, for Ireland to improve upon a record of six World Cup quarter-finals, things needed to change, and “some of the things we need to do aren’t going to be palatable for all of the people all of the time.”
“I’m certainly not against foreign players,” said Nucifora. “There definitely is a place for the foreign players in our system because history shows there are a heck of a lot of foreign players who have added a heck of a lot of value to Irish rugby over the years.”
“What we are aiming to do is to put in a number of checks and balances to be able to be very comfortable with a system of due diligence and how we go about choosing who those players should be,” said Nucifora, adding: “Obviously we can’t get logjams in any one particular position, we have to make sure it fits across the country.”
By way of another example, Nucifora confirmed that Munster had sought to acquire Australia's World Cup captain Stephen Moore – widely rumoured to be the case but not something that Munster had heretofore commented on. While Nucifora maintained that the Union did not block the move, he did suggest they didn't exactly push it through, preferring instead that a younger indigenous player, presumably Niall Scannell, was given game time.
He also hinted that Moore’s continuing Test career made his acquisition less palatable for the Union/Nucifora, given the additional need for “financial prudence”, while citing a case of one proposed foreign player “who would have cost in excess of €200,000 a year.”
Admitting that “ultimately the buck stops with me”, Nucifora revealed: “Munster came to us with Stephen and said ‘this is what we’d like to put forward’. There’s a whole range of things that we think about that go into these decisions. So having a player that’s still eligible to play international rugby that’s going to cost a province a lot of money, is that the best use of the funds available at that point in time, where he’s going to be missing for a large portion of the season? Probably not.”
“It’d be nice to have him but it’d be nice to have him for the whole year. The fact that people have said that we blocked it, it wasn’t blocked. I think you’ll find that there probably was an offer made to Stephen Moore. It just wasn’t accepted.”
Given the more expensive market place, Nucifora also said that the figure of four overseas players plus one special project was not case in stone, and that there might be a case for “getting in two really good ones and as opposed to four average ones and invest the rest of our money into trying to hold on to the best of our Irish boys.”
Tellingly too, perhaps, Nucifora did not pay too much heed to the relatively poor results of Leinster and Munster in Europe this season. He noted that Leinster had "exactly" as many internationals on the pitch as Toulon, which was one way of interpreting the bald statistics, and many more than Wasps and Bath.
Buck stops
This suggested he and the Union believed Leinster, and maybe Munster, had been under-performing in Europe, although he denied this. Ultimately, despite the stark evidence to the contrary this season, he still maintained: “We would all be more than confident, the provinces and ourselves, that we’ve got the players there to be able to still win European competitions. I have no doubt about that.”
The buck also stopped with him regarding player movement between the provinces and while as part of their “succession planning” there might be a desire to encourage a player to move, ultimately it was the player’s decision.
Citing the example of Johnny Sexton’s move to Racing, and the difficulties in obtaining release of players who move abroad, Nucifora said: “straight away the players that go leave themselves at a disadvantage.”
In the case of Madigan, perhaps bound for Bordeaux, Nucifora said: “If Ian decided to go and he played 10 every week. We wouldn’t ignore him, we don’t ignore any of the players that might be overseas. We watch them all very carefully. Does it mean that he is at disadvantage behind the boys playing in Ireland? Yes, it does.”
Nucifora out-takes
On the World Cup review deeming Ireland’s campaign a success:
“No it’s not where we wanted to be. It’s not. We would be kidding ourselves. We wanted to go further in the tournament, we want to go at least make a semi-final. We are not happy with that, with the way that it ended up. Does that mean it was a failure? Not it doesn’t because there is a lot of good things that have come out of Irish rugby in the last number of years.”
On the provinces being limited to a maximum of four overseas’ players plus one special project:
“At the moment it is four-plus-one and that is what was decided before I got here. But the four-plus-one is merely a number. It is a maximum and each player that is put forward has to fit into a business case and if they don’t fit into the province’s business model and the succession planning of the national side they it is not a good fit. So it doesn’t have to be four-plus-one.
On the future of Robbie Henshaw
Nucifora was “confident that Robbie will be playing his rugby in Ireland” but as to where: “That’s up to Robbie. That is probably something to touch on. I know that sometimes people think that we manipulate the system and tell people where they can play and that’s not the case. The players, when they are off contract, it is totally up to them to decide where to play.
On players moving between provinces:
“I think they have to take responsibility as well and if you’re going to be a world-class player you have to have ambition and drive. If that means packing up the kitbag and moving down the road then that’s what it takes. There’s a lot of guys who do that but it would be nice to think that more people have got that ambition, and when you see young players doing well, hopefully that whets the appetite of other blokes as well.”
On the Union’s expectation for national team in 2016:
"I think the primary thing, in the eyes of the players and coaching staff is to defend our Six Nations title. That's the thing that's directly in front of us, that's the starting point for us, to go out and defend that."
