Many sports are adopting a more flexible approach to national identity

TONGA’S RUGBY team punches above its weight. The Pacific-island country has a population of around 107,000, just a few thousand more than could fit into the world’s largest rugby stadium in Johannesburg. Yet Tonga’s men’s side is ranked 15th in the world. And even that rating is not truly reflective of the country’s talent levels, since many Tongans choose to represent larger, wealthier countries for which they have qualified through naturalisation or residency. Current examples include Billy and Mako Vunipola, brothers who play for England, and Wales’s Taulupe Faletau. Australia and New Zealand have players eligible to represent Tonga, too. If you got the exiles together, they would probably give a strong showing at the Rugby World Cup, currently taking place in France.

Professional athletes cannot be blamed for pursuing more lucrative contracts and a greater chance of silverware. But the practice of poaching stars from Pacific-island countries like Tonga and Fiji has long added to a sense of inequity in global rugby. In 2021, a few months after Tonga had been pounded 102-0 by New Zealand, the sport’s authorities went some way towards redressing the balance by changing the eligibility rules. Three years after last playing for one international side, athletes can now switch to another, assuming they are eligible owing to their place of birth or that of a parent or grandparent. Those changes have made a considerable difference to the make-up of some of the teams in this year’s tournament. Samoa’s World Cup squad has three players who represented New Zealand; Tonga’s (pictured) has five.

Rugby is not the only sport to make it easier recently for players to turn out for more than one country. Modern footballers were until recently forbidden from changing teams once they had made a competitive international appearance. But in 2020 football’s governing body, FIFA, tweaked the criteria, allowing players to switch if they have played no more than three competitive matches for their first country. Those games must have taken place before the player turned 21 and cannot have been part of the finals of a big tournament like the World Cup.

That is not quite a return to the free-wheeling days of the early 20th century, before the rules were tightened, when international players could switch teams rather more easily. There is unlikely to be another Luis Monti, the only player to feature in World Cup final matches for two different countries: Argentina in 1930 and Italy in 1934. But the new rules begin to acknowledge that many modern players have a fluid sense of national identity and may be able to help another team. Wilfried Zaha, for instance, was born in Ivory Coast but moved to Britain at the age of four. He played two friendly matches for England, before he stopped getting picked. He switched his allegiance to Ivory Coast and has played for them 31 times. Under the old rules, if one of his England appearances had been a tournament qualifier, Mr Zaha’s move would have been impossible.

Some fans might consider changing stripes an act of betrayal. But the patriotic chest-thumping is pointless. Giving eligible players the chance to modify their allegiances makes sense. Many will feel an affinity with more than one country anyway. Young athletes can accept a call-up to a competitive match with less fear of becoming “one-cap wonders”, who briefly feature in a coach’s plans before being locked out of international competition for the rest of their careers. Fans also benefit by seeing as many of the best players as possible perform on the international stage.

Still, lax rules regarding eligibility can have unintended consequences. In July Kholod, an independent Russian media outlet, reported that over 200 top-level Russian sports stars had changed nationality since the invasion of Ukraine began—141 of them chess players. The International Chess Federation banned Belarus and Russia from its competitions after the invasion, but makes it easy for people to change the flag under which they compete. Players only need another passport or residency permit and the approval of their new national federation, which must pay their counterparts in the first country €50 ($54).

Some of those who took the opportunity, such as Alexandra Kosteniuk, had spoken out against the war. Others perhaps simply did what was needed to circumvent the ban. Similar debates arose in tennis last year after Wimbledon banned Belarusian and Russian professionals (the ban was revoked this year). Natela Dzalamidze, born and raised in Russia, changed her nationality to Georgian, the country of her father, to ensure she could compete. The tournament’s organisers admitted they could do little to stop her.

And for all the positives of rugby’s rule change (Tonga’s team has probably never been stronger), it has not been without controversy. Before the rules were finalised, Simon Raiwalui, now the head coach of the Fijian men’s side, criticised the idea of players representing two different countries, thereby denying other athletes the chance to play international sport. And perhaps the most prominent player to benefit from the change has been Israel Folau, who played 73 times for Australia before his contract was terminated in 2019 for making homophobic comments on social media. Mr Folau started playing for Tonga in 2022. Only injury ruled him out of appearing at the World Cup.■