{"id":114762,"date":"2021-08-11T01:05:40","date_gmt":"2021-08-11T01:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=114762"},"modified":"2021-08-11T04:59:13","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T04:59:13","slug":"sonny-bills-radical-fix-for-australian-rugby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=114762","title":{"rendered":"Sonny Bill's radical fix for Australian rugby"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sonny Bill Williams has a radical proposal to make the Wallabies world-beaters again: let Australia's top-end talent fly the coop overseas.<\/p>\n

Dual code legend Williams shared his seemingly counter-intuitive views on Stan Sport's Rugby Heaven<\/em><\/a>, when asked to weigh in on Rugby Australia's eligibility laws which place restrictions on who the Wallabies can pick from abroad.<\/p>\n

World champions and Lions-tamers South Africa<\/a> have a selection free for all, with many of their best players now earning big club cheques in Europe and Japan.<\/p>\n

Watch every match of the Bledisloe Cup and The Rugby Championship with live, ad-free and on-demand coverage on Stan Sport<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"SBW's<\/p>\n

New Zealand Rugby doesn't allow any overseas-based players to represent the All Blacks but Michael Hooper-style sabbaticals are fairly common.<\/p>\n

"The old Giteau rule," said Williams, a two-time Rugby World Cup-winner who also played in France and Japan.<\/p>\n

"For me, I'm not too far away from controversy, as I've found throughout my career.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Wallabies star makes surprise Bledisloe return<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Wallabies welcome back boozy Bledisloe trio<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Shock recall kicks Springboks to Lions victory<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Hooper's<\/p>\n

"But for me, when it comes to that rule, I think the question should be 'what do we want to get out of the Wallabies at that level?'<\/p>\n

"And we want them competing against the top tier nations, we want them beating them consistently, we want them winning the Bledisloe Cup consistently.<\/p>\n

"How do you do that? For me I think we've got it wrong in the sense that we think by hoarding the top end players\u2026 for me it's not going to happen."<\/p>\n

\"Wallabies<\/p>\n

Williams identified Australian rugby's class divide as an issue within a highly competitive sporting market.<\/p>\n

"The source of the problem is footy at school. The majority of public schools all play rugby league and the majority of private schools play rugby union.<\/p>\n

"How do we change that? Well, I wouldn't mind that rule going, where you get some top earning players going overseas. So a player that's on $500,000, he could go overseas and get $1 million, go overseas, get that.<\/p>\n

\"All<\/p>\n

"That $500,000 goes back into the Australian Rugby Union.<\/p>\n

"The Australian Rugby Union is struggling at the moment so the money that's left over from that, where does that go, it goes into schoolboy footy.<\/p>\n

"Rugby league will never die in public schools but if they can just open a little bit of space and create a bit of space for rugby union to thrive, I think that's where you'll see the depth in the higher ranks come into play."<\/p>\n

\"All<\/p>\n

Williams' comments were interestingly timed as Wallabies coach Dave Rennie announced he was recalling Japan-based star Samu Kerevi to his squad.<\/a><\/p>\n

"I think it ticks both boxes in the sense that I'm all for players earning, for looking after themselves and their families, especially Polynesian families because it's often not just the immediate families," Williams said.<\/p>\n

"We're looking after quite an extended group."<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sonny Bill Williams has a radical proposal to make the Wallabies world-beaters again: let Australia's top-end talent fly the coop overseas. Dual code legend Williams […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114762"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114762"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114765,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114762\/revisions\/114765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}