Goughy
Hall of Fame Member
Your issues (and good luck with them btw) are not relevant to the current SA player debate.My experience is not so pleasant on these matters and here is what I have to say.
I am a saffa married to a Norwegian and I find most of europe has a two faced policy when it comes to immigration. I have now been married for 3 years to her and due to the nature of her work, we are required to travel abroad regularly. I am not allowed to live in Norway freely unless i prove every single time that I am married to her, despite having gone through the same visa process 3 times alread. Yet, I still get treated like a new applicant each time and I only see myself getting citizenship in 10 years time, despit by then I would have been married for 10 years. Now why is it so easy for sportd people to get such rights for the sake of playing a sport but so difficult for other in a more needing situation to get the same rights? The other thing is that half of the population playing cricket in Aus, NZ and SA have roots in Europe and I am sure that all of them could legally get a Europian passport of some sort and most probably that passport would be british. What would then happen if all the cricket players from these countries chose to represent Eng as apposed to theri country of birth? The reason why this mostly affect SA is because
1)We now have the ability to travel to the UK (a right denied to us for many years due to sanctions)
2)Quotas
3)Many people find the grass is greener in other countries due to some deeper issues I will not discuss here.
I guess the only statement I was trying to make is from a point of view of the sport and not the players. If this continues for SA then SA will lose fans to the game and risk a decrease in attracting young fans to the sport.
So again, why is the ICC who are trying to salvage Test match cricket, allowing some countries to gain the talenst from development in other countries and allowing countries with more money to woo more players of quality to their team?
Imagine if FIFA allowed countries to handpick/pay for better talents to represent a country as apposed to mandating that players must play for their countries of birth?
You say it would take 10 years for you to become a citizen and cricketers have it easier just because they are sportsmen. That is wrong. KP and Trott were already British citizens. They are not looking to 'back-door' but merely live and work in a country they have every right to as citizens.
I guess you dont have a Euro passport and that makes things more difficult for you. That is precisely why you shouldnt take issue with KP and Trott. These are not guys without links to the UK who are being let in for financial and performance reasons. They are British and as such need to be treated as such. If they were not already British then their path would have been far more difficult. It is not that the England team is just taking anyone. Just those that want to and already have the right.
RE: FIFA- I suggest you read the requiements. Soccer has the loosest (sp?) system imaginable. There is no rule that a player has to play for the country of their birth and nations hand pick talent all the time. In fact far more so than in Cricket.
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