County Championship and Aviva Premiership highlight complexities of the home-grown v imported players dilemma It was also a topic of conversation before the Lord's final in a Sky Sports feature on Glamorgan and their current "Welshness." Rather ironically the final was won by Nottinghamshire, who fielded eight players signed from other counties, plus an overseas player. They too, though, are battling championship relegation this week. For the record, on Saturday Glamorgan fielded four Welshmen and two adopted sons (Dean Cosker and Ben Wright). In recent times, because of a lack of local talent coming through, there have been more acquisitions from outside. As Robert Croft, the former off-spinning all-rounder and now part of the coaching staff, explained: "You can't play for Glamorgan just because you're Welsh. You do a disservice to the badge and to those people who have played before. If you play for Glamorgan, you have to be a good enough cricketer. And therein lies the rub. It is a tricky balance between seeking success and producing home-grown talent. Places in the first team should not be gifted in overemphasising the latter. That happened at Glamorgan for a while. In football it does not matter about locally produced players. That is all about success, and because the clubs can stand on their own two feet, so making club football more important than international, they can just delve into the transfer market. Supporters do not seem to mind, even in Wales, where they flock to games even though, for instance, only three Welshmen in total started in the Premier League sides of Cardiff City and Swansea City on Sunday. Rugby union is at an interesting juncture in this respect. International rugby is undoubtedly more important than its domestic counterpart at the moment, but the imbroglio over the European Cup could change that. For all the talk about qualification and distribution of finances, it is only really about one thing: power. The clubs of England and France want to run the game instead of the unions. And you wonder where that road might lead once the journey down it has begun. For now at least rugby union is as keen on producing international players as it is on domestic success. The English Qualified Players scheme in the Aviva Premiership is working well, with Harlequins the shining exemplar, using 87 per cent of English players over last season. That is not to say, however, that all clubs rely on local talent, as emphasised last week by Worcester's new director of rugby, Dean Ryan, in bemoaning his academy produce. "Quins is a great model," he said, "They have a squad of 44 with something like 40 English-qualified players and 30 of those are academy-produced. We have to move this club towards that profile, but that will not happen overnight. I'd love to, but nine EPS [Elite Player Squad] players are not queuing up at my door to come here, so I have to look at how I generate my own. So to an even greater extent has county cricket, which is subservient to the national team's finances. It generally cannot attract the crowds that even Worcester rugby can regularly. Therefore it must have a duty to produce local players, and blend in some, but not too many, outsiders.