In the arms race for young sporting talent in Australia, rugby union often feels like it is fighting with a peashooter opposite the bazookas wielded by rugby league and Aussie Rules. Now, however, Rugby Australia is facing a new and more ruthless set of opponents.
Visesio Kite is, by any definition, a genetic freak. At 16-years-old, Kite is already 6ft 8in and 23 stone and still growing. The Queenslander is also now in France having signed for La Rochelle in March to the considerable chagrin of the Wallabies.
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Kite is far from the only young Aussie talent to be picked off by a French club. Heinz Lemoto, the highly rated No 8, appears bound for Toulouse while hooker Adrian de Klerk has signed for Montpellier and sevens star Declan Minto will join Bayonne. Japanese clubs are also actively recruiting in Australian waters.
Where once it was the Pacific Islands of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa who fell victim to poaching raids from European clubs, now Australia are similarly powerless to stop the influence of market forces dragging their brightest talents abroad.
‘We are not on same playing field financially’
“We would not have the capacity to compete with the money that La Rochelle were offering to retain a 16-year-old prop,” Sam Cordingley, the general manager at the Queensland Reds, told Telegraph Sport. “If those French clubs come hard at a young guy we are not on the same playing field financially.
“It’s the same with the NRL clubs. There was a guy called Sam Walker and we went pretty hard at him as a ball player. But then he got an offer of $400,000 (around £200,000) from the Sydney Roosters – if they want to go hard at a player we just get blown out of the water.”
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Rugby Australia asks World Rugby to look into ‘poaching’
The case of Kite left a particularly sour taste after his father got involved and publicly lambasted Rugby Australia for failing to authorise his release. Currently a tighthead prop, La Rochelle already plan to convert him into a second row very much in the mould of Will Skelton. This drew a trenchant response from Daniel Herbert, the Rugby Australia chairman.
“It’s something that we’re talking to World Rugby about, because there’s more than what’s been reported as well that we’re aware of, and our view is that France has the ability to produce its own players,” Herbert said.”They don’t need to come and talk to our player agents to try and poach ours at a very young age. So there’s going to be some discussions at World Rugby level around what is actually allowed to happen in that market.
“Because, you know, [France’s] population of 70 million without the major competition [rugby league] that we have and doesn’t need to go to other markets to try and poach players. So it’s a live discussion with World Rugby at the moment.”
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Part of the reason that French clubs are casting their nets so wide is because of the JIFF regulation, which forces Top 14 clubs to field at least 15 ‘homegrown’ players in their matchday squad. The loophole is that the definition of ‘homegrown’ extends to any player who has spent three seasons with a club’s academy by the age of 23. Hence, New Zealand-born, Australian raised Emmanuel Meafou is a JIFF player for Toulouse as well as a French international.
Call for compensation
What Australia are calling for is either some kind of compensation mechanism because at the moment World Rugby’s regulation 4.7 does not account for players on academy contracts.
“I think World Rugby reg 4.7 talks to some level of compensation for development but it is a bit of a relic of the past and it has not moved with the times since professionalism came in,” Cordingley said “That’s something that needs to be looked at from Australia’s perspective as well as from the Pacific Islands in terms of how that talent is developed and supported.
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“We invest a hell of a lot in our development, not just in terms of our academy but into our pathways programme. The cost of developing a player is not insignificant. We acknowledge we are going to be net exporters of talent but at the same time Australia needs to move towards a model where there is some recompense or at least recognition of talent development.”
Green shoots
It is not all doom and gloom. Last year Australia Under-18s upset their New Zealand equivalents 38-31 in Hamilton for their first victory over Kiwi opposition since 2019. Of that 23-man squad, 20 have signed for Super Rugby teams.
Of the ones that got away, Lemoto looks set for France while full back Rex Bassingthwaighte has signed for the Roosters and winger Heamasi Makasini for the Wests Tigers in the NRL. In a strange way, many Australian observers were happy that Lemoto has gone to France and at least remained in union – and potentially still on the Wallabies’ radar.
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So ingrained is sport into the Australian social fabric, that they will always produce more athletes per capita than any European nation. That level of talent can only spread so far with 18 AFL (Aussie rules) and soon to be 20 NRL (league) franchises all armed with bigger budgets and greater profiles.
According to Cordingley, who won 23 caps for Australia as a scrum-half, the solution lies in “boxing cleverly” against the heavyweights by offering young players different and exciting opportunities such as the ability to play abroad.
“We acknowledge there’s a battleground but it has always been that way,” Cordingley said. “We are trying to create points of difference in our programme that aren’t just financial while acknowledging the finances are important. We have got to find ways to be better. We can’t use it as an excuse. We have got to be able to offer our players more opportunities to play and improve.”
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