World Rugby Regulation Change Affecting MLR Draft Plans

So, here's the rub in the MLR draft. Players who played on NCR teams that have not registered with USA Rugby (a few do indeed double register) have not had their residency clock start yet—if they didn't register with the National Governing Body (and therefore registered with World Rugby) they don't have a consistent residency record.

To put it another way; the USA Rugby cannot verify that a player has been playing rugby only in the USA if that player hasn't always been registered with USA Rugby. 

This is becoming an issue and teams in MLR have been discussing it this week and this weekend. Players who think they have logged four years in the USA might find out that, according to World Rugby, they have zero years because they weren't registered with the National Governing Body. In addition, it has to be 60 consecutive months, not accumulated months. So if you came to the USA in 2019 and registered with USA Rugby through the 2021-22 season, but then transferred to a NCR-only school which didn't dual register, your clock would go back to zero.

As outlined in GRR's videos on the Major League Rugby Draft, MLR teams have a limited number of foreign player slots, and it's very difficult for a non-USA-Eligible college player to get one of those slots right after being drafted, and it could make it a bit more difficult to be signed. However, if that player has logged, for example, four years of residency, then he is more attractive to a team because he only has one more year to go before being USA eligible (if he hasn't already been capped or locked-in by another country), and therefore a team in the MLR would presumably be much more willing to sign him—there are certainly players in that situation.

Paperwork

Regulation 8 also is partnered with Regulation 4. Foreign players who come to the USA to play rugby have to fill out a World Rugby outbound player form and also an inbound player form for the USA (Regulation 4). That form is found here: https://usa.rugby/international-player-clearance. For collegiate rugby that paperwork is processed through CRAA (which is one of the reasons for the $20-per-player fee discussed here>>). If a player came to the USA to play for an NCR team and didn't fill out that form, apparently World Rugby doesn't recognize his or her residency clock.

This also affects players and coaches who go overseas. In recent months, CRAA representatives have had to step in to a) prevent a coach from being dismissed from an international tournament because he was only registered with NCR and not with USA Rugby, b) help players from an NCR-only program gain standing within USA Rugby so they could play overseas at a university that insisted on NGB membership, and c) fast-tracked USA Rugby membership for NCR players going on tour with the NCR All American team in France so they would be allowed to tour.

Immediate Ramifications

It is not completely clear how this will affect Major League Rugby draft and signing decisions. As far as GRR knows, there will be foreign-born NCR players drafted this coming week, and there remains some confusion about where those players sit in the residency timeline. Will MLR teams be reluctant to sign overseas players who registered exclusively with NCR? We asked around in the MLR sphere and the answers were, to paraphrase, "probably," "maybe," and "we don't know."

Questions remain on this regulation change. Is there a grandfather clause? Should World Rugby avoid making a recent regulation change retroactive? Can a player register independently with USA Rugby and manage his own clock that way? And, perhaps most importantly, how are players kept informed of the Inbound Player and Residency Eligibility regulations? 

Because if a player loses out on a professional contract and years of residency in his hope of making the USA national team, there's plenty of blame to share around.