Don't tier it down: Woolf, Frizell support nation-hopping

Tonga's Kristian Woolf and Tyson Frizell have launched an impassioned defence of international rugby league’s tiering system in the face of renewed calls to further restrict players from nation-hopping.

Born in Wollongong with a Tongan mother and Welsh father, veteran Newcastle forward Frizell makes his debut for the Mate Ma’a on Sunday against England having previously played six times for Wales and on 14 occasions for Australia – all of which came under current Kangaroos coach Mal Meninga.

The 32-year-old agrees with his coach that the current tiering system, and the potential for multi-nation representation in a career, was right.

"Mal's a big advocate for international footy," Frizell said.

"But there's a ruling on second-tier nations. You want the best players playing in the big games. I don’t know if we can pigeonhole players to play for one nation or just Origin and you can’t play for other international countries.

“I’ve played my junior footy in NSW and I’ve always wanted to play for the Blues. I’m a proud Tongan as well and Welsh.  Are they saying I’m more passionate about one side of family than the other? That’s just not true.

“Obviously some boys are just pure Aussie and it just falls into that... [but] it’s different circumstances for me.”

“We’ve got to look at what we want internationally," Woolf told NRL.com in St Helens, where Tonga kick off the first three-Test tour of England by tier-two nation in the sport’s history.

"If we want a genuine international competition that has more than three teams, if we want it to be what it is at the moment where it’s five, six, seven teams that are becoming really competitive, then the rules need to stay as they are.

“To me, I can’t see any problem with the rules. I know if becomes frustrating for coaches and fans at different times when players do change. Kotoni Staggs, as far as we knew up until the day before we named our squad, was playing for Tonga. 

“That’s frustrating, obviously, at times. But that’s part of international footy and that’s the way it is. There’s no point getting upset about it or thinking we should change the rules on the back of that. The rules that have been put in place are the reason we’ve seen what we’ve seen since 2017.

“If we change those rules we’ll go back to what we had in 2013. There were three competitive teams in the 2013 World Cup.”

In 2019, International Rugby League stopped players changing countries inside a calendar year after Cronulla’s Ronaldo Mulitalo played for Samoa and the United States Nines in the space of a month. Having been found ineligible for Queensland, Mulitalo is now forging an international career for New Zealand.

Frizell revealed he considered giving up representative football when he made himself unavailable for Wales last year, which would also have discounted him from the ‘New South’ variety earlier this year as well.

“Kristian made contact with me back in 2013 but at the time I was playing for Wales and I wanted to play for them and in the future potentially play for Tonga,” he recounted.

I reached out to the club and reached out to Kristian and said I was ready to come over and I’d love the opportunity to play if selected.

Tonga forward Tyson Frizell

“From then on, I’ve been in contact with Kristian and they said before finals footy that if I was fit and ready they wanted me to be part of the team.

“It’s something I’m very excited about. I’ve got a lot of cousins on my Tongan side... they’re excited because they’ve been able to see what Tonga’s been able to do over the past few years as a second-tier nation.

“I was kidding myself [thinking of retirement]. I just love playing footy. I just love playing in the big games, international footy and Origins."