Australia are to press ahead with a campaign to tighten regulations governing players who change international allegiance after their successful appeal to the International Rugby Board that the New South Wales centre Jason Jones-Hughes was not eligible to play for Wales. But Wales and a "surprised and disappointed" Jones-Hughes have not given up.

Wales last week named the 22-year-old former Australian Schools and under-21 international, whose father was born in Colwyn Bay, in their World Cup squad, but the matter was referred to the IRB because the player had appeared for the Australian Barbarians against Scotland last year.

The Australian Rugby Union contended that as the Barbarians were the team immediately below the Wallabies, Jones-Hughes was not eligible to play for any other country, regardless of birth, for another two years. The problem for Jones-Hughes is that the IRB is changing its rule next January so that once a player has appeared for a country as a full international or for the team immediately below that level, he may never play for another nation.

The ARU wants the regulation to be more far-reaching. "We feel it should encompass players who go on tour," said ARU spokesman Strath Gordon.

"The Celtic nations are stockpiling players from the Southern Hemisphere and they are being allowed to get away with it. We are also concerned that players who claim to have a grandparent born in the country they want to play for do not have to prove it."

The IRB will be looking at the issue at its conference in September. There was a dispute over whether the Australian Barbarians were effectively Australia `A'. The IRB's three-man commission, which met on Monday in San Francisco, sided with the ARU.