Tonga appear to be on a march in terms of player acquisition. Quite apart from the disappointment in them acquiring notorious homophobe Israel Folau, they've named Chales Piutau, Malakai Fekitoa, and Augustine Pulu in their summer squad, and there are rumours that their November squad could include the likes of Atu Moli, Sekope Kepu, Adam Coleman, and George Moala. That's going to be a huge uptick in the quality available to them and will instantly move them from being a 16th ranked team struggling to quality for the RWC to being a significant danger to pretty much every other side.
Obviously, the trick is going to be access to players, but for the RWC they should be able to put out a pretty scary XV, making a group that already contained Ireland, South Africa, and Scotland even worse. Spain are currently appealing the decision to kick them out of the RWC - given that their reward would be going into that group, they might be better off accepting their punishment!
Be interesting to see if there's a change in Australia's player selection policy after this - Tonga are definitely sharking for players who have taken the Euro and there's a few names on there that I don't think Aus would've been quite done with, if they'd had the choice.
Puja
New and improved Tonga
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Re: New and improved Tonga
If only Tonga were in the same group as Australia...Puja wrote:Be interesting to see if there's a change in Australia's player selection policy after this - Tonga are definitely sharking for players who have taken the Euro and there's a few names on there that I don't think Aus would've been quite done with, if they'd had the choice.