"You've"?
Obviously not one of the informed members of the public then!
Some constructed posts from the Scottish side of things:
"1) "Steven has confirmed to Scottish Rugby that he declined to sign a declaration from the WRU that he was committed solely to representing Wales at senior level." - If Wales were asking players to sign a doc, then that suggests that the other U20 teams were not 2nd international senior sides as Wales would not have needed the doc had they been. Wales were trying plan B to secure talent, and given Steven didn't sign it, then fair enough.
2) "Scottish Rugby believes we have acted in good faith in this matter and have also taken cognisance of an IRB ruling last year concerning two players who played for Wales under-20 against France under-20 in 2010 who now play for Connacht and are eligible for Ireland." - good that they've done their homework here in case history, but not so good is the word "believes", which offers some form of doubt. In a statement they were certain about, I would have presented a fact, rather than made it seem like it was our opinion. Good faith also states 'we trusted the player', rather than 'we checked'. It reveals doubt in their minds.
3) "We are liaising with the IRB on this matter." - this answers demosthenes' question, and it seems they are now talking to the IRB, rather than checking before the team was announced. I can't understand why this didn't happen before. Guessing Wales was going to be a bit miffed, I'd have gone all out to check and double check with the IRB that we were in the right. To check NOW seems a little risky, and late. "
"
Stepping back from the technicalities of this.
The principle is that once a player has played SENIOR representative Rugby for one Country he is not eligible to play for another. Players capped at age grade are not normally tied - and this is true for almost every sport.
So far so good.
Senior representative Rugby is defined as 1) the full team (obviously) 2) the Sevens side (fair enough) and 3) the second most senior side (or words to that effect)
Herein lies the issue.
This second senior side regulation exists, I understand, principally because Tier 1 nations often play a weakened/experimental/fringe Senior side - often called an A side - when playing lesser nations, with additional ad-hoc fixtures against each other. The IRB rules that these fixtures should be regarded as representative SENIOR internaional matches and therefore should tie the players involved. This is probable fair enough, players playing in, say, Scotland A v Canada should probably be tied on both sides.
The IRB introduced a nomination process in 2000 that requires member Unions to nominate their second senior representative side (for a period of 4 years) because 1) many teams are not called A (e.g. Wolfhounds, Saxons, Jaguars) or 2) it exists alongside multiple senior representative sides (e.g. NZ A, NZ Maori, Presidents XV, etc.).
This was done for clarity. It was (surely) never the intent of this regulation to tie the eligibility of players competing in regularly scheduled age-grade tournaments such as the U20 6N or the Junior RWC.
Going back to the complexities.
Wales folded their U20 side in 2003 due to funds/politics and therefore nominated this as their second most senior side. They argue that this is enough to tie the player.
However, there were two further complexities added to the mix in that which were brought up in the case of Loxton and Jarvis the players recently signed by Connacht as IQ players who played U20s for Wales in 2010:
1. Did Wales U20 play another second most senior side, in effect creating an A International; and
2. Were the players informed of this and/or agree to this tieing them.
On point 2 the SRU statement seems to suggest that Shingler was not informed and/or did not agree to this. On point 1 it is not clear that France U20 were France's second senior side even though they had no A fixtures in 2011. If the nomination was for a 4 year period from 2008 then it was still their second side in 2011 as well."
