Same broadcast mentioned Emlyn Hughes, Fred Hughes boy. It's ok to play for England with a name like Emlyn, you can't choose that either.
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Wales first ever international team in 1876 contained 5 English born player's. By the year 1890. 37 of the player's who represented Wales were born in England. Gleaned from BBC radio Cymru. Not researched by myself.. You don't get to decide where you were born, you do however get to decide who you play for up to a point. excuse the typo in thread before you start.
Same broadcast mentioned Emlyn Hughes, Fred Hughes boy. It's ok to play for England with a name like Emlyn, you can't choose that either.
I've seen many a thread in my time saying how stupid it is having all these South Africans playing for England in Cricket, and how it turns the sport into a farce. What we are seeing is players born in South Africa using ties to the country via parentage and then playing for a country. Did Kevin Pietersen grow up wanting to play for England, i dont think so, however the system made it easier to play for England and make it to the top than if he stayed in SA
What we then see is the very same people who would ridicule the Cricket model, will go out of their way to defend exactly the same thing happening in Welsh football.
Lets be honest the system as it stands isnt great. Wales do systematically identify players with legacy qualifications and get them playing in the age groups system in Wales. It has to do this to some extent because Wales has next to no structure in bringing through young players outside of the 4 English Football league clubs.
What is international sport, is it a product where you exhibit the best talent you can produce as a country, or is it a product where you use the rules to be as successful as you can.
Im as proud as anyone of the Welsh National Team, but i cannot agree with the Grandparent qualification. If people want to highlight the system that Wales employ at the moment, then in a way they are correct, and well within their rights.
Like what you say but the South African part seem's such a long way away as to highlight the whole issue in another light. Residency probably apllie's as well. Trying to extradite Wales from England is so hard as to be impossible. England made sure of that. A line needs to be drawn agreed, I just think the new Welsh lads are drawing they're own one.
People like Kevin Pietersen and Gregg Rusedski both had English Mothers, so they were a generation closer to England, than Ashley Williams is to Wales, yet some will say that the first 2 are a complete farce, where Williams (and plenty of others to be fair) are fine to pick where they want to choose.
There was a thread on here the other day that said Mo Farah wasn't British.
I really don't care, but Durham on Talksport was saying we have quite a few players that have never even lived in wales.
I had segregating people...who am I to say who is from where? But we are stretching it a bit
He is right though The first time Ashely Williams came to Wales was to play for the national team. Im sure its the case for many others (i mean if only one grandparent was from an area).
Durham is simply doing what any Welshman has done in the past with the Plastic Paddy's, English Cricket team, Lennox Lewis, Mo farah, Gregg Rusedski, etc....
F*ck what Durham thinks. Me suggesting that I'm more Welsh because I speak Welsh than some of my fellow Welshmen deprived in South Wales of the chance to do so would be outrageous. If you're in you're in. Simple enough to my mind.
Adrian Durham was calling for Januzaj to play for England a few years back. He is irrelevant.
I dont understand why people get upset about the Durham thing, in a way he's correct. We are scouting English legacy players and we are using the rules to our advantage. He is perfectly correct.
As Welsh fans we have to be content with that don't we. We have to be happy with the success, because we are fully aware that the situation is happening.
Surely the counter debate is that we are simply following the rules criteria that is set-out to us. In fact we are even hamstrung further from other country's outside the UK because we do not use residency rules. So we could never have a Diego Costa turning out for us.
Didn't want to give any oxygen to Durham in this thread. It is just hard these day's to separate Wales from England and vice versa under current and original qualification rules. A Welsh historian was quoting the first Welsh team. intereseting in a modern context. Wonder what was made of it back then.
Difference is, we have a population of 3m, 25% of which is English and a huge amount of young people leave Wales in search of work, a lot of the time to England, we can't afford to be picky and we'll take whatever we can get. I don't care if they were born in Timbuktu, if they shown passion and desire when playing for Wales and are obviously committed to the country, they're as Welsh as anyone
If you showed someone who had no idea at all about football a Wales game, they'd assume Ashley Williams was as pure and passionate a Welshman as you could get, was born here and spends his time off playing Welsh Scrabble
I didn't fume about Owen Hargreaves and look at the time we invested in that young man. You could argue that i would fume more about Vinnie Jones playing for us. In the end I thought fair enough if he really want's to, can do and is into it. Again though it's a choice, you are in or you are out.
Hargreaves was born in Canada, Owen from a border town from English parents.
Bale, and individual born in Wales, to Welsh Parents, went to school in Wales, but had one English Grandparent. Much like many currently playing for Wales, i must admit with the talent he possesses that would annoy me.
Surely you see the difference.
Course I see the difference but again I would say it's up to the individual. Of course i would be miffed if Bale played for England and some would be slagging off the FA for identifying Welsh/English qualified talent. Hargreaves came through the u21 with Brian Flynn whilst with B.Munich., he wanted to play for England and he did. I guess I mean you either want to play for Wales or you don't. Maybe England and the profile/agents/media could twist you're arm but the other way around seems more like a want. I'm happy with that.
People get way too hung up on nationality. The way I see it it's not about one thing, it's about where you're born, where you're brought up, where your family come from and even a strong affinity or love of a country.
As far as representing Wales at sport, all of the above are fine with me.
My thoughts on this are (very) well documented.
If a player isn't good enough to be picked for His own country, then why would he / should he, take the place of a Welsh player in their national team.
Obviously, Williams and Vokes would love to play for England, but were not good enough, so (some might say) selfishly play for Wales.
Impoverished countries have always endured mass migration. People need to earn to live, and in many cases it's in another country. The 'another' country's establishment is very often the cause of the lack of employment in the home country. Bit rich to bleat a few generations down the line over sport.
Couldn't disagree more. I wish every Welsh person spoke Welsh but they don't and mostly can't. It's fine, It's the way it is for many reasons. Doesn't make them any any less Welsh too me it would just be nice in my mind. I buzzed hard when Williams, Vokes plus Robson-Kanu scored against Belgium as well as other high's in our game. They did n all, You can see it. It means something.
You completely missed my point.
Why should an Englishman, rejected by England, play for Wales instead of a Welshman?
It's just selfish and egotistical, and morally wrong.
A few players (recent e.g. Turner and Shawcross), have politely declined, even though they 'qualify' they are not Welsh, and therefore did the decent thing.
Oh, your point on Vokes is completely invalid by the way, he played for Wales' Under 21s at 17, an age where he would still have had chances to play for England at any level, he instead committed to Wales and has showed a lot more commitment than a lot of "proper Welshman" (a certain Mr.Giggs springs to mind)
Williams has admitted to supporting England when he was a kid and of course he did, but now he seems himself as fully Welsh and has raised his children as such, nationality is more than whichever hospital you happen to have been born in