Peter Jackson: Try the new Premiership game: Spot an Englishman!

When Newcastle and Leicester squared up at Kingston Park last Sunday, they set a record of sorts, one that appeared to pass without a flicker of recognition.
The Aviva Premiership made no mention of it. Perhaps they didn’t know or, there again, perhaps they did and realised it contravened the party line that a healthy majority of their players are English.
The Falcons versus the Tigers took the global dimension of the Premiership to disturbingly new frontiers. It turned out to be closer than any domestic match hitherto in a case of spot-the-Englishman.
For once, an English Premiership match featured a minority of English players. The French, it seems, no longer have a monopoly on flooding the domestic game with imports.
Of the 30 in starting action on Tyneside, only 13, (43.33 per cent), were English. The other 17, (56.66 per cent), came from 12 different countries – Argentina, Australia, Canada, Fiji, Ireland, New Zealand, Samoa, Scotland, South Africa, Tonga, Wales, Zimbabwe.
Nine of them belonged to Newcastle – Vereniki Goneva, Juan-Pablo Socino, Sinoti Sinoti, Mike Delany, Sonatane Takalua, Scott Lawson, Jon Welsh, Evan Olmstead and Ally Hogg.
Leicester supplied the other eight – Telusa Veainu, Peter Betham, Owen Williams, JP Pietersen, Mike Fitzgerland, Brendon O’Connor, Luke Hamilton and Mike Williams.
After three years in the Premiership, Williams from Bulawayo is now officially reclassified as English – hence his promotion to their elite squad. One man’s conversion cannot obscure the reality, that non-English numbers are going up in tandem with the salary cap.
Bristol’s 23-man squad at Wasps last weekend included a majority of ‘foreign’ players, not that it did them a fat lot of good. Three-fifths of the starting team came from Wales (Jordan Williams, Ryan Edwards, Ryan Bevington, Ian Evans), Samoa (Tusi Pisi, Anthony Perenise, Jack Lam), Scotland (Mitch Eadie) and America (Thretton Palamo).
Three more on the bench, ex-Wales scrum-half Martin Roberts, Argentina prop Gaston Cortes and his Tongan counterpart Soane Tonga’uiha, took the non-English total to 12. Wasps, by contrast, had that many English in their starting XV.
When the season began, English or English-qualified players accounted for marginally more than 60 per cent of a Premiership playing population of some 500. Since then the English percentage, nearer 70 not so long ago, has been slipping and the non-English increasing, albeit by no more than a few decimal points.
Since the kick-off, six more have either arrived from the Southern Hemisphere or are in the process of doing so – Hurricanes wing Jason Woodward to Bristol, Samoan prop Alofa Alofa to Harlequins, Fijian lock Api Ratuniyarawa and Tongan Nafi Tuitavake from France to Northampton, Leroy Houston from Queensland Reds back to Bath where he will be joined by Welsh wing Aled Brew.
Bristol, Newcastle and Worcester have the most non-English players (21), followed by Gloucester (20) and Saracens (19). Wasps and Quins have the fewest, (12).
In France, the percentage gap between home-grown players and imports in the Top 14 had narrowed, at the last count, to 55-45. Three of their clubs – Toulon, Lyon and Montpellier, carry squads containing more non-French players than French.
Three more – Stade Francais, Pau and Brive – are as near to 50-50 as makes no difference. Only one of the Top 14 have succeeded in maintaining their identity as truly French – Castres where almost 75 per cent of their 42-man squad are homegrown.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they were to win the Top 14 again this season?