South Africans and Pacific players to keep non-foreign category until 2024

The Rugby Football Union has ruled that Premiership stars from South Africa and the Pacific Islands will continue to be classified as non-foreign until 2024, when the governing body is seeking to introduce beefed-up rules on England-qualified quotas, the Guardian understands.

Premiership clubs are entitled to two foreign players in their matchday squads and before Brexit anyone from South Africa, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga was not considered a foreign player due to the 2003 EU Association Agreement. Clubs, however, had feared that would no longer be the case when the UK left the EU.

In the wake of Brexit the RFU opted temporarily to keep the existing definitions of non-foreign players and it is understood that at the union’s most recent council meeting an extension was agreed until the end of the 2023-24 season, after which the new Professional Game Agreement comes into force.

RFU guidance recently issued to clubs reads: “The decision on who can work in the UK is a matter for government. Player registration and classification rules however sit with the RFU and within the bounds of English law, it is the RFU’s decision to determine who is classified as a foreign or non-foreign player. As such due to the United Kingdom no longer being a member of the European Union, the RFU is working with stakeholders to determine the position going forwards with regards to the regulatory classification of foreign players.

“From summer 2024 there will be a new EQPs system and new foreign player rules. There is further work to do to agree the detail of this subject to a new Professional Game Agreement and introduction into regulation. Pending this, an interim position will exist such that players who are or would have been classified as a