Jeff Probyn: England stance is vital for developing young talent

The increasing call on the RFU to change its stance and pick players who choose to ply their trade in another country is understandable, but naïve. Funny thing is, it is only when they cross the channel (English not Bristol) that players suddenly seem to become persona non grata.
The current cause celebre is Steffon Armitage who is playing some great rugby for Toulon in the French Top14 but is still apparently not needed for England’s NZ tour, despite a potential impact the Premiership play-off final could have on First Test selections.
Armitage and many other players who have made the choice and moved to France appear to be on the receiving end of a spiteful campaign to punish them for moving to where they are better off financially and in all probability improved as players – but is that really true?
Most of the international players who made the move would have done so in the knowledge they were in the last days of their international career (like Toby Flood), when younger players take their place in the team and they are relegated to the bench, playing the odd few minutes at the end of games.
What has to be remembered is that all the English players that have taken the euro have made the choice knowing that in all probability it would end their chances of international rugby, so it’s a bit ripe to then express disappointment when not picked.
The problem of selecting players that are not playing in your home league is all about access, not only to the players but also to games, making true assessments of how well players are truly playing difficult if not impossible. Overseas players leave selectors relying on videos and hearsay from the media.
The Top 14 is stuffed full of teams that have spent fortunes buying some of the world’s best players, many of whom are at the end of their international careers but are still more than capable of dominating ‘standard’ club opposition.
With teams like Toulon, whose entire side is made up of current and past internationals, it can have the effect of making even a very average player seem like a world beater, so imagine how good that could make a technically good player look.
Even when trying to assess players that are playing here in England, where you could watch them every week if you wanted, it is incredibly difficult to measure a player’s quality when the performance of each player is reliant upon the performance of his team mates and the style of game they are coached to play.
There are many cases of players that have been selected to play for their country and only played a few times or sometimes just a single game. Some may have had their international careers cut short by injury but the majority would be deemed as unfortunate errors of selection that picked players who were unable to either adapt to a different playing style or raise their game to the high standard needed at international level.
Many of the players would have been playing well for their successful clubs at the time of selection and so would have been seen as the natural choice.
Among the worst years for selection errors were 1984, 1997 and 1998, with 18 players capped in each of those years and a majority selected to play only a few games.
Those levels of selection errors usually occur only when there is poor leadership in a management team who are uncertain of the style they want the squad to play, or who are the best players to deliver on the field. But when you have a decisive leader of the management team, with a cohesive plan as it appears Stuart Lancaster is, the number of new caps is usually lower and the players remain in the squad longer.
Access is key to everything; the ability of the management team to see live how players are playing and to be able to talk to them is far easier if they are playing in their home country. However, some countries have no choice but to accept that a large number of their better players will be playing in another country.
For the Celtic nations with small playing numbers and a limited number of professional teams it could be said to be essential for them to lose players to France and England to enable them to ‘blood’ new talent at home.
If the established players remained in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, it could stifle the development of young talent needing valuable game time.
England and France have a different problem; they have so many players that it is difficult to sort the ‘wheat from the chaff’ and sometimes must rely on injuries to give players the chance to state their case like in this year’s Six Nations with Luther Burrell.
England has greater success at keeping players than others nations because they pay such a large match fee which means players will only go to France when they feel their time playing for England is over.
Both the Armitage brothers left for France when for different reasons it looked like time was being called on their England careers and they have enjoyed a great few years playing good rugby with great players and are helping to establish Toulon as one of the premier teams in Europe.
If any player believes they can really resurrect their England careers they know what to do – leave France and find a club in England.