Jean Kleyn controversially qualified to play for Ireland just weeks before he beat Devin Toner for a place in Joe Schmidt’s Rugby World Cup squad, but “them's the rules and we have to deal with them,” according to Keith Wood.
The 58 times capped former Ireland and Munster player said that the conversation around Irish-born players missing out to those who qualify on residency is a tough topic to deal with.
But it doesn’t erode the credibility of Ireland age-grade system, Keith Wood told Off The Ball on Monday Night Rugby.
“No, and I find that a difficult thing to say because, in many respects, that would’ve been my opinion but when you look at where the game has gone at the present moment in time, you want every single team playing under the same rules.
“We can’t just suddenly say we’re not and take three, four, five or 10 players out of our system that are there by the laws of the game and [those types of players] are in each and every team we play against,” Wood said.
However, he felt comparing leaving players like Simon Zebo out of the Ireland squad is not comparable to the policy of picking players who qualify on residency.
“It’s a choice, but it’s a choice to stop players leaving Ireland - there is a rationale behind it.
“Whether we like it or not, personally I’d like to see Simon Zebo involved but I understand the rationale behind it. It is to try to stem the flow of players leaving Ireland and to try have as many as possible,” Wood explained.
World Rugby did change the residency rule so that it will now take five years, instead of the previous three, to qualify through residency. Wood thinks that it will change how Ireland choose players.
“Right now the residency rule is three years but in 2020 it will be five years. We had the discussion about two or three years ago about whether you could have it on a passport-holders basis.
“World Rugby decided that they would push it out to five years which makes it much, much harder to have project players and I think that will make a significant change. However it doesn’t erode the credibility of Ireland age-grade system,” he said.
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