FOR SOME, THE presence of overseas players always seems to be a contentious issue.

Professional rugby is a relatively young sport, and the financial offerings have given players a different reason to up sticks from their native land and local club. The word mercenary can be carelessly flung around, but this is sport, there is no shame in doing the best for your career — we all know how short and precarious this sport makes such a thing anyway.

Even clubs, like Leinster’s opponents in the Aviva Stadium today Wasps, must sometimes change the scenery and move lock, stock and barrel in order to stay afloat.

We’re fortunate in Ireland to have four ancient provincial boundaries that form a large catchment area for the four professional outfits. The union’s efforts to make the most of that fortune and promote Irish qualified players is to be commended too, even if the phrases involved in categorising players can run the risk of slightly alienating a new arrival.

Source: Billy Stickland/INPHO

By now, Isa Nacewa is one of the names and faces most synonymous with Leinster’s rugby history. In his second spell in Ireland, he is the democratically elected captain in a team which today boasts 12 homegrown (including the east-of-the-Shannon-born Robbie Henshaw) players in the starting XV, but even he needed someone to make the effort to ensure he wasn’t made to feel like an outsider.

“I felt very accepted, very quickly,” said the man who arrived from the Auckland Blues in 2008 before raising a family here.

“It took me a while to understand the shape of the European season, by the time I understood it, we won our first European trophy, the Heineken Cup.”

Simple words, but the timing of the interruption from the towering Meathman left an impression with the Kiwi.

“That coming from Shaggy… how do you not feel accepted? That’s the way its’ been ever since. My girls were born here, so I feel part of the furniture. That’s for sure.”