I groaned loudly when I heard about Maurie Fa'asavalu's decision to make himself available for Great Britain and England. Now I'm sure Maurie has very good reasons for wanting to play for his adopted country, having lived here for four years, and played his entire rugby league career in Britain.

And I am pleased Maurie has settled here - he has turned into a cult hero on the Knowsley Road terraces and if he is happy to become an honorary St Helener we will welcome him into the fold.

If selected by coach Tony Smith, there is no doubt that the powerful former Samoan rugby union international will be an asset to the Great Britain team in autumn's Test series against the Kiwis, giving pack some real aggressive momentum off the bench.

I don't blame Maurie's reasoning - he is a professional rugby league player and obviously wants to play at the sport's highest level. Having done it all already domestically, the only boxes he has left to tick are at international level.

The reason I groaned were nothing to do with the but he's not really British' school of thought that occasionally gets trotted out at times like this. We have an Aussie national coach already for starters - and other sports do this sort of thing regularly. Mike Catt, for example, is South African born, but nobody bats an eyelid when he trots out for England Rugby Union every week - well at least not because of birthplace!

Rather, my disappointment is that Maurie has not opted to play for the Samoan team instead and maybe help them qualify for next year's World Cup.

Rugby league is a small game globally - puny when comparisons are made to the current rugby union World Cup which is currently grabbing acres of newsprint - so by taking players off the minnows aren't we helping to keep the game small?

If you look back to our World Cup of 1995 one of the reasons it was so successful was that fledgling rugby league nations like Wales, Samoa and Tonga showed some real passion and no little flair. The game at the capacity crowd Vetch between a Welsh side featuring a majority of bona fida Welshmen against a robust Western Samoan team boasting the likes of Apollo Perelini, Inga Tuigamala, Tea Ropati was one of the highlights. Likewise the game at Wilderspool between Tonga and the Kiwis was an absolute corker.

We should be doing our utmost to ensure that the small nations are given every possible encouragement to compete at the top level so we don't end up with a World Cup that is effectively a closed shop between Australia, New Zealand and England with the other teams thrown in as makeweights.

What do you think? Should the residency rule be scrapped for international rugby league? Should Maurie be picked for Great Britain?