Lets Talk about Scotland's "Foreign" Players…
Scotland has come under a lot o flack recently about the number of foreign players in there 6 nations squad. With 21 0f the 40 man squad originally named not being born in Scotland. But is there any truth to this?
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So it is true that 52.5% of the squad were not natively born in Scotland but that competently ignores players like Cameron Redpath who grew up in England and was born in France because his father was playing there at the time. I feel like its hard to make a case that a man with 2 Scottish parents one of which has 60 caps for Scotland and is an ex captain of his country isn’t Scottish and also Cameron Henderson who was born in Hong Kong to Scottish parents and grew up and was trained in Scotland. But to be fair 3 of the players are VDM, Peirre Schoemann and WP Nel. All of which are residency players and have no connection to Scotland outside of having lived here for at least 3 years. Which isn’t even the most residency players in a 6 nations 2023 squad. Ireland have 4. But what of the other 16? well all of them have at least 1 parent or 1 grand parent who is Scottish which makes them eligible to play for the nation. 9 were born in other UK nations, 2 are from New Zealand, 2 are from Australia, 1 is from South Africa, 1 is from Canada, 1 is from Ireland
There is also the weird interpretation of what a Nation is. In the eyes of the UK and World Rugby Scotland is a Nation but in the eyes if the UN it is not. You cannot even get a Scottish Passport. All Scots are British Citizens which means we all have a British Passport. Meaning that at least 10 of the 21 “foreign” players in the squad have the correct citizenship for the country they represent with another 8 being eligible for citizenship through ancestry and WP Nel and VDM being eligible through 5 years residency but yet they are still called foreign? People laud Japan for making there players be citizens but yet when Scotland's are they are classed as “foreign”. Now yes I’m being somewhat facetious here but I’m more pointing out the complex situation of what nationality is when it comes to UK nations. But we do potentially have an idea of what it would take to get Scottish citizenship if you could. In 2014 before the Scottish Independence Referendum the Scottish Government released a white paper describing many aspects of independence. One of which was the nature of citizenship. It stated that any British citizen living in Scotland would qualify for Scottish citizenship and anyone with a parent or grand parent could apply for citizenship. It also stated that if you have lived in the country for 10 years you would also be able to gain citizenship. Which means 18 out of the 21 foreign born players in the Scotland squad would qualify for Scottish citizenship under the Scottish governments own proposal. And if its good enough for the democratically elected Government of Scotland do define these people as Scottish. It should be good enough for you.
Some might say I am coming at this topic in bad faith but I would equally say that anyone saying there are 21 foreigner in the squad is doing the same. There are only 21 foreign players by 1 definition of what a foreigner is but as we see here by other definitions that number could fall as low as 1 player who will represent Scotland in this years six nations championship
