England: We only want quality

LONDON - England rugby officials are reported to be planning to limit the number of foreign players in the club championship to ensure prospective test players get the chance to make the grade.

An English Rugby Football Union committee headed by former England prop and Lions manager Fran Cotton has been given until April to come up with a proposal to force all 12 premiership clubs to pick up to 17 England-qualified players in their 22-man squads.

"We want the quality overseas players," Cotton told the Daily Mail.

"This is not a plan to get rid of these guys.

"What we don't want is to be flooded out by second-raters, which they are by implication, otherwise they would be playing Super 12 [in New Zealand, Australia or South Africa]."

The union is alarmed at the prospect of overseas players mounting a legal challenge to any quota restrictions after Slovenian handballer Maros Kolpak brought a successful action through the European courts against restrictions at his German club.

The English union pours millions of pounds into the clubs and fears a flood of overseas players might dry up the reservoir of local talent and hurt England's World Cup champions' status.

"Why pay in the region of £8 million to £9 million [$21.6-$24.3 million] annually to fund overseas players when we all realise that the wealth-creator is the success of the England team?" Cotton said.

But he acknowledged the need to come up with a legally watertight plan because an earlier attempt by the union to impose controls was abandoned two years ago when a player threatened to go to court over a non-English limit.

* Rugby Canada has received 23 applications to succeed David Clark as coach of the national team.

Most of the applications were foreign, coming from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, but Rugby Canada's preference is for a Canadian, spokesman Graham Brown said yesterday.

The union did not name any of the applicants.

For the first time, the coaching position will double as director of national men's teams, with a salary from A$60,000 to A$80,000 ($68,480-$91,310).

Clark, an Australian, was Canada's first fulltime paid national coach.

Canada, who failed to advance from the first-round group phase at the World Cup, have a busy year.

They have been invited to take part in the Super Nations Cup in May in Japan, with the United States, Japan and Russia.

They will also host the Churchill Cup in June in Calgary and Edmonton, including England A, the United States and New Zealand Maori.

Canada will host France on July 10 in Toronto, and will tour England and Italy in November.

- AGENCIES