Vodafone Fiji 7s coach Ben Ryan says New Zealand rugby clubs are poaching Pacific players and paying them ‘illegally’.
In an interview with stuff.co yesterday, Ryan says the way many Pacific island players are recruited to New Zealand clubs is “like the Wild West”.
He adds that Fiji is getting huge amounts of players going into clubs in New Zealand and Australia and elsewhere on visas that do not allow them to be paid for playing rugby.
It is revealed that some rugby clubs around New Zealand are allegedly creating jobs for Pacific Island rugby players, in order to get them work visas.
Ryan says the Pacific players are not given the full picture.
He stresses that a lot of the local players will get a phone call from somewhere in New Zealand saying they want them to come over, and perhaps leave out a few important points.
Some will usually get into doing manual labour on a low wage to earn them some pocket money to play for their clubs.
Ryan says sometimes players are on the wrong visas which caused them to be illegally paid.
He says many agents come to Fiji to find players but are not registered.
Source: stuff.co
